Ellery Queen
The  Adventure  of  Abraham
Lincoln's  Clue

We cannot resist quoting Anthony Boucher's editorial introduc-
tion to "The Adventure of Abraham Lincoln's Clue" in BEST
DETECTIVE STORIES OF THE YEAR: 21st Annual Collection, Mr.
Boucher wrote: "Ellery Queen has written very nearly as many
different types of detective stories as he has edited; but my
favorites are largely those that might almost be called fan-
tasies: tales of a looking-glass world in which people create the
most improbable mystifications for the most unlikely reasons,
yet always leaving some trail of mad logic for Ellery (and the
reader) to follow problems that are as unbelievable as they are
acutely solvable. "The Adventure of Abraham Lincoln's Clue'
is especially appealing because it involves two of the deepest
passions of both Queen-the-character and Queen-the-author: the
lives of Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allan Poe.
"Ellery Queen appeared in BEST #18 with a long novelette, and
in #19 and #20 with short-shorts. Now we have him in a
regulation-length short story and one of the most characteristic
Queenly stories in his long and rich career."
Detective: ELLERY QUEEN

Fourscore and eighteen years ago, Abraham Lincoln brought
forth (in this account) a new notion, conceived in secrecy and
dedicated to the proposition that even an Honest Abe may borrow a
leaf from Edgar A. Poe.
It is altogether fitting and proper that Mr. Lincoln's venture into
the detective story should come to its final resting place in the files
of a man named Queen. For all his life Ellery has consecrated
Father Abraham as the noblest projection of the American dream;
and, insofar as it has been within his poor power to add or detract,
he has given full measure of devotion, testing whether that notion,
or any notion so conceived and so dedicated, deserves to endure.
Ellery's service in running the Lincoln clue to earth is one the
world has little noted nor, perhaps, will long remember. That he
shall not have served in vain, this account:
The case began on the outskirts of an Upstate-New York city
with the dreadful name of Eulalia, behind the flaking shutters of
a fat and curlicued house with architectural dandruff, recalling
for all the world some blowsy ex-Bloomer Girl from the Gay
Nineties of its origin.
The owner, a formerly wealthy man named DiCampo, possessed
a grandeur not shared by his property, although it was no less
fallen into ruin. His falcon's face, more Florentine than Victorian,
was like the house ravaged by time and the inclemencies of
fortune; but haughtily so, and indeed DiCampo wore his scruffy
purple velvet house jacket like the prince he was entitled to call
himself, but did not. He was proud, and stubborn, and useless;
and he had a lovely daughter named Bianca, who taught at a
Eulalia grade school and, through marvels of economy, supported
them both.
How Lorenzo San Marco Borghese-Ruffo DiCampo came to this
decayed estate is no concern of ours. The presence there this day
of a man named Harbidger and a man named Tungsten, however,
is to the point: they had come, Harbidger from Chicago, Tungsten
from Philadelphia, to buy something each wanted very much, and
DiCampo had summoned them in order to sell it. The two visitors
were collectors, Harbidger's passion being Lincoln, Tungsten's
Poe.
The Lincoln collector, an elderly man who looked like a migrant
fruit picker, had plucked his fruits well: Harbidger was worth
about $40,000,000, every dollar of which was at the beck of his
mania for Lincolniana. Tungsten, who was almost as rich, had the
aging body of a poet and the eyes of a starving panther, arma-
ment that had served him well in the wars of Poeana.
"I must say, Mr. DiCampo," remarked Harbidger, "that your
letter surprised me." He paused to savor the wine his host had
poured from an ancient and honorable bottle (DiCampo had filled
it with California claret before their arrival). "May I ask what
has finally induced you to offer the book and document for sale?"
"To quote Lincoln in another context, Mr. Harbidger," said Di-
Campo with a shrug of his wasted shoulders, " 'the dogmas of the
quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.' In short, a hun-
gry man sells his blood."
"Only if it's of the right type," said old Tungston, unmoved.
"You've made that book and document less accessible to collectors
and historians, DiCampo, than the gold in Fort Knox. Have you
got them here? I'd like to examine them."
