Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938

If thine hobby offend thee, put it away, for it is better to be without a hobby than to be condemned to everlasting hellfire

I

Murray Hobart was sitting in his den under a very strong shaded light, gazing through a magnifying glass at a small flat object held up by his other hand with a tiny pair of tweezers, when someone knocked at the closed door. He put down the tweezers first, with infinite care, then the glass, and then he got up with an air of great annoyance, strode over to the door and unlocked it.

“Well?” he scowled. “Is the house on fire? If it’s anything less than that, I’ll have your—”

The servant standing out there said apologetically, “I know, Mr. Hobart. I told him you were going over your collection and couldn’t be disturbed, but—”

“Who is it?”

“It’s an Inspector Foster on the wire, sir.”

“I don’t know any Foster,” snapped his employer irritably. “Get rid of him. Tell him I’m not—” He gestured. “Wait a minute. Inspector, did you say? Inspector of what?”

“I... I don’t know, sir. I think he said Homicide Bureau.”

Hobart felt his chin. “Police department, eh? That’s unusual.” He took an extra twist in the cord of his dressing gown. “I’ll talk to him,” he said, and stepped out through the doorway. Before moving away, however, he transfered the key to the outside, closed the door and locked it. Then he went down the paneled hall to the telephone.

The manservant, with a single sullen scowl at the insulting precautions his employer had just taken, went on about his business. His lips moved sneeringly. “Little colored pieces of paper,” he breathed contemptuously.

Hobart, at the phone, stood in such a position that he commanded a full view of the door he had just come from.

“This is Murray Hobart,” he said.

Inspector Foster introduced himself a second time. Then, “I was wondering,” he said, with the hesitancy of a man asking a favor, “if we could trouble you for a little expert advice. I understand you’re a specialist in this particular field, and I was wondering if you’d be good enough to give us the benefit of your opinion.”

Hobart kept his eyes on the room door, as though he wished the unwelcome interruption were over, so he could go back inside there to resume his recent occupation. “Brokerage?” he said shortly. “That’s my occupation.”

The inspector laughed disarmingly. “No, no, no. I mean, er, your sideline, your hobby — postage stamps.”

“Oh.” But the change that came over Hobart was almost miraculous. His eyes lit up, his voice took on life, for the first time he began to take a real interest in the conversation and no longer waited for the first opportunity to cut it short.

“How did you happen to hear of me?” he asked interestedly.

“Well you see, we’re — by that l mean the Bureau — is on a job, a case, and there’s an angle to it that has us stumped. It’s a little over our heads. We’re none of us qualified to give an opinion. We’re not authorities in the matter, you understand. It would mean a trip to New York, to some big stamp dealer, to clear it up, and that would take days. I wired the head of one such firm, to find out if there was any possibility of getting the information we need without the trouble of sending someone there personally, by means of photostats for instance, and he wired back, of course, that there wasn’t, but mentioned your name as being competent to help us. He said he’d been supplying you for years and you were on his mailing list, right here in the same town with us.”

“Well, if it has anything to do with stamps,” agreed Hobart, not bragging but with the air of a man stating a simple fact, “I don’t believe there’s anyone can tell you more about them than I can. What is it you’d like cleared up?”

“I’m afraid you’d have to examine the evidence personally to be able to pass an opinion on it.”

“Yes, in the case of stamps I think that’s always necessary. Particularly if it’s a question of detecting a forgery.”

“I’m afraid it’s a little more gruesome than that,” the inspector said apologetically. “It’s a murder case, and it’s important for us to know—”

“Stupid of me,” interrupted Hobart. “Homicide Squad. It would be, of course. Where is it you want me to go — down to headquarters?”

“No, if it wouldn’t be asking too much, could you come out to 215 Rainier for a short while? I’ll send an official police car for you if you like.”

“Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. I’ll drive out in my own car.”

The inspector’s voice became almost effusive in his gratitude. “Thanks, Mr. Hobart. We appreciate your cooperation a lot.”

“Not at all. I’m very interested myself now in finding out what this can be,” Hobart assured him. “I’ll be there almost directly.”

“Think you can find it all right?” The inspector repeated the address.

“I’m sure I won’t have any trouble.” Hobart hung up, went back into his den. It took him less than five minutes to put away the paraphernalia of his obsession. A wall safe figured in this. When he came out again, locking the door after him and pocketing the key, he had exchanged his dressing gown for the jacket of his suit. He called to the servant for his hat and coat.

“Don’t bother waiting up. I’m taking my own latchkey.”

“Yes sir. Good night, Mr. Hobart.” The man closed the front door after him respectfully, then grimaced savagely. “Him and his colored scraps o’ paper!” he seethed. “Lucking ’em up like they was blooming diamonds!”

Hobart went around to the side of the house, took his car out of the garage, and set out. He stopped at the first intersection he came to and asked another motorist, waiting there for the light to change: “What’s the nearest way to Rainier Street?”

The directions the man gave him were simple enough to follow. Hobart reached his objective in about twenty minutes, going at a rather fast clip. The thoroughfare was wide but rather shabby looking. It seemed to him to be just the kind of street upon which murder was apt to strike. He coursed along it slowly, scanning the door numbers.

The curb before 215, when he finally found it, was empty, and there was no sign of any undue excitement or activity going on about the premises. He braked, got out, and rang the doorbell. A pugnacious looking woman in sweater and apron looked out at him.

“Tell Inspector Foster Mr. Hobart’s here,” he said pleasantly.

She tightened her grip on the door. “There’s no Foster lives here,” she said surlily.

“I didn’t say he lives here,” Hobart explained patiently. “He told me to come out and meet him here.”

“He couldn’t of,” snapped the woman, “because there’s nobody here by that name, waiting for you nor nobody else!”

Hobart’s jaw dropped in surprise and annoyance. He took a step back, verified the number beside the door, came in again. “But this is 215 Rainier Street, isn’t it? I’m sure I heard him right. He repeated it twice.”

“Yeah, this is 215 Rainier Street, but there’s no Foster here and never has been. I been living in this house five years and I ought to know. Somebody’s been kidding you.” Congenitally suspicious, she shifted the burden of responsibility to her husband’s shoulders, though Hobart had made no move to force his way in. “Max, come here a minute, talk to him, will ya?”

The man of the house, as is often the case, was a little less hostile, but no more helpful than she had been. “No,” he said in answer to Hobart’s perplexed question, “nobody along this street has called the police in. There ain’t no trouble around here, as far as I know.”

Hobart shook his head. “A fine thing, dragging me out of the house on a fool’s errand like this! It couldn’t have been a practical joke, because I don’t know anyone who would—” He broke off. “May I use your phone a minute? I’ll pay you for the call. Maybe I can reach him through headquarters.”

The woman quickly forestalled this, in a loud stage-whisper. “No, don’t let him in here! You don’t know who he is or what he’s after!”

The man looked a little embarrassed, but refused. “You better try a drug store.”

Hobart, who could have bought the whole house and the ground it stood on out of his cigarette money, turned away fuming at the boorishness of these people, and strode back to his car. Before he could start off, however, the door reopened and the man called out to him:

“Hey! I just thought of it! Are you sure he said street, Rainier Street?”

He hadn’t, now that Hobart thought of it. He’d just said Rainier, without any further designation.

