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 non-fiction 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 cigarette, returned 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 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 mustache 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 book-case. 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 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 Center 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 Dim, 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.

  The names of the other two collectors were John Hinchman and J. S. Peters. A detective attached to the precinct had visited each in turn and had then gone to the address of Beninson. Beninson, who presumably had been the man with black mustaches and blue-tinted spectacles, was ignorant of the entire affair; and his physical appearance did not tally with the description of Ulm’s assailant. He had received no invitation from the Ulm brothers, he said, to attend the private sale. Yes, he had had an employee, a man with black mustaches and tinted glasses, for two weeks—this man had answered Beninson’s advertisement for an assistant to take charge of the collector’s private stamp-albums, had proved satisfactory, and had suddenly, without explanation or notice, disappeared after two weeks’ service. He had disappeared, the detective noted, on the morning of the Ulms’ sale.

  All attempts to trace this mysterious assistant, who had called himself William Planck, were unsuccessful. The man had vanished among New York City’s millions.

  Nor was this the end of the story. For the day after the theft old Uneker himself had reported to the precinct detective a queer tale. The previous night—the night of the Ulm theft—said Uneker, he had left his shop for a late dinner; his night-clerk had remained on duty. A man had entered the shop, had asked to see Europe in Chaos, and had then to the night-clerk’s astonishment purchased all copies of the book in stock—seven. The man who had made this extraordinary purchase wore black mustaches and blue-tinted spectacles!

  “Sort of nuts, ain’t it?” growled Sergeant Velie.

  “Not at all,” smiled Ellery. “In fact, I believe it has a very simple explanation.”

  “And that ain’t the half of it. One of the boys told me just now of a new angle on the case. Two minor robberies were reported from local precincts last night. One was uptown in the Bronx; a man named Hornell said his apartment was broken into during the night, and what do you think? Copy of Europe in Chaos which Hornell had bought in this guy Uneker’s store was stolen! Nothin’ else. Bought it two days ago. Then a dame named Janet Meakins from Greenwich Village had her flat robbed the same night. Thief had taken her copy of Europe in Chaos—she’d bought it from Uneker the afternoon before. Screwy, hey?”

  “Not at all, Velie. Use your wits.” Ellery clapped his hat on his head. “Come along, you Colossus; I want to speak to old Unky again.”

  They left Headquarters and went uptown.

  “Unky,” said Ellery, patting the little old bookseller’s bald pate affectionately, “how many copies of Europe in Chaos did you have in stock at the time the thief escaped from your back-room?”

  “Eleffen.”

  “Yet only seven were in stock that same evening when the thief returned to buy them,” murmured Ellery. “Therefore, four copies had been sold between the noon-hour two days ago and the dinner-hour. So! Unky, do you keep a record of your customers?”

  “Ach, yes! De few who buy,” said old Uneker sadly. “I addt to my mailing-lisdt. You vant to see?”

  “There is nothing I crave more ardently at the moment.”

  Uneker led them to the rear of the shop and through a door into the musty back-room from whose alley-door the thief had escaped two days before. Off this room there was a partitioned cubicle littered with papers, files and old books. The old bookseller opened a ponderous ledger and, wetting his ancient forefinger, began to slap pages over. “You vant to know de four who boughdt Europe in Chaos dot afternoon?”

  Uneker hooked a pair of greenish-silver spectacles over his ears and began to read in a singsong voice. “Mr. Hazlitt—dot’s the gentleman you met, Mr. Quveen. He boughdt his second copy, de vun dot vass robbed from his house….Den dere vass Mr. Hornell, an oldt customer. Den a Miss Janet Meakins—ach! dese Anglo-Saxon names. Schrecklich! Undt de fourt’ vun vass Mr. Chester Singermann, uff t’ree-tvelf East Siggsty-fift’ Street. Und dot’s all.”

  “Bless your orderly old Teutonic soul,” said Ellery. “Velie, cast those Cyclopean peepers of yours this way.” There was a door from the cubicle which, from its location, led out into the alley at the rear, like the door in the back-room. Ellery bent over the lock; it was splintered away from the wood. He opened the door; the outer piece was scratched and mutilated. Velie nodded. “Forced,” he growled. “This guy’s a regular Houdini.”

  Old Uneker was goggle-eyed. “Broken!” he shrilled. “Budt dot door iss neffer used! I didn’t notice not’ing, undt de detectiff—”

  “Shocking work, Velie, on the part of the local man,” said Ellery. “Unky, has anything been stolen?” Old Uneker flew to an antiquated bookcase; it was neatly tiered with volumes. He unlocked the case with anguished fingers, rummaging like an aged terrier. Then he heaved a vast sigh. “Nein,” he said. “Dose rare vons…Not’ing stole.”

  “I congratulate you. One thing more,” said Ellery briskly. “Your mailing-list—does it have the business as well as private addresses of your customers?” Uneker nodded. “Better and better. Ta-ta, Unky. You may have a finished story to relate to your other customers after all. Come along, Velie; we’re going to visit Mr. Chester Singermann.”

