Dutch Blue Error

by William G. Tapply

  “Coyne.” The breeze blew across Graustein’s face again. “You should be a numismatist, Mr. Coyne. Your first name, it isn’t Bill, is it, sir?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “No. It’s Brady.”

  “Well,” he continued, “there just happens to be the smallest lull in my business at this moment, and you just happen to be talking with a man who knows all about rare stamps, sir.” He glanced again at his telephone. “So. Do you want to know about a particular rare stamp? Or rare stamps in general? How may I help you, Mr. Coyne?”

  “A particular one. It’s called the Dutch Blue Error. Are you familiar with it?”

  He ran his fingers through his thick tangle of white hair. “Everybody is familiar with the blue 1852 Netherlands fifteen-cent. I cannot tell you how to buy it, sir. But I can tell you many things about it.” He bent over and rummaged in a drawer in his desk. In a moment he produced a tattered old magazine, which he flipped through and then spread out on the desktop in front of me. “The official story is in here. You can read it. But it is not the whole story, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me ask you a question, sir,” said Graustein.

  “What’s my interest in the stamp, right?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m inquiring for a client.”

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  “That’s all I can tell you,” I said.

  “Does your client want to buy the Dutch Blue Error?”

  I smiled and shrugged.

  “Because if he does, I cannot help you. However, if he desires to sell it…”

  “Yes?”

  “If he wants to sell it—if your client owns the Dutch Blue Error—I would like to have the opportunity to buy it from him. Will you tell him that for me, sir? You might not think so, but I could buy that stamp.”

  “My client,” I said carefully, “wants neither to buy nor to sell the Dutch Blue Error. Believe me. I just want to learn about it. I just need the information.”

  Graustein sighed. “Yes. Well, have it that way, then. All right. Briefly. The Blue Error, it is assumed, was originally one of a single sheet of the fifteen-cent orange issue. The plate was probably incorrectly inked. It may have been the first sheet printed, and the printer realized his mistake after the first sheet was produced. No one knows. There are many ways such errors can be made. At any rate, the stamps probably did not circulate, except for the Blue Error of which you inquire. None of the others, if there was an entire sheet, has ever turned up, sir. It has been assumed for many years that the other blue errors—if there were others—were destroyed by the printer. Perhaps they have simply disappeared. Once that assumption became widely accepted, once it seemed probable that there were no other blue errors, the value of that one stamp increased rapidly. Of course, it is possible—not likely, I should say, sir, but possible—that there are others yet to be found.”

  Graustein told me of the stamp’s discovery by a Dutch boy in 1885, his sale of it to a dealer, and the periodic exchanges of the stamp among European dealers. “Each of these sales is documented,” he said. “Right up to the last one.”

  “When was that?”

  “That was 1967, at an auction in Paris.”

  “And the stamp hasn’t been sold since then?”

  “No”

  “Could it be sold privately?”

  “Only in violation of the tax laws of every civilized nation on earth, sir,” said Graustein. “No. It is assumed that the 1967 buyer still owns the Dutch Blue Error.”

  “Who,” I asked hesitantly, “was that buyer?”

  He shrugged. “I do not know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. It is a mystery. The man who did know is dead.”

  “Dead?” I elevated my eyebrows to encourage him.

  “Yes. The agent. The sale, we assume, was made to an American. Perhaps an individual, more likely a corporation or a conglomerate. Conceivably even a museum, although one would assume they would want to show the stamp. In any case, whoever bought it used a purchaser. An agent, a Frenchman, who acted on behalf of the buyer. This is quite common among wealthy collectors, sir. They have agents in the major cities with the authority and the access to funds to make purchases. In any case, a French agent purchased the Blue Error in April of 1967.”

  “He has since died, you say:”

  Graustein’s faded blue eyes stared at me. “He died within twenty-four hours of the transaction. He was found in the swimming pool of the hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with a broken neck. Suicide, sir. He jumped from the balcony outside the building into the pool. Eight floors down.”

  I took out a Winston and tapped it on the top of his desk.

  “Oh, please, sir. Do not smoke in here.”

  “Sorry,” I said, sticking the cigarette back into the pack.