"No other hand will ever touch them except by right of owner-
ship," Lorenzo DiCampo replied bitterly. He had taken a miser's
glee in his lucky finds, vowing never to part with them; now
forced by his need to sell them, he was like a suspicion-caked old
prospector who, stumbling at last on pay dirt, draws cryptic maps
to keep the world from stealing the secret of its location. "As I
informed you gentlemen, I represent the book as bearing the sig-
natures of Poe and Lincoln, and the document as being in Lin-
coln's hand; I am offering them with customary proviso that they
are returnable if they should prove to be not as represented; and
if this does not satisfy you," and the old prince actually rose, "let
us terminate our business here and now."
"Sit down, sit down, Mr. DiCampo," Harbidger said.
"No one is questioning your integrity," snapped old Tungston.
"It's just that I'm not used to buying sight unseen. If there's a
money-back guarantee, we'll do it your way."
Lorenzo DiCampo reseated himself stiffly. "Very well, gentle-
men. Then I take it you are both prepared to buy?"
"Oh, yes!" said Harbidger. "What is your price?"
"Oh, no," said DiCampo. "What is your bid?"
The Lincoln collector cleared his throat, which was full of
slaver. "If the book and document are as represented, Mr. Di-
Campo, you might hope to get from a dealer or realize at
auctionoh$50,000. I offer you $55,000."
"$56,000," said Tungston.
"$57,000," said Harbidger.
Tungston showed his fangs.
"$60,000," he said.
Harbidger fell silent, and DiCampo waited. He did not expect
miracles. To these men, five times $60,000 was of less moment
than the undistinguished wine they were smacking their lips
over; but they were veterans of many a hard auction-room cam-
paign, and a collector's victory tasted very nearly as sweet for the
price as for the prize.
So the impoverished prince was not surprised when the Lincoln
collector suddenly said, "Would you be good enough to allow Mr.
Tungston and me to talk privately for a moment?"
DiCampo rose and strolled out of the room, to gaze somberly
through a cracked window at the jungle growth that had once
been his Italian formal gardens.
It was the Poe collector who summoned him back. "Harbidger
has convinced me that for the two of us to try to outbid each other
would simply run the price up out of all reason. We're going to
make you a sporting proposition."
"I've proposed to Mr. Tungston, and he has agreed," nodded
Harbidger, "that our bid for the book and document be $65,000.
Each of us is prepared to pay that sum, and not a single penny
more."
"So that is how the screws are turned," said DiCa;mpo, smiling.
"But I do not understand. If each of you makes the identical bid,
which of you gets the book and document?"
"Ah," grinned the Poe man, "that's where the sporting proposi-
tion comes in."
"You see, Mr. DiCampo," said the Lincoln man, "we are going
to leave that decision to you."
Even the old prince, who had seen more than his share of the
astonishing, was astonished. He looked at the two rich men really
for the first time. "I must confess," he murmured, "that your com-
pact is an amusement. Permit me?" He sank into thought while
the two collectors sat expectantly. When the old man looked up he
was smiling like a fox. "The very thing, gentlemen! From the
typewritten copies of the document I sent you, you both know that
Lincoln himself left a clue to a theoretical hiding place for the
book which he never explained. Some time ago I arrived at a pos-
sible solution to the President's little mystery. I propose to hide
the book and document in accordance with it."
"You mean whichever of us figures out your interpretation of
the Lincoln clue and finds the book and document where you will
hide them, Mr. DiCampo, gets both for the agreed price?"
"That is it exactly."
The Lincoln collector looked dubious. "I don't know .'. ."
"Oh, come, Harbidger," said Tungston, eyes glittering. "A deal
is a deal. We accept, DiCampo! Now what?"
"You gentlemen will of course have to give me a little time.
Shall we say three days?"
Ellery let himself into the Queen apartment, tossed his suitcase
aside, and set about opening windows. He had been out of town
for a week on a case, and Inspector Queen was in Atlantic City
attending a police convention.
Breathable air having been restored, Ellery sat down to the
week's accumulation of mail. One envelope made him pause. It
had come by airmail special delivery, it was postmarked four days
earlier, and in the lower left corner, in red, flamed the word UR-
GENT. The printed return address on the flap said: L.S.M.B-R
DiCampo, Post Office Box 69, Southern District, Eulalia, N.Y. The
initials of the name had been crossed out and "Bianca" written
above them.
