A few days later, unable to live in doubt, Signor was en route to Mexico City.
After manœuvering for a week he found out that Don Garaye had once possessed such a stamp, but had sold it to a house in Lisbon, Portugal. There was no more impatient man on the boat than the Signor.
The expanse of water and sky was nothing to him. The thousands of horse power of the big engines harnessed did not work fast enough and the possible quest of every one on the boat dwindled to meaninglessness before the importance of his own.
Without a night's rest he hurried from Havre to Paris and fumed and fretted the few hours he had to wait for the Madrid express. After three days travel in the train, crossing France and Spain, Signor reached the city of Lisbon. But lo, the stamp, exchanged for a collection of other things, was now in Italy. The old Raspiegli of Rome, Italy's oldest philatelist, had acquired the much sought for unique "Bahama."
News of sudden inquiries travels fast among antiquarians and philatelists and the frequency of such inquiries raises the value of the thing inquired for.
Giuseppe Raspiegli of Rome knew all about Signor's travels ere that gentleman crossed the frontier of Italy. When an old man in a Prince Albert coat, casually visited his shop and inquired about a perforated Bahama stamp the Rome philatelist just as casually answered that the little thing was somewhere in Italy and that he could procure it if—if Signor was serious enough. Signor answered that he wanted to see it, but when he heard the price Raspiegli asked, he threw his hands up. It was double the amount he ever dared to ask for his Bahama.
For weeks at a stretch Signor secluded himself in his little attic room overlooking the Tiber. For hours and hours he looked at his own Bahama, he had believed so many years to be unique.