THE UNABRIDGED

Roger Halsted, normally an equable person (as one would have to be to survive the teaching of mathematics at a junior high school), arrived at the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers in a highly apparent state of the sulks. "I'll have a bloody Mary, Henry," be said. "Light on the blood and an extra slug of Mary."

Silently and deftly, Henry produced the drink, complete with slug, and James Drake, who was the host for the evening, stared at him over the smoke of his cigarette and let his inconsiderable gray mustache twitch. "What's the

matter, Rog?" he asked in his soft, hoarse voice.

Roger said, "I'm late." "So?" said Drake, who had to come in from New Jersey and had been known to be late himself. "Drink fast and catch up." "It's why I'm late that bothers me," said Halsted. His high forehead had turned pink past the place where the vanished hairline had once been. "I was looking for my cuff links. My favorite pair. -My only pair, actually. I spent twenty minutes. I looked everywhere." "Did you find them?" "No! Have you got any idea bow many hiding places there are in a two-story three-bedroom house? I could have spent twenty hpliw-and ended with nothing."

Geoffrey Avalon drifted over, with the second drink at the halfway mark. "You don't have to look through the whole house, Rog. You didn't paste them over the molding or inside the drainpipe, did you? Where do you usually keep them?" "In a little box I've got in the drawer. I looked there first. They weren't there."

His voice had risen well past its usual quiet pitcb and Emmanuel Rubin called out from the other side of the banquet table, "You left

them in your shirt the last time you wore them and they got sent to the laundry and youT never see them again." "That's not so," said Halsted, clenching his left hand into a fist and waving it. "This is the only darned shirt I've got with French cuffs and I haven't worn it in three months and I saw the cuff links in the box just the other night when I was looking for something else." "Then look for something else again," said Rubin, "and they'll turn UP." "Ha-ha," said Halsted grimly, and finished his drink.

Mario Gonzalo said, "Is that shirt you're wearing the one with the French cuffs, Rog?" "Yes, it is." "Well then, if that's the only shirt you've got with French cuffs, and you couldn't find your only pair of cuff links, what are you using to bold the cuffs together?" "Thread," said Halsted bitterly, shooting his cuffs for inspection. "I had Alice tie them with white thread."

Gonzalo, himself an example of faultless sartorial splendor, with a predominant bluish touch in shirt and jacket, shading into the darker tints of his tie, winced. "Why didn't you put on a different shirt?" "My blood was up," saiol Halsted, "and I wasn't going to be forced into changing the shirt."

Drake said, "Well, if you'll cool down a bit, Rog, I'll introduce my guest. Jason Leorrinster, this is Roger Halsted, and coming up the stairs yelling for a scotch and soda is the final member, Thomas Trumbull."

Leominster smiled dutifully. He was not quite as tall as Avalon's six feet two, but he was thinner. He was clearly in his forties though he looked younger, and under his tan jacket he wore a black turtleneck sweater which managed to seem not out of place. He had high and pronounced cheekbones over a narrow and pointed chin.

He said, "I'm afraid you're not getting much sympathy, Mr. Halsted, but you may have mine for what it's worth. When it comes to not finding things, my heart bleeds."

Before Halsted could express what gratitude he felt for that, Henry signaled the beginning of dinner, the Black Widowers took their seats, and Trumbull, loudly and rapidly, proclaimed the ritualistic toast to Old King Cole.

Rubin, staring bard at what was before him, lifted his straggly beard skyward in an access of indignation and said to Henry, "This thing looks like an egg roll. What is it, Henry?"

"It's an egg roll, sir." "What's it doing here?" Henry said, "The chef has put together a Chinese meal for the club this month." "In an Italian restaurant?"

"I believe be considers it a challenge, sir."

Trumbull said, "Shut up and eat, Manny, will you? It's good." Rubin bit into it, then reached for the mustard. "It's all right," he said discontentedly, "for an egg roll."

Even Rubin melted with the birds' nest soup, and ,vben the first of the seven platters proved to be Peking duck, he grew positively mellow. "Actually," he said, "it's not that you lose things. You forget them. It's that way with me. It's that way with anyone. You're holding something, and put it down with your mind on something else. Two minutes later you can't for the life of you tell where that something you put down is. Even if, by sheer accident, you find it, you still can't remember putting it down there. Roger hasn't lost his cuff links. He put them somewhere and he doesn't remember where."

