Kavaalen, behind the wheel, turned around and began jabbering at Olsen, in the back seat, in something that sounded like Swedish.  Most Finns can speak Swedish, and Rand was wishing he could understand it.  The corporal’s remarks ran to about a paragraph, and must have been downright incendiary.  At least, Olsen seemed to catch fire from them.  He rose in his seat, waving his arms and howling back in the same language.

“Shut up, goddammit, shut up!” McKenna bellowed into his face.  “Shut up before I sling your ass to hell out of this car!  I’m talking, and I don’t want any goddam jaw from you, Olsen.  You either,” he barked at Kavaalen, winking at him at the same time.

Silence fell with a heavy thump in the car.

“Well, now that the international crisis seems to have been averted, how’s about letting me in on it, too?” Rand asked.  “For instance, what about Gresham?  What’s he supposed to be a suspect for?”

“Ah, Olsen suspects him of chopping Rivers up,” McKenna replied wearily.  “See, we questioned this Cecil Gillis, and he told us that last evening, as he was leaving Rivers’s, he saw Stephen Gresham drive up and go into the shop.  I wanted to talk to him, myself; I thought he might account for the cigar-ashes, and the drink-fixings on that table.  But when Farnsworth heard about the killing, he sent Olsen around, and when Olsen heard that Gresham had been there, he tried him and convicted him on the spot.”

“Oh, obscenity!  Is that what it’s about?” Rand exclaimed in disgust.  “Yes, Gresham told me about that.  He didn’t have the drink, and he wasn’t smoking a cigar in the shop, and he left a little after nine.  He got home at nine twenty-two.  I can testify to that, myself; I was there at the time, and so were seven other people.”  Rand named them.  “They dribbled away at different times during the evening, but Philip Cabot and I stayed till around eleven.”  He mentioned the approximate time at which the others had left.  “What time was Rivers killed, or hasn’t the time been fixed?”

“The M.E. says around ten to two,” McKenna said.

“He could be wrong; them guys only guess, half the time,” Olsen argued.  “And besides, Gresham had it in for Rivers.  And that ain’t all, neither; he knew how to use a bayonet, too.  I seen him, myself, during the war, showin’ the Home Guard how to do it, just the way Rivers was killed!” he produced triumphantly.

McKenna used a dirty word.  “So what?  Anybody who’s ever had infantry training knows that butt-stroke-and-lunge,” he retorted.  “I learned it myself, when I was a kid, in ’24 and ’25, in C.M.T.C.  Hell, anybody who’s ever seen a war-movie....  If you hadn’t lammed out of Sweden when you were sixteen, to duck conscription, you’d of known it, too.”

“Well, maybe Olsen, or his boss, can explain why Gresham threw those record-cards in the fire,” Rand contributed.  “You know why Olsen says Gresham had it in for Rivers?  Rivers sold Gresham a fake antique, a flint lock navy pistol that had been worked over into something else.  Gresham was going to subpoena those records, when he brought suit against Rivers,” Rand lied.  “But I can explain why Cecil Gillis might have destroyed them, after killing Rivers, if he’d been cheating Rivers and Rivers caught him at it.”