Chinese Orange Mystery (13 page)

“I’m accusing no one,” said Ellery. “But you can’t deny that it’s very odd under the circumstances.”

“So’s your hat,” snarled Dr. Kirk. “Get my books back!”

Ellery sighed and grasped his stick firmly. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but at the moment I can see no way of restoring your volumes. You might telephone my father—Inspector Queen—at Police Headquarters and inform him of this latest development. … Miss Temple.”

She started. “Yes, Mr. Queen?”

“I’m sure we’ll be excused for a moment.” They were stared at as Ellery drew the tiny woman out into the corridor and closed the door securely behind them. “Why didn’t you mention it before, O Lotus Blossom?”

“Mention what, Mr. Queen?”

“I’ve just recalled it myself. Why didn’t you mention the fact that one of the outstanding examples of backwardness in the whole Chinese gamut is—the Chinese language?”

“Language? Oh!” She smiled faintly. “You’re such a suspicious person, Mr. Queen. I just didn’t think of it. You mean of course that, aside from Hebrew, Chinese is probably the only language in the world which is printed backwards; and it’s written from top to bottom instead of from side to side, besides. But what of it?”

“Nothing—except that,” murmured Ellery, “you failed to mention it.”

She stamped her foot. “Oh, you’re as bad as the others! Is there something in the air here that makes people silly? Every one except Donald Kirk seems afflicted with a mild insanity; and even he—And suppose I didn’t mention it? You can’t say it has any significance here, anyway. You notice that the thief didn’t steal Dr. Kirk’s
Chinese
books!”

“That,” said Ellery with a frown, “is what’s bothering me. Why? An oversight with cosmic implications. Or perhaps I’m making a mountain out of the well-known molehill. At any rate, this thing needs the application of thought. … China, China, China! I’m beginning to wish I had a Charlie Chan on the scene to clarify these esoteric mysteries of Orientalism. I’m completely bewildered. Nothing makes sense, nothing at all. This is the world’s most mystifying crime.”

“I wish,” said Jo with lowered eyes, “I could help you, indeed I do.”

“Hmm,” said Ellery. “Well, thank you, Miss Temple.” He seized her hand and pumped it. “Things could always be worse. And perhaps they will be. For God knows what will turn out backwards tomorrow!”

D
JUNA, THE QUEENS’ BOY
-of-all-work, thrust his olive and hatchety young face into the bedroom the next morning. “Why, Mr. Ellery!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t know you’d got up!”

His astonishment was based upon experience, and the current blasting of it. Mr. Ellery Queen—who neither toiled nor spun, except within the environs of his mind—was not the earliest riser in the world; and indeed his lean figure sprawled in innocent sleep upon the second of their twin beds caused the Inspector to erupt, like a patient volcano, each morning in a growling thunder of expostulation. But this morning there he was, his hair still ruffled from sleep, sitting up in pongee pajamas,
pince-nez
perched on the bridge of his thin nose, gravely reading a fat book at the unheard-of hour of ten o’clock.

“Wipe that smirk off your face, Djuna,” he said absently, without looking up from the page. “Can’t a man get up early one morning?”

Djuna frowned. “What you reading?”

“Somebody’s massive tome on Chinese customs, you heathen. And I can’t say it’s much help.” He flung it aside, yawning, and plopped back on the pillow with a luxurious sigh. “Might rustle me a yard of toast and a liter of coffee, Djun’.”

“You better get up,” said Djuna grimly.

“And why had I better get up, young ’un?” murmured Ellery in a smothered voice from the depths of the pillow.

“’Cause some one’s waiting here to see you.”

Ellery bolted upright, the glasses dangling from his ear. “Well, of all the exasperating—! Why didn’t you say so before, homunculus? Who is it? How long has he been waiting?” He scrambled out of bed and reached for his dressing-gown.

“It’s a Mr. Macgowan, an’ how’d you know it was a ‘he’?” demanded Djuna with restrained admiration, lounging against the door.

“Macgowan? That’s strange,” muttered Ellery. “Oh, that! Very simple, number one boy. You see, there are only two sexes—not taking into account certain accidents of nature. So it was at the very least a fifty-fifty guess.”

“G’on,” said Djuna with a disbelieving grin, and vanished. Then he materialized again, sticking his gamin head back into the room, and said: “Got the coffee on the table,” and vanished once more.

When Ellery emerged into the Queens’ living-room he found tall Glenn Macgowan pacing restlessly up and down before the fire that crackled in the grate. He ceased his patrol abruptly. “Ah, Queen. I’m sorry. Had no idea I’d be routing you out of bed.”

