Excellent Intentions Page 7

  “Did you suggest just now,” Yockleton had taken almost a quarter of a minute to recover from the shock, “that I had stolen a jewel of yours?”

  “It was loose before and easily prised out of its setting with a little force. But one thing at a time. This article as I was saying points directly at me and actively encourages everyone in Scotney End to take the attitude that I feel is so very deplorable.”

  “Stop. I refuse to listen to a word more until you remove the accusation that you have made.”

  “About the emerald? I may be wrong. It only seemed to me a very peculiar coincidence. If you really want to disprove it, perhaps you wouldn’t object to being searched?”

  “Really, Mr. Cargate! May I remind you that I am the vicar of this parish?”

  “Ah! I thought that the idea of being searched would not appeal to you. It’s quite a valuable emerald.”

  Yockleton thought a minute. It was a ridiculous and obviously trumped-up charge. Probably that was the reason why Cargate had himself gone to get the parish magazine, since otherwise he would not have been left by himself in the library of Scotney End Hall. Probably too the suggestion that he should be searched contained a trick too. The vicar was quite astute and he foresaw what might well happen.

  “I won’t be searched by you,” he answered, “because you would be certain to plant the thing on me, if you haven’t already done so.”

  “Quite experienced, I see,” Cargate remarked pleasantly. Then, changing suddenly from the light tone which he had been adopting, he went on without worrying to veil his contemptuous anger. “In a few minutes I am going to show you a wasps’ nest; on the table there, quite close to my snuffbox, is a bottle containing potassium cyanide. To-night the one rather incompetent gardener whom I have is going to use the contents of that bottle to destroy those pestilential insects. From where that wasps’ nest is we shall be able to get a view, a distant view I am glad to say, of the village of Scotney End. I hope that its inhabitants will not become as troublesome to me as those of the hole in the ground by which we shall be standing, for I am as interested in the one as in the other, and I shall find it equally easy to deal with either.”

  “Really, sir! Your lack of humanity!”

  “Is only equalled by my knowledge of how to deal competently with human beings. Even when they are queen wasps who buzz round and annoy me with their silly noise and sillier writings and even threaten to sting if they knew but how. Indeed, I have taken a fancy to show you this nest.”

  “I have no desire to see it.”

  “Perhaps not, but I think that it would be as well if you did. When we get there I shall relieve you of the emerald and at the same time explain to you how it could have been found in your possession. A simple trick, Mr. Yockleton; perhaps in view of your reputation and profession, it might not have been successful, but one which can easily be repeated if there is necessity on a more elaborate and convincing scale. Now, allow me to show you this wasps’ nest and, on the way, the outside of the front door. There will be no need for you to see the inside again. This way please. Ah! Miss Knox Forster,” he continued as he caught sight of his secretary in the hall, “the vicar is inclined to be angry with me, as you have no doubt observed from the rather mottled condition of his face. I have been so unfortunate as to incur his displeasure by refusing to employ an army protégé of his of whom I have heard no good accounts. However, I am going to soothe him down by showing him our wasps’ nest. It won’t be there any more after to-day.”

  “Now I wonder just what all that was about,” Joan Knox Forster said to herself as the front door closed behind them, “though I think that I can guess. What is it, Raikes?”

  “About the clock, Miss. I’ve sent for the man to come but they don’t seem to hurry in these parts, and Mr. Cargate’s going on something shocking about it, if you will excuse me saying so, and I don’t rightly know what to do. I don’t seem to be able to do anything right to-day.”

  “Is your own watch reliable?”

  “Very fairly so, Miss.”

  “Then set the clock morning and evening by it until the man comes. And go on doing it, because it will probably be just as bad after he has gone as it is now.”

  Raikes sighed. It was certainly a simple way out which had even occurred to him, but his life was getting complicated by having to remember so many little trifles of that sort. If only his employer would occasionally make allowances! He didn’t think that he could stick it much longer.

  “Therefore at 11.15 the Reverend Mr. Yockleton was alone in the library of Scotney End Hall and both the snuffbox and the poison were available. Moreover he had just been most unjustifiably attacked, and was feeling outraged and indignant. Then again, round about 11.30 the library was empty for perhaps eight minutes while Mr. Cargate persisted in walking with Mr. Yockleton to the banks of the moat which once completely surrounded the Hall and still exists on three sides of the house. There he showed the protesting vicar a hole in the ground in a sunny patch between the shade of two elm trees and pointed out to him the insects that were continually making their way to and from it. Then, I understand, with a parting insult, he turned on his heel and made his way back to the house.

  “During that time, perhaps, as I have said, eight minutes, there were two people who were in and about the hall, from which I must remind you, the library could be entered. They were Miss Joan Knox Forster and Alfred Raikes. You will hear that they had a few minutes’ conversation and that then both of them went about their duties, Raikes to lay the table and attend to the silver in the dining-room, while Miss Knox Forster happened to be passing to and fro putting fresh flowers about the house. The statements which those two persons have made as to the exact movements of themselves and of the other do not entirely agree but—I wish to be absolutely fair—you may come to the conclusion that neither of them had any reason to take any very particular notice of what was happening and therefore it is natural that there should be some difference of opinion, or you may take a contrary view and consider that they should be more consistent. For the present I only wish to point out that those eight minutes must be noted.

