Some people call him Signor, but he is better known as "Unique" and many more people call him "Signor Unique." He is a bent little man in a long green Prince Albert coat that was once black. A short gray beard frames a pale face in squashed folds on which squats a flat nose. Bushy, low-arched eyebrows shade two little eyes which move rapidly up and down and in and out of their orbs as move scared little mice in their hole. Such is the appearance of Signor when you meet him in his musty shop littered with bric-a-brac.

On the street his gait is so irregular it suggests that he is vociferating with his legs; that the two limbs are quarreling with the jerking arms and that the four limbs argue each separately with the pavement and the curb stones about things we simple mortals will never understand.

From where and when he came here nobody knows. But all the antiquarians on 28th Street swear—and some of these gentlemen are much older than the antiques they sell—that Signor was there before any of them was born, that his shop is the oldest on the street.

They also assure you that he can "smell" a fake antique from a distance. In fact, they maintain, this sixth sense of Signor has been his undoing. He could not "guarantee" the genuineness of an article. He knew too much.

Most of the others guaranteed in good faith and ignorance thousands of pieces, and made fortunes, where Signor only shook his head derisively.

They have sold "genuine" Memlings to collecting millionaires, swords of Gaspard Olivares and statues of Osiris as well as Chinese porcelains and Buddhas, the origin of which they refused to know, while Signor maintained that the real things still on the market would not fill a good sized shoe.

On the dusty shelves in Signor's store are pieces in brass, pewter, glass and iron of no particular artistic value, but the origin of each thing is guaranteed by the dusty old man.

He will tell you the whole history of every bit of metal in his shop. And if you think him stark mad when he announces the price of the iron hinge on which once hung the principal door of the Amiens Cathedral, or of the brass lantern which once adorned the nuptial chambers of the Moor King Mambrin of Don Quixote fame—if you are stunned by Signor's prices he will tell you that all these things are "unique."

Signor never owned or sold a thing which was not unique. He has investigated that Cathedral door hinge and convinced himself that the upper hinge on which now hangs the door is a new one. As to the brass lantern, he has a hundred authorities to strengthen his allegation.

One must know that Signor does not deal in things that have their counterpart somewhere on this planet.

But above all, Signor has always been proud of his collection of stamps. Among the philatelists the world over he is listed as the owner of the most searched for stamps.

There are standing offers of thousands of dollars for some of the little colored squares of paper Signor is tucking safely away in his heavy safe every sundown. Bent over his little desk in a corner of his darkened shop, the old man is daily examining his stamp collection.

He looks them over again and again; treats them, where there is suspicion of decay, nurses them back to health, using medicines from labelled bottles or by exposing them to the air after mid-day, when the rays of the sun no longer affect color and tissue.

No living thing ever had his care. To these square pieces of paper he has devoted all his life. To obtain them he has schemed and worried and worked and lived.

Of all the stamps in his collection, Signor had one which had given him the greatest trouble and which he had nursed for years. It was the only postage stamp left of a first emission of one of the Bahama Islands.

For some reason or other this stamp was perforated and the edge around the holes in the paper was thinning away with a rapidity which frightened the old philatelist.

He loved that stamp as a father loves a sick child of genius. There was not another one like it in the world. Not another bit of carmine paper with a five-cornered crown and a small cross a little off centre.

There was a standing offer for the stamp by a philatelist of London who had tried for years to induce Signor to part with it, but the bent little man prized and loved the stamp even more, when he knew how much the other man across the waters wanted to have it.

Out of sheer perversity, he occasionally wrote to London to find out whether James Bolton would not offer a bigger price. With each increase the other offered, he grew in Signor's estimation. But to part with the "Bahama" was another question!

And suddenly, through some other philatelist, Signor learned that there existed in Mexico City another "Bahama," just like his own. At first he pretended that he did not believe the report. He was so sure that the one he had was unique!

But little by little the suspicion of such possibility wormed itself into him and undermined his confidence. He looked at the stamp, questioningly, as one would at the corpse of a dead woman, whose faithfulness was just impugned, but there was no answer.

A few days later, unable to live in doubt, Signor was en route to Mexico City.

After manoeuvering 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.

Raspiegli demanded such an enormous sum for his stamp! It was in much better condition than the one Signor owned. Time had been kindlier to its color and tissue. But the price was an enormous one. It was almost all he possessed. It meant ruin.

The old philatelist could neither eat nor sleep. His limbs grew even more quarrelsome with one another and his bent shoulders now frequently entered the argument.

Raspiegli was made of adamant. He had fixed his price and would not relent.

He had sized up his customer and knew that sooner or later the little man would open his wallet and pay.

Meanwhile Signor starved himself to death. When he had finally decided to pay the price to Raspiegli he had just enough left to carry him home on the next boat.

That last night in the attic room overlooking the Tiber was one of great suffering. He cried. He tore his hair. He bit his nails.

But early morning found him at the door of Raspiegli, money in hand.

"It is all I possess Maestro Raspiegli," he muttered.

"Which shows you are a real philatelist," the Italian answered suavely as he counted the money.

From the deepest recess of the safe he brought out the little square of carmine paper. Signor looked at it again. No doubt it was in a better state of preservation than his own, but he felt no warmth, no intimacy, no kinship with it.

"You will probably yet make a profit on it," Raspiegli disturbed the old man's contemplation.

"A profit! A profit! I did not buy it to make a profit. I only wanted that my own Bahama should be the only one of its kind."

As he spoke he lit a match and before Raspiegli had time to interfere the ashes of the other "Bahama" mixed with the dust on the floor.

For Signor things had to be unique to be worth keeping.