Authors: Ellery Queen
QED (26 page)
“He might have meant among the Poe books in the
public
library. Miss DiCampoâ”
“Wait.” Bianca sped away. But when she came back she was drooping. “It isn't. We have two public libraries in Eulalia, and I know the head librarian in both. I just called them. Father didn't visit either library.”
Ellery gnawed a fingernail. “Is there a bust of Poe in the house, Bianca? Or any other Poe-associated object, aside from books?”
“I'm afraid not.”
“Queer,” he mumbled. “Yet I'm positive your father interpreted âthe hiding-place of the book' as being âin Poe.' So he'd have hidden it âin Poe' ⦔
Ellery's mumbling dribbled away into a tormented sort of silence: his eyebrows worked up and down, Groucho Marx fashion; he pinched the tip of his nose until it was scarlet; he yanked at his unoffending ears; he munched on his lip ⦠until, all at once, his face cleared; and he sprang to his feet. “Bianca, may I use your phone?”
The girl could only nod, and Ellery dashed. They heard him telephoning in the entrance hall, although they could not make out the words. He was back in two minutes.
“One thing more,” he said briskly, “and we're out of the woods. I suppose your father had a key ring or a key case, Bianca? May I have it, please?”
She fetched a key case. To the two millionaires it seemed the sorriest of objects, a scuffed and dirty tan leatherette case. But Ellery received it from the girl as if it were an artifact of historic importance from a newly discovered IV Dynasty tomb. He unsnapped it with concentrated love; he fingered its contents like a scientist. Finally he decided on a certain key.
“Wait here!” Thus Mr. Queen; and exit, running.
“I can't decide,” old Tungston said after a while, “whether that fellow is a genius or an escaped lunatic.”
Neither Harbidger nor Bianca replied. Apparently they could not decide, either.
They waited through twenty elongated minutes; at the twenty-first they heard his car, champing. All three were in the front doorway as Ellery strode up the walk.
He was carrying a book with a red cover, and smiling. It was a compassionate smile, but none of them noticed.
“Youâ” said Bianca. “âfoundâ” said Tungston. “âthe book!” shouted Harbidger. “Is the Lincoln holograph in it?”
“It is,” said Ellery. “Shall we all go into the house, where we may mourn in decent privacy?”
“Because,” Ellery said to Bianca and the two quivering collectors as they sat across a refectory table from him, “I have foul news. Mr. Tungston, I believe you have never actually seen Mr. DiCampo's book. Will you now look at the Poe signature on the flyleaf?”
The panther claws leaped. There, toward the top of the flyleaf, in faded inkscript, was the signature
Edgar Allan Poe
.
The claws curled, and old Tungston looked up sharply. “DiCampo never mentioned that it's a full autographâhe kept referring to it as âthe Poe signature.' Edgar
Allan
Poe ⦠Why, I don't know of a single instance after his West Point days when Poe wrote out his middle name in an autograph! And the earliest he could have signed this 1845 edition is obviously when it was published, which was around the fall of 1844. In 1844 he'd surely have abbreviated the âAllan,' signing âEdgar
A
. Poe,' the way he signed everything! This is a forgery.”
“My God,” murmured Bianca, clearly intending no impiety; she was as pale as Poe's Lenore. “Is that true, Mr. Queen?”
“I'm afraid it is,” Ellery said sadly. “I was suspicious the moment you told me the Poe signature on the flyleaf contained the âAllan.' And if the Poe signature is a forgery, the book itself can hardly be considered Poe's own copy.”
Harbidger was moaning. “And the Lincoln signature underneath the Poe, Mr. Queen! DiCampo never told me it reads
Abraham
Lincolnâthe full Christian name. Except on official documents, Lincoln practically always signed his name
âA
. Lincoln.' Don't tell me this Lincoln autograph is a forgery, too?”
Ellery forbore to look at poor Bianca. “I was struck by the âAbraham' as well, Mr. Harbidger, when Miss DiCampo mentioned it to me, and I came equipped to test it. I have here”âand Ellery tapped the pile of documents he had taken from his briefcaseâ“facsimiles of Lincoln signatures from the most frequently reproduced of the historic documents he signed. Now I'm going to make a precise tracing of the Lincoln signature on the flyleaf of the book”âhe proceeded to do soâ“and I shall superimpose the tracing on the various signatures of the authentic Lincoln documents. So.”
He worked rapidly. On his third superimposition Ellery looked up. “Yes. See here. The tracing of the purported Lincoln signature from the flyleaf fits in minutest detail over the authentic Lincoln signature on this facsimile of the Emancipation Proclamation. It's a fact of life that's tripped many a forger that
nobody ever writes his name exactly the same way twice
. There are always variations. If two signatures are identical, then, one must be a tracing of the other. So the âAbraham Lincoln' signed on this flyleaf can be dismissed without further consideration as a forgery also. It's a tracing of the Emancipation Proclamation signature.
