Drury Lane’s Last Case by Ellery Queen Page B

sound horribly disappointed, Dr. Sedlar,” said Patience.
    He started. “Eh? I beg your pardon.… Yes, yes, I am.”
    â€œBut why? Didn’t you ever see the 1599? I thought that rare books were common property among bibliophiles.”
    â€œShould be,” replied the Englishman with a grim smile, “but this one was not. It belonged to Samuel Saxon, you know. That made it quite inaccessible.”
    â€œI believe Mr. Rowe and Dr. Choate did say something about Mr. Saxon’s—er—secretiveness.”
    Dr. Sedlar grew excited, and his monocle trembled and then fell, to dangle by its cord on his breast. “Secretiveness!” he exploded. “The man was a bibliomaniac. He spent half his declining years in England bidding in at auctions and quite taking away all our precious things.… Sorry. But there were items which weren’t universally known. The Lord alone knows where he picked them up. This stolen 1599 Jaggard edition of The Passionate Pilgrim was one of the unknowns. Until a short time ago only two copies of this first edition were known to be in existence; then Saxon dug up a third somewhere, but he never permitted scholars so much as a glimpse of it. He stowed it away in his library like so much fodder in a granary.”
    â€œThat sure sounds tragic,” said the Inspector disagreeably.
    â€œOh, yes,” drawled the Englishman. “I assure you it is. I’d really looked forward to examining it.… When Mr. Wyeth told me about the acquisition of the Saxon bequest——”
    â€œHe mentioned that the 1599 Jaggard was included in the benefaction?” murmured Lane.
    â€œYes, indeed.” Dr. Sedlar sighed and bent over the cabinet again. He readjusted his monocle. “Lovely, Lovely. I can scarcely wait——What’s this?” His thin lips parted with excitement as he seized the third of the three volumes in the case and studied its flyleaf.
    â€œWhat’s the matter now?” asked Lane swiftly, rising and hurrying to the cabinet.
    Dr. Sedlar expelled a long whistling breath. “For a moment I thought—I was wrong. I examined this particular copy of Henry V in London some years ago, before it was purchased by Saxon. It bears the date 1608—jolly well established as a case of deliberate ante-dating by Jaggard, who printed it for the stationer Thomas Pavier. It was probably printed in 1619. But I recalled that the leather was a deeper scarlet. Apparently it’s faded a bit under the tender ministrations of Saxon.”
    â€œI see,” said the old gentleman. “You had me jumping, Doctor! How about the Sir John Oldcastle ?”
    The incumbent curator fingered the first volume in the cabinet lovingly. “Oh, that’s quite all right,” he said seriously. “Hasn’t changed hue since I last saw it at Sotheby’s in 1913 when it fetched a pretty price at auction—the same golden brown! Mind you, I’m not accusing Saxon of vandalism, please understand——”
    Dr. Choate hurried into the room. “I’m afraid I was wrong,” he said brightly. “No sign of the stolen Jaggard. We’ll keep searching, of course.”
    Mrs. Lydia Saxon burst into the Saxon Room with the awful irresistibility of an infuriated she-elephant. She was built on the grand scale—an enormous woman with mountainous flanks, a Zeppelin’s stern, the bosom of a sea-cow, and the carriage of a frigate. There was a feral glare in her watery green eyes that boded ill for such unfortunate creatures as scholars, curators, and the whole unhappy tribe of beneficiaries. She was followed by Gordon Rowe, grinning cheerfully, and an attenuated, sidling old man dressed in a rusty tailcoat. There was something of the quality of ancient papyrus in this creature: rasping dry skin, almost a rustle of brittle bones as he walked, and the pale predacious features common to Italian signors,