The enclosure, in a large agitated female hand on inexpensive
notepaper, said:
Dear Mr. Queen,
The most important detective book in the world has disap-
peared. Will you please find it for me?
Phone me on arrival at the Eulalia RR station or airport
and I will pick you up.
Bianca DiCampo
A yellow envelope then caught his eye. It was a telegram, dated
the previous day:
WHY HAVE I NOT HEARD FROM YOU STOP AM IN DESPERATE
NEED OF YOUR SERVICES
BIANCA DICAMPO
He had no sooner finished reading the telegram than the tele-
phone on his desk trilled. It was a long-distance call.
"Mr. Queen?" throbbed a contralto voice. "Thank heaven I've fi-
nally got through to you! I've been calling all day"
"I've been away," said Ellery, "and you would be Miss Bianca
DiCampo of Eulalia. In two words, Miss DiCampo: Why me?"
"In two words, Mr. Queen: Abraham Lincoln."
Ellery was startled. "You plead a persuasive case," he chuckled.
"It's true, I'm an incurable Lincoln addict. How did you find out?
Well, never mind. Your letter refers to a book, Miss DiCampo.
Which book?"
The husky voice told him, and certain other provocative things
as well. "So will you come, Mr. Queen?"
"Tonight if I could! Suppose I drive up first thing in the morn-
ing. I ought to make Eulalia by noon. Harbidger and Tungston
are still around, I take it?"
"Oh, yes. They're staying at a motel downtown."
"Would you ask them to be there?"
The moment he hung up Ellery leaped to his bookshelves. He
snatched out his volume of Murder for Pleasure, the historical
work on detective stories by his good friend Howard Haycraft, and
found what he was looking for on page 26:
And... young William Dean Howells thought it significant
praise to assert of a nominee for President of the United States:
The bent of his mind is mathematical and metaphysi-
cal, and he is therefore pleased with the absolute and
logical method of Poe's tales and sketches, in which the
problem of mystery is given, and wrought out into ev-
eryday facts by processes of cunning analysis. It is said
that he suffers no year to pass without a perusal of this
author.
Abraham Lincoln subsequently confirmed this statement,
which appeared in his little known "campaign biography" by
Howells in 1860 . . . The instance is chiefly notable, of course,
for its revelation of a little suspected affinity between two
great Americans . . .
Very early the next morning Ellery gathered some papers from
his files, stuffed them into his briefcase, scribbled a note for his
father, and ran for his car, Eulalia-bound . . .
He was enchanted by the DiCampo house, which looked like
something out of Poe by Charles Addams; and, for other reasons,
by Bianca, who turned out to be a genetic product supreme of
northern Italy, with titian hair and Mediterranean blue eyes and
a figure that needed only some solid steaks to qualify her for Miss
Universe competition. Also, she was in deep mourning; so her con-
quest of the Queen heart was immediate and complete.
"He died of a cerebral hemorrhage, Mr. Queen," Bianca said,
dabbing at her absurd little nose. "In the middle of the second
night after his session with Mr. Harbidger and Mr. Tungston."
So Lorenzo San Marco Borghese-Ruffo DiCampo was unexpec-
tedly dead, bequeathing the lovely Bianca near-destitution and a
mystery.
"The only things of value father really left me are that book
and the Lincoln document. The $65,000 they now represent would
pay off father's debts and give me a fresh start. But I can't find
them, Mr. Queen, and neither can Mr. Harbidger and Mr.
Tungstenwho'll be here soon, by the way. Father hid the lwo
things, as he told them he would; but where? We've ransacked the
place."
"Tell me more about the book, Miss DiCampo."
"As I said over the phone, it's called The Gift: 1845. The
Christmas annual that contained the earliest appearance of Edgar
Allan Poe's The Purloined Letter."
"Published in Philadelphia by Carey & Hart? Bound in red?" At
Bianca's nod Ellery said, "You understand that an ordinary copy
of The Gift: 1845 isn't worth more than about $50. What makes
your father's copy unique is that double autograph you men-
tioned."