“Not only was this book not Poe's own copy; it was never signedâand therefore probably never ownedâby Lincoln. However your father came into possession of the book, Bianca, he was swindled.”
It was the measure of Bianca DiCampo's quality that she said quietly, “Poor, poor father,” nothing more.
Harbidger was poring over the worn old envelope on whose inside appeared the dearly beloved handscript of the Martyr President. “At least,” he muttered, “we have
this
.”
“Do we?” asked Ellery gently. “Turn it over, Mr. Harbidger.”
Harbidger looked up, scowling. “No! You're not going to deprive me of this, tool! ”
“Turn it over,” Ellery repeated in the same gentle way. The Lincoln collector obe yed reluctantly. “What do you see?”
“An authentic envelope of the period! With two authentic Lincoln stamps!”
“Exactly. And the United States has never issued postage stamps depicting living Americans; you have to be dead to qualify. The earliest U.S. stamp showing a portrait of Lincoln went on sale April 15, 1866âa year to the day after his death. Then a living Lincoln could scarcely have used this envelope, with these stamps on it, as writing paper. The document is spurious, too. I am so very sorry, Bianca.”
Incredibly, Lorenzo DiCampo's daughter managed a smile with her “
Non importa, signor
.” He could have wept for her. As for the two collectors, Harbidger was in shock; but old Tungston managed to croak, “Where the devil did DiCampo hide the book, Queen? And how did you know?”
“Oh, that,” said Ellery, wishing the two old men would go away so that he might comfort this admirable creature. “I was convinced that DiCampo interpreted what we now know was the forger's, not Lincoln's, clue, as
30d
read upside down; or, crudely,
Poe
. But âthe hiding-place of the book is in Poe' led nowhere.
“So I reconsidered, P, o, e. If those three letters of the alphabet didn't mean Poe, what could they mean? Then I remembered something about the letter you wrote me, Bianca. You'd used one of your father's envelopes, on the flap of which appeared his address:
Post Office Box 69, Southern District, Eulalia, N.Y
. If there was a Southern District in Eulalia, it seemed reasonable to conclude that there were post offices for other points of the compass, too. As, for instance, an Eastern District. Post Office Eastern, P.O. East. P.O.E.”
“Poe!” cried Bianca.
“To answer your question, Mr. Tungston: I phoned the main post office, confirmed the existence of a Post Office East, got directions as to how to get there, looked for a postal box key in Mr. DiCampo's key case, found the right one, located the box DiCampo had rented especially for the occasion, unlocked itâand there was the book.” He added, hopefully, “And that is that.”
“And that
is
that,” Bianca said when she returned from seeing the two collectors off. “I'm not going to cry over an empty milk bottle, Mr. Queen. I'll straighten out father's affairs somehow. Right now all I can think of is how glad I am he didn't live to see the signatures and documents declared forgeries publicly, as they would surely have been when they were expertized.”
“I think you'll find there's still some milk in the bottle, Bianca.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Bianca.
Ellery tapped the pseudo-Lincolnian envelope. “You know, you didn't do a very good job describing this envelope to me. All you said was that there were two canceled Lincoln stamps on it.”
“Well, there are.”
“I can see you misspent your childhood. No, little girls don't collect things, do they? Why, if you'll examine these âtwo canceled Lincoln stamps,' you'll see that they're a great deal more than that. In the first place, they're not separate stamps. They're a vertical pairâthat is, one stamp is joined to the other at the horizontal edges. Now look at this upper stamp of the pair.”
The Mediterranean eyes widened. “It's upside down, isn't it?”
“Yes, it's upside down,” said Ellery, “and what's more, while the pair have perforations all around, there are no perforations between them, where they're joined.
“What you have here, young ladyâand what our unknown forger didn't realize when he fished around for an authentic White House cover of the period on which to perpetrate the Lincoln forgeryâis what stamp collectors might call a double printing error: a pair of 1866 black 15-cent Lincolns imperforate horizontally, with one of the pair printed upside down. No such error of the Lincoln issue has ever been reported. You're the owner, Bianca, of what may well be the rarest item in U.S. philately, and the most valuable.”
The world will little note, nor long remember.
But don't try to prove it by Bianca DiCampo.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1968 by Ellery Queen
Copyright renewed by Ellery Queen
The stories in this book originally appeared in the following magazines:
This Week, Argosy, Cavalier, Signature
âThe Diner's Club Magazine,
MD
, and
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors.
Cover design by Kat Lee
ISBN 978-1-5040-1658-2
This 2015 edition published by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
EBOOKS BY ELLERY QUEEN
FROM
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