Gonzalo, who was daintily picking out a black mushroom in order to experience its unaccompanied savor, said, "Much as it pains me to agree with Manny-" "Much as it pains you to be right for one rare occasion, you mean." I've got to admit there's something to what he has just said. By accident, I'm sure. The worst thing anyone can do is to put something away where he knows it will be safe from a burglar's band. The burglar will find it right away, but the owner will never see it again. I once put a bankbook away and didn't find it for five years." "You hid it under the soap," said Rubin. "Does that work with you?" asked Gonzalo sweetly. "It doesn4t with me." "Where was it after you found it, Mario?" asked Avalon. "I've forgotten again," said Gonzalo. "Of course," interposed Leominster agreeably, "it is possible to put something in one place, shift it to another for still safer keeping, then remember only the first place-where it isn't." "Has that happened to you, Mr. Leominster?" asked Trumbull. "In a manner of speaking," said Leominster, "but I don't really know if it happened at all."

Henry arrived with the platter of fortune cookies and said in a low voice to Halsted, "Mrs. Halsted has just called, sir. She wants me to tell you that the cuff links were found."

Halsted turned sharply. "Found? Did she say where?" "Under the bed, sir. She says they had presumably fallen there." "I looked under the bed." "Mrs. Halsted says they were near one of the feet of the bed. Quite invisible, sir. She bad to feel around. She said to tell you that it has happened before." "Open your fortune cookie, Rog," said Avalon indulgently. "It will tell you that you are about to find something of great importance."

Halsted did so, and said, "It says, 'Let a smile be your umbrella,"' and chafed visibly.

Rubin said, "I'm not sure that it's proper for a Black Widower to be receiving a message from a woman while a stag meeting is actually in session."

Gonzalo said, "Electric impulses have no sex, though I don't suspect you would know that, Manny, any more than you know anyw thing else about the subject."

But Henry was bringing the brandy and Drake headed off the inevitable furious (and possibly improper) response by tapping a rapid tattoo on his water glass.

Drake said, "Let me introduce Jason Leominster, a somewhat distant neighbor of mine. He's a genealogist and I don't think there's a single member of the Black Widowers-always excepting Henrywith a genealogy that would bear looking into, so let's be cautious."

Leominster said, "Not really. No one has ever been disappointed in a genealogy. The number of ancestors increases geometrically with each generation, minus the effect of intermarriage. If we explore the siblings, the parents and their siblings, the grandparents and their siblings; all the attachments by marriage and their siblings; and the parents and grandparents that enter in with cases of remarriage; we have hundreds of individuals to play with when we go back only a single century. "By emphasizing the flattering connections and ignoring the others, we can't lose. To the professional genealogist, of course, there can be items of historic value uncovered, often minor, and sometimes surprisingly important. I discovered, for instance, a collateral descendant of Martha Washington who-"

Trumbull, having raised his hand uselessly in the course of these remarks, now said, "Please, Mr. Leominster- Look, Jim, this is out of order. It's got to be question-and-answer. Will you indicate a griller?"

Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said, "It sounded interesting to me as it was. But go ahead. You be the griller."

Trumbull scowled. "I just want everything in order. Mr. Leominster, I apologize for interrupting you. It was interesting, but we must proceed according to tradition. My first question would have been that of asking you to justify your existence, but your remarks have already indicated how your answer would be framed. Let me, therefore, go on to the next question. Mr. Leominster, you said in the course of the dinner that a person might hide something in one place, switch it to another, then remember only the first. You also said that it happened to you only in a manner of speaking and may never have happened at all. Could you elaborate on this? I am curious to know what was in your mind." "Nothing, really. My aunt died last month," and here Leominster raised his hand, "but spare me the formalities of regrets. She was eighty-five and bedridden. The point is that she left me her house and its contents, which bad been her brother's till he died ten years ago, and Mr. Halsted's affair. with the cuff links reminded me of what went on when my aunt inherited the house." "Good," said Trumbull, "what went on then?" "Why, she was convinced something was hidden in the house; something of value. It was never found and that's all there is to it."