  “I do not stock a great number of stamps. But those I have are very valuable. The smoke is not good for them. And I do fear fire, sir.”

  “I understand.” I returned the pack to my pocket. “So this French agent was the last one to have the stamp.”

  “It is believed that he bought the stamp and delivered it to his client in Puerto Rico before he jumped from the balcony. The trail of the Dutch Blue Error ends there, sir. In 1967 in San Juan with the suicide of the French agent.”

  My mind whirled with half-formed thoughts.

  “Of course,” continued Graustein, “there are stories. Now and then a Dutch Blue Error story will make the rounds. The latest story is that one of Fidel Castro’s henchmen duped the French agent out of the stamp, and when the Frenchman realized what had been done to him, he took his own life so that he would not have to face his client.”

  “What do you think, Mr. Graustein?”

  “Me?” He looked surprised. “I do not know, sir. There was an earlier story that makes about as much sense.”

  I smiled and waited.

  Graustein rested his forearms on his desktop and leaned toward me. “The Dutch Blue Error has always been owned by Europeans. In 1934 it was purchased from an Englishman by a Parisian. Monsieur Ouelette. When Paris was occupied, so the story goes, Ouelette bought his and his family’s passage to Switzerland from a Nazi officer. The Dutch Blue Error was the price of his liberty. According to the tale, a Citroen registered to a Monsieur Ouelette drove off a mountain a few miles short of the Swiss border.”

  I shook my head. I thought of Francis Shaughnessey and Albert Dopplinger. A lot of dead men lay strewn in the wake of the Dutch Blue Error.

  “When the 1967 transaction was made,” he continued, “the agent who sold it had all the right papers. He claimed to be acting on behalf of a Mr. Ouelette.” Graustein shrugged. “Ouelette is not an uncommon name. So who knows whether it is a true story or not? But that is not the interesting thing, sir.”

  “The interesting thing?”

  “Yes. The interesting thing is this. If you believe the story, the Nazis intended to create several duplicates of the Blue Error.”

  “Duplicates!” Scenarios abounded. “Why would they want to do that?”

  “Possibly simply to make money. The Nazis, as you remember, were very interested in owning valuable things. Or else, as a part of their grand plan, they intended to devalue all things not owned by the Germans.” He pronounced it “Chermans.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “If good forgeries of the Dutch Blue Error began to turn up, people would become increasingly cautious about buying other rare stamps. That would be natural, do you see, sir? It would be considered a poor investment. The market would become depressed. Conceivably at that point, agents of the German government would begin to buy up the rare stamps of the world, just as they had confiscated and hoarded the contents of the great museums and private collections of Europe.” Graustein shrugged again. “It is just a story. Since the Nazis lost the war, I suppose we will never know.”

  “I thought forgeries were easy to detect.”

 
“That is very complicated, sir,” he said. He turned his head around to stare at the clock on the wall behind him. It was 4:25. “Very complicated to explain about forgeries,” he repeated.

  “Mr. Graustein, suppose I buy you a beer?”

  “A nice glass of German beer. Yes, that would be fine, sir,” said Graustein, smiling as if he hadn’t thought of it. “I even know a little place.”

  He fumbled with the several locks on his door and led me down the stairs and out onto Bromfield Street. We turned left, and at the end of the alley emerged onto Washington Street. We had entered what is universally known as Boston’s Combat Zone. The City Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, have designated that stretch of Washington Street a kind of legal no-man’s land, a free-fire area, where porno film operators, topless dancers, prostitutes, and pimps can all ply their dubious trades more or less free of official interference, and visiting salesmen and commuting executives can buy watered-down drinks for five bucks, provided they’ll do the same for the bar girls who sit beside them, and by asking the right questions they can also invest in a case of herpes to bring home to their wives.

  In the evening, loud music spills out onto the streets, hookers stroll in pairs and threesomes, cars creep slowly along the streets, and old men urinate in the alleys against the brick walls. A few years ago, a Harvard football player was stabbed to death in a Combat Zone bar. He and some of his teammates had gone to celebrate their season, which had ended with a glorious victory over Yale. He was a linebacker, a senior who had played the last game of his career that afternoon. A pre-med student, the papers said.