"That's what he said, Mr. Queen. I wish I had the book here to
show youthat beautifully handwritten Edgar Allan Poe on the
flyleaf, and under Poe's signature the signature Abraham Lin-
coln"
"Poe's own copy, once owned, signed, and read by Lincoln," El-
lery said slowly. "Yes, that would be a collector's item for the
ages. By the way, Miss DiCampo, what's the story behind the
other piecethe Lincoln document?"
Bianca told him what her father had told her.
One morning in the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln opened
the rosewood door of his bedroom in the southwest corner of the
second floor of the White House and stepped out into the red-
carpeted hall at the unusually late hourfor himof 7:00 A.M.;
he was more accustomed to beginning his work day at six.
But (as Lorenzo DiCampo had reconstructed events) Mr. Lincoln
that morning had lingered in his bedchamber. He had awakened
at his usual hour but, instead of leaving for his office immediately
on dressing, he had pulled one of the cane chairs over to the
round table, with its gas-fed reading lamp, and sat down to reread
Poe's The Purloined Letter in his copy of the 1845 annual; it was a
dreary morning, and the natural light was poor. The President
was alone; the folding doors to Mrs. Lincoln's bedroom remained
closed.                                           ~
Impressed as always with Poe's tale, Mr. Lincoln on this occa-
sion was struck by a whimsical thought; and, apparently finding
no paper handy, he took an envelope from his pocket, discarded
its enclosure, slit the two short edges so that the envelope opened
out into a single sheet, and began to write in a careful hand on
the blank side.
"Describe it to me, please."
"It's a long envelope, one that must have contained a bulky let-
ter. It is addressed to the White House, but there is no return ad-
dress, and father was never able to identify the sender from the
handwriting. We do know that the letter came through the regu-
lar mails, because there are two Lincoln stamps on it, lightly but
unmistakably cancelled."
"May I see your father's transcript of what Lincoln wrote out
that morning on the inside of the envelope?"
Bianco handed him a typewritten copy and, in spite of himself,
Ellery felt goose-flesh rise as he read:
Apr. 14,1865
Mr. Poe's The Purloined Letter is a work of singular origi-
nality. Its simplicity is a master-stroke of cunning, which
never fails to arouse my wonder.
Reading the tale over this morning has given me a "no-
tion." Suppose I wished to hide a book, this very book,
perhaps? Where best to do so? Well, as Mr. Poe in his tale
hid a letter among letters, might not a book be hidden among
books? Why, if this very copy of the tale were to be deposited
in a library and on purpose not recordedwould not the Li-
brary of Congress make a prime depository!well might it
repose there, undiscovered, for a generation.
On the other hand, let us regard Mr. Poe's "notion" turn-
about: suppose the book were to be placed, not amongst other
books, but where no book would reasonably be expected? (I
may follow the example of Mr. Poe, and, myself, compose a
tale of "ratiocination"!)
The "notion" beguiles me, it is nearly seven o'clock. Later
to-day, if the vultures and my appointments leave me a few
moments of leisure, I may write further of my imagined
hiding-place.
In self-reminder: the hiding-place of the book is in 30d,
which
Ellery looked up. "The document ends there?"
"Father said that Mr. Lincoln must have glanced again at his
watch, and shamefacedly jumped up to go to his office, leaving the
sentence unfinished. Evidently he never found the time to get
back to it."
