The Wrong Way Down Read Online Free PDF Page A

added.” He tapped the glass again, lower down. “Title, artist’s name, engraver’s name, date, anything.”
    Miss Paxton listened in silence.
    â€œProof before letter,” continued Gamadge, “is more valuable than lettered proof. It’s scarcer, for one thing, and it’s often a finer impression. The engraver sometimes draws it himself. Now of course values differ very much from time to time in the case of things like this; fashions change, hobbies wax and wane, money is tight or free. Hall could only guess at these particular values—”
    â€œThat’s why you asked him about the picture!”
    â€œThat’s why. He guesses roughly that this impression we have before us now might be worth twenty-five to thirty dollars in the open market; but that a collector might pay a hundred for a proof before letter.”
    â€œSeventy dollars difference?”
    â€œIf you could find your market. In any case there’d be some difference, I should say fifty dollars at least. But Miss Vance, or anybody, would have to be prepared with the less valuable picture in order to make the change, and she’d have to be prepared with something else—information.”
    â€œYou mean she knew she could make the change without being interfered with?”
    â€œCertainly that.” Gamadge stood contemplating Lady Audley biting the side of his thumb. He looked at Miss Paxton sideways. “You know these are not common.”
    â€œLady Audleys?”
    â€œI never saw her before in my life. Rather a coincidence for Miss Vance, for anybody who knew that there was one already in the house, to own or pick up another one. Most of them must be in the books, you know—the books they were engraved for. All the lettered ones would be in the books unless somebody tore one out. Do you know what I think, Miss Paxton?”
    â€œI can’t even imagine, Henry.”
    â€œI think this one must have been in the house too.”
    â€œBoth of them in the house? I never heard that this one was.”
    â€œWell, it may have been, and your cousin Lawson Ashbury may never have heard of it either. It’s an inferior copy of the portrait your uncle was interested in; let’s say he acquired it first, and kept it in one of those tip-out receptacles in the book closet. Mr. Lawson Ashbury—did he live here all his life?”
    â€œNo, certainly not. He lived with Marietta in an apartment, or in the country.”
    â€œNo reason why his father should keep him posted on all such purchases, was there?”
    â€œNone at all.”
    â€œWell, your uncle had this copy, and later on he found the finer one, the proof before letter. It was so fine and so much of an acquisition that he framed it and hung it in the hall. He’d lost interest in this one, never spoke of it to you or the rest of the family.”
    Miss Paxton said: “I can’t for the life of me see why people shouldn’t prefer the ones that have all the information on them.”
    â€œAnd you’d probably rather have a set of books in a handsome binding than in the original boards, uncut and unopened. Collectors wouldn’t, no matter how fine the binding. And if you cut a page in one of their dratted Firsts, so as to read what the author said, they’d murder you.
    â€œWell, we have the motive—malice, or a problematical seventy dollars. If we wanted to delve into psychology we might ask ourselves whether or not the very fact that the portrait resembled Mrs. Vincent Ashbury—”
    â€œHenry, don’t. It’s too ugly.”
    â€œI told you you wouldn’t see the beauty of the case. Now for opportunity. Miss Vance, as we have already seen, may have had opportunity to change the pictures after she supposedly left on Sunday afternoon. We presume that she understood the difference in value between letter proof and proof before letter. Can’t we presume that when she was