Ellery shook his big hand lazily. “Not at all. You did me a service; there’s no telling when I’d have got up. Join me in some breakfast, Macgowan?”

“Had mine, thank you. But don’t let me stop you. I can wait.”

“I hope,” chuckled Ellery, “you’re cultivating what Bishop Heber was pleased to term ‘Swift’s Eighth Beatitude,’ although it’s really Popish in origin.”

“I beg your pardon?” gasped Macgowan.

“Popish advisedly. I meant Pope. In a letter to John Gay he wrote: ‘Blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.’ I don’t feel in the donative mood this morning. … Well, well! I find I’m ravenous, now that I put my mind to it. We can talk while I’m refueling.” Ellery sat down and reached for his orange-juice, leaving Macgowan with a partly open mouth. He observed that one bright young eye was fixed to the crack of the kitchen door—fixed very curiously upon his visitor. “Sure you won’t join me?”

“Quite.” Macgowan hesitated. “Er—do you always talk this way before breakfast, Queen?”

Ellery grinned as he gulped. “I’m sorry. It’s a nasty habit.”

Macgowan resumed his pacing. Then he stopped short jerkily and said: “Ah, Queen. Sorry about the other night. Dr. Kirk’s unpredictable. I assure you Marcella and I—all of us—felt very bad about the whole dismal business. Of course, the old gentleman’s exercising the prerogative of senility. He’s a tyrant. And besides, he doesn’t understand the necessities of official investigation—”

“Quite all right,” said Ellery cheerfully, munching toast. And he said nothing more, seeming content to leave the conversation to his visitor.

“Well.” Macgowan shook his head suddenly and sat down in an armchair by the fire. “I imagine you’re wondering why I’ve come here this morning.”

Ellery raised his cup. “Well, I’m human, I suppose. I can’t say I was precisely prepared for it.”

Macgowan laughed a little gloomily. “Of course, I did want to express my apologies personally. I feel like one of the Kirk family, now that Marcella and I … Look here, Queen.”

Ellery sank back with a sigh, dabbing his lips with his napkin. He offered Macgowan a cigaret, which the big man refused, and took one himself. “There!” he said. “That’s worlds better. Well, Macgowan? I’m looking.”

They studied each other in silence for some time, quite without expression. Then Macgowan began to fumble in his inner breast-pocket. “Y’know, I can’t quite make you out, Queen. I get the feeling that you know a good deal more than you pretend—”

“I’m like the grasshopper,” murmured Ellery. “Protective coloration. Really, that’s an air cultivated for purposes of my avocation, Macgowan.” He squinted at his cigaret. “I assume you have the murder in mind?”

“Yes.”

“I know nothing. I know,” said Ellery sadly, “rather less than nothing, when it comes to that. I might, however, ask you what
you
know.” Macgowan started. “I hadn’t got round to you, you see. But you do know something, and I think it would be wise for you to let me share your knowledge. I’m the repository for more secrets than you could throw at a dead cat, if that’s the polite custom. I’m unofficial—blessed state, you understand. I tell what I think should be told and keep all the rest to myself.”

Macgowan stroked his long jaw nervously. “I don’t know what you mean. I holding something back? Really—”

Ellery eyed him calmly. Then he put the cigaret back into his mouth and smoked with a thoughtful air. “Dear, dear. I must be losing my grip. Well, Macgowan, what’s on your mind—or rather in your hand?”

Macgowan unfolded his big fist and Ellery saw in the broad palm a small leather object, like a card-case. “This,” he said.

“One case, leather or leatherette. Unfortunately I haven’t X-ray eyes. Let’s have it, please.”

But without taking his eyes off the case in his hand and without raising his hand Macgowan said: “I’ve just purchased—what’s in this case. Something valuable. It’s pure coincidence, of course, but I believe in anticipating trouble—trouble that might lead me into some embarrassment, though I assure you I’m perfectly innocent of any …” Ellery watched the man unblinkingly. He was extraordinarily nervous. “There’s nothing in it for me to conceal, but if I neglected to mention it, some one of the police, I fancy, might find out. That would be awkward, perhaps unpleasant. So—”

“Obviously inspection is called for,” murmured Ellery. “What
are
you talking about, Macgowan?”

Macgowan handed him the leather case.