Trumbull said, "Then whatever it is is still there, isn't it?" "If it was ever there in the first place, then I suppose so." "And it's yours now?" "Yes." "And what do you intend to do about it?" "I don't see that I can do anything. We didn't find it when we looked for it, and I probably won't find it now. Still-" "Yes?)) "Well, I intend in time to put the house up for sale and auction off its contents. I have no use for them a's things and a reasonable use for the cash equivalents. It would be, however, annoying to auction off something for a hundred dollars and find that it contains an item worth, let us say, twenty-five thousand dollars."

Trumbull sat back and said, "With the host's permissi6h, Mr. Leominster, I'm going to ask you to tell the story in some reasonable order. What is the thing that is lost? How did it come to be lost? And so on." "Hear, bear!" said Gonzalo approvingly. He bad finished his sketch, making Leominster's face a triangle, point-down, without in the least losing its perfect recognizability.

Leominster looked at the sketch stoically and nodded, sipping at his brandy, while Henry noiselessly cleared the table.

Leominster said, "I am from what is called an old New England

family. The family made its money two centuries ago in textile mills and, I believe, in some of the less cheerful aspects of trade in those days-slaves and rum.Jhe family has kept its money since, investing it conservatively and so on. We're not tycoons, but we're all well off -those of us who are left: myself and a cousin. I am divorced, by the way, and have no children. "The family history is what makes me interested in genealogy, and the family finances make it possible for me to humor myself in this respect. It is not exactly a remunerative pursuit-at least, not in the fashion in which I pursue it-but I can afford it, you see. "My Uncle Bryce-my father's older brother-retired fairly early in life after the death of his wife. He built a rather fussy house in Connecticut and involved himself in collecting things. I myself don't see the pleasure in accumulation, but I imagine it gave rise in him to the same pleasures that are given me by genealogical research." "What did he collect?" asked Avalon. "Several types of items, but nothing unusual. He was a rather plodding sort of fellow, without much imagination. He collected old books to begin with, then old coins, and finally stamps. The fever never got to him so badly that he would invest really large sums, so that his collections are not what you might call first class. They're the kind that appraisers smile condescendingly over. Still, it gave him pleasure, and his thousand-book library isn't entirely worthless. Nor is the rest. And of course even a minor collector may sometimes get his hands on a good item." "And your uncle bad done so?" asked Trumbull. "My Aunt Hester-sbe was the third child, two years younger than my Uncle Bryce and five years older than my father, who died fourteen years ago- My Aunt Hester said that my uncle had a valuable item." "How did she know?" "My Aunt Hester was always close to my uncle. She lived in Florida, but after my uncle was widowed she took to spending some of the summer months with him in Connecticut each year. She had never married and they grew closer with age, since there was almost no one else. My uncle had a son but be has been in South America for a quarter century. He has married a Brazilian girl and has three children. He and his father were not on good terms at all, and neither seemed to exist as far as the other was concerned. There was myself, of course, and they entertained me often out of a sense of duty and distant liking; and I was rather fond of them. "Aunt Hester was a prim old lady, terribly self-conscious about the family position; to a ridiculous and outmoded extent of course. She

was precise and stiff in her speech, and was convinced that she was living in a hostile world of thieves and Socialists. She never wore her jewelry, for instance. She kept it in a safe-deposit box at all times. "It was natural, then, that my uncle would leave the house to my aunt, and that she would in turn leave it to me. I'm genealogical enough, however, to remember that my Uncle Bryce has a son who is the direct heir and more deserving, by ties of blood, to have the house. I've written to my cousin asking him if be is satisfied with the will, and I received a letter from him three days ago telling me I was welcome to the house and contents. Actually, he said, rather bitterly, that as far as he was concerned I could bum the house and contents."