  No one ever figured out who stabbed the kid, or why. A cop was quoted as saying that was the risk you took going into the Combat Zone.

  But at 4:30 on a bright Monday afternoon in early October, the Combat Zone was enjoying an armistice. The people who walked along the sidewalks barely glanced into the darkened establishments along the way. They seemed to be just passing through, secretaries and bankers and account executives on their way home from their State Street offices.

  Graustein led me to a tiny bar wedged between a place that displayed photos of big-busted women in advanced states of nudity, and a movie theater whose marquee boasted: ALL X-RATED!!!

  I followed Morris Graustein through the door into a narrow, dark barroom. At the far end, a small color television was tuned to an afternoon soap opera, and a thin man in a short-sleeved white shirt leaned against the wall behind the bar, staring at it. When Graustein hopped up onto a stool, the bartender glanced over and lifted his eyebrows. Graustein nodded and smiled. The thin man poured a tall glass of coffee-colored beer from a tap and set it on a cardboard coaster in front of the stamp dealer.

  “Thank you, Jimmy,” he said. “And you, my friend? Will you have the same?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Jimmy brought two glasses of the dark brew and whisked away Graustein’s first, already empty. “Ah,” he said. “The first for the thirst, and the rest for the taste.” He lifted it toward me, then raised it to his lips. I imitated him. The beer was strong and creamy and faintly bitter.

  “Now, sir,” said Graustein, wiping a frothy mustache from his lip with the sleeve of his shirt, “you wanted to know about fraudulent stamps.”

  I shrugged. “It sounds interesting. And you mentioned the Nazis…”

  He waved his hand. “Oh, sir, that is only a tale. I do not think that happened.”

  “In any case.”

  “Yes. Well, then.” Graustein sipped his beer. “There are two kinds of fraudulent stamps, sir. First there are the forgeries. Counterfeits. Like paper money, eh? And as with counterfeit money, knowledgeable people cannot be fooled by forged stamps.”

  “They can’t?”

  “Oh, my, no. There are too many ways to detect forgeries. The size, the details of the design, the color and type of ink, the type of paper, the quality and color of the gum, the manufacturing process—all of these are variables, sir, that the expert can examine. Just as with paper money.”

  “I see,” I said. “Forgeries really aren’t a problem, then.”

  “Not with very rare stamps, sir. They are examined too carefully. Sometimes with middle-range stamps we find forgeries. But your concern is the Dutch Blue Error, and no forgery would escape the detection of an expert. It would be an absurd waste of effort to forge such a stamp. Absurd.”

  Graustein shook his head in dismay at the thought.

  Jimmy, who had returned to his television program, glanced over and said, “Again, gentlemen?”

  “Why, yes, Jimmy. Please,” said Graustein.

  “You mentioned a second kind of fraud,” I said.

  “Ah, thank you, Jimmy,” he said to the bartender, who replaced our empty glasses with full ones. The philatelist sipped from his glass. “Mmm. Ambrosia. Nectar of the gods. Divine. Wonderful.” He pronounced it “vunderful.”

  “Fakes,” said Graustein.

  “Huh?”

  “The second kind of fraud, sir. Fakes. These are genuine stamps that are altered to increase their value. A much nastier matter.”

  I raised my eyebrows over the rim of my glass. Graustein’s eyes twinkled in reply.

  “The third great pillar of philatelic value, sir,” he said. “Condition.” Then he frowned. “Of no interest with regard to your Blue Error stamp. The British Guyana black and magenta, of course, which we generally acknowledge to be the single most valuable stamp in the world—it is in perfectly horrible condition. Corners cut off, nasty blob of a postmark. With stamps of this great rarity, these unique stamps, condition is less of a factor than supply and demand. Most especially, of course, demand.” I nodded. Ollie Weston had told me much the same thing.

