Late in the action of President Fu Manchu, protagonist Mark Hepburn examines a curious artifact left behind by the "madman of the Stratton Building."
It was a three-cent Daniel Webster stamp, dated 1932, gummed upside down upon a piece of cardboard, then framed by the paper in which a pear-shaped opening had been cut. The effect, when the frame was dropped over the stamp, was singular to a degree.
It produced a hideous Chinese face!
Mark Hepburn took out his notecase and carefully placed this queer discovery in it. As he returned the case to his pocket a memory came of hynotic green eyes staring into his own--a memory of the unforgettable features of Dr. Fu Manchu as he had seen them through the broken window on the night of the Chinatown raid . . . .
Yes, the fact was unmistakable: inverted and framed in this way, the Daniel Webster stamp presented a caricature, but a recognizable caricature, of Dr. Fu Manchu!
President Fu Manchu, pp. 238-239 of first edition
This curiosity was first noted by John Harwood
in a letter in The Rohmer Review No, 2.
Go to The Page of Fu Manchu
Copyright © 1997, 1998 Lawrence Knapp. All rights reserved.