Ellery turned it over in his fingers curiously, with that deliberate detachment which years of examination of strange objects had bred in him. It was made of a plain morocco, black, and apparently operated on a simple spring-catch arrangement. He pressed the small button and the lid flew back. Inside the case, imbedded in a hollow of satin, lay a rectangular envelope of stiff milky glassine. And in the envelope, incased in a pochette, lay a postage stamp.

Silently Macgowan produced a stamp-tongs of nickel and offered it to Ellery. Ellery opened the envelope and with the tongs, rather clumsily, extracted the pochette. The stamp showed clearly through the cellophane. It was an oversize stamp, wider than deep, and perforated evenly along its four edges. The border was an ochre-yellow in color, and the bottom was designed as a sort of Chinese flower-garland. In the two lower corners appeared the denomination of the stamp: $1. In squat ochre letters running across the top of the border was the word:
Foochow
, capitalized.

But inside the border, where even to Ellery’s untrained eye it was evident that there should have been a pictorial design of some kind in another color, there was—nothing. Merely the blank white paper of the stamp.

“That’s funny, isn’t it?” murmured Ellery. “I’m not a philatelist, but I can’t remember ever having seen or heard of a stamp that was blank in the center of the design. What’s the idea, anyway, Macgowan?”

“Hold it up to the light,” said Macgowan quietly.

Ellery flung him a sharp glance and obeyed. And instantly he saw, through the thin paper, a very charming little scene in black. In the foreground there was what appeared to be a long ceremonial canoe of some kind, filled with natives; and in the background a harbor scene; obviously, from the legend at the top, a view of the harbor of Foochow.

“Amazing,” he said. “Perfectly amazing.” And something glittered in his eye as he flung Macgowan another sharp glance.

Macgowan said in the same quiet voice: “Turn the stamp over.”

Ellery did so. And there, incredible as it seemed, was the harbor scene in its black printing-ink, impressed upon the back of the stamp. There was a gloss of dried gum over it, cracked and streaky.

“Backwards?” he said slowly. “Of course. Backwards.”

Macgowan took the tongs with the pochette between its tines and replaced the pochette in the envelope. “Queer, isn’t it?” he said in a smothered voice. “The only error of its kind to my knowledge in the whole field of philately. It’s the sort of rarity collectors dream about.”

“Backwards?” said Ellery again, as if he were asking himself a question the answer to which was too pat to be true. He leaned back in his chair and smoked with half-closed eyes. “Well, well! This
has
been a fruitful visit, Macgowan. How on earth does such an error occur?”

Macgowan snapped the lid of the case shut and replaced the case almost carelessly in his breast-pocket.

“Well, this is a two-color stamp, as you saw. What we term a bicolor. Ochre and black in this instance. That means that the sheet of stamps—they come in sheets, of course—aren’t printed separately; the sheets of stamps had to be run through the presses twice.”

Ellery nodded. “Once for the ochre, once for the black. Obviously.”

“Well, you can deduce what happened in this strange case. Something went wrong after the ochre impression had been made and dried. Instead of placing the sheets face up in the press, a careless printer permitted them to get in
face down
. Consequently the black impression came out on the back of the stamps, not the face.”

“But, Lord, there must be some sort of government inspection! Our own postal authorities are strict, aren’t they? I still don’t understand how this stamp managed to get into circulation. I always thought that when errors of this sort occurred the sheets were summarily destroyed.”

“So they are in most cases, but occasionally a sheet or two gets out—either as a clerk’s mistake, or else they’re stolen by some official for the sole purpose of exploiting them philatelically. For example, the sheet of twenty-four-cent U.S. airmail inverts which is so well-known simply slipped by the inspectors. This Foochow …” Macgowan shook his head. “There’s no telling what actually happened. But here’s the stamp.”

“I see,” said Ellery; and for a space only the brisk sounds of Djuna washing the breakfast dishes in the kitchen broke the silence. “So you’ve come to me, Macgowan, to tell me about your purchase of it. Afraid of its backwardness?”

“I’m afraid of nothing,” said Macgowan stiffly; and Ellery, studying those level eyes and the set of that long jaw, could well believe. “At the same time, I’m a canny Scot, Queen, and I’m not going to be caught with my pants down in something …” He did not finish. When he spoke again it was in a lighter tone. “This Foochow stamp is what we call a ‘local’—that is, the city of Foochow, one of the Treaty Ports, used to issue its own postage stamps for local postage purposes. I’m a specialist in locals, you see; don’t collect anything else. Locals from anywhere—U.S., Sweden, Switzerland. …”