So all of us went down to the Stamp Room. There was a chalk outline where the body had lain on the worn maroon carpeting, but nothing else seemed out of place. Jutting out from the wall on the right were eight display cases filled with trays of stamps and envelopes, with printed cards telling what each was and in some instances giving historical data. At the rear was a long glass counter with stamps, stamp albums, books about stamps; these were the items for sale by Lorde’s. On the counter top was a telephone, several reference books, catalogs, a charge-card machine, and some pencils. The left side of the room had three eight-foot-high shelves, like stacks in a library, running parallel to the wall with the door; these had trays of stamps and first covers, some of which were for sale and some of which belonged to the Lorde’s Collection. The windows were directly opposite, behind the counter. Not only were the bars firmly in place, but the sash was painted to the frame.
Steele walked to the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle, studying everything in it, and I knew that the single turnaround had fixed every detail of the Stamp Room in his mind.
He stared at the counter briefly, turned and walked to the display cases on the right. “Where was the stamp?” he asked.
“Third case from the rear,” McCarthy told him. “Incredible!”
“We’ll worry about the stamp later,” Garrett said. “Well, Steele? Do you see anything we might have missed?” His voice was tinged with irony.
“Perhaps,” Steele said. “Mr. McCarthy, what did you do when you found the body?”
“I left the room and called the police.”
“You didn’t touch anything in here?”
“I know better than that.”
“You didn’t call from this phone?”
“No. I didn’t want to disturb anything.”
Steele nodded and turned to Garrett. “You said the room was locked from the inside. Surely there are cylinders on both sides of the door?” With his air of positive command, it didn’t occur to the detective that he should be asking the questions and Steele responding. Steele’s carefully nurtured stage personality had some use away from the footlights.
“There are,” Garrett admitted. “But there’s only one key, and it’s supposed to be in the possession of the manager at all times, because of insurance regulations. It was found in his pocket.”
“May I see it, please?”
Garrett asked another officer to get the “evidence envelope,” and the man nodded and left the room. “We’ll find the killer,” the lieutenant said to Steele. “But to make a case, we have to know how he got out of the room. Can you tell us?”
Steele offered his hand. “I accept the challenge.”
Garrett, who was unaware that he had issued a challenge, shook hands — and then frowned.
“This isn’t a publicity thing, is it? It better not be. I want no statements to the press unless you clear with me first.”
“No publicity, I assure you, Lieutenant. The challenge of the puzzle itself is my reward. Just give me access to the information as you collect it, and I promise you the mystery will be satisfactorily solved. As I said before, there’s no such thing as a locked room.”
The officer came back with a large manila envelope and handed it to Garrett, who ripped it open and dumped the items inside onto a glass counter. “Schneider’s pockets, contents of,” he said.
Steele picked up the key ring and isolated and examined the Stamp Room key. “Not copied recently,” he told Garrett, “and no impression taken.”
“How do you know?”
“Simple,” Steele said. “Your laboratory will say the same. If it had been copied there would be some sign of it on the lands, where the copying pantograph would be pressed against it. If it had been impressed, then some miniscule particle of wax or clay would have adhered to the inner surface of this groove.”
“All right, Steele,” Garrett said. “You see anything else there?”
“Not at the moment,” Steele answered, but his eyes had a secretive look that I recognized. He was onto something, and he wasn’t ready to share it. Steele has a flair for the dramatic and, on occasion, the melodramatic, and his timing is excellent.
There was a point that was bothering me, and I decided to ask: “Doesn’t this room have a burglar alarm?”
Garrett nodded. “It does, but not on the door.”
“That’s right,” Thorp said. “The alarm system is wired into the display cases. It sets off a silent alarm in the office of the private security outfit we use.”
“Then why didn’t the alarm go off when the Hayes stamp was stolen?” I asked.
Garrett turned to Thorp. “That’s a damn good question. Where’s the alarm control box?”
“Outside in Sportswear. In a recessed wall cubicle.”
“Who has the keys?”
Thorp colored slightly. “Key; there’s only one. I have it. One of my duties is to activate the alarm system after closing.”
“Let’s see it.”
Thorp pulled it from his pocket. It was a single key, too large to fit on any ring; about as long as a fountain pen, and thicker around, with an irregular series of grooves on one end and a large round handle on the other.
“Fascinating,” Steele said, taking it from Thorp’s hand and examining it. “It must be over thirty years old.”
“The alarm system is older than that,” Thorp said. “We’ve been taking bids on modernizing it.”
“This thing must be a chore to carry around.” Steele hefted the key. “It’s solid brass — and look how shiny it is.”
“I usually keep it in the safe. Only take it out to turn the system on and off.”
“How do you get into the store without setting off the alarm, then?” Garrett asked.
“I don’t. The alarm covers the entrance doors, and it goes off when the first person comes into the store in the morning. He has to call the security people immediately and identify himself. It’s usually me or Mr. Schneider. Then I reset the alarm.”
“Who else has the combination to the safe?”
“Victor Schneider had,” Thorp said. “Only he.”
“That poses a question,” Garrett said. “Thorp here could have turned off the alarm, but he couldn’t get into the room.”
“Are you suggesting—” Thorp’s face flushed dark red.
“Just speculating,” Lieutenant Garrett said. “It’s my job. Now, Schneider could have come in here and turned off the alarm, but then we’d have to assume he had an accomplice, since he didn’t murder himself.”
“Didn’t he have to have the alarm off to inventory the stamps?” Mrs. Lorde asked. “That’s what he was doing. I asked him to do the first inventory, then Mr. McCarthy would do the second. We always do two.”
“It’s a physical inventory,” McCarthy said. “He didn’t have to touch them or examine them, just make sure they were there. He just peered through the glass.”
“One second,” Steele said. He disappeared down one of the short aisles between the display cases on the right. “Is this the inventory control sheet?” he asked, coming back out with a clipboard in his hand.
“Yes,” McCarthy said.
“Where did you find it?” Garrett demanded.
“On top of the case, about halfway along. It’s checked off to item number three-twenty-six. Where would that be?”
“Right about where you found the clipboard,” McCarthy said.
“So Schneider got it in the middle of his inventory,” Garrett mused.
“He caught someone stealing the stamp,” Thorp said.
“How was the stamp stolen without the alarm going off?”
“A duplicate key could have been made,” I volunteered. “Someone could have taken an impression of the lock; it’s right out there in plain view of any customer with a piece of wax.”