French was profoundly worried by the disappearance of Molly Moran. He could not get out of his mind the thought that if anything happened to her he was by no means free from responsibility. There could be no doubt that it was through him that she had incurred the suspicion of the gang, and he had led her to believe that she could confide in him with perfect safety. Bitterly he regretted his oversight in not having her shadowed so that her kidnapping would have been impossible. Again and again he cursed his mistake and again and again he swore to leave no stone unturned to save her, and if unhappily he failed in that, to bring her murderers to justice.
There was little that he could do personally but remain in his room and collate and sift the information which soon began to come in. A good deal was obtained as a result of the inquries which he had set on foot, but unfortunately it was all negative.
The first news he had was from the men he had sent to the banks at which Style got rid of his half-crowns. At none of them had the man been seen. This was Thursday and since Tuesday he had neither paid in half-crowns nor drawn cheques. The total sum standing to his credit in all six was close on five hundred pounds. It was evident, therefore, that he was badly frightened, if, as seemed likely, he had abandoned the money.
Telephone reports from the other men engaged were equally disappointing. Sergeant Harvey rang up to say that he had been unable to learn anything at the Panopticon. Miss Moran had left at her usual time on the Tuesday evening and an assistant with whom she had walked to the tube said that her remarks showed that she intended to be at work on the following day. Nor was any news available from her boarding house. On the Wednesday evening she had not returned after the performance. That was the desolating fact. She had not sent any message to explain her absence nor had she previously given a hint to anyone there that she might not be home.
Even more disquieting was the report from Carter. He had been unable to arrest Curtice Welland because Welland also had disappeared. The man had not returned home on Wednesday evening nor had he been seen since. His housekeeper, however, was not alarmed about him as he had sent her a telegram on Wednesday afternoon to say that he was unexpectedly called away on business and would be absent for a few days. His usual haunts had been shadowed and exhaustive inquiries made, but all to no purpose.
The three other box office girls who had been changing coins were interrogated, also without result. At first all three had denied that they had been engaged in questionable practices with half-crowns, but the police examination had soon broken them down and they had admitted their complicity. But all stated that Wednesday was the last day on which they had seen Welland. None of them had seen Style for many weeks.
One vitally important piece of information, however, came in, a piece, indeed, fundamental to the whole inquiry. At any other time it would have raised French to the pitch of exalted enthusiasm usual to him under such circumstances. But now he was so worried about Molly Moran’s safety that he took the news as a matter of course.
Returning to the Yard from a further visit to the girl’s boarding house in Nelson Street, he found himself in demand. ‘Chief wants you, sir,’ he was told by the first three men he met, while Inspector Tanner, whom he passed on the way to his room, hailed him with, ‘Hullo, French, my son! Now you’ve been and gone and done it! There has been no peace here this morning, looking for Brer French.’
Before French could reply a sergeant approached.
‘Beg pardon, sir, but the assistant commissioner wishes to see you in his room as soon as possible.’
‘Lord!’ said French. ‘What’s all the shindy about? Right, Sergeant. I’m going now.’
Sir Mortimer Ellison, the assistant commissioner, was seated at his desk in his well but plainly furnished office when French entered. With him were two other men, evidently from their dress and bearing persons of importance. One was small, white-haired and precise looking, the other, a younger man, was evidently his subordinate. All three were smoking the opulent Turkish cigarettes which Sir Mortimer affected. The elder of the visitors was speaking, the others listening with every appearance of interest.
‘Come along, French,’ said Sir Mortimer, interrupting the other’s flow of conversation. ‘You’ve turned up in the nick of time. This is the inspector who has been handling the case, gentlemen. French, these are Mr Cullimore and Mr Dove from the Mint. They’ve called about that silver bombshell you sent down.’
‘What, sir?’ French exclaimed. ‘Then the coins were counterfeit all right?’
‘All right?’ Sir Mortimer waved his hand towards French and looked quizzically at the others. ‘Hear Scotland Yard speak! French, you’ve got a distorted mind. Revelling in iniquity. Why should you be pleased because the revered institution which our friends represent has been the victim of a fraud?’
French knew his superior.
‘Pleased to tell them, sir, that thanks to Scotland Yard the fraud is at an end,’ he said without a smile.
‘There’s Scotland Yard again. When you have no answer, beg the question. I do it myself, so I know. Now, French, sit down in that chair and tell us all about it.’