“Because I just remembered, there’s a Rainier Parkway too, way out on the other side of town. Our mail gets mixed up sometimes. He mighta meant that.”

He gave Hobart a few sketchy directions, and later on Hobart amplified them from another motorist. His annoyance evaporated before long. As long as he was out and in the car, it seemed childish not to try his luck at the second address before turning home. If the inspector was a real inspector and the case was on the level, it gave promise of being inordinately interesting. Anything concerning stamps was interesting to Hobart. Their collection was a fetish to him. They took more time than his business.

II

But the twenty minutes had nearly tripled themselves before he finally reached his new destination. This Parkway with the plagiarized name (or maybe it was the other way around) ran through a far superior residential section than had the first. All the residences along it were set in ample grounds. Some of the estates comprised entire square blocks. Two-fifteen was among the latter. It was a house a good deal like his own, but on an even larger scale. There were two cars standing out in front of it, and when he went up the front walk a heretofore invisible figure detached itself from behind one of the veranda columns and became a uniformed patrolman barring his way.

“An Inspector Foster in there?” asked Hobart.

“Oh yeah? You Mr. Hobart? He’s waiting for you. Go right in.” The cop even opened the front door and accommodatingly held it for Hobart to go through.

The hallway was lighted but empty. Up above somewhere, at the top of a spacious, curving white-painted staircase, came a sound of feminine sobbing pitched in a low, exhausted key, as though it had been going on for hours. A voice with a Negroid drawl to it was coaxing, “Drink his tea now, honey. Come on, drink it for Beulah.”

A tiny white thing on the carpet became, to Hobart’s keen and almost microscopic eyes, a rose petal. Another, more waxlike, he identified as a gardenia petal. A noticeable aroma of flowers and pungent greenery clung to the air. The funeral, evidently, had already taken place. He was glad of that. He was not an amateur criminologist, had no hankering to stare corpses in the face, or even be under the same roof with them for any length of time. He was a philatelist.

He turned in at the brightly lighted, double doorway ahead, and entered a room where there were three men. One was busy at a large open secretary reading through a stack of old correspondence, item by item. A second was seated at a table, with a number of thick albums before him. They were about two feet square, gilt-edged, with expensive hand-tooled leather bindings and the initials A.H. embossed on each. He was slowly turning the pages of one with the perfectly blank look of a man looking at something he doesn’t understand. The third was doing nothing but sitting in an easy chair, smoking, with his legs crossed, as though waiting for something.

Hobart said, “Inspector Foster?” to the man engaged with the stamp albums.

The idler in the chair, who was younger and far less identifiable as a police officer, got up and came toward him. “I’m Foster. We were just beginning to wonder whether—”

Hobart said, clasping the offered hand, “Sorry I took so long, but I went to the wrong address first. I darned near gave up then and there,” he added, as a gentle hint that he wasn’t merely an errand boy used to chasing around at people’s behest, and that they should be glad he’d come at all.

Foster looked genuinely remorseful. “I wouldn’t have had that happen for the world! We did the same thing ourselves last night when we first answered the call. I should have been more explicit, but we’ve been working like dogs all day and I guess in my hurry it slipped my mind.”

“That when it happened, last night?”

“Yes, sometime between nine and midnight.” Foster introduced his two teammates. “This is Broderick, and this is Timmins, Mr. Hobart. Sit down, won’t you? Now first I’d better tell you what we’ve gotten so far.” At this point, Hobart noticed, the one called Broderick curved his index finger around so that it met the point of his thumb evidently suggesting a zero. Foster went on. “This man Aaron Harding—”

“That the murdered party?” Hobart hadn’t even known whose house he was in until now.

“Yes, a very wealthy man. Realtor by profession and, like yourself, an ardent stamp-collector on the side. As a matter of fact his collecting activities were taking up more of his time than his legitimate business. He was getting on in years, had made his pile two or three times over, and figure J he was entitled to a little relaxation, I suppose. That’s neither here nor there. He was a widower and lived here alone with just a darky couple, man and wife, cook and chauffeur. Well, they had some revival meeting or chicken fry or whatnot to go to last night, and he gave them both the night off, and stayed here alone. When they left at nine he was sitting in this same chair you’re in now.”

Hobart looked down at the chair with a layman’s typical queasiness, but remained where he was. To the detective mind, evidently, it didn’t even occur that such a trivial coincidence could make anyone uncomfortable.

Foster went on: “He had his stamp looks spread out around him. When they came back at twelve and the woman looked in to see if he’d like any refreshment, he was still in the same chair, stamp books spread out around him, but — he’d been smothered to death by a handkerchief being pressed tight over his mouth and nose until his heart had stopped beating. We figured that from bits of lint found on his lips and nostrils.”

Hobart blew out his breath to dispel the repugnance the recital had evoked. “Shouldn’t the handkerchief give you a clue?” he ventured finally. “I’ve heard you people are very clever about things like—”

“It was his own,” said the detective ruefully. “Here’s how we’ve reconstructed it, with the little we have to go by. He admitted the person himself. He must have. There are no signs of forcible entry anywhere around the house. We don’t believe the person was known to him by sight, and we’re positive he wasn’t expected. Harding would have mentioned he was coming to the darkies, and he didn’t. But this man somehow gained Harding’s confidence out there at the door and was led in here to view the collection. Possibly he pretended to have stamps to offer for sale. The old man reseated himself, sneezed as he did so, from the effects of going to the open door the way he just had, took out his handkerchief, and the other stepped quickly behind him, applied pressure, and kept on applying pressure until the suffocated old man was gone. Then the intruder left, without taking anything, without disturbing anything, without leaving a clue behind. No fingerprints on anything — tabletop, chair, doorknob, or the covers of the albums themselves. Obviously gloved.”

“That’s a tough baby, all right,” admitted Hobart.

“You’re telling us?” said Foster ruefully. “We’ve been working on it twenty-four hours, and we’ve gotten exactly nowhere. We’ve got to get our teeth into a motive before we can get anywhere. Before we can begin to make even faint motions of looking for our suspect. He came, killed, and went absolutely unseen by the human eye. He wasn’t just a marauder or burglar, because there’s not a penny in cash missing.”

Foster produced a bulky crocodile wallet. “The old gent had two hundred odd bucks in this thing alone, right on his person, and there’s three times as much lying practically in the open elsewhere around the house.” He produced a smoked-pearl stickpin, the Size of a kidney bean, and a gold cigarette-case with a ruby clasp. “No valuables or jewelry missing — and inside in the dining room, directly across the hall from here, is a whole set of solid silver service, gold lined. Not a silver spoon missing!

“It wasn’t anyone who had a grudge, who felt personal enmity toward him. We’ve checked back twenty years or more and can turn up absolutely nothing that by any stretch of the imagination could have created ill will toward him. He’s never discharged any servants, because he’s never had any but these two Negroes. His chauffeur has never run over anyone or so much as barked anyone’s shins. He’s never made any deals in real estate at the expense of any of his competitors. He dealt in the development of new tracts, out beyond the city limits — virgin parcels, so to speak.

“It’s not an inside job either. The two darkies have been with him for years. Old retainer stuff. They’ve both got religion worse than a pup has fleas. They thought so much of him that the old Negro tried to hang himself when he first found out his boss was gone. Harding didn’t leave any will — no motive there. On the contrary, afraid that he’d outlive them or that they’d be insufficiently provided for by the State when he passed on, the servants were both getting a pension during his lifetime. It’s now that it stops.”