  “For the moment I will leave that matter where it stands and I will also pass over for the present the long period of time to which I have referred, though I shall return to it, and I shall next call to your attention the third short period which occurred in the afternoon of this same day at, as I have stated, about 3.30 p.m. I am afraid that I must necessarily involve you in some discussion on the subject of philately, a term which, as you know, means, in more simple language, the collecting of postage stamps.

  “I need hardly tell you” (as in the case of all people who use that phrase, Blayton immediately proceeded to do so) “that whereas stamp collecting can be a very simple matter when it is carried out by the young—and I should be on the whole surprised to hear that none of you, members of the jury, indulged in the insidious pastime in your youth—when it infects, if I may use the term, those of mature years, it develops complications thus resembling those many childish complaints, infectious diseases and so forth, which have little effect on those of tender years but which are very serious when contracted by adults.”

  Blayton smiled cheerfully at the jury at what he considered a very happy metaphor in a light vein and then recollecting, rather belatedly, that it was not impossible that some of his hearers might still be stamp collectors who might not like to have it implied that they were suffering from a form of mental measles or mumps, he went on hurriedly: “Not of course that there are not very great benefits to be derived from a hobby which has obtained the patronage even of royalty. I only mean to imply that it is in its higher branches a very highly elaborate and technical hobby. I understand that the complete philatelist must be fully cognizant of the processes of papermaking and printing as well as of perforating and water-marking the paper used. He must know all about type, printer’s ink, ‘make ready
’, laid and wove papers, grilles, photogravure, line-engraving, and he must be thoroughly well acquainted with the methods of detecting forgeries of all kinds, alterations even in the postmark, and of observing the most minute repairs. When I add that the philatelist will incidentally acquire an addition to his knowledge of history and geography, I shall, I am sure, have convinced you that the hobby is a learned one.

  “Even we, I am afraid, my lord, shall have to acquire some knowledge on the matter.”

  “Assuming, Mr. Blayton, that we do not already possess it.” Mr. Justice Smith saw no reason why he should be selected as the representative of ignorance, even though, as a fact, he did not himself collect stamps. Still, for all Blayton knew, he might.

  “Quite, my lord. But I fear that it is too much to hope that in addition to yourself, all the counsel concerned, and all the jury are stamp collectors.”

  “Probably, but you never can tell, Mr. Blayton. However, proceed. You were saying that there were certain matters of which we should have—I think you said ‘to acquire some knowledge’.”

  “Exactly, my lord. We shall have to hear something of mixed perforations, of accents inserted by hand, of a missing fraction bar, of the phrase ‘se tenant’, for, members of the jury, whether his lordship or I are stamp collectors is immaterial. What matters is that Henry Cargate was, and a very advanced one too, with a magnificent collection, and that on the afternoon of July 12th, from 2.30 to 3.45 he was visited by Andrew Macpherson, a dealer in rare stamps, who for once and as a special favour to an important client, left his offices in the Strand and proceeded to Scotney End.

  “What happened there is this…”

  Andrew Macpherson disliked the railway journey to Larkingfield very much, and he grudged intensely the time spent in going there. For almost no other client would he ever have considered leaving his office, let alone going out of London.

  But Cargate was a very exceptional client for a variety of reasons. In the first place he spent a great deal of money. In the second place, or so he said, owing to ill-health he found it inconvenient to be in London very often, and thirdly Macpherson himself was a little unhappy about certain aspects of Cargate’s philatelic habits. If what he suspected was true, Cargate was definitely a menace to the stamp trade.

  The second point would normally have presented very little difficulty. Macpherson had many clients, valuable and trusted clients, whom he had infrequently or even never seen. He sent them portions of his stock on approval, or offered them parcels which he had bought at auction or privately if he happened to know that they were likely to be of interest to them. Indeed his business depended to some extent on throwing the right fly over each collector without ever forcing anything, or being in danger for a moment of being a nuisance. On the principle of the greatest mutual trust and interest, it worked very well and Macpherson prided himself on taking a very genuine interest in the collections of quite a number of people.

  But it had to be a matter of mutual trust. He had, practically speaking, to guarantee the genuineness in every detail of every stamp that he sold, and he had, on the other hand, to entrust his stock to the hands of a great many people whom he really only knew slightly. If they accidentally damaged them, he had to rely on their honesty to say so. If an item was sent out by mistake unpriced, or only priced in pencil, he had to trust them not to remove it or rub out the price, and in either case say nothing about it. Finally he had to take the risk that they would not take his good specimens and substitute damaged ones or, what was worse, replace valuable varieties with quite common ones. It was all a trifle hazardous because with a stock of hundreds of thousands of stamps, he could not keep track of every one, nor if he did could he be certain whether to blame the collector who had the book last or the one before that. The damage might have been done weeks before.