But French remained standing with a puzzled expression on his face.
‘But what about—’ he began, then stopped.
‘What is it, French?’
‘Sorry, sir. But this can only refer to the second lot of coins. The first lot were good.’
‘That is so,’ broke in Cullimore in thin, precise tones. ‘The first batch was good. It is this second batch alone that is in question.’
‘A bit puzzling that, sir,’ French went on to the assistant commissioner. ‘I should have expected it the other way round. The first batch was given to the girl Moran to pass out to the public, the second was in Style’s safe. Why should they pass out good coins?’
‘You’ve got them the wrong way round. That lot you got from the girl must have been received from the public, not from the gang.’
French shook his head.
‘No, sir, I’m quite sure of my ground there. Miss Moran put the coins she got from the public in the car. What she gave me were taken from the car for distribution.’
There was silence for a moment, then Sir Mortimer spoke.
‘Well, if I can’t prove you in the wrong I must try something else. How would this do? Those people are smarter than you’ve been giving them credit for. They twigged you were on them and went canny. Is there any way they could have known what you were up to?’
‘Through the girls, sir,’ French admitted. ‘I saw the risk, but I had to take it.’
‘There you are, then. The girls reported your activities and Welland, Style & Co., thought it healthier to trade good money. Well, French, when these gentlemen rang me up to make an appointment I expected Chief Inspector Mitchell would be here to post me in the affair until you got back. But Mitchell has been detained at Croydon so that I have been unable to tell them more than the main outlines. Now you start in from the beginning and let us have all the details.’
‘About the cinema girls, sir?’
‘About the silver. I’ve explained the method of distribution through the cinema girls and that is all these gentlemen require to know on that point. You tell about everything connected directly with the silver.’
‘I’m afraid, sir, there’s not so much to be told. All I’ve found is—’ and French began explaining his investigations in detail. He told of the distribution and transport of the coins, the vanity bags, the secret panel beneath the seat of Welland’s car and the pipe connecting the two garages. Then he read out his notes of what he had found in the office, particularly the weights of silver and copper purchased compared to the weight of silver ornaments sold. The three men listened with keen attention, Cullimore congratulating him warmly when he had finished.
‘It’s the cleverest fraud I’ve come across for many a day,’ he declared. ‘Indeed I don’t mind admitting that if it hadn’t been for our friend here it might have gone on almost indefinitely. It would never have been discovered from mere inspection of the coins. They look perfect. Only careful tests in our laboratories proved they were counterfeit.’
‘Made by an expert?’ Sir Mortimer prompted.
‘Unquestionably. Perfectly marvellous the way they were turned out! I have shown them to several of our people and they all said they were good; men with wide experience too. I don’t wonder that Miss Moran’s bank clerk friend was deceived. You see,’ Cullimore monopolised the conversation with evident pleasure, ‘there are four principal tests of a silver coin: its appearance, by which I include feel and texture as well as design; its weight, its composition and its ring. All these tests were met or discounted, except perhaps that of composition and that was practically met.’
‘I don’t know that I quite follow you,’ said Sir Mortimer, and French nodded his agreement.
‘Well, take composition. The composition of these coins was the actual composition of the coins we turn out from the Mint. In other words, the fake coins were genuine as far as the material of which they were made was concerned—at least, as nearly as it could be done without our extraordinarily accurate system of proportioning the ingredients. In fact, it took our extraordinarily accurate system to discover the inaccuracy. That is what I meant by saying that this test of composition had been practically met.’
The assistant commissioner nodded.
‘The proportions of metal in our silver at present,’ went on Cullimore, ‘are 50 per cent silver and 50 per cent alloy, principally copper. You will see what I mean when I tell you that these fake coins contained not less than 48.63 nor more than 51.12 per cent of silver, the remainder being alloy. Nothing there to call one’s attention to a fake!’
‘That is so. Yet your people found the discrepancy.’
Cullimore shrugged his shoulders.
‘We did, but we’re not proud of it. The less we say about that part of the affair the better. My point is that no one would have suspected anything wrong from the appearance of the coins.’
Sir Mortimer nodded again.
‘You mentioned three other tests?’