“I thought I heard a woman sobbing upstairs,” Hobart said.

“Yes — that’s his only living relative, his married daughter.”

Hobart didn’t say anything further, but Foster read his thought. “She took a plane out from Chicago at nine this morning for the funeral. No possible personal gain motive involved, to be blunt about it. D’you know who she’s married to? Adams of the Electric Corporation of America. Her husband’s one of the ten or twenty wealthiest men in the country. If the old man was well off, she’s practically a mint walking around on high heels. Nor did Harding carry a cent of insurance either — old-fashioned old duck evidently. Mrs. Adams has already served notice she’d rather waive her share in her father’s estate, have it turned over to charity or public works, and the State is the sole remaining beneficiary. And the State does not commit murder — it executes people for it instead. So it’s completely an outside job if there ever was one. That gets us back to the point I made before. Not a red dime, not a silver spoon missing from the house.”

Foster pointed a finger at Hobart, to fasten down his attention even more securely, although he had it already anyway. “Now. Here’s where you can come in handy for us. It’s occurred to us that robbery may have been the motive after all, but not cash or valuables.” He pointed to the weighty volumes on the table. “It may have been committed, and we’ve already been on the case a full day and a night without knowing it. We’ve been over those albums not once but several times, and we’re still in the dark; although there are plenty of blank spaces—”

Hobart made a condescending pass with his hand. “Every collection has them. When every space is filled, you may as well be dead. You have nothing more to live for.”

“We can’t tell whether the ones that aren’t there were taken from the collection, or never were in it in the first place. Nor can we tell whether they’re valuable — valuable enough to commit murder for — or unimportant. Don’t you see what it’ll mean? If you can dig up the motive from inside that collection, look what a head start that gives us! That narrows us down to a suspect who owns a stamp collection himself, who knew Harding owned one, and finally, if you tell us something valuable is missing, we can watch for it to turn up. We can tip off the various stamp brokers and dealers in New York, just as though it were a piece of hot jewelry. Otherwise we’re up against a completely motiveless case, and that means — no soap. D’you think you can help us out on this angle, Mr. Hobart?”

“I’m pretty sure I can. If he had any system at all to his collecting, I think I can tell you the things you want to know.” He drew his chair closer to the table, slipped the knot of his necktie. “You say the stamp books were spread out around him when he was found. Were they open or closed?”

“Those two were closed, standing one atop the other. This third one was open on the table before him.”

“What page, can you tell me?”

It was now Foster’s turn to look a little self-satisfied. “You bet I can!” he said warmly. “I may not know anything about stamps, but it’s my job to notice any little thing like that. It’s where I left that little strip of paper sticking out for a marker.”

Hobart reopened it to that page. “Cape of Good Hope,” he murmured, reading the printed title of the country at the top.

“Look at that whole row of blank frames across there. What about them?” Foster prompted hopefully, scaring his finger out. “Don’t it look like—?”

“Look out! Don’t prod them with your nails! Stamps are very fragile things,” Hobart said fussily. “Hand me that glass.”

He peered through it briefly, announced authoritatively, “Those are stamps he never had. I’m going to give you one pointer, before we go any further; something you evidently don’t know. We collectors don’t lick stamps and paste them down flat on the face of the album, like people do when they’re mailing a letter. D’you know how it’s done?”

Their three heads shook as one.

“By means of hinges. Little tabs of wax-paper, gummed on one side only. They peel off very easily. You just draw the stamp off without damaging it. Now. He never had any stamps in this row of frames, because the hinges would have left little patches of dullness on the album paper. I’m looking at it through the glass and the surface gloss of the paper is unmarred.”

They just gave him a look of silent admiration, grouped around his chair.

“He had a beautiful collection,” said Hobart wistfully. “A crackerjack. He must have been at it for years. Funny I never heard of him, living in the same town with him. I guess we both dealt with out-of-town agents. There aren’t any dealers here, as far as I—”

He broke off suddenly as he turned the page. He was staring fixedly at something. He just sat there rigid, as if turned to stone. They saw a lump rise in his throat, as if he were swallowing something with difficulty.

“What’s the matter?” breathed Foster anxiously, looking from Hobart’s face to the page, and from the page back to his face again. “Anything wrong? Did you find something?” But there were no blank spaces on this one at all. Every frame was filled.

Hobart recovered himself with an effort, as though remembering there were three other people in the room with him. He looked up at them dazedly for a minute.

III

“Well, what is it?” they chorused. “What’d you find?” Their untrained eyes peered at the well-filled page and showed no understanding. If they’d been watching Hobart’s left hand instead, which was resting open on his thigh just below the table, they would have seen it contract into a tight knot, until the knuckles showed white.

Foster, answering their own questions, said, “Why, there’s nothing gone from that page. Every space is filled!”

“That’s just it. Every space is filled,” nodded Hobart. “Gentlemen,” he said slowly, turning to look up at them, “you asked me to come here and help you. I think I can tell you what you want to know without looking any further. On this page, staring up at you from the midst of all its companions, is one of the most valuable stamps in the world.”

“Which one is it?”

“To your eyes one doesn’t look any different than the others,” said Hobart almost scornfuly. “Well, it’s the Cape of Good Hope triangular, this three-sided one right here. Did he own a catalogue? He must have. Let me have it a minute. I’ll show you what Scott’s quotes it at.”

He opened the stamp collector’s bible, which gives the description and current market price of every stamp issued anywhere in the world, and he read aloud: “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

The three detectives nearly fell over. “Are you kidding?” one said. “For that, for that little colored piece of paper?”

“That figure is only hypothetical,” Hobart went on. “That’s what it would bring if it were available. That’s what it brought the last time it changed hands, evidently. As it is, it’s priceless, because there are only three of them known to be in existence. One is in the collection of the late King George, one belonged to the late Czar, I think, and one was in the Farrari collection which was sold at auction behind closed doors in Paris about fifteen years ago. This may be either one of those last two — if it’s genuine and not a fake. There are a number of fakes floating around.” His jaw set in a grim, bitter line. “I know of more than one unsuspecting collector who has been stung with them by unscrupulous fly-by-night dealers, who rented an entire establishment for a ‘front,’ filled it with dummy stock, just for the sake of making this one larcenous transaction, then vanished in time to escape prosecution.”

“Well, which is that one, the McCoy or a counterfeit? Can you tell?” Foster asked eagerly.

“No, I can’t,” said Hobart irritably, as though the sight of such a treasure had made him discontented. “Not just looking at it with the naked eye, or through a glass either. It needs a watermark detector.” He stopped their torrent of further questions with an impatient lift of his hand. “From your point of view its continued presence in the album can mean only one thing. That the stamps played no part in the murder, their theft wasn’t the motive, and the murderer was not a stamp collector. You can bet your lives he wasn’t! He certainly wouldn’t have left that fabulous thing undisturbed if it had been.”

To his surprise, he could see that Foster appeared unwilling to accept this conclusion. The detective walked away, lit a cigarette, turned, and stood looking back — part of an unconscious third-degree technique.

“Unless,” Foster suggested, “it really is a fake, and he only saw that after he croaked the old guy, and then didn’t bother taking it after all.”

