“Help me with this list, Miss Carla. Those stamps must be somewhere in this locker. Bailey, remember when you caught the colonel coming in from a recon near Baesweiler?”
Turtle nodded.
“Well, we’d just planted the stamps on an abandoned baggage lorry which Recon had spotted on an aerial sweep. The colonel planned to do a thorough search of anyone who got near it. I thought the trap had failed because I remember Warren pulled a search before we could. And he made such an issue of sending the stuff back to HQ. The call that Colonel Murdock got just as he ordered me to go get Warren was to tell him that the planted bait had not reappeared at HQ. He called me back and we both went to get Warren. Only, at the time, I thought the colonel had finally made up his mind to transfer Warren out of the line. And, of course, we never got to Warren.”
Turtle cursed under his breath.
I bent hastily over the German album, straightening a stamp in its treads. This particular album was made with strips to retain the stamps in place without gummed tabs. As I fooled needlessly to cover my inner pain, I pushed it to one side and disclosed the stamp carefully inserted behind it. The second stamp was not a duplicate. Furthermore it was one of the violet-orange 75-centimes French-Chinese stamps and as valuable as it could be! The 75-centimes was inverted! Information was triggered in my mind and I didn’t need any Scott to remind me this little piece of pretty paper was worth several thousand dollars. In fact, the French at that time seemed to have a problem with the 75-centimes stamps all along the line and the inversions were as valuable as they were rare.
“Look!” I gabbled excitedly. “Here’s our proof. Here’s one of them. See, the seventy-five-centimes is inverted. They’re priceless. All by themselves.” I had difficulty keeping my fingers careful as I discovered more of the rare inversions. And, sure enough, amid some perfectly unexceptional French Egyptian stamps were some of the valuable carmine-and-purple handstamped Tchongking of 1900.
“Gawd,” I exclaimed, spreading the finds out delicately on the table for them all to see, “Dad must’ve just died to find these. Oh!” I closed my eyes against the pain of that imbecilic idiom.
“What are these paper-wrapped packages?” DeLord asked evenly.
I forced myself to see what he held. “I haven’t looked yet.”
The lieutenant undid the string. Pushing back the paper, he whistled in amazement. I glanced up and my eyes widened with surprise. That was no album.
“Whatinhell’s that?” Turtle growled.
Reverently, the lieutenant opened the heavy tooled cover, exposing the first illuminated sheet with its elaborate and beautiful titles, red, black, and gold. Even the borders were in gold. There were about eighteen or so lines, arranged in one column on the page, framed by those magnificently intricate, monk-conceived borders.
“Confessio Santo Fulgentii
” the lieutenant read hesitantly as he deciphered the ancient script. He whistled again, carefully turning the next page of heavy but brittle-looking vellum. Some of the gold in the border on this page had faded and the green background showed through.
“That’s one of those Books of Hours or something,” I said in an awed voice.
“No wonder the MFAAC had me assigned to find out what was happening.” The lieutenant’s eyes were wide. “This thing is priceless.”
“Can’t even read it,” Turtle remarked dourly.
There were two other wrapped packages which we lifted out with great reverence. One was quite small but rather thick for the leaves were heavy vellum. The illumination was even more elaborate than the “Confessio,” purple bands, gold lettering, the most intricate initials and borders. Pictures in many colors with silvery borders. Just beautiful and so old, so lovingly, meticulously crafted. The lieutenant and I decided it must be the Gospels, although between the unfamiliar calligraphy and our rusty Latin it was difficult to tell.
The third was unquestionably a Bible, two columns of the black Latin script on each page. The capitals were gold and red, the titles daintier in design than the others. Lots of vines in the borders and much gold with more varied colors than the other two had boasted so the effect was more brilliant.
When I learned later what they actually were, I felt I had blasphemed even to gaze at them. The last one was an eighth-or ninth-century book of Gospels, stolen from the Bibliotheque de Tours. It had been used when the monarchs of France took their oaths as honorary canons of St. Martins. The smallest one was also dated in the ninth century and also Gospels, but a bedside copy.
The “Confessio” was, again, ninth century, done at St. Germain des Pres. I guess it was the brilliant golds and colors that attracted Warren and made him think they were valuable. They were but he could never have sold them. The Germans, of course, hadn’t worried about selling them. They just wanted to have them.
“Those things look like money,” Turtle remarked after we had carefully rewrapped the old books and put them back in the footlocker. “But these things?” and he picked up one of the “trap” stamps, a 75-centimes inverted.
“They’re a fine investment,” DeLord assured him, collecting the squares carefully. As he reached for a transparent envelope his leg brushed against one of the cartridge boxes we had put to one side. It fell and the sound it made striking the floor drew our attention.
Fascinated I stared down. One of the shells had lost its lead tip and two gemstones winked up at me.
“Chrissake!” Turtle gasped.
We grabbed up the shells and when we had finished opening them, a glittering assortment of jewels lay before us. The second box, apparently not even sealed, contained heavy gold and gem-encrusted crosses of ancient design.
“Willya look at that!” Turtle said as we lined up the impressive array of wealth.
The lieutenant was shaking his head slowly from side to side.
“The man was clever. I’ll give him that. We’ve been looking for these since the Cotentin. They’re why PM assigned me to the case. Tell me, Miss Carla, let’s suppose Warren did call on you. Did bring up the subject of the footlocker. I suppose he could have inquired whether you got your father’s things back safely. He might even have inquired what was returned. Would you have been likely to turn over to him the gun and the cartridge boxes?”
“Well,” I said with a heavy sigh, “probably yes. You’re not supposed to keep a service Colt and he’d know I know it. Yes, I probably would have handed him over a fortune in gems and the gun that killed my own father.” Pure hatred flooded me.
“But those books? How would he have got them back?” DeLord grinned at me. “I only just found that out myself. Let me backtrack a bit to where we left off before the navy landed. What had puzzled us was how the missing valuables were getting out of Europe. Even when I knew that Warren was the only possible suspect, and I didn’t know that until I’d planted my own trap, I still didn’t know how. I felt I was close to the solution when the colonel got wounded at Aachen.”
Turtle’s laugh was very unpleasant.
“I told my superiors my suspicions and a very close check was kept on Warren’s movements, contacts, and mail, while he was recuperating in the hospital. We arranged to have him transferred stateside, knowing he would have to lead us to the loot eventually if he was to realize any profit. By then, one or two items had turned up in pawnshops and in respectable antique shops. When Warren inquired when the next shipment of casualties’ effects was being made, we had our first real break. He tried to arrange his passage on the same ship but we switched him to another at the last moment.” DeLord’s eyes danced maliciously.