When Walters entered, Rand had his pipe lit and was walking slowly around
the room, laying out the work ahead of him. Roughly, the earliest pieces
were on the extreme left, on the short north wall of the room, and the
most recent ones on the right, at the south end. This was, of course,
only relatively true; the pistols seemed to have been classified by type
in vertical rows, and chronologically from top to bottom in each row. The
collection seemed to consist of a number of intensely specialized small
groups, with a large number of pistols of general types added. For
instance, about midway on the long east wall, there were some thirty-odd
all-metal pistols, from wheel lock to percussion. There was a collection
of U.S. Martials, with two rows of the regulation pistols, flintlock and
percussion, of foreign governments, placed on the left, and the
collection of Colts on the right. After them came the other types of
percussion revolvers, and the later metallic-cartridge types.

It was an arrangement which made sense, from the arms student's point
of view, and Rand decided that it would make sense to the dealers and
museums to whom he intended sending lists. He would save time by
listing them as they were hung on the walls. Then, there were the cases
between the windows on the west wall, containing the ammunition
collection--examples of every type of fixed-pistol ammunition--and the
collection of bullet-molds and powder flasks and wheel lock spanners and
assorted cleaning and loading accessories. All that stuff would have to
be listed, too.

"I beg your pardon, sir," Walters broke in, behind him. "Mrs. Fleming
said that you wanted me."