Solomons Seal Read Online Free PDF

this little collection together?’ He seemed quite excited.
    â€˜A little,’ I said. ‘But I’d rather hear what you think first.’
    He hesitated, the corners of those bright blue eyes crinkling. ‘Want me to stick my neck out, do you? All right, but tell me something first. This client of yours who’s had such a poor time of it, does she want to sell, or don’t you know yet?’
    â€˜I think that would depend on the price,’ I said cautiously.
    He laughed. ‘I never doubted you were a good agent, Roy, but don’t get too excited. We’re not dealing with the earlies here, no Mauritius or other rarities, except for the “Lady McLeod”. Put it this way, is she after a quick cash sale, or is she going to send them to auction? You can tell me that, surely.’ And he added, ‘At auction, as you very well know, it could take four months, even longer, before she got her money.’
    â€˜Are you interested in them personally, then?’ I hadn’t expected that.
    He hesitated, then said, ‘Yes. Yes, I think I mightbe. Not because of the value of the stamps, but because of the collection as a collection. It has a distinct curiosity value.’
    â€˜How do you mean?’
    â€˜You’ve looked through it. Didn’t anything strike you?’
    I nodded. ‘New Zealand and those Australian states, you’d expect a man living somewhere in the South Pacific to collect them. But there are Canadian provincials as well, a lot of Newfoundland. And most of them unused, so it looks as though he visited the eastern seaboard of Canada, maybe traded there.’
    â€˜It’s possible.’ But he sounded doubtful. ‘My guess is he simply wrote for them so that he could see what they were like.’ He picked up the last two pages and turned them round so that I could see them. ‘Know what these are?’
    â€˜Proofs,’ I said. ‘But it did occur to me they might be fakes.’
    â€˜Look again.’ And he pushed one of the pages towards me.
    I bent forward, examining once again the two little rectangles of thick yellowish paper, one showing the frame of the stamp, the other simply the unadorned shape of what looked like an Arctic or North Atlantic seal. On the other page there was just the one rectangle of paper showing the seal inside the frame. ‘Doesn’t anything strike you now?’
    I shook my head. There was no value given, no indication of country, the frame surround all black.
    He turned the pages round, lost in thought as hestared down at them. ‘I’m not quite sure if they’re die or plate proofs. That’s why I wanted the magnifying glass. The whole process, as you know, starts with the die, and it is from this original picture, engraved on the flat, that the roller impression is taken by rocking it back and forth over the die under pressure. This transfer, or roller die, is then used to transfer the impression, again by rocking back and forth, on to the actual plate from which the final stamp will be printed. Now, I
think
these are die proofs. That’s to say, they’re taken from the original flat engraving; in the case of the one showing the seal inside the frame, both dies have been used on the same sheet of paper, the proofs being struck off singly. They have that extra sharpness. If they were plate proofs, they would have been taken from the plate itself after it had been hardened for printing the full sheet of stamps.’ He leafed back through the album, pausing several times. Finally he turned again to the pages with the proofs. ‘Very interesting,’ he mused. ‘The collection itself, I mean. As you say, no Queen’s heads. The stamps are all of ships and views, with a sprinkling of animals. Recess or line-engraved printing, mostly Perkins Bacon, the first printers of postal labels and specialists in line-engraving for banknotes.’
    He leaned back, and I