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

“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.

“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.