“He couldn’t tell by just looking at it,” Hobart insisted stubbornly. “I don’t care who he was. If I can’t, he couldn’t have, either! He’d have had to take it out and put it in a watermark detector before he could make sure, and it hasn’t been taken out of the album.”

Foster wouldn’t give in either. “Fair enough as far as it goes,” he said skeptically, “but you’re not using psychology, and that brings us back onto my ground again. Look at it this way. If there are only three of them as you say, how can anyone taking it possibly hope to get rid of it afterward — unload it without creating an uproar in stamp circles? Don’t you see? It’s too rare, too easily identifiable. It’d be like heisting the Venus de Milo or the Hope diamond. He was no fool, whoever he was. Don’t you think it’s likely he realized, at sight, that this thing would be a white elephant? Isn’t it possible he purposely left it there because its possession would have branded him, and instead helped himself to a lot of less unique, but still worthwhile, stamps from other parts of the collection? Stamps whose ownership would be harder to trace, stamps that would bring him plenty of money without the risk of detection? I don’t think you’ve given us our answer yet. Not until you’ve gone over that collection from A to Z and told us definitely whether anything is missing from it.”

Hobart nodded reluctantly, but he seemed to be thinking of something else. He kept chewing his lower lip. “That’ll take days,” he said unwillingly. And one of the other detectives remonstrated with Foster. “Don’t forget, Frank, Mr. Hobart isn’t on the city payroll. After all, he’s given you his opinion.”

“Well, I don’t want to impose, but we’re absolutely dependent on you for our clues in this.” Foster appealed to the stamp expert.

Hobart glanced once more at the tiny pyramid-shaped piece of paper lying there on the page. He seemed to make up his mind abruptly, as though the stamp had exerted some sort of magnetism on him.

“I’ll do it,” he said. He drew his chair in again. “I’ll start in alphabetically and work my way through the albums country by country. That’s the only way.” He pointed to the catalogue. “Do you see those little pencil-checks next to a great many of the listings? That means he had those items. That’s the way most collectors keep a record of what they own. I do it myself. It’s simply a routine matter of verifying the catalogue-checks by what’s in the album.”

“Oh, well, if that’s all there is to it, one of us could do it. There’s no reason why you should,” Foster suggested penitently.

Hesitantly though he had been before, Hobart now seemed anxious for the chore. “I can do it about three times as quickly, though, because I’m familiar with the stamps at sight. You people would have to pore over the color of each one, and the face value, and the date of issue and all that; I can identify at a glance. Besides, it’s no tiresome task. I’ll enjoy it even though they’re somebody else’s stamps. It’s my hobby. I think I can work over the whole collection in about two sittings.”

He took off his coat, polished up the magnifying glass, and got busy. They watched him fascinatedly for a few minutes, but the novelty quickly wore off. All he did was simply go down the line of pencil-checks in the catalogue with one tracing finger, and with his other hand keep swiveling a pencil back and forth between catalog and album, occasionally bringing the glass into play to inspect something more closely. That was all there was to see. Their interest quickly waned, and after all they had their own work to attend to. After a series of hoasely-whispered consultations — they were like schoolboys in the presence of a headmaster, who must not be disturbed — they went out one by one, metaphorically on tiptoe, if not literally. Foster, the last to leave the room, said: “Tell you what. You holler if you come across anything missing. I got a little more questioning to do upstairs.”

Hobart simply nodded abstractedly, without looking up. Yet if he seemed oblivious of the fact that he had been left quite alone in the room, that was a misleading impression; he was acutely conscious of it, with every nerve in his body.

“Fools,” he thought savagely, continuing to pore over the tabletop, “leaving a stamp collector, I don’t care who he is, alone and unwatched with the Cape triangular! After I told them what it’s worth!” it was, he realized vaguely, because they didn’t quite believe him. That is, consciously they did, but unconsciously they didn’t. It still had no meaning to them. It was just a triangle of colored paper no matter what he said about it. If it had been jewelry or something their minds were trained to think of as intrinsically valuable...

He had reached Canada, the country before Cape of Good Hope, when he finally quit for the night. The last thing he did before shutting the album was to turn two pages ahead and take another look at the famous Cape triangular. A long, lingering look. A tormented look.

“Are you real,” he breathed reverently, “or are you a phoney like mine?”

The only way to tell was by the watermark. The paper that blocks of stamps are printed on, before they are perforated and separated, is water-marked just like banknote or writing paper sometimes is. The watermark of the paper plays as important a part in the stamp’s description, in Scott’s catalogues and to collectors all over the world, as its color or design or face value. The authentic Cape triangulars, issued back in the Forties of the Nineteenth Century and now all gone from the world but three, were watermarked with the British royal crown and the initials V R, Victoria Regina. The fakes were unwatermarked, for this official postal paper could not be obtained, and that was the only sure way of telling them apart — as Hobart had found out to his cost. An unwary collector, in the heat of acquisition, seeing a prize he had never hoped to obtain within his reach and usually at a lower figure, was apt to overlook that — or had been ten or fifteen years ago, when knowledge and use of the watermark detector was not so widespread as now.

He was dying to know: had old Aaron Harding been stung just as he had, or was this the genuine article? Alongside that question, the preoccupation of these three ignoramuses as to who had killed him and why seemed trivial, unimportant, child’s play.

The old man had not owned a watermark detector; old-fashioned in that respect just as he had been about insurance and making a will. Hobart, as he moved the short distance from the table to the open room-door, made up his mind. He would bring his own over in his pocket tomorrow night when he came back to continue his auditing. If they left him alone in the room, off and on, the way they had tonight, he could easily take the stamp out of the album, test it in the detector, and replace it again without their being any the wiser. What harm could there possibly be in that? It was just to satisfy his own curiosity.

On the other hand, why do it secretively, behind these men’s backs? What harm would it have been to mention openly what he wanted to do, ask their permission? It almost certainly would have been granted him. Was it because he didn’t want to attract their attention to his overweening interest in it, put them on their guard against possible substitution? Was it because he already knew that he meant to do more than just test it?

He raised his voice and called from the doorway, “Foster! Inspector Foster! I’m going home now.”

“Find anything?” the detective called down from above-stairs.

“Not so far, but I’m going ahead with it tomorrow night.”

Foster came down personally to see him out.

Hobart said, “You’re not going to just leave those albums lying out there on the table all night, are you?” They couldn’t get it into their thick heads that those scraps of paper were worth all kinds of money! “Didn’t he keep them in a safe or anything?”

“No, just inside the drawers of that secretary, from what the Negroes tell me. I’ll put them back and keep the key on me. But they’re safe enough. There’ll be a cop at the door all night, anyway.” His attitude was plainly, “What burglar would be fool enough to go after those things, when there’s real loot in a house?” He began to thank Hobart warmly for his assistance, as he accompanied him to the door.

“Sorry I haven’t been able to turn up anything definite for you yet,” the expert said, “but I may come upon it further along in the collection.” The remark had an insincere ring, to his own ears, though. Because he knew he wasn’t really interested in whether he did or not. He was only interested in having an excuse to come back the next night and find out for sure whether or not that was a genuine Cape triangular.