Trumbull said, "Mr. Leominster, I wonder if you could get back to the lost object." "Ah, I'm sorry. I bad forgotten. Aunt Hester, considering her views, was not happy over my uncle's cavalier treatment of his collection. Aunt Hester had a totally exaggerated idea of its value. These items and sundries,' she would say to me, 'are of peerless worth."' "Is that what she called them? Items and sundries?" asked Avalon, smiling. "That was a pet phrase of hers. I assure you I remember it correctly. She had an archaic way of speaking-a deliberately cultivated one, I'm sure. She felt that language was a great mark of social status-" "Sbaw thought so too," interrupted Rubin. "Pygmalion." "Never mind, Manny," said Trumbull. "Won't you please proceed, Mr. Leominster?" "I was just going to say that Aunt Hester's fetish of verbal complication was something which she felt, I think, set her off from the lower classes. If I were to tell her that she ought to ask someone about something, she was quite certain to say something like, 'But of whom, exactly, dear, ought I to inquire?' She would never say 'ask' if she could say 'inquire'; she never ended a sentence with a preposition or split an infinitive. In fact, she was the only persgli,. I ever met who consistently used the subjunctive mood. She on6e' said to me, 'Would you be so gracious, my dear Jason, as to ascertain whether it be raining or no,' and I almost failed to understand her. "But I am wandering from the point again. As I said, she had an exaggerated idea of the value of my uncle's collection and she was always after him to do something about it. At her insistence, he put in an elaborate burglar alarm system and had a special signal installed that would sound in the local police station." "Was it ever used?" asked Halsted.

"Not as far as I know," said Leominster. "There was never any burglary. My uncle didn't exactly live in a high-crime area-though you could never convince my aunt of that-and I wouldn't be sur-prised if prospective burglars had a more accurately disappointing notion of the worth of my uncle's collection than my aunt had. After my uncle's death, Aunt Hester had some of his belongings appraised. When they told her that his stamp collection was worth, perhaps, ten thousand dollars, she was horrified. 'They are thieves,' she told me. 'Having remitted ten thousand dollars, they would then certainly proceed to retail the collection for a million at the very least.' She would allow no further appraisals, and held onto everything with an unbreakable clutch. Fortunately, she bad plenty to live on and didn't have to sell anything. To her dying day, though, I am sure she was convinced that she was leaving me possessions equivalent to an enormous fortune. -No such thing, unfortunately. "My Uncle Bryce was hardheaded enough in this respect. He knew that the collections were of only moderate value. He said so to me on several occasions, though he also said he had a few items that were worth while. He did not specify. According to Aunt Hester, he went into more detail with her. When she urged him to put his stamp collection in a vault he said, 'What, and never be able to look at it? It would have no value to me at all, then. Besides, it isn't worth much, except for one item, and I've taken care of that.'"

Avalon said, "That one item in the stamp collection that your uncle said he had taken care of-is that what is now lost? Was it some stamp or other?" "Yes, so Aunt Hester said at the time of my uncle's death. He had left her the house and its contents, which meant that stamp too. She called me soon after the funeral to say that she could not find the stamp and was convinced it bad been stolen. I bad attended the funeral, of course, and was still in Connecticut, having taken the occasion to track down some old gravestones, and I came over for dinner the day after she called me. "It was a hectic meal, for Aunt Hester was furious over not having found the stamp. She was convinced it was worth millions and that the servants bad taken it-or perhaps the funeral people had. She even had a little suspicion left over for me. She said to me over dessert, 'Your uncle, I presume, never discoursed on the matter of its location with you, did he?' "I said he did not-which was true. He had never done so."

Trumbull said, "Did she have any idea at all where he hid it?" "Yes, indeed.

That was one of her grounds for annoyance. He had told her, but had -not been specific enough, and she bad not thought

to pin him down exactly. I suppose she was satisfied that he had taken care of it and didn't think further. He told her he had placed it in one of his unabridged volumes, where he could get it easily enough to look at it whenever he wished, but where no casual thief would think to find it." "In one of his unabridged volumes?" said Avalon in astonishment. "Did he mean in his collection?" "Aunt Hester quoted him as saying 'one of my unabridged volumes.' We assumed be meant in his collection."

Rubin said, "It's a foolish place to put it. A book can be stolen as easily as a stamp. It can be stolen for itself and the stamp would go along as a side reward."

Leominster said, "I don't suppose my uncle seriously thought of it as a place of safety; merely as a way of satisfying my aunt. In fact, if she had not nagged him, I'm sure that Uncle Bryce would have left it right in the collection, which is, was, and has always been safe and sound. Of course, I never said this to my aunt."