Ellery brooded. Evidently indeed. From the moment when Ab-
raham Lincoln stepped out of his bedroom that Good Friday morn-
ing, fingering his thick gold watch on its vest chain, to bid the
still-unrelieved night guard his customary courteous "Good morn-
ing" and make for his office at the other end of the hall, his day
was spoken for. The usual patient push through the clutching
crowd of favor-seekers, many of whom had bedded down all night
on the hall carpet; sanctuary in his sprawling office, where he
read official correspondence; by 8:00 A.M. having breakfast with
his familyMrs. Lincoln chattering away about plans for the
evening, 12-year-old Tad of the cleft palate lisping a complaint
that "nobody asked me to go," and young Robert Lincoln, just re-
turned from duty, bubbling with stories about his hero Ulysses
Grant and the last days of the war; then back to the presidential
office to look over the morning newspapers (which Lincoln had
once remarked he "never" read, but these were happy days, with
good news everywhere), sign two documents, and signal the sol-
dier at the door to admit the morning's first caller, Speaker of the
House Schuyier Colfax (who was angling for a Cabinet post and
had to be tactfully handled); and soon throughout the daythe
historic Cabinet meeting at  11:00 A.M., attended by General
Grant himself, that stretched well into the afternoon; a hurried
lunch at almost half-past two with Mrs. Lincoln (had this 45-
pounds-underweight man eaten his usual midday meal of a bis-
cuit, a glass of milk, and an apple?); more visitors to see in his
office (including the unscheduled Mrs. Nancy Bushrod, escaped
slave and wife of an escaped slave and mother of three small chil-
dren, weeping that Tom, a soldier in the Army of the Potomac,
was no longer getting his pay: "You are entitled to your husband's
pay. Come this time tomorrow," and the tall President escorted
her to the door, bowing her out "like I was a natural-born lady");
the late .afternoon drive in the barouche to the Navy Yard and
back with Mrs. Lincoln; more work, more visitors, into the eve-
ning ... until finally, at five minutes past 8:00 P.M., Abraham
Lincoln stepped into the White House formal coach after his wife,
waved, and sank back to be driven off to see a play he did not
much want to see, Our American Cousin, at Ford's Theatre . . .
Ellery mused over that black day in silence. And, like a relative
hanging on the specialist's yet undelivered diagnosis, Bianca Di-
Campo sat watching him with anxiety.
Harbidger and Tungsten arrived in a taxi to greet Ellery with
the fervor of two castaways waving at a smudge of smoke on the
horizon.
"As I understand it, gentlemen," Ellery said when he had
calmed them down, "neither of you has been able to solve Mr. Di-
Campo's interpretation of the Lincoln clue. If I succeed in finding
the book and paper where DiCampo hid them, which of you gets
them?"
"We intend to split the $65,000 payment to Miss DiCampo,"
said Harbidger, "and take joint ownership of the two pieces."
"An arrangement," growled old Tungston, "I'm against on prin-
ciple, in practice, and by plain horse sense."
"So am I," sighed the Lincoln collector, "but what else can we
do?"
"Well," and the Poe man regarded Biafica DiCampo with the icy
intimacy of the cat that long ago marked the bird as its prey,
"Miss DiCampo, who now owns the two pieces, is quite free to re-
negotiate a sale on her own terms."
"Miss DiCampo," said Miss DiCampo, giving Tungston stare for
stare, "considers herself bound by her father's wishes. His terms
stand."
"In all likelihood, then," said the other millionaire, "one of us
will retain the book, the other the document, and we'll exchange
them every year, or some such thing." Harbidger sounded un-
happy.
"Only practical arrangement under the circumstances," grunted
Tungston, and he sounded unhappy. "But all this is academic,
Queen, unless and until the book and document are found."
Ellery nodded. "The problem, then, is to fathom DiCampo's in-
terpretation of that 30d in the document, 30d . . . I notice, Miss
DiCampoor, may I? Bianca?that your father's typewritten
copy of the Lincoln holograph text runs the 3 and 0 and d
togetherno spacing in between. Is that the way it occurs in the
longhand?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. Still . . . 30d . . . Could d stand for days . . . or the British
pence . . . or died, as used in obituaries? Does any of these make
sense to you, Bianca?"
"No."
"Did your father have any special interest in, say, pharmacol-
ogy? chemistry? physics? algebra? electricity? Small d is an ab-
breviation used in all those." But Bianca shook her splendid head.
"Banking? Small d for dollars, dividends?'
"Hardly," the girl said with a sad smile.
"How about theatricals? Was your father ever involved in a
play production? Small d stands for door in stage directions."
"Mr. Queen, I've gone through every darned abbreviation my
dictionary lists, and I haven't found one that has a point of con-
tact with any interest of my father's."
Ellery scowled. "At that1 assume the typewritten copy is
accuratethe manuscript shows no period after the d, making an
abbreviation unlikely, 30d. . . let's concentrate on the number.
Does the number 30 have any significance for you?"
"Yes, indeed," said Bianca, making all three men sit up. But
then they sank back. "In a few years it will represent my age, and
that has enormous significance. But only for me, I'm afraid."
