Solomons Seal Read Online Free PDF Page A

concentrating all the time on the islands of the Pacific, but in the end I had to give it up. I just couldn’t find it. Nor could I identify the proofs, which were printed in black on thick paperand showed what looked like a seal in a rectangular frame and also the frame separately.
    It was not until Sunday evening that I was finally able to contact Tubby Sawyer. He had been north along the coast as far as the Deben estuary for a few days, and I called across, inviting him over for a drink, as he drifted up on the tide to his moorings. He was a short, stout man with blue seaman’s eyes in a round, babyish face, and coming alongside in his tiny plastic dinghy, he looked like a frog balanced precariously in the cup of a waterlily. ‘And to what do I owe the doubtful pleasure of being offered a gin on your old Folkboat?’ he asked, squeezing himself in through the hatch and lowering his heavy bottom into the space at the head of the only berth. He wore a tattered blue sweater, oily jeans, and his bare toes were poking out of his salt-stiff deck shoes. ‘First time this season.’ He grinned at me, leaning frayed woollen elbows on the makeshift table. ‘There must be a catch in it.’
    â€˜There is,’ I said. ‘I want you to value some stamps for me.’
    â€˜Free of charge, I suppose.’
    â€˜Of course.’ And I explained about Miss Holland’s circumstances as I poured him his pink gin.
    â€˜Any particular period?’
    â€˜Victorian, most of them.’ I gave him his drink and put the albums down in front of him. ‘See what you think. There’s one I haven’t been able to identify, and where there’s just one stamp to the page like that, it makes them look important even if they aren’t.’
    He sat there for a moment gazing at the wornleather covers with their gilt fastenings. These are the sort of albums Victorian ladies used for drawing miniatures, writing poems, pressing flower collections, that sort of thing.’
    I poured myself a drink and watched him as he opened first one, then the other, leafing quickly through the loose pages. ‘You’re right about the period, anyway. The end of Queen Victoria’s reign, most of them stamps in issue in the late eighteen hundreds, and all of them stuck down tight.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Still, it’s probably better than if they were hinged with gummed strips from the sheet margin, a very common practice in those days.’ He turned to the island album and began going through it slowly, page by page, until he came to the blue stamp with LM C L below the ship. He paused there and sipped his drink. ‘This the one you couldn’t identify?’ And when I nodded, he said, ‘Try Trinidad. The “Lady McLeod”. Its value may surprise you.’
    I sat down on the berth opposite him, watching his face, which was lit by the evening sun slanting in through the open hatch. He was turning the pages again, and I couldn’t be sure from his expression whether the stamp would put the collection beyond my reach. He came to the end and lit a cigarette, leaning back, his eyes half closed. ‘Well?’ I asked.
    â€˜Don’t be so impatient. I haven’t finished yet.’ He smiled. ‘But it’s interesting – very. I’ll tell you why in a minute.’ And he leaned forward again and began working his way through the second volume. It was so quiet on board I could hear the ticking of the ship’sclock and the gurgle of the tide making against the bows. And then, when he came to the proofs, he held the two loose leaves up to catch the light, peering at them closely. ‘Do you use a magnifying glass when you’re charting?’
    â€˜Yes, do you want it?’
    â€˜Please.’
    I found it for him, and he went over those last two pages again, examining the proofs through the glass. ‘Know anything about the person who put