  They left the bookshop, walked over to Fifth Avenue and turned north, heading uptown. “Plain as the nose on your face,” said Ellery, stretching his long stride to match Velie’s. “And that’s pretty plain, Sergeant.”

  “Still looks nutty to me, Mr. Queen.”

  “On the contrary, we are faced with a strictly logical set of facts. Our thief stole a valuable stamp. He dodged into Uneker’s bookshop, contrived to get into the back-room. He heard the officer and Friederich Ulm enter, and got busy thinking. If he were caught with the stamp on his person…You see, Velie, the only explanation that will make consistent the business of the subsequent thefts of the same book—a book not valuable in itself—is that the thief, Planck, slipped the stamp between the pages of one of the volumes on a shelf while he was in the backroom—it happened by accident to be a copy of Europe in Chaos, one of a number kept in stock on the shelf—and made his escape immediately thereafter. But he still had the problem of regaining possession of the stamp—what did Ulm call it?—the ‘one-penny black,’ whatever that may be. So that night he came back, watched for old Uneker to leave the shop, then went in and bought from the clerk all copies of Europe in Chaos in the place. He got seven. The stamp was not in any one of the seven he purchased, otherwise why did he later steal others which had been bought that afternoon? So far, so good. Not finding the stamp in any of the seven, then, he returned, broke into Unky’s little office during the night—witness the shattered lock—from the alley, and looked up in Unky’s Dickensian ledger the names and addresses of those who had bought copies of the book during that afternoon. The next night he robbed Hazlitt; Planck evidently followed him from his office. Planck saw at once that he had made a mistake; the condition of the weeks-old book would have told him that this wasn’t a book purchased only the day before. So he hurried out to East Orange, knowing Hazlitt’s private as well as business address, and stole Hazlitt’s recently purchased copy. No luck there either, so he feloniously visited Hornell and Janet Meakins, stealing their copies. Now, there is still one purchaser unaccounted for, which is why we are calling upon Singermann. For if Planck was unsuccessful in his theft of Hornell’s and Miss Meakins’ books, he will inevitably visit Singermann, and we want to beat our wily thief to it if possible.”

  Chester Singermann, they found, was a young student living with his parents in a battered old apartment-house flat. Yes, he still had his copy of Europe in Chaos—needed it for supplementary reading in political economy—and he produced it. Ellery went through it carefully, page for page; there was no trace of the missing stamp.

  “Mr. Singermann, did you find an old postage-stamp between the leaves of this volume?” asked Ellery.

  The student shook his head. “I haven’t even opened it, sir. Stamp? What issue? I’ve got a little collection of my own, you know.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ellery hastily, who had heard of the maniacal enthusiasm of stamp-collectors, and he and Velie beat a precipitate retreat.

  “It’s quite evident,” explained Ellery to the Sergeant, “that our slippery Planck found the stamp in either Hornell’s copy or Miss Meakins’. Which robbery was first in point of time, Velie?”

  “Seem to remember that this Meakins woman was robbed second.”

  “Then the one-penny black was in her copy….Here’s that office-building. Let’s pay a little visit to Mr. Friederich Ulm.”

  Number 1026 on the tenth floor of the building bore a black legend on its frosted-glass door:

  ULM

  Dealers in

  Old & Rare Stamps

  Ellery and Sergeant Velie went in and found themselves in a large office. The walls were covered with glass cases in which, separately mounted, could be seen hundreds of canceled and uncanceled postage stamps. Several special cabinets on tables contained, evidently, more valuable items. The place was cluttered; it had a musty air astonishingly like that of old Uneker’s bookshop.

  Three men looked up. One, from a crisscrossed plaster on his cheekbone, was apparently Friederich Ulm himself, a tall gaunt old German with sparse hair and the fanatic look of the confirmed collector. The second man was just as tall and gaunt and old; he wore a green eye-shade and bore a striking resemblance to Ulm, although from his nervous movements and shaky hands he must have been much older. The third man was a little fellow, quite stout, with an expressionless face.

  Ellery introduced himself and Sergeant Velie; and the third man picked up his ears. “Not the Ellery Queen?” he said, waddling forward. “I’m Heffley, investigator for the insurance people. Glad to meet you.” He pumped Ellery’s hand with vigor. “These gentlemen are the Ulm brothers, who own this place. Friederich and Albert. Mr. Albert Ulm was out of the office at the time of the sale and robbery. Too bad; might have nabbed the thief.”

  Friederich Ulm broke into an excited gabble of German. Ellery listened with a smile, nodding at every fourth word. “I see, Mr. Ulm. The situation, then, was this: you sent invitations by mail to three well-known collectors to attend a special exhibition of rare stamps—object, sale. Three men called on you two mornings ago, purporting to be Messrs. Hinchman, Peters, and Beninson. Hinchman and Peters you knew by sight, but Beninson you did not. Very well. Several items were purchased by the first two collectors. The man you thought was Beninson lingered behind, struck you—yes, yes, I know all that. Let me see the rifled cabinet, please.”