IV

Business was slow the next day. There wasn’t much trading. Well, he’d made enough money. It wasn’t a matter of bread and butter any more. And that was when your sparetime hobby started to grow on you, crowd aside your full-time occupation. He’d noticed long ago that he couldn’t get as much thrill out of a transaction that meant a sizable profit as he could out of getting hold of some philatelic rarity that completed a certain set or filled the last blank space on a certain page. It was unreasonable, but there it was.

He found himself thinking of that Cape triangular time and again, even when he was watching the ticker. Was the stamp real or wasn’t it? And if it was, what good was it to a dead man?

He didn’t start right over to Harding’s house when he had finished his dinner that evening. He unlocked his den instead and went in to take out his own collection. It was while he was turning the dial on the wall safe that he happened to glance up into a mirror and see his manservant standing in the open doorway, looking in questioningly.

He whirled angrily, strode over to the door. “Don’t come in here,” he said sharply, “You know I don’t let anyone in here.”

“Sorry, sir. I knocked but you didn’t hear me. Inspector Foster just called again, sir. He said if you hadn’t left yet to finish going over Mr. Harding’s collection, to tell you he was on his way there, himself and he’d stop by and call for you, if you’d care to wait for him.”

This was unimportant from Hobart’s point of view. He certainly had no reason for not wanting to ride out with the detective. In fact it saved him the trouble of getting his own car out of the garage. It was important only in that it gave the servant his first inkling as to what the police-auxiliary business was his employer was engaged in over there.

Hobart closed the door in his face abruptly. The man’s face, as the shadow fell athwart it, became a study in homicidal rage. (It takes a fine point of psychology to explain this fully.) Apart from the fact that all household servants resent undue precautions guarding against theft taken by their employers, as a reflection on their characters, there was this added factor: this man of Hobart’s was fully aware that nothing of any value outside the stamps was kept in that den. Since these stamps meant absolutely nothing to him, were perfectly worthless in his eyes, it only aggravated him the more to have them guarded from him so pointedly. It was adding insult to injury. He could have understood it if it had been silverware, but to do it about something that in his estimation belonged in the dust-bin...

And finally, it so happened that he was rigidly honest, had never stolen a pin in his life, but was of a sulky, vicious disposition, inclined to brood over his grievances, whether real or imaginary, until they festered and became maniacal hales.

Hobart opened his album, looked at his own Cape triangular. He’d often wondered why, after he’d found out definitely it was spurious, he’d bothered keeping it in his collection, why he hadn’t thrown it away and marked it off to experience. In the beg inning, when he’d gone to the police about it (that was in New York) and they’d been trying to apprehend the swindler, he’d needed it of course for evidence. And then after that, when it became evident that the sharper had made good his escape, well, maybe the fact that Hobart had parted with five thousand dollars for it had something to do with his hanging onto it, just like people hang onto gold-brick stock they’ve been swindled into buying, even when they know it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.

He removed the stamp now, with his tweezers. Then he brought out his watermark detector. This was simply a shallow little tray, about four by six inches, of a hard black bakelite composition. He placed the stamp in it, face down, so that the white reverse showed uppermost. Then he poured a few drops of benzine over it, enough to moisten the bottom of the tray. It wasn’t necessary to use this liquid; the same effect could be achieved with plain water, but benzine dries more rapidly. The soaked paper still showed completely unshadowed against the tray’s blackness, for this one was unwatermarked, a forgery.

He’d subjected it to this test repeatedly after the first devastating discovery — even performed it for the police to prove his point. He wondered, therefore, why he bothered repeating it at this late date. Was it, he reflected with a twinge, just the excuse, given to himself by himself, for getting the stamp out of the album?

He took it out of the pan, left it on a sheet of blotting paper for the air to dry it. But then he didn’t wait — he put the album back without it, locked the wall safe. It stayed there on the blotting paper as though he’d forgotten it. He hadn’t. He was fighting a battle with himself, a battle that gave no outward sign.

Foster didn’t bother to ring the doorbell when he arrived, just stayed in the car and tooted the horn. Hobart went out to him, leaving the stamp behind. He seemed to have won the battle.

He shook hands, asked the detective hospitably: “Care to come in a minute for a drink before we go?”

Foster gave him a humorously rueful look. “On duty? I’d like to keep my job a little longer.” He opened the car door for him.

“Just a minute,” Hobart said abruptly. “I forgot something.” He went back into the house. He had forgotten something. Something innocent, as yet. The watermark detector, with which he’d been meaning to test Harding’s Cape triangular on the sly.

But when he left the den the second time, the stamp wasn’t there on the blotter any more. He’d lost the battle.

A colored man with the mournful eyes of a dog that has lost its master opened the door for them at Harding’s house. A tall stately woman garbed in black was coming down the stairs as they entered.

“Mrs. Adams, this is Mr. Hobart,” said the detective, “He’s a stamp enthusiast like Mr. Harding was. He’s been good enough to put his expert knowledge at our disposal.”

She gave Hobart a warm look, as though the fact that he and her father had something in common was enough to make her look favorably on him. “I used to see him with the stamps so often,” she said sadly. “Cruel, isn’t it, Mr. Hobart?” She raised a handkerchief quickly to her lips, then regained control of herself.

Foster went into the murder room, unlocked the secretary, took out the albums for Hobart. Then Foster rejoined Mrs. Adams in the hall. She had, for obvious reasons, not stepped into the room.

Hobart seated himself at the table, shot back his cuffs, and resumed his “auditing.” He took up where he had left off the night before, and in a very few minutes had reached and passed the triangular. Without moving facial muscle he raised his eyes to the open doorway, dropped them again.

A moment later, without any warning, the darky was standing there in the doorway, coughing apologetically. Hobart looked up a second time without showing any emotion, although something like a short circuit had just gone through his system.

“Beg pardon, suh. Mrs. Adams like to know can I git you any refreshment while you wukking?”

“Thank you. A glass of water,” said Hobart pleasantly.

The darky brought it in on an expensive chased-silver platter, set it down on the table, withdrew tactfully. Hobart heard his almost inaudible tread go up the stairs to the floor above. Mrs. Adams and the detective had also gone there some time before this. Evidently there was an attic or storeroom full of trunks containing old letters and documents that claimed their attention.

Now was as good a time as any.

Hobart fished out his watermark detector surreptitiously and placed it on his lap under the table. He stuck two fingers into the drinking glass, traced their moistened tips along the bottom of the detector. Then he took up Harding’s tweezers, fixed them on the stamp and gently peeled it off its hinge and free of the album. He dropped the stamp face down onto the glistening tray.

Wrist shaking a little, he raised the tray up above table level, where the light could get at it freely. The black of the tray slowly peered through the soggy stamp in a series of tracings that finally resolved themselves into the British royal crown with the initials V R.

It was genuine, it was the real thing! It was the third Cape triangular, either from the dispersed Ferrari collection or the lost Romanoff one! His head swayed back until it almost struck the tall chair-back behind him; he tightened his neck muscles, pulled his head sharply forward again.

Its monetary value was no temptation to him. He didn’t think of it in that way at all, of what he could get for it. His collector’s instinct cried out for its possession, to keep, to hide away, even though no other living eve but his own ever saw it again. He thought: “Harding’s dead now. I’m not robbing anyone at all. She doesn’t understand stamps or care two pins about them. Nor does she need the money they might bring. Who’ll ever know the difference? Who’ll ever be the wiser? It’s not as though I intended to dispose of it afterward, run the risk of exposure. It’ll stay with me forever, and no one ever sees my collection but myself.”

