“He didn’t seem Arab to me,” said Reed. “And if he were, why was the offer not renewed? Or why wasn’t there an attempt at taking it from me by violence?”
Drake said, “You say he studied the object carefully. Do you suppose he saw something that convinced him of its value — whatever that value might be?”
Reed said, “How can I dispute that? Except that whatever he might have seen, I certainly never have seen. Have you seen anything?”
“No,” admitted Drake.
Rubin said, “This doesn’t sound like a mystery we can possibly solve. We just don’t have enough information. — What do you say, Henry?”
Henry, who had been listening with his usual quiet attention, said, “I was wondering about a few points.”
“Well then, go on, Henry,” said Avalon. “Why don’t you continue grilling the guest?”
Henry said, “Mr. Reed, when you showed the object to your guests on that occasion in 1962 or 1963, you say you passed the package around. You mean the original package in which the letter and the meteorite had come, with its contents as they had always been?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. It was a family treasure.”
“But since 1963, sir, you have carried the meteorite in your pocket?”
“Yes, always,” said Reed.
“Does that mean, sir, that you no longer have the letter?”
“Of course it doesn’t mean that,” said Reed indignantly. “We certainly do have the letter. I’ll admit that after that fellow’s threat I was a little concerned, so I put it in a safer place. It’s a glamorous document from the family standpoint, hoax or not.”
“Where do you keep it now?” asked Henry.
“In a small wall safe I use for documents and jewels.”
“Have you seen it recently?”
Reed smiled broadly. “I use the wall safe frequently, and I see it every time. Take my word for it, Henry, the letter is safe — as safe as the luck piece in my pocket.”
Henry said, “Then you don’t keep the letter in the original package any more.”
“No,” said Reed. “The package was more useful as a container for the meteorite. Now that I carry that object in my pocket, there was no point in keeping the letter in the package.”
Henry nodded. “And what did you do with the package, sir?”
Reed looked puzzled. “Why, nothing.”
“You didn’t throw it out?”
“No, of course not.”
“Do you know where it is?”
Reed frowned and paused. He said at last, “No, I don’t think so.”
“When did you last see it?”
The pause was longer this time. “I don’t know that, either.”
Henry seemed lost in thought.
Avalon said, “Well, Henry, what do you have in mind?”
Henry said, “I’m just wondering” — he quietly circled the table removing the brandy glasses — “whether that man wanted the meteorite at all.”
“He certainly offered me money for it,” said Reed.
“Yes,” said Henry, “but first such small sums as would offer you no temptation to sell it, and which he could well afford to pay if you called his bluff. Then a larger sum couched in such deliberately offensive language as to make it certain you would refuse. And after that a mysterious threat which never materialized.”
“But why should he do all that,” said Reed, “unless he wanted my iron gem?”
Henry said, “To achieve, perhaps, precisely what he did, in fact, achieve — to convince you he wanted the meteorite and to keep your attention firmly fixed on that. He gave you back the meteorite when you held out your hand for it; he gave you back the letter — but did he give you back the original package?”
Reed said, “I don’t remember him taking it.”
Henry said, “It was ten years ago. He kept your attention fixed on the meteorite. You even spent some time examining it yourself and during that time you didn’t look at him, I’m sure. Can you say you’ve seen the package since that time, sir?”
Reed shook his head slowly. “I can’t say I have. You mean he fastened my attention so tightly on the meteorite that he could walk off with the package and I wouldn’t notice?”
“I’m afraid you didn’t notice. You put the meteorite in your pocket, the letter in your safe, and apparently never gave another thought to the package itself. This man, whose name you don’t know and whom you can no longer identify thanks to your friends’ death, has had the package for ten years with no interference. And by now you could not possibly identify what it was he took.”
“I certainly could,” said Reed stoutly, “if I could see it. It has my great-grandmother’s name and address on it.”
“He might not have saved the package itself,” said Henry.
“I’ve got it,” cried out Gonzalo suddenly. “It was that Chinese writing. He could make it out and he took it to get it deciphered with certainty. The message was important.”
Henry’s smile was the barest flicker. “That is a romantic notion that had not occurred to me, Mr. Gonzalo, but I don’t know that it is very probable. I was thinking of something else. — Mr. Reed, you had a package from Hong Kong in 1856 and at that time Hong Kong was already a British possession.”
“Taken over in 1848,” said Rubin briefly.
“And I think the British had already instituted the modern system of distributing mail.”
“Rowland Hill,” said Rubin at once, “in 1840.”
“Well, then,” said Henry, “could there have been a stamp on the original package?”
Reed looked startled. “Now that you mention it, there was something that looked like a black stamp, I seem to recall. A woman’s profile?”
“The young Victoria,” said Rubin.
Henry said, “And might it possibly have been a rare stamp?”
Gonzalo threw up his arms. “Bingo!”
Reed sat with his mouth open. Then he said, “Of course, you must be right — I wonder how much I lost.”
“Nothing but money, sir,” murmured Henry. “The earliest British stamps were not beautiful.”
Criminalimerick
The Black Widowers: 4
by D. R. Bensen[2]
The hour’s getting later and later;
There’s a tale of hatred (and hater);
The Black Widowers thrill
To its uncanny chill,
And who clears it all up? — the waiter!
Things Change
by Joyce Harrington[3]
Old Mrs. Trimble was found sprawled in the town cemetery with her head bashed in. Her son Wayne was the town’s chief (and only) pharmacist, and no one, including Officer Hupp, seemed to notice the inconspicuous absence of something in the drugstore’s window display...
It had been so easy. So easy he wondered why he hadn’t done it years before. Wayne Trimble chuckled to himself as he rounded the comer of Elm and Main on his first day back to work after the funeral.
Everyone in town knew of Mrs. Trimble’s habit of walking her nasty yippish little dog through the cemetery at dusk. Everyone, including Officer Hupp, had warned her that it was not the safest thing in the world to do. Not in these days when there were dope addicts and wild kids everywhere, even in a place like Minchville — Main Street with five cross streets named after trees and a surrounding sprawl of immobilized mobile homes. But nothing would deter Mrs. Trimble from her nightly ramble with Precious Lotus trailing at her heels.