“ACH!” said old Uneker. “It iss a terrible t’ing Mr. Quveen — a terrible t’ing, like I vass saying. Vat iss New York coming to? Dey come into my store — polizei, undt bleedings, undt whackings on de headt... Diss iss vunuff my oldest customers, Mr. Quveen. He too hass hadt exberiences... Mr. Hazlitt, Mr. Quveen... Mr. Quveen iss dot famous detectiff feller you read aboudt in de papers, Mr. Hazlitt. Inspector Richardt Quveen’s son.”
Ellery Queen laughed, uncoiled his length from old Uneker’s counter, and shook the man’s hand. “Another victim of our crime wave, Mr. Hazlitt? Unky’s been regaling me with a feast of a whopping bloody tale.”
“So you’re Ellery Queen,” said the frail little fellow; he wore a pair of thick-lensed goggles and there was a smell of suburbs about him. “This is luck! Yes, I’ve been robbed.”
Ellery looked incredulously about old Uneker’s bookshop. “Not here?” Uneker was tucked away on a side street in mid Manhattan, squeezed between the British Bootery and Mme. Carolyne’s, and it was just about the last place in the world you would have expected thieves to choose as the scene of a crime.
“Nah,” said Hazlitt. “Might have saved the price of a book if it had. No, it happened last night about ten o’clock. I’d just left my office on Forty-fifth Street — I’d worked late — and I was walking crosstown. Chap stopped me on the street and asked for a light. The street was pretty dark and deserted, and I didn’t like the fellow’s manner, but I saw no harm in lending him a packet of matches. While I was digging it out, though, I noticed he was eyeing the book under my arm. Sort of trying to read the title.”
“What book was it?” asked Ellery eagerly. Books were his private passion.
Hazlitt shrugged. “Nothing remarkable. That best-selling nonfiction thing, Europe in Chaos; I’m in the export line and I like to keep up-to-date on international conditions. Anyway, this chap lit his cigaret, returning the matches, mumbled his thanks, and I began to walk on. Next thing I knew something walloped me on the back of my head and everything went black. I seem to remember falling. When I came to, I was lying in the gutter, my hat and glasses were on the stones, and my head felt like a baked potato. Naturally I thought I’d been robbed; I had a lot of cash about me, and I was wearing a pair of diamond cuff links. But—”
“But, of course,” said Ellery with a grin, “the only thing that was taken was Europe in Chaos. Perfect, Mr. Hazlitt! A fascinating little problem. Can you describe your assailant?”
“He had a heavy moustache and dark-tinted glasses of some kind. That’s all. I—”
“He? He can describe not’ing,” said old Uneker sourly. “He iss like all you Americans — blindt, a dummkopf. But de book, Mr. Quveen — de book! Vhy should any von vant to steal a book like dot?”
“And that isn’t all,” said Hazlitt. “When I got home last night — I live in East Orange, New Jersey — I found my house broken into! And what do you think had been stolen, Mr. Queen?”
Ellery’s lean face beamed. “I’m no crystal-gazer; but if there’s any consistency in crime, I should imagine another book had been stolen.”
“Right! And it was my second copy of Europe in Chaos!”
“Now you do interest me,” said Ellery, in quite a different tone. “How did you come to have two, Mr. Hazlitt?”
“I bought another copy from Uneker two days ago to give to a friend of mine. I’d left it on top of my bookcase. It was gone. Window was open — it had been forced; and there were smudges of hands on the sill. Plain case of housebreaking. And although there’s plenty of valuable stuff in my place — silver and things — nothing else had been taken. I reported it at once to the East Orange police, but they just tramped about the place, gave me funny looks, and finally went away. I suppose they thought I was crazy.”
“Were any other books missing?”
“No, just that one.”
“I really don’t see...” Ellery took off his pince-nez eyeglasses and began to polish the lenses thoughtfully. “Could it have been the same man? Would he have had time to get out to East Orange and burglarize your house before you got there last night?”
“Yes. When I picked myself out of the gutter I reported the assault to a cop, and he took me down to a nearby station house, and they asked me a lot of questions. He would have had plenty of time — I didn’t get home until one o’clock in the morning.”
“I think, Unky,” said Ellery, “that the story you told me begins to have a point. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Hazlitt, I’ll be on my way. Auf wiedersehen!”
Ellery left old Uneker’s little shop and went downtown to Centre Street. He climbed the steps of Police Headquarters, nodded amiably to a desk lieutenant, and made for his father’s office. The inspector was out. Ellery twiddled with an ebony figurine of Bertillon on his father’s desk, mused deeply, then went out and began to hunt for Sergeant Velie, the inspector’s chief-of-operations. He found the mammoth in the press room, bawling curses at a reporter.
“Velie,” said Ellery, “stop playing bad man and get me some information. Two days ago there was an unsuccessful man-hunt on Forty-ninth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The chase ended in a little bookshop owned by a friend of mine named Uneker. Local officer was in on it. Uneker told me the story, but I want less colored details. Get me the precinct report like a good fellow, will you?”
Sergeant Velie waggled his big black jaws, glared at the reporter, and thundered off. Ten minutes later he came back with a sheet of paper, and Ellery read it with absorption.
The facts seemed bald enough. Two days before, at the noon hour, a hatless, coatless man with a bloody face had rushed out of the office building three doors from old Uneker’s bookshop, shouting: “Help! Police!” Patrolman McCallum had run up, and the man yelled that he had been robbed of a valuable postage stamp — “My one-penny black!” he kept shouting. “My one-penny black!” — and that the thief, black-mustached and wearing heavy blue-tinted spectacles, had just escaped. McCallum had noticed a man of this description a few minutes before, acting peculiarly, enter the nearby bookshop. Followed by the screaming stamp dealer, he dashed into old Uneker’s place with drawn revolver. Had a man with black mustaches and blue-tinted spectacles come into the shop within the past few minutes? “Ja — he?” said old Uneker. “Sure, he iss still here.” Where? In the back room looking at some books. McCallum and the bleeding man rushed into Uneker’s back room; it was empty. A door leading to the alley from the back room was open; the man had escaped, apparently having been scared off by the noisy entrance of the policeman and the victim a moment before. McCallum had immediately searched the neighborhood; the thief had vanished.
The officer then took the complainant’s statement. He was, he said, Friederich Ulm, dealer in rare postage stamps. His office was in a tenth-floor room in the building three doors away — the office of his brother Albert, his partner, and himself. He had been exhibiting some valuable items to an invited group of three stamp collectors. Two of them had gone away. Ulm happened to turn his back; and the third, the man with the black mustache and blue-tinted glasses, who had introduced himself as Avery Beninson, had swooped on him swiftly from behind and struck at his head with a short iron bar as Ulm twisted back. The blow had cut open Ulm’s cheekbone and felled him, half-stunned; and then with the utmost coolness the thief had used the same iron bar (which, said the report, from its description was probably a “jimmy”) to pry open the lid of a glass-topped cabinet in which a choice collection of stamps was kept. He had snatched from a leather box in the cabinet an extremely high-priced item — “the Queen Victoria one-penny black” — and had then dashed out, locking the door behind him. It had taken the assaulted dealer several minutes to open the door and follow. McCallum went with Ulm to the office, examined the rifled cabinet, took the names and addresses of the three collectors who had been present that morning — with particular note of “Avery Beninson” — scribbled his report, and departed.