He took the stamp out of the tray and placed it on the table, to let the dampness evaporate. He reached in his pocket, brought out his own, the counterfeit. He held them close to each other. So very much alike, so identical in every detail of coloring and engraving. Only that betraying little watermark.

But he kept fighting it out, as he had at his home. And the tide started to turn, the longer he hesitated. He was no thief. He’d never done anything like this before in his life. He wouldn’t have dreamed of doing a thing like this in business, appropriating a client’s account. If he did this now he was no better, no, he was far worse, than that long-ago sharper who had mulcted him. He could survive without this particular stamp. He had plenty of other rarities in his collection. And if no one ever looked at his albums but himself, all the more reason for being satisfied with the counterfeit he’d had all these years. But there was this collector’s fever to contend with, this vague instinct for perfection, for fulfillment, that craved the satisfaction of knowing he possessed the genuine one, even though nobody else ever would.

In the end he might have won out overcome the temptation, but circumstances defeated him. The front doorbell rang sharply, and the colored butler’s tread started down the stairs to answer it. Again he dabbed a finger into the glass of water, and stroked it across the hinge that had remained in the album, renewing its adhesive properties.

There was no excuse. The outer door had already opened, but there was equal time left to have replaced either one in the frame, the counterfeit or the genuine. He put back the forgery he had brought from his own house, and pressed it down until it remained fixed fast on the hinge. Then he put his other hand down on the tabletop, covering the real one, just as Broderick came into the room.

“Hello, Hobart,” the detective greeted him guilelessly. “How you coming along? Where’s Foster, upstairs? We just picked up a suspicious character that was seen roaming around this vicinity two days ago.” He went out again to the foot of the stairs, called his fellow worker down.

Hobart had only to lift his hand from the table. The stamp, still damp, adhered to his palm. He thrust his hand into his side pocket, and when he brought his hand out again it was empty.

Foster’s voice was raised, outside in the hall, in argument with his teammate. “You’re crazy! Harding would never have let anyone of that description into the house in the first place, and if he had gotten in he would have swiped everything he could lay his hands on, you bet.... All right, I’ll go down and question him, but you’re way off on the wrong track, I tell you!”

Hobart went ahead with his work, eyelids discreetly veiled.

By eleven-thirty he had reached Zanzibar, the last country in any collector’s album, and as he straightened in his chair with a sigh, Foster and the other dick came back. They were still arguing as they reentered the room, but apparently Foster had been vindicated by the results of their questioning. “See, I told you he’d be a false alarm!” he was saving. “Why, he’s just a stumblebum. The flophouse keeper himself told me he was in a two-bit bed that whole evening from nine o’clock on! How you making out, Mr. Hobart?”

“Just got through now,” Hobart told him, cushioning his hands comfortably behind his head, “and I can give this collection a clean bill of health. There’s nothing missing, according to the check system he used in his catalogue. Not the cheapest two-cents-red American variety.”

The news was understandably not welcome. Foster’s face sagged. “Now where are we?” he asked dismally, turning to confront his partner. “The stamps are out of it, and that was the only angle that promised a ghost of a possibility.”

“There’s still a chance that it was a stamp fiend,” offered Broderick by way of half-hearted consolation, “but he was frightened away by something and didn’t finish casing the collection for what he wanted.”

Hobart was about to say, “How long does it take to lift a stamp out of one of these books, if you know what you want?” but changed his mind prudently. “I’m going home,” he said instead. “It’s been a strenuous evening’s work.”

He made the trip back, in the detective’s car, with no more sense of guilt or strain than if he hadn’t had a $150,000 stamp in his pocket. At his own door he waved aside the dick’s renewed thanks with an airy, “It was an interesting experience! Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

He stood there outside his door with his latchkey in his hand until the sound of Foster’s car had dwindled away in the direction of downtown. He smiled derisively after it, and murmured something that sounded like, “Great detective! He’s taking money under false pretenses!”

In his den he turned on the light and closed the door. He opened the safe, took out his own album, and opened it to the Cape of Good Hope page. Then he took the priceless triangular out of his pocket, touched it to his lips, held it up for a moment toward the light with a smug expression. Finally he affixed a hinge to it, placed it where he had taken the counterfeit from.

Just as he was about to return the book to the safe, however, some faint sound from outside came to his ear. He crossed swiftly to the door, almost jumped at it, flung it open. The servant was standing out there, one foot out behind him, trying to appear as though he had just come up the hall to knock. Hobart received a distinct impression, however, that he had been crouched down on his heels for some time past watching him through the keyhole.

He could feel his face whiten, and tried to steady it. “I thought you’d gone to bed!” he yelled. “What’re you doing out here at this hour, spying on me?”

“No sir,” said the man submissively. “I only wanted to ask you if I should lock up yet.”

“You ought to know that without having to ask!” He slammed the door, nearly striking the man in the face with it. He went back and finished putting away his collection. He was shaking a little — and not altogether from exasperation, although he felt plenty of that.

He swore through clenched teeth. “He had to catch me just at that particular moment! That’s the only slip-up I’ve made throughout the whole business!” But then, he consoled himself, the spying servant had no way of knowing what it was, at that distance, nor where it had come from, nor how it had been obtained.

He didn’t give the man as much credit as he deserved. For at that very moment, locking up and putting out lights in another part of the house, his hostile employe was grimacing knowingly: “Swiped it, eh? I can tell that by the look he had on his face. It’s always the ones that mistrusts others that turns out to be crooked themselves. I’m biding my time. I’ve got something now, but I’m biding my time with it. He thinks he’s a tough guy, does he? Well, when I get the chance I’m going to show him I can be tougher.”

V

One week went by from the night Hobart had completed his specialized “assistance” to the police investigation of Aaron Harding’s murder. During that time the inquiry seemed to get no further. An item in one of the papers told him that Mrs. Adams had returned to Chicago. She intended to return later to dispose of the house after the case had been finally closed. There was no other mention of the matter. It had been a “quiet” sort of murder, in one sense — had not excited much public interest, so the editors made no attempt to keep it alive. Hobart certainly had no further reason to be particularly concerned with it. He had not committed it; he had not even known the murdered man. It was none of his business. He had not seen or heard from Foster or the others in the interval, either.

Exactly one week to the day after his last visit to the Harding house, his office secretary announced: “There’s a Mr. Lindquist out here to see you.”

He couldn’t recall the name offhand as belonging to any of his clients, but there was no sense hi turning away a new account.

A short little man with an extremely ruddy, cherubic face and a pointed white goatee, came bustling in. He vaguely suggested a French cabinet minister, with his cutaway coat and glasses on a heavy black cord.

“I couldn’t resist combining pleasure with business!” was his greeting. Then, at the uncertain look on Hobart’s face: “I see you can’t place me. Well, that’s not to be wondered at. You’ve been dealing with us for years but I seldom attend to our correspondence personally. I’m Helmer Lindquist, president of the Lindquist Stamp Exchange of New York.”

Hobart smiled with his eyes, but the lower part of his face tightened a little — why, he could not have told. They shook hands.