"You'll be drawing wolf whistles at twice thirty," quoth Ellery
warmly. "However! Could the number have cross-referred to any-
thing in your father's life or habits?"
"None that I can think of, Mr. Queen. And," Bianca said, hav-
ing grown roses in her cheeks, "thank you."
"I think," said old Tungsten testily, "we had better stick to the
subject."
"Just the same, Bianca, let me run over some 'thirty' associa-
tions as they come to mind. Stop me if one of them hits a nerve.
The Thirty Tyrantswas your father interested in classical
Athens? Thirty Years Warin Seventeenth Century European
history? Thirty alldid he play or follow tennis? Or. . . did he
ever live at an address that included the number 30?"
Ellery went on and on, but to each suggestion Bianca DiCampo
could only shake her head.
"The lack of spacing, come to think of it, doesn't necessarily
mean that Mr. DiCampo chose to view the clue that way," said
Ellery thoughtfully. "He might have interpreted it arbitrarily as
3-space-O-ri."
"Three od?" echoed old Tungsten. "What the devil could that
mean?"
"Od? Od is the hypothetical force or power claimed by Baron
von Reichenbachin 1850, wasn't it?to pervade the whole of
nature. Manifests itself in magnets, crystals, and such, which ac-
cording to the excited Baron explained animal magnetism and
mesmerism. Was your father by any chance interested in hyp-
nosis, Bianca? Or the occult?"
"Not in the slightest."
"Mr. Queen," exclaimed Harbidger, "are you serious about all
thisthis semantic sludge?"
"Why, I don't know," said Ellery. "I never know till I stumble
over something. Od. . . the word was used with prefixes, too
biod, the force of animal life; elod, the force of electricity; and so
forth. Three od . . . or triod, the triune forceit's all right, Mr.
Harbidger, it's not ignorance on your part, I just coined the word.
But it does rather suggest the Trinity, doesn't it? Bianca, did your
father tie up to the Church in a personal, scholarly, or any other
way? No? That's too bad, really, because Odcapitalizedhas
been a minced form of the word God since the Sixteenth Century.
Or . . . you wouldn't happen to have three Bibles on the premises,
would you? Because"
Ellery stopped with the smashing abruptness of an ordinary
force meeting an absolutely immovable object. The girl and the
two collectors gawped. Bianca had idly picked up the typewritten
copy of the Lincoln document. She was not reading it, she was
simply holding it on her knees; but Ellery, sitting opposite her,
had shot forward in a crouch, rather like a pointer, and he was
regarding the paper in her lap with a glare of pure discovery.
"That's it!" he cried.
"What's it, Mr. Queen?" the girl asked, bewildered.
"Pleasethe transcript!" He plucked the paper from her. "Of
course. Hear this: 'On the other hand, let us regard Mr. Poe's "no-
tion" turn-about.' Turn-about. Look at the 30d 'turn-about'as I
just saw it!"
He turned the Lincoln message upside down for their inspec-
tion. In that position the 30d became:
.W.
"Poe\" exploded Tungsten.
"Yes, crude but recognizable," Ellery said swiftly. "So now we
read the Lincoln clue as: 'The hiding-place of the book is in PoeT
There was a silence.
"In Foe," said Harbidger blankly.
"In Poe?" muttered Tungston. "There are only a couple of trade
editions of Poe in DiCampo's library, Harbidger, and we went
through those. We looked in every book here."
"He might have meant among the Poe books in the public li-
brary. Miss DiCampo"
"Wait." Bianca sped away. But when she came back she was
drooping. "It isn't. We have two public libraries in Eulalia, and I
know the head librarian in both. I just called them. Father didn't
visit either library."
Ellery gnawed a fingernail. "Is there a bust of Poe in the house,
Bianca? Or any other Poe-associated object, aside from books?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Queer," he mumbled. "Yet I'm positive your father interpreted
'the hiding-place of the book' as being 'in Poe.' So he'd have hid-
den it 'in Poe' . . ."
Ellery's mumbling dribbled away into a tormented sort of si-
lence: his eyebrows worked up and down, Groucho Marx-fashion;
he pinched the tip of his nose until it was scarlet; he yanked at
his unoffending ears; he munched on his lip . . . until, all at once,
his face cleared; and he sprang to his feet. "Bianca, may I use
your phone?"