  “On the other hand,” he continued, after a long draught from his glass, “there are hundreds of genuinely rare and valuable stamps for which condition is all-important. A very fine mint stamp—well centered, clear, bright color, unhinged, with original gum, perforations nicely torn—that stamp might be worth, let us say, three thousand dollars. That would be a collector’s prize. And the same stamp, off center, or color faded by the sun, perhaps creased or with a tiny half-millimeter tear in the corner, or with pulled perforations—actually, sir, with any one of those seemingly minor defects—your same stamp might bring you forty or fifty dollars. If you could find someone to buy it. No bargain, sir.”

  “Yes. I see.”

  “So, you create a fake from that stamp. You alter it. You repair a crease or a tear or a thin spot, let us say. Or perhaps you erase or fade a heavy cancellation—what we call a ‘killer blob.’ With care, this can be done with chemicals. Or you can brighten faded color, eliminate a stain, regum the back. There are unscrupulous men who will doctor stamps in such ways to increase their value, do you see? Alas, it is most difficult to detect. Few have the skill and the equipment with which to detect such clever doctoring of stamps.”

  “Have you ever heard of Albert Dopplinger?” I asked him.

  “Ah, poor Albeit. I knew Albert, yes.”

  “Was he considered…?”

  “Oh, my, yes. The best. Better by far than me, sir. And he had all the equipment. The microscopes, the quartz lights, the chemicals. Nobody was better than Albert.” Graustein shook his head. “He is dead, you know.”

  “Yes. He was murdered.”

  Graustein turned again to stare at me. His eyes were solemn. “Is this why…?”

  “No,” I said. “I told you. I’m an attorney.”

  “Because I know of no one who would want to murder Albert Dopplinger, sir.”

  “I’m sure of it,” I said. “I have no interest in the murder case. I’m interested in the Dutch Blue Error.”

  “On the other hand,” Graustein continued, as if I had not spoken, “men have been murdered for stamps. Oh, yes.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  He steepled his fingers in front of his face. “The two-cent Hawaiian Missionary of 1851. There are only fifteen of them in existence.
According to the story, they were used by missionaries on their mail back to the mainland. Cheap, unattractive stamps. But valuable to collectors. They are worth perhaps one hundred thousand dollars today, the two-cents. Not as valuable as your Blue Error, sir, but valuable stamps. Worth killing for, some might say. Hm. Shall we have more beer, sir?”

  I nodded and gestured to Jimmy, who slid two brimming glasses to us.

  “One day, sometime in the eighteen-nineties,” continued Graustein, after a long draught on his beer, “I forget the exact year, a gentleman named Gaston Leroux was found murdered in his Paris flat. The police had no clues—no known enemies, no motive, no evidence of theft. There was money still there, gold coins, a diamond watch. But Leroux was a philatelist, and one of the investigators happened to know a bit about stamps. He examined the dead man’s collection and determined that there was one stamp missing. Yes, sir. The two-cent Missionary of 1851. So the detective thought that he might have a motive for murder, and his suspicions soon centered on a gentleman named Hector Giroux, a friend of Leroux and himself a collector. The detective befriended the unsuspecting Giroux. They had, after all, a common passion in philately. And one evening Giroux invited the inspector to his flat. The detective turned the conversation to the Missionary stamps, and Giroux was duped into proudly showing off his collection to the detective. It contained one of the two-cents—the precise one, the detective was convinced, that had belonged to the late M. Leroux. The next day Giroux was arrested and interrogated. He was unable to explain satisfactorily how he had acquired the two-cent Missionary. No papers, you see. No authentication, no bill of sale. So he was charged with the murder of Gaston Leroux. And eventually he confessed. His explanation, which, one imagines, he may have considered a justification, was that he needed the two-cent to complete his collection of Hawaiian Missionaries.” Graustein smiled elfishly at me. “Only a true philatelist could sympathize with Hector Giroux, eh?”

  I returned his smile. “I suppose you’re right,” I said. “But, as I said, I am only interested in the Dutch Blue Error.”

  “And you want to know about fakes and forgeries. And you knew Albert.” Graustein nodded his head up and down. several times. Then he turned to grin at me. “Well, maybe you will find the man who murdered Albert anyway, eh? Wouldn’t that be something? All right, sir. Let me tell you about the other kind of fake, and then we shall drink some more fine German beer, eh?”