  It is probable that there is no body of men who have a higher sense of honour than stamp dealers. To put it at the lowest, it is absolutely essential to them since stamp collecting is an absolutely artificial trade, and if there is one thing which may kill it for ever, it would be the discovery of a large number of forgeries. There are indeed certain countries whose stamps have been imitated extensively, and they are collected only by a very few people. Of all this the stamp dealer is well aware and for that reason is always on the look-out to help the public.

  To the collector the restraint is less present, but the temptation to forge, if not to steal, is less. To manufacture bogus stamps to put into your collection gives no more satisfaction than cheating at patience; to do it to make money, apart from considerations of honesty is highly dangerous because it is so extremely difficult.

  In all his years of experience—and he had entered his father’s business as a boy when the stamp trade was just beginning to boom at the end of the nineteenth century—Macpherson had never known more than the most trivial and petty pieces of dishonesty until he began to have dealings with Cargate, and even then he only suspected without quite having proof.

  Cargate, like all advanced collectors, made no attempt to obtain the stamps of every country. He confined himself to two groups, first the British West Indies and secondly the issues of Great Britain including British stamps overprinted for use elsewhere. It may, to those who preserve their sanity and avoid stamps carefully, sound a severe restriction, but those who have allowed themselves to be infected by the virus of a hobby which once it is allowed to get into the blood is never wholly eradicated, will know that actually it is a very extensive—and expensive—field.

  It was over the question of some stamps of the Bahamas that Macpherson had first begun to get worried. Cargate had on that occasion come to him and said that he had some duplicates of which he would like to get rid. With that he had opened a small leather-bound book specially fitted for carrying loose stamps and had displayed the contents.

  Macpherson could remember still the surprise with which he had observed what was there. At that time Cargate had been a fairly new client and he had no idea that he had a collection at all out of the way.

  “This is pretty good stuff. These old Bahamas in mint condition are pretty scarce. Are they all without watermark or are any of them Crown C. C.?”

  “You can tell from the colour. You don’t get that lavender grey in the later ones.”

  “Quite. But that doesn’t apply to the pennies, or, for that matter, to the fourpenny dull rose.” Macpherson was a good-tempered man but he disliked being snubbed as much as anyone else; besides, he probably knew more about the tricky first issues of Bahamas than anyone else. To cover up his annoyance he bent over the stamps and exclaimed: “That fourpenny and sixpenny are magnificent. They’re one of the good perforations too.”

  “Do you really think that you can tell perforations at a glance?” There seemed to be a sneer in the question.

  “Those aren’t the perf. fourteen to sixteen, which, though they are nice enough, aren’t quite the best. Nor do I think they are perf. thirteen. Even so there are two choices left.”

  “As a matter of fact they are the compound perforation. Eleven and a half or twelve with eleven.”

  “The devil they are! Mint! And duplicates! It seems too good to be true.”

  “They’ve been in my family for a long while. I had a great-uncle who was out there and he, fortunately for me, brought a good many things back. It seems a pity not to let those that I don’t want get in circulation.”

  “Personally I should want to keep all that I ever got of these. But before buying them I should want to measure all these perforations very carefully. The differences aren’t very easy to tell.”

  “I do not find it so hard. In fact I will tell you quite frankly that if you disagree with me I shall continue to prefer my own opinion.”

  “I may have to stick to mine all the same. Do you mind waiting a minute, sir? I’d like to get a new instrument which has just come on the market.”

 
“Very well then. But don’t be long, I haven’t got much time to spare.” Cargate had sat in the inner office of the shop impatiently drumming his fingers on the table. He might know all about compound perforations, but what this new invention was he had no idea. Still less could he have imagined that years later the question was to be faintly referred to in a law court and that a painstaking barrister was to have to explain that “Perf. 14” meant that there were fourteen perforation holes cut in a length of two centimetres, or that “compound perf.” meant that the stamp was perforated partially on one gauge and partially on another.

  However, at the time he was only interested in what Macpherson had just brought into the office. It appeared to be a combination of a lamp and magnifying glass or even telescope, and down it Macpherson was peering intently with a face growing rapidly graver.

  “Are you quite sure these have never been in any other hands than your great-uncle’s and your own?”

  “Quite. Why?”

  “Then I’m afraid that somebody imposed on your great-uncle.”

  “I’ve always understood that he bought them from the post-office himself.”

  “Have you ever used one of these ultra-ray lamps, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Then perhaps you would like to look down it now. Just put your eye there.”

  Cargate looked, and there was no doubt that there was genuine amazement on his face. The dull rose stamp with the young Queen’s head surrounded by a crown seemed to fall into two pieces. The stones of the pearl necklace which she was represented as wearing seemed distinctly and unfortunately printed on quite a separate piece of paper to that on which the words “fourpence” were. Without comment Macpherson removed the stamp and substituted the lavender-grey sixpenny value to which he had referred before. It looked, under the lamp, as if it were composed of six different pieces of paper of which the one at the top bearing the word “Bahamas” now appeared to be a totally different colour.