The girl could only nod, and Ellery dashed. They heard him
telephoning in the entrance hall, although they could not make
out the words. He was back in two minutes.
"One thing more," he said briskly, "and we're out of the woods.
I suppose your father had a key ring or a key case, Bianca? May I
have it, please?"
She fetched a key case. To the two millionaires it seemed the
sorriest of objects, a scuffed and dirty tan leatherette case. But El-
lery received it from the girl as if it were an artifact of historic
importance from a newly discovered IV Dynasty tomb. He un-
snapped it with concentrated love; he fingered its contents like a
scientist. Finally he decided on a certain key.
"Wait here!" Thus Mr. Queen; and exit, running.
"I can't decide," old Tungston said after a while, "whether that
fellow is a genius or an escaped lunatic."
Neither Harbidger nor Bianca replied. Apparently they could
not decide, either.
They waited through twenty elongated minutes; at the twenty-
first they heard his car, champing. All three were in the front
doorway as Ellery strode up the walk.
He was carrying a book with a red cover, and smiling. It was a
compassionate smile, but none of them noticed.
"You" said Bianca. "found" said Tungsten, "the book!"
shouted Harbidger. "Is the Lincoln holograph in it?"
"It is," said Ellery. "Shall we all go into the house, where we
may mourn in decent privacy?"
"Because," Ellery said to Bianca and the two quivering collec-
tors as they sat across a refectory table from him, "I have foul
news. Mr. Tungsten, I believe you have never actually seen Mr.
DiCampo's book. Will you now look at the Poe signature on the
flyleaf?"
The panther claws leaped. There, toward the top of the flyleaf,
in faded inkscript, was the signature Edgar Allan Poe.
The claws curled, and old Tungston looked up sharply. "Di-
Campo never mentioned that it's a full autographhe kept refer-
ring to it as 'the Poe signature.' Edgar Allan Poe . . . Why, I don't
know of a single instance after his West Point days when Poe
wrote out his middle name in an autograph! And the earliest he
could have signed this 1845 edition is obviously when it was pub-
 lished, which was around the fall of 1844. In 1844 he'd surely
have abbreviated the 'Allan,' signing 'Edgar A. Poe,' the way he
signed everything! This is a forgery."
"My God," murmured Bianca, clearly intending no impiety; she
was as pale as Poe's Lenore. "Is that true, Mr. Queen?"
"I'm afraid it is," Ellery said sadly. "I was suspicious the mo-
ment you told me the Poe signature on the flyleaf contained the
'Allan.' And if the Poe signature is a forgery, the book itself can
hardly be considered Poe's own copy."
Harbidger was moaning. "And the Lincoln signature under-
neath the Poe, Mr. Queen! DiCampo never told me it reads Ab-
raham Lincolnthe full Christian name. Except on official docu-
ments, Lincoln practically always signed his name 'A. Lincoln.'
Don't tell me this Lincoln autograph is a forgery, too?"
Ellery forbore to look at poor Bianca. "I was struck by the 'Abra-
ham' as well, Mr. Harbidger, when Miss DiCampo mentioned it
to me, and I came equipped to test it. I have here" and Ellery
tapped the pile of documents he had taken from his briefcase "
facsimiles of Lincoln signatures from the most frequently repro-
duced of the historic documents he signed. Now I'm going to make
a precise tracing of the Lincoln signature on the flyleaf of the
book" he proceeded to do so "and I shall superimpose the trac-
ing on the various signatures of the authentic Lincoln documents.
So."
He worked rapidly. On his third superimposition Ellery looked
up. "Yes. See. here. The tracing of the purported Lincoln signature
from the flyleaf fits in minutest detail over the authentic Lincoln
signature on this facsimile of the Emancipation Proclamation. It's
a fact of life that's tripped many a forger that nobody ever writes
his name exactly the same way twice. There are always variations.
If two signatures are identical, then, one must be a tracing of the
other. So the 'Abraham Lincoln' signed on this flyleaf can be dis-
missed without further consideration as a forgery also. It's a trac-
ing of the Emancipation Proclamation signature.
"Not only was this book not Poe's own copy; it was never
signedand therefore probably never ownedby Lincoln. How-
ever your father came into possession of the book, Bianca, he was
swindled."