“So you’re the man that’s been getting all my hard-earned money!” he said jocularly. “Sit down.” Hobart offered a cigarette. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“I came out to do a little buying,” beamed the pigeon-like little man.

Hobart’s jawline wouldn’t relax, much as he tried to ease it. “You came out here from New York to do some buying? It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it?”

“But this is a special opportunity not likely to occur again, what the French call a bon marché.” He glanced at Hobart coyly, as though debating whether or not to tell him any more. “I know I shouldn’t tip my hand like this. I’m not forgetting you’re a collector yourself. However, I represent a corporation, and you’re probably not in a position to pay one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a single stamp, so there’s no harm in—”

The tautness of Hobart’s facial muscles had become like lockjaw. He just looked the question, without being able to ask it.

“Yes, you’ve guessed it,” chirped the gnome-like visitor. “The famous Cape triangular, in the Harding collection. I have a client in New York at this very moment, ready to pay me two hundred thousand for it, cold cash. If I can get it back for what Harding paid for it, fifty thousand dollars profit is not to be sneezed at.”

Hobart’s tongue flicked across his lips. “How do you know it’s genuine?” he murmured almost inaudibly. His mouth was dry.

“How do I know? Why we sold it to him! Our firm has never handled a single stamp that wasn’t genuine in the ninety years of our existence. Our agent bought it from Ferrari in Paris in 1922.” He blinked alarmedly. “Why, you look pale, Mr. Hobart! Are you ill? What’s the matter?”

“If you’ll glance behind you at that ticker you’ll see the reason.”

Lindquist did so briefly, but spread his hands at shoulder level. “Greek to me,” he said.

Hobart had gotten up with forced steadiness, was drawing water from the cooler into a paper container.

Lindquist was laughing puckishly. “Naturally, I don’t blame you for being on your guard, after the way you were taken in yourself by that very stamp once. The burnt child shuns the fire.”

“So you know that too?” Hobart didn’t get pale this time, or betray himself in any way. The first shock had insulated him against the second. Watching the water bubble into the cup he was holding, he said to himself stonily: “This man must die. He sold Harding the genuine triangular. He remembers reading in the papers at the time that I was swindled with a forgery.” Aloud he asked with careful steadiness: “Have you seen the Harding collection yet?” But obviously Lindquist hadn’t, or he would already have raised the alarm about the substitution.

“No, but I have an appointment with Inspector Foster to look it over tomorrow. I can’t, of course, buy anything until the estate has been probated, but I’m hoping to be able to get an option, first claim on this triangular, from Mrs. Adams, and put one over on my competitors in that way.”

Hobart said, “Why don’t you come out and dine with me at my house tonight? I’ll show you my collection.” And inwardly, “If you live long enough to get there.”

“Splendid, splendid!” the enthusiastic little connoisseur burst out. “I’m at the Harrison Hotel. Very kind of you indeed! And now I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“I’ll call for you at six sharp and drive you out.” As the frosted-glass panel closed after his caller, Hobart slumped back behind the desk and held his head in both hands. “He’s got to be put out of the way,” he said to himself.

It wasn’t revelation of the theft that worried him now any more. He was realizing he had put himself into a position where he would almost certainly be charged with the murder itself. After all, how could he prove that he had taken it the night he had, and not two nights before, the night Harding had been killed? He had stayed in his den that whole night going over his stamps. Nobody had seen him, could vouch for him, but his servant — and a single unsupported corroboration like that was too shaky to count on...

Yes, he would have to commit a murder, with all deliberation, as the only way of escaping being charged with one. One he had had nothing to do with.

He switched on his inter-office loudspeaker, snapped, “I’m not in to anyone for the rest of the day, understand?”

Tracing imaginary lines on his glass-topped desk with a gold pencil, he said to himself: “There are two ways out to my place from the Harrison Hotel, downtown. One is the short way, with traffic lights to guarantee its safety. One is the long roundabout route, that crosses the railroad right-of-way twice. He’s a stranger here. He won’t know the difference. The Flyer shoots through those right-of-ways at about 6:10 every night, for the East. If something should happen to the car, and it stalled on the crossing, I’d have time to jump for it — if I knew ahead of time — but would he?”

He bounced the gold pencil on the glass. “That’s it!” he exulted. He was a business man, quick to make decisions. Only this time the business was death.

VI

At five to six, in a dark backstreet behind the Harrison Hold, he stopped his car, got out, took a wrench from the tool kit and carried it around to the front door on the right hand side. He glanced around him, but in the twilight, in this section of factories and warehouses, there was no one in sight. He began swinging the wrench like a short-tempered man who has been trying to repair something and finally loses control of himself. The blows bent the outside door-handle down at such an angle to the face of the door that it became impossible to turn it, even from the inside. Then he flattened the latch-grip on the inside, so that even thin fingers couldn’t work under it to get a grip on it. The door beside the guest seat was now jammed immovably for all practical purposes. One could still open it, with patience and dexterity, yes, but not in an emergency, under stress of excitement or extreme fright.

Five minutes later, around the corner from there, he was leading Lindquist toward the car wider the lighted hotel-marquee, all sociability. Murray Hobart could be agreeable when he wanted to.

“You’ll have to get in from that side and squeeze through under the wheel,” he apologized. “A truck grazed me coming down and jammed that door fast.”

“Too bad,” sympathized Lindquist.

(“You’ll find out how to-bad it is,” Hobart thought.)

He noted with satisfaction the difficulty the rotund little connoisseur had in clearing the steering wheel shaft with his convex shape and short little legs. When he had, he was jammed into a corner pocket from which the only possible escape lay in vaulting over the top of the door. He was neither of a build nor agility to make this feasible. And it was going to come up on this side, from their right; that meant the dazzle of the headlight would blind him. And the natural instinct would be to get away from it, not jump out toward it. That meant the wheel shaft would trap him.

“Do you drive, Mr. Lindquist?” Hobart asked, to make conversation as they started off.

“No, strangely enough I’ve never taken it up.”

Hobart glanced at his watch. A minute past six. It had better happen at the first crossing, otherwise the Flyer might go by before they reached the second. Six-ten o’clock for the first, and about a quarter past for the second.

He held his car to a steady forty going down the shabby warehouse-lined road, that had neither traffic officers nor lights nor carried any private traffic, and that drew away from the direction of his own house at nearly a right angle, only to loop around again later. Forty was just about right — would get them there neither too soon nor too late. And since Lindquist didn’t drive, he wouldn’t be able to recognize the engine trouble, when it came, for the fake it was.

“How simple it is to kill another man,” thought Hobart philosophically.

He started to talk about stamps again, to keep Lindquist’s mind occupied. He was that kind of a man. He could talk shop to the man beside him while he was in the very act of driving him to his death.

He said, eyes on a tiny green pea ahead that marked the railroad crossing, “My own collection is no slouch, if I must say so myself. I’ve been collecting about eighteen years now.”

“Nothing like it, is there?” agreed Lindquist heartily.

Ahead, the green pea at the point of perspective of the broad gloomy vista had swollen to the size of a grape now, a green Malaga grape hanging there in mid-air.

Hobart glanced at his watch. Six-eight. They’d just get there in time for the funeral. One band left the wheel, came idly to rest on the door latch next to him, in readiness for his own imminent bolt.