Rubin said, "When people speak of 'the Unabridged,' they usually mean Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Did your uncle have one?" "Of course. On a small stand of its own. My aunt had thought of that and had looked there and hadn't found it. That was when she called me. We went into the library after dinner and I went over the Unabridged again. My uncle kept his better stamps in small, transparent envelopes and one of them might have been placed among the pages. Still, it would have been quite noticeable. It was an onionskin edition, and there would certainly have been a tendency for the dictionary to open to that page. Aunt Hester said it would be just like Uncle Bryce to hide it in such a foolish manner as to make it easily stolen. "That was quite impossible, however. I bad used the Unabridged myself now and then in my uncle's last years and I'm sure there was nothing in it I inspected the binding to make sure that he hadn't hid it behind the backstrip. I was even tempted to pull the entire volume apart, but it didn't seem likely that Uncle Bryce bad wue to elaborate lengths. He had slipped it between the pages of Aookbut not the Unabridged. "I said as much to Aunt Hester. I told her that it might be among the pages of another book. I pointed out that the fact that he bad referred to 'one of the unabridged volumes' was a sure sign that it was not

in the Unabridged." "I agree," said Rubin, "but how many unabridged volumes did he have?"

Leominster shook his head. "I don't know. I know nothing about

books-at least from a collector's point of view. I asked Aunt Hester if she knew whether he bad any items that were unabridged-an unabridged Boswell, for instance, or an unabridged Boccaccio-but she knew less about such matters than I did."

Gonzalo said, "Maybe 'unabridged' means something special to a book collector. Maybe it means having a book jacket-just as an example-and it's between the book and its jacket."

Avalon said, "No, Mario. I know something about books, and unabridged has no meaning but the usual one of a complete version." "In any case," said Leominster, "it doesn't matter, for I suggested that we ought to go through all the books." "A thousand of them?" asked Halsted doubtfully. "As it turned out there were well over a thousand and it was a task indeed. I must say that Aunt Hester went about it properly. She hired half a dozen children from town-all girls, because she said girls were quieter and more reliable than boys. They were each between ten and twelve, old enough to work carefully and young enough to be honest. They came in each day for weeks and worked for four or five hours. "Aunt Hester remained in the library at all times, banding out the books in systematic order, receiving them back, handing out another, and so on. She allowed no short cuts; no shaking the books to see if anything fell out, or flipping the pages, either. She made them turn each page individually." "Did they find anythine." asked Avalon. "Numerous things. Aunt Hester was too shrewd to tell them exactly what she was looking for. She just asked them to turn every single page and bring her any little thing they found, any scrap of paper, she said, or anything. She promised them a quarter for anything they found, in addition to a dollar for every hour they worked, and fed them all the milk and cake they could bold. Before it was over, each girl had gained five pounds, I'm sure. They located dozens of miscellaneous items. There were bookmarks, for instance, though I'm sure they were not my uncle's, for he was no reader; postcards, pressed leaves, even an occasional naughty photograph that I suspect my uncle had hidden for occasional study. They shocked my aunt but seemed to delight the little girls. In any case they did not find any stamp." "Which must have been a great disappointment to your aunt," said Trumbull. "It certainly was. She bad immediate dark suspicions that one of the little girls had walked off with it, but even she couldn't maintain that for long. They were perfectly

unsophisticated creatures and

there was no reason to suppose that they would have thought a stamp was any more valuable than a bookmark. Besides, Aunt Hester had had her eye on them at every point." "Then she never found it?" asked Gonzalo. "No, she never did. She kept on looking through books for a while -you know, those that weren't in the library. She even went up into the attic to find some old books and magazines, but it wasn't there. It occurred to me that Uncle Bryce may have changed the hiding place in his later years and had told her of the new one-and that she had forgotten the new place and remembered only the old one. That's why I said what I did during dinner about two hiding places. You see, if that were true, and I have a nagging suspicion that it is, then the stamp could be anywhere in the house-or out of it, for that matter-and frankly, a search is hopeless in my opinion. "I think Aunt Hester gave up too. These last couple of years, when her arthritis had made it almost impossible for her to move around, she never mentioned it. I was afraid that when she left the house to me, as he had made it quite plain she would, it would be on condition that I find the stamp-but no such thing was mentioned in her will."

