The Chinese Orange Mystery

“I know nothing. I know,” said Ellery sadly, “rather less than nothing, when it comes to that. I might, however, ask you what you know.” Macgowan started. “I hadn’t got round to you, you see. But you do know something, and I think it would be wise for you to let me share your knowledge. I’m the repository for more secrets than you could throw at a dead cat, if that’s the polite custom. I’m unofficial¯blessed state, you understand. I tell what I think should be told and keep all the rest to myself.”

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.

“One case, leather or leatherette. Unfortunately I haven’t X-ray eyes. Let’s have it, please.”

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¯”

“Obviously inspection is called for,” murmured Ellery. “What are you talking about, Macgowan?”

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: Foochow, capitalized.

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.

“That’s funny, isn’t it?” murmured Ellery. “I’m not a philatelist, but I can’t remember ever having seen or heard of a stamp that was blank in the center of the design. What’s the idea, anyway, Macgowan?”

“Hold it up to the light,” said Macgowan quietly.

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.

“Amazing,” he said. “Perfectly amazing.” And something glittered in his eye as he flung Macgowan another sharp glance.

Macgowan said in the same quiet voice: “Turn the stamp over.”

Ellery did so. And there, incredible as it seemed, was the harbor scene in its black printing-ink, impressed upon the back of the stamp. There was a gloss of dried gum over it, cracked and streaky.

“Backwards?” he said slowly. “Of course. Backwards.”

Macgowan took the tongs with the pochette between its tines and replaced the pochette in the envelope. “Queer, isn’t it?” he said in a smothered voice. “The only error of its kind to my knowledge in the whole field of philately. It’s the sort of rarity collectors dream about.”

“Backwards?” said Ellery again, as if he were asking himself a question the answer to which was too pat to be true. He leaned back in his chair and smoked with half-closed eyes. “Well, well! This has been a fruitful visit, Macgowan. How on earth does such an error occur?”

Macgowan snapped the lid of the case shut and replaced the case almost carelessly in his breast-pocket. “Well, this is a two-color stamp, as you saw. What we term a bicolor. Ochre and black in this instance. That means that the sheet of stamps¯they come in sheets, of course; aren’t printed separately¯the sheets of stamps had to be run through the presses twice.”