Lindquist had gone on chattering blithely about the Harding collection. “I bet if it were appraised it would come to a cool half million. Why, his early British colonials alone—”

He bit the sentence off short. Left it hanging in mid-air as though it had been cut by a knife. Hobart stiffened and the bristles on the back of his neck stood up. He’d seen the collection, this man next to him! Not the fact that he had admitted knowledge of the British colonials (for in the guise of stamp dealer he could have supplied them to Harding and therefore known they were in the collection), but the way he had guiltily stopped short in mid-sentence, choked on what he was saying, gave him away. He had already seen the collection, and yet he had said in the office this afternoon that he hadn’t. That could only mean one thing. He was no stamp expert. At least not the innocent, casual looker-in at Hobart’s office that he pretended to be. He was a decoy, a police spy, a stool-pigeon! He had been employed by Foster to get the goods on him, Hobart. That meant he was already under suspicion, they had their eyes on him.

That changed everything. He mustn’t die. He mustn’t die! Why he. Hobart, was under surveillance right now, must have been every step of the way. The whole thing was a set-up. If he went through with his plan now, they’d have him dead to rights for murder! He’d take the grand larceny rap, he’d even risk being accused of the Harding murder — anything, anything. But he mustn’t go through with this. It would be delivering himself up to them tied hand and foot.

The red light glowed ahead of them like a malignant planet. He braked violently, maniacally, nearly standing erect in his seat to bring down the last ounce of pressure. They bucked, teetered, lurched, half skidded, half ploughed, to a sickening stop, inches away from the outside line of rails of the quadruple trackbed.

The lathe-like barriers that had attempted to descend to guard the right of way were unable to meet, formed a pointed arch over the car. One of the rear tires went shudderingly out with a plaintive whine, overstrained by the skidding.

“My, you did that on short notice!” remonstrated Lindquist mildly.

There was a roaring like a high wind, a blinding beam of light shot along the track, reared abruptly into the air, snuffed out, and the long sleek Flyer went racketing by, car after streamlined car of it. The reflection of the long rows of lighted windows streamed across their faces like a rippling golden pennant. Hobart’s was glistening with sweat. Lord that had been a close shave! If the revelation had come a minute later. A minute? Ten seconds!

He pushed the door on his side open, got out on trembling legs. “Got to have a look at that back tire,” he panted to Lindquist — probably unheard in the din of the passing train.

He went to the back of the car, supporting himself with one arm against it as he did so. He had to, to stand up straight, he was so shaken.

He squatted down like a frog by the left rear wheel. Sure, flat as a— He got vertigo or something, couldn’t focus his eyes straight. The spokes seemed to revolve inside the rim. The wheel was starting to draw away from him, slowly, then faster.

He straightened with a shriek. He saw at once what had happened. Lindquist was wedged under the wheel-stem in the attempt to get out after him, facing backward, waving his arms helplessly around over his head like pinwheels. He’d done something, accidentally stepped on the accelerator, taken off the brake. There was a short pronounced grade down to the depressed trackbed, enough to pull the car into motion.

He yelled, “The brake! Put on the brake!”

But evidently Lindquist couldn’t. He was wedged there, floundering inextricably. But it was all right, it would be all right. The long Flyer, not yet completely past, was running the second track over, and here came the observation car. It would be past by the time the machine nosed that far out.

They seemed to miss each other by inches, while Hobart stood there paralyzed, incapable of moving. Pfft! and the aluminum observation-car had streaked by, the right of way was clear.

The car rolled on across the just-vacated second pair of tracks, came to a halt athwart the third, the center of the depression.

Lindquist was still semaphoring. He had one leg out over the side but he couldn’t seem to extricate his other hip. Hobart could see him too plainly. There was something the matter! He was all blue up and down one side, as if a flashlight picture were being taken of him. There was an inhuman screech overhead, like a bird of prey — and a freight came tearing out from behind the Flyer, racing in the other direction, with the unexpectedness of a blacksnake. There was a crack like a sheet of tin being torn off a roof, and a lot of little things came falling down all over.

“Get me a drink, quick — and, and pack my bag!” blurted Hobart as his servant opened the door for him a few minutes later. No time had been lost. He had to burn that damn stamp first of all. He was in for it now. But it was an accident. They couldn’t make it anything else! True, at first he’d intended — but he’d changed his mind. It was an accident!

The servant poured him a jiggerful of brandy and he gulped it down. “Accident,” he gasped. “Car smashed up — man I was bringing home to dinner—”

“Better take another.” But the servant’s eyes were hard. It wasn’t said solicitously.

Hobart wanted another drink but he had to go in there and get rid of that stamp before he did anything else. He threw the door of his den open — and the lights were already on, and Foster was sitting there waiting for him.

“A little too unexpected for you?”

He smiled at Hobart’s spasmodic heave, but not like he’d smiled a week ago, not grateful or respectful or admiring. Perhaps the dick was no longer accepting his pay under false pretenses. Perhaps he never had.

He said, “You know why I’m here.” And he got up and came over to Hobart. He took Hobart by the cuff and twisted that around into an inextricable knot that acted like a manacle.

Hobart didn’t pretend he didn’t know. The game had gone past that stage now.

“You think l killed I larding. I didn’t. All right. I’ll make a clean breast of it. I did substitute a fake for the triangular. But that was two nights after, when I went up there to help you. I didn’t kill him.”

He turned beseechingly to the servant standing impassively behind him. “Tell him, Graves — tell him! You were spying on me through the key hole, I know. Tell him, tell him what night it was you saw me come home and put a stamp into my book late at night.”

“I have already, sir,” said the servant respectfully. “He asked me that the first thing, and I told him. It was nine nights ago tonight. Tonight’s Thursday. It was Tuesday of last week.”

“The night Aaron Harding met his death,” murmured Foster.

“No!” Hobart’s voice rose to a wail of anguish. “He’s lying! He’s got a better memory than that! He hates me! He knows it was a week ago tonight — last Thursday night.”

“I have got a good memory,” said the servant imperturbably. “You’ve often told me so yourself. That’s why I know I’m not mistaken. It was Tuesday of last week.” And he just looked levelly, inscrutably, at his employer.

Hobart appealed frantically to the detective. “Don’t you remember the first night you phoned me to come out? I went to the wrong address first. Doesn’t that prove I’d never been to Harding’s house before?”

“Not necessarily,” said the detective. “It could just as easily prove you were clever enough to want to make it look that way. Lindquist, who was never in this town before, got out there without any trouble. Where is he, by the way? We investigated him and he’s exactly what he says he is.”

“I had an accident with my car.” Hobart shuddered. “He was — it was hit by a freight train at the Central Avenue crossing just now.”

All Foster said, with deadly emphasis, was, “Since when is Central Avenue the shortest way between the Harrison Hotel and your house here? Let’s get started, shall we?”

And as he half-carried the almost senseless victim of circumstances through the door with him, he growled disgustedly: “All for a little bit of colored paper! I have a letter in my pocket right now, from Mrs. Adams, in which she mentions she was going to give the stamp collection to you intact, triangular and all, as soon as the estate was settled, to show her appreciation and because neither she nor her husband are interested in stamps and you are.”

“I didn’t kill Harding!” shrieked Hobart.

“You’re the only one who had a motive,” Foster said flatly. “You’re the only one who could have. If you didn’t kill him, who did?”