It was the measure of Bianca DiCampo's quality that she said
quietly, "Poor, poor father," nothing more.
Harbidger was poring over the worn old envelope on whose in-
side appeared the dearly beloved handscript of the Martyr Presi-
dent. "At least," he muttered, "we have this"
"Do we?" asked Ellery gently. "Turn it over, Mr. Harbidger."
Harbidger looked up, scowling. "No! You're not going to deprive
me of this, too!"
"Turn it over," Ellery repeated in the same gentle way. The
Lincoln collector obeyed reluctantly. "What do you see?"
"An authentic envelope of the period! With two authentic Lin-
coln stamps!"
"Exactly. And the United States has never issued postage
stamps depicting living Americans; you have to be dead to qual-
ify. The earliest U.S. stamp showing a portrait of Lincoln went on
sale April 15, 1866a year to the day after his death. Then a liv-
ing Lincoln could scarcely have used this envelope, with these
stamps on it, as writing paper. The document is spurious, too. I
am so very sorry, Bianca."
Incredibly, Lorenzo DiCampo's daughter managed a smile with
her "Non importa, signor." He could have wept for her. As for the
two collectors, Harbidger was in shock; but old Tungsten managed
to croak, "Where the devil did DiCampo hide the book, Queen?
And how did you know?"
"Oh, that," said Ellery, wishing the two old men would go away
so that he might comfort this admirable creature. "I was con-
vinced that DiCampo interpreted what we now know was the
forger's, not Lincoln's, clue, as 30d read upside down; or, crudely,
POS. But 'the hiding-place of the book is in Poe' led nowhere.
"So I reconsidered. P, o, e. If those three letters of the alphabet
didn't mean Poe, what could they mean? Then I remembered
something about the letter you wrote me, Bianca. You'd used one
of your father's envelopes, on the flap of which appeared his ad-
dress: Post Office Box 69, Southern District, Eulalia, N. Y. If there
was a Southern District in Eulalia, it seemed reasonable to con-
clude that there were post offices for other points of the compass,
too. As, for instance, an Eastern District. Post Office Eastern,
P.O. East. P.O.E."
"Poe!" cried Bianca.
"To answer your question, Mr. Tungsten: I phoned the main
post office, confirmed the existence of a Post Office East, got di-
rections as to how to get there, looked for a postal box key in Mr.
DiCampo's key case, found the right one, located the box Di-
Campo had rented especially for the occasion, unlocked itand
there was the book." He added, hopefully, "And that is that."
"And that is that," Bianca said when she returned from seeing
the two collectors off. "I'm not going to cry over an empty milk
bottle, Mr. Queen. I'll straighten out father's affairs somehow.
Right now all I can think of is how glad I am he didn't live to see
the signatures and documents declared forgeries publicly, as they
would surely have been when they were expertized."
"I think you'll find there's still some milk in the bottle, Bianca."
"I beg your pardon?" said Bianca.
Ellery tapped the pseudo-Lincolnian envelope. "You know, you
didn't do a very good job describing this envelope to me. All you
said was that there were two cancelled Lincoln stamps on it."
"Well, there are."
"I can see you misspent your childhood. No, little girls don't col-
lect things, do they? Why, if you'll examine these 'two cancelled
Lincoln stamps,' you'll see that they're a great deal more than
that. In the first place, they're not separate stamps. They're a ver-
tical pairthat is, one stamp is joined to the other at the horizon-
tal edges. Now look at this upper stamp of the pair."
"The Mediterranean eyes widened. "It's upside down, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's upside down," said Ellery, "and what's more, while the
pair have perforations all around, there are no perforations be-
tween them, where they're joined.
"What you have here, young ladyand what our unknown
forger didn't realize when he fished around for an authentic
White House cover of the period on which to perpetrate the Lin-
coln forgeryis what stamp collectors might call a double print-
ing error: a pair of 1866 black 15-cent Lincolns imperforate hori-
zontally, with one of the pair printed upside down. No such error
of the Lincoln issue has ever been reported. You're the owner,
Bianca, of what may well be the rarest item in U.S. philately, and
the most valuable."
The world will little note, nor long remember.
But don't try to prove it by Bianca DiCampo.