Avalon twirled the brandy glass by its stem and said rather porttously, "See here, there's no real reason to think that there was such a stamp at all, is there? It may well be that your uncle amused himself with the belief be had a valuable item, or may just have been teasing your aunt. Was he the kind of man capable of working up a rather malicious practical joke?" "No, no," said Leominster, with a definite shake of his head. "He did not have that turn of mind at all. Besides, Aunt Hester said she bad seen the stamp. On one occasion, be bad been looking at it and he called in Hester and showed it to her. He said, 'You are looking at thousands of dollars, dear.' But she did not know where he had gotten it, or to what hiding place he had returned it. All she had thought at the time was that it was unutterably foolish for grown men to pay so much money for a silly bit of paper-and I.;Aher agreed with her when she told me. She said there wasn't evn any. thing attractive about it." "Does she remember what it looked like? Could you recognize it if you found it?" asked Avalon. "For instance, suppose that shortly before the time of your uncle's death he had placed the stamp with the rest of his collection for some reason-perhaps because your aunt was in Florida and could

not nag him, if he wanted it available for frequent gloating. -Was she in Florida at the time of his death, by the way?

Leominster looked thoughtful. "Yes, she was, as a matter of fact." "Well then," said Avalon. "The stamp may have been in the collection all along. It may still be. Naturally, you wouldn't find it any where else."

Trumbull said, "That can't be, Jeff. Leominster has already told us that the stamp collection was ajpraised at ten thousand dollars, total, and I gather that this one stamp would have raised that mark considerably higher."

Leominster said, "According to Aunt Hester, Uncle Bryce once told her that the stamp in question was worth his entire remaining collection twice over."

Avalon said, "Uncle Bryce may have been kidding himself or the appraisers may have made a mistake." "No," said Leominster, "it was not in the collection. My aunt remembered its appearance and it was unusual enough to be identifiable. She said it was a triangular stamp, with the narrow edge downward-something like my face as drawn by Mr. Gonzalo."

Gonzalo cleared his tbroat and looked at the ceiling, but Leominster, smiling genially, went on. "She said it bad the face of a

man on it, and a bright orange border and that my uncle referred to it as a New Guinea Orange. That is a distinctive stamp, you must admit, and while it never occurred to me that it might be in the collection itself, so that I did not search for it specifically, I did go through the collection out of curiosity, and I assure you I didn't see the New Guinea Orange. In fact, I saw no triangular stamps at allmerely versions of the usual rectangle. "Of course, I did wonder whether my uncle was, wrong about the stamp's value, and whether be might not have found out be was wrong toward the end and sold the stamp or otherwise disposed of it. I consulted a stamp dealer and be said there were indeed such things as New Guinea Oranges. He said some of them were very valuable and that one of them, which might be in my uncle's collection because it was not recorded elsewhere, was worth twenty-five thousand dollars." "Well, look," said Drake. "I have an idea. You've mentioned your cousin, the one in Brazil. He was your uncle's son, and he was disinherited. Isn't it possible that be wasn't entirely disinherited; that your uncle mailed him the stamp, told him its value, and let that be his inheritance? He could then leave the house and its contents to his sister with a clear conscience, along with whatever else he had in his estate."

Leominster thought for a while. He said, "That never occurred to me. I don't think it's likely, though. After all, his son was in no way

in financial trouble and I was always given to understand be was very well to do. And there was bard feeling between father and son, too; very bard. It's a family scandal of which I do not have the details. I don't think Uncle Bryce would have mailed him the stamp."

Gonzalo said eagerly, "Could your cousin have come back to the United States and-" "And stolen the stamp? How could be have known where it was? Besides, I'm sure my cousin has not been out of Brazil in years. No, heaven only knows where the stamp is, or whether it exists at all. I wish I could get a phone call, as Mr. Halsted did, that would tell me it's been located under the bed, but there's no chance of that."

Leominster's eye fell to his still unopened Chinese fortune cookie and he added whimsically, "Unless this can help me." He cracked it open, withdrew the slip of paper, looked at it, and laughed. "What does it say?" asked Drake. "It says, 'You will come into money,"' said Leominster. "It doesn't say how."

Gonzalo sat back in his chair and said, "Well then, Henry will tell you how."

