Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

‘Yes.’

He nodded, still examining the proof. ‘Tubby rang me about it, said he thought the label on the cover auctioned a couple of years ago must have had the word “Solomons” on it — Solomons Shipping Company, something like that.’ And he added, ‘I checked with a friend of mine at Robson Lowe. He couldn’t remember what was on the label, so I asked him who had put the cover up for auction. He rang me later to say that it had been sent to them by a dealer in Sydney.’ He reached to a box file on the window ledge behind him, searched out a card and copied an address on to a slip of paper. ‘Cyrus Pegley, that’s the dealer’s name.’ He handed me the slip. ‘Since you’re going there, do me a favour, will you? Go and see him when you’re in Sydney, find out all you can about that cover, where he got it from, what was printed on the label — anything at all that will help establish the provenance of these die proofs.’

The address he had given me was Victoria Street, King’s Cross, presumably a suburb of Sydney. ‘I won’t have much time,’ I murmured.

‘Then make time. It’s important if you want these die proofs to fetch the sort of figure I think they could.’ He was leaning forward again, peering intently at the pages, the jeweller’s glass back in his eye. ‘Solomons Shipping Company,’ he murmured, and shook his head. ‘I don’t believe that would fit. Berners didn’t tell you who his client was, I suppose? No, of course not.’ He sighed. ‘A pity. We need to know a lot more. It’s so incredible, so incongruous.’

‘What is?’

‘The seal. Particularly the seal on its icefloe. Do you have the Perkins Bacon Records? ’ he asked without looking up. ‘The first volume dealing with the Colonial issues. You’ll find it in that, towards the end. A very odd admission for a firm of security printers that was known chiefly for the printing of banknotes.’ And when I told him I hadn’t got the books, he said, ‘You should have. Those two volumes are the meticulous record of every letter, every transaction connected with the design, printing and delivery by Perkins Bacon of stamps for the colonies, and for several foreign countries, too. It took Percy de Worms years to compile it, and he died before he had completed the work. Every collector of early line-engraved issues should have them.’

‘Well, I haven’t,’ I said. ‘So perhaps you’ll tell me what it’s all about.’

He hesitated, then shook his head. ‘Better ask Tubby. He spotted it first, not me.’ He took the glass out of his eye, closed the albums and leaned back in his chair. ‘He’ll enjoy telling you, so I won’t spoil it for him. And now, having had another look at the proofs, I have a suggestion to make, bearing in mind your client’s needs and the fact that you’ll be out of the country for a time.’

What he proposed was to have the collection entered on the books of his partner in Zurich, who would then advance Miss Holland the equivalent of £2,000 in Swiss francs. This would be paid into an external account at her Southampton bank, thus enabling her to draw on it for payments in any currency. The only stipulation he made was that I sign an undertaking on her behalf that the collection would be put up for sale at his Birmingham auction house. ‘We’ll put it up in the autumn, when I hope to have a really big sale, and I won’t charge her any interest on the monies advanced. Okay?’

It was as good an arrangement as I could have hoped for, and with my departure for Australia so imminent I was relieved to have the whole thing settled. It was only when I was out in the Strand again that I remembered what Tubby had said about the Seal-on-Icefloe stamp having been printed by an American banknote company. It couldn’t have been anything to do with Perkins Bacon. But that was Keegan’s problem now. As far as I was concerned, the collection was out of my hands. Perenna Holland had £2,000 spending money in the form of a guaranteed minimum, and the prospect of at least double that if he was right about the interest the collection would arouse.

As soon as I got home, I wrote to her care of the bank. Then I rang Tubby. There was no reply. I rang him again later that night, when I had broken the back of the things that had to be done before I left. There was still no reply. My curiosity unsatisfied, I got out my own collection. It always gave me a feeling of satisfaction to look through the colourful print mosaics of my careful lay-outs and to realise that most of the stamps had been acquired long before inflation had got into its stride. But not this time, for I was very conscious that there was nothing in my collection that was in any way out of the ordinary, nothing that would get Josh Keegan talking the way he had about the Solomons Seal.

In the end I locked the albums away and went to bed. It was after one. An owl was hooting from the big cedar across the moat, and though it was already Saturday, and tomorrow I would be on my way to Australia, the forlorn sound of it seemed to reflect my mood.

A new country, the possibility of a fresh start — I should have been feeling eager, full of anticipation. Instead, the feeling I had was one of despondency, almost foreboding. And that night I had a very strange dream. I was back in that empty house, and everywhere there were masks and strange obscene figures staring at me, and a voice was calling. I don’t know whose voice it was or what it was trying to say; it just boomed meaninglessly around the empty rooms, and I woke with the feeling that somebody, something had been trying to get through to me.

I don’t often dream, and when I do, my dreams are usually fairly innocuous. But this wasn’t, and I automatically reached out to the next bed for comfort. But it was empty, as it had been for far too long now, and I lay there in the dark, trying to remember some detail that would provide a rational explanation.

In the end I switched on the light, got myself a Scotch and took it back to bed, thinking about that girl, and about Australia. What would she do when she got my letter? The memory of her was very vivid in my mind, and I lay there sipping my drink, telling myself it was nothing to do with me and no chance our paths would cross again. It was finished, but the knowledge that she was gone out of my life for good didn’t stop me indulging in fantasy. And all the time I was remembering that booming, unintelligible voice.

Dawn was breaking before I dozed off, and when I finally woke, it was past nine. I rang Tubby, but again I got no answer. I didn’t bother about breakfast, but drove straight down to the Crouch. His boat was gone. I went on board my own then, got the anchor up and beat down the river against the tide, tacking through the first yacht race of the day until I was out in the fairway and thumping around in a growing nor’easter off Foulness. It did me a world of good, the voice of my dream and that dreadful little house blown away by the stiff onshore breeze funnelling up the estuary.

Back at my moorings I cooked myself a meal, and afterwards I sat in the cockpit with a drink in my hand, wondering whether I would ever see my boat again. The wind had died with the setting sun, the Burnham waterfront gleaming white in the fading light, everything very still except for the ripple of the tide against the bows and the waterborne sound of voices from the last yachts drifting up on the tide. No sign of Tubby, so clearly he was away for the weekend. The pale glow of the town, the estuary, the tide … I had lived in East Anglia ever since finishing my National Service, and the thought of leaving it for good filled me with nostalgia. Would I always have to be shifting from job to job? Was that the pattern of my life, some flaw in my character, a lack of stability? Two months past forty, and here I was planning to start all over again.