Free Assassins Have Starry Eyes by Donald Hamilton

to identify something for me, if possible.”
    “Sure,” I said. I cleared a couple of ash trays and a bowl of flowers from the cocktail table. “You can make your demonstration here, Professor.”
    He said reprovingly, “This is a fairly serious matter, Dr. Gregory.” In all the time I had known him, I had never heard him address any of us by our first names, although we all called him Van. I guess it’s easier to be a cop if you don’t allow yourself to be too friendly with the suspects. And don’t ever kid yourself; to a security agent, everybody is a suspect, all the time.
    I said, “You’re the one who’s making a big mystery of it, not I. How about a cup of coffee?”
    “No, thanks.” He rose and laid his package on the long, low table, produced a small penknife, and cut the tape that held the brown paper in place. He looked up. “I would like you to take your time and be sure before you say anything.”
    I nodded. Natalie, who was standing beside me, put her hand on my arm. She looked a little scared. I could hardly blame her. After the build-up, I probably looked a little scared myself. Van Horn pulled the paper apart. It was a twelve-gauge Remington automatic shotgun with a compensator on the muzzle. The short spreader tube was in place. I’m not very fond of automatics, and I can live indefinitely without compensators, poly-chokes, or muzzlebrakes in any shape or form, but some people like them and do very well with them. It was not the gun itself that made Natalie gasp, however, but the stuff that was on it. Well, I had seen blood before; even blood with dirt and pine needles drying in it.
    “Turn it over,” I said.
    Van Horn put a finger under the trigger guard, and exposed the other side of the weapon.
    I said, “It’s Jack Bates’s gun. You don’t have to take my word for it. All his hunting equipment is insured. The serial number will be on the policy and in the company’s files, so I’m not giving away any secrets.”
    “Good enough,” said Van Horn. “Is there anything else you’d care to say about it?”
    I leaned over and sniffed the slotted barrel of the compensator, where fouling is most apt to collect. The gun had been fired recently enough for the odor of burned powder to remain sharp and noticeable. I shook my head.
    “Not without knowing more about the situation,” I said. “Except—”
    “Except what, Dr. Gregory?”
    I walked over to the telephone table in the hall, found a roll of scotch tape in the drawer, returned, and dropped it in front of him.
    “Except that I don’t like your approach,” I said. “Cover it up again, Van, and stop playing cop around here. Jack Bates is a friend of mine. Don’t come around here and shove his bloody gun under my nose without telling me what’s happened to him! I ought to wrap the damn thing around your neck!”
    He asked quietly, “What makes you think something has happened to Dr. Bates?”
    I said, “What am I supposed to think? That he chopped the head off a chicken, let it bleed all over his gun, and then presented the piece to you as a souvenir?”
    “You have no other reason for worrying about him?”
    “Such as?”
    “His disturbed condition last night, for instance.” Van Horn paused, and grimaced. “I guess I am beating around the bush. After leaving the DeVrys’ house last night, Dr. Bates apparently went home, packed his station wagon with camping equipment, and drove to a public camp ground up in the Sandias, on the road to the ski-run. He had the place to himself at this time of year. This morning, however, some kids driving up to go skiing pulled into the area to put chains on—the road’s pretty slick up above. This was about eight-thirty. They saw Dr. Bates’s car, and while the boys were working, the girls kind of strolled over to look around. They found him lying behind the car, dead. He had been shot in the face. The gun was beside him.”
    “I see,” I said. I looked down at the shotgun on the