Leominster smiled like one going along with a joke. "If you cdbld bring me the stamp on your tray, Henry, I'd appreciate it." "I'm not joking," said Gonzalo. "Tell him, Henry."

Henry, who had been listening quietly from his place at the sideboard, said, "I am flattered by your confidence, Mr. Gonzalo, but of course I cannot locate the stamp for Mr. Leominster. I might ask a few questions, however, if Mr. Leominster doesn't mind."

Leominster raised his eyebrows and said, "Not at all, if you think it will help." "I cannot say as to that, sir," said Henry, "but you said your uncle was no reader. Does that mean be did not read the books in his library?" "He didn't read much of anything, Henry, and certainly not the books in his library. They weren't meant to be read, only c,91lected. Dry, impossible stuff." "Did your uncle do anything to them-rebind them, or in any way modify them? Did be paste pages together, for instance?" "To hide the stamp? Bite your tongue, Henry. If you do anything to any of those books, you reduce their value. No, no, your collector always leaves his collection exactly as he receives it."

Henry thought a moment, then said, "You told us your aunt affected an elegant vocabulary." "Yes, she did."

"And that if you said 'ask,' for instance, she would change it to 'inquire."' P7 'Yes. "Would she have been aware of having made the change? -1 mean, if she had been asked under oath to repeat your exact words, would she have said 'inquire' and honestly have thought you had said it?"

Leominster laughed. I wouldn't be surprised if she would. She took her false elegance with enormous seriousness." "And you only know of your uncle's hiding place by your aunt's report. He never told you, personally, of his hiding place, did he?" "He never told me, but I'm bound to say that I don't for a minute believe Aunt Hester would lie. If she said he told her, then he did." "She said that your uncle said he had hidden it in one of his unabridged volumes. That was exactly what she said?" "Yes. Exactly. In one of his unabridged volumes."

Henry said, "But might not your aunt have translated his actual statement into her own notion of elegance, a short word into a long one? Isn't that possible?"

Leominster hesitated. I suppose it is, but what short word?" "I cannot say with absolute certainty," said Henry, "but is not an abridged volume one that has been cut, and is not an unabridged volume therefore one that is uncut. If your uncle had said 'in one of my uncut volumes,' might not that have been translated in your aunt's mind to 'in one of my unabridged volumes'?" "And if so, Henry?" "Then we must remember that 'uncut' has a secondary meaning with respect to books that 'unabridged' does not. An uncut volume may be one with its pages uncut, rather than its contents. If your uncle collected old books which he did not read, and with which he did not tamper, some of them may have been bought with their pages uncut and would have kept their pages still uncut to this day. Does he, in fact, have uncut books in his library?"

Leominster frowned and said hesitantly, "I think I remember one definitely, and there may have been others."

Henry said, "Every pair of adjacent pages in such a book would be connected at the margin, and perhaps at the top, but would be open at the bottom, so that they would form little bags. And if that is so, sir, then the young girls who went through the books would have turned the pages without paying any attention to the fact that some of them might be uncut, and inside the little bag-one of them-a stamp in its transparent envelope may easily have

been affixed with a bit of transparent tape. The pages would have bellied slightly as they

were turned and would have given no sign of the contents. Nor would the girls think to look inside if their specific instruction were merely to turn the pages."

Leominster rose and looked at his watch. "It sounds good to me. I'll go to Connecticut tomorrow." He almost stuttered as be spoke. "Gentlemen, this is very exciting and I hope that once I am settled you will all come and have dinner with me to celebrate. -You especially, Henry. The reasoning was so simple that I'm amazed none of the rest of us saw it." "Reasoning is always simple," said Henry, "and also always incomplete. Let us see if you really find your stamp. Without that, of what use is reason?"

11 Afterword

I sometimes feel faintly embarrassed over the slightness of the points on which the solution to a Black Widowers story rests, but that's silly. These are, frankly, puzzle stories, and the size of the puzzle doesn't matter as long as it's a sufficient challenge to the mind.

And as for myself, I have the double pleasure of thinking of the puzzle point first, and then of hiding it under layers of plot without being unfair to the reader. "The Unabridged" I didn't submit anywhere, but saved it for this collection.