a smothered voice from the depths of the pillow.
Ellery bolted upright, the glasses dangling from his ear. “Well, of all the exasperating?! Why didn’t you say so before, homunculus? Who is it? How long has he been waiting?” He scrambled out of bed and reached for his dressing-gown.
When Ellery emerged into the Queens’ living-room he found tall Glenn Macgowan pacing restlessly up and down before the fire that crackled in the grate. He ceased his patrol abruptly. “Ah, Queen. I’m sorry. Had no idea I’d be routing you out of bed.”
Ellery shook his big hand lazily. “Not at all. You did me a service; there’s no telling when I’d have got up. Join me in some breakfast, Macgowan?”
Ellery grinned as he gulped. “I’m sorry. It’s a nasty habit.”
Macgowan resumed his pacing. Then he stopped short jerkily and said: “Ah, Queen. Sorry about the other night. Dr. Kirk’s unpredictable. I assure you Marcella and I?all of us?felt very badly about the whole dismal business. Of course, the old gentleman’s exercising the prerogative of senility. He’s a tyrant.. And besides, he doesn’t understand the necessities of official investigation?”
Ellery raised his cup. “Well, I’m human, I suppose. I can’t say I was precisely prepared for it.”
Macgowan laughed a little gloomily. “Of course, I did want to express my apologies personally. I feel like one of the Kirk family, now that Marcella and I . . . Look here, Queen.”
Ellery sank back with a sigh, dabbing his lips with his napkin. He offered Macgowan a cigaret, which the big man refused, and took one himself. “Therel” he said. “That’s worlds better. Well, Macgowan? I’m looking.”
They studied each other in silence for some time, quite without expression. Then Macgowan began to fumble in his inner breast-pocket. “Y’know, I can’t quite make you out, Queen. I get the feeling that you know a good deal more than you pretend?”
Macgowan stroked his long jaw nervously. “I don’t know what you mean. I holding something back? Really?”
Ellery eyed him calmly. Then he put the cigaret back into his mouth and smoked with a thoughtful air. “Dear, dear. I must be losing my grip. Well, Macgowan, what’s on your mind?or rather in your hand?”
Macgowan unfolded his big fist and Ellery saw in the broad palm a small leather object, like a card-case. “This,” he said.
But without taking his eyes off the case in his hand and without raising his hand Macgowan said: “I’ve just purchased?what’s in this case. Something valuable. It’s pure coincidence, of course, but I believe in anticipating trouble?trouble that might lead me into some embarrassment, though I assure you I’m perfectly innocent of any . . . “ Ellery watched the man unblinkingly. He was extraordinarily nervous. “There’s nothing in it for me to conceal, but if I neglected to mention it, some one of the police, I fancy, might find out. That would be awkward, perhaps unpleasant. So?”
Macgowan handed him the leather case.
Ellery turned it over in his fingers curiously, with that deliberate detachment which years of examination of strange objects had bred in him. It was made of a plain morocco, black, and apparently operated on a simple spring-catch arrangement. He pressed the small button and the lid flew back. Inside the case, imbedded in a hollow of satin, lay a rectangular envelope of stiff milky glassine. And in the envelope, incased in a pochette, lay a postage stamp.
Silently Macgowan produced a stamp-tongs of nickel and offered it to Ellery. Ellery opened the envelope and with the tongs, rather clumsily, extracted the pochette. The stamp showed clearly through the cellophane. It was an oversize stamp, wider than deep, and perforated evenly along its four edges. The border was an ochre-yellow in color, and the bottom was designed as a sort of Chinese flower-garland. In the two lower corners appeared the denomination of the stamp: $1. In squat ochre letters running across the top of the border was the word:
But inside the border, where even to Ellery’s untrained eye it was evident that there should have been a pictorial design of some kind in another color, there was?nothing. Merely the blank white paper of the stamp.
Ellery flung him a sharp glance and obeyed. And instantly he saw, through the thin paper, a very charming little scene in black. In the foreground there was what appeared to be a long ceremonial canoe of some kind, filled with natives; and in the background a harbor scene; obviously, from the legend at the top, a view of the harbor of Foochow.
Macgowan said in the same quiet voice: “Turn the stamp over.”