‘Yes, those of design, weight and ring. Take the first of these. Now I’m sure you know, Sir Mortimer, that no matter how carefully a coin is copied, defects will creep in. Particles of dust or slight defects in the original will make a difference. Admittedly these may be invisible to the naked eye, but a microscope will reveal them. Any coins struck as copies, that is, not from the original dies, will be microscopically defective in the detail of its design. You follow me?’
‘Quite.’
‘Now take weight. This is dependent primarily on the thickness of the coin and the correct thickness can only be produced by the elaborate machines in the Mint. It is scarcely conceivable that a forger could obtain one of these machines. These two tests together are therefore very reliable and convincing.’
‘Then surely the fake coins could have been discovered by these?’
‘Ah,’ Cullimore replied, making a little gesture of demonstration as he reached his point, ‘that’s what I thought you’d say and that’s where the cleverness of this gang comes in. They discounted these two tests, and that in the simplest and most natural way imaginable. They wore the coins.’
‘Wore them?’
‘Yes. In some way which we can only imagine they produced wear. Our engineers imagine that they turned them with very fine sand in some kind of a rotary churn, for the microscope shows that the wear is really caused by numbers of very fine scores and cuts. Ordinary wear from circulation, while it shows occasional cuts and scratches, leaves a comparatively smooth surface on the higher parts of the design. But even so, what I might call this counterfeiting of wear was uncommonly well done. Here again only the microscope could have told the difference.’
‘And that had the effect—’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Cullimore, determined not to be cheated of his climax. ‘Don’t you see? That had the effect of blurring the design so that minor defects became invisible and also lightening it so that the weight test became inoperative. Clever, wasn’t it?’
‘Rather an obvious precaution, I should say,’ the assistant commissioner commented, annoyed at having the words taken out of his mouth.
‘No doubt,’ the other admitted, ‘but how to do it is not so obvious.’
‘Well, it’s all very interesting at all events. What about the ring?’
Cullimore sat back and became less enthusiastic.
‘The ring?’ he repeated. ‘The ring is not so easy to explain. It depends on a lot of things, such as the precise degree of hardness of the coins. Even with the careful manufacture in the Mint we do not get all coins to ring alike. All have to be tested individually, and those which do not ring correctly are rejected. I fancy our counterfeiters must have adopted the same plan.’
When Cullimore finished speaking there was silence for some seconds. Sir Mortimer busied himself in handing round fresh cigarettes. When they were lighted, French said:
‘There is one point which has been bothering me since I became satisfied that these people were coining and that is, How does it pay them? Surely it must cost at least nearly half a crown to produce a half-crown?’
‘No,’ returned Cullimore, ‘it doesn’t. That’s just the point. It should pay them uncommonly well. You know, of course,’ he went on, addressing the company generally, ‘that during the War the price of silver went up, so that coins were worth more when melted down than as currency. This actually led to a considerable loss of coins. To meet the difficulty the percentage of silver was reduced. Formerly it was 92.5 per cent, but in 1920 it was reduced to the 50 per cent of which I spoke a moment ago. Since 1920 the price of silver has fallen again. It is now standing at about two shillings an ounce. The cost of the silver in a half-crown is therefore less than sixpence—let us assume sixpence. The alloy and manufacture, including overhead, might at the very most be another sixpence. These people could therefore produce a half-crown at a cost of about a shilling, making eighteenpence profit on each coin. As the law now stands, that’s the unhappy fact.’
‘By Jove!’ French turned to Sir Mortimer. ‘In that case, sir, it prompts one to ask why the staple industry of the British Isles is not counterfeiting coining?’
‘A pertinent question, French. I was considering it myself. Difficulty of distribution, I presume.’
‘That’s it, Sir Mortimer,’ Cullimore declared. ‘Any skilful man may produce sufficiently good coins to pass, but it takes a genius to get rid of enough to pay for the plant. That’s why most people with these ideas try printing notes. If you can make eight or nine shillings for every ten-shilling note you pass the game becomes worthwhile, particularly when changing notes is so easy. But you cannot change half-crowns in the same way. Some system of changing like that of Mr French’s friends becomes necessary and that’s where the trouble arises.’
‘That’s where it arose in this case anyway,’ said French. ‘The distribution was the weak link in the whole scheme.’
‘So it has proved,’ Cullimore admitted. ‘But I consider it an extremely clever scheme all the same. The more you consider the problem involved, the more you will realise, I think, its enormous difficulty. Just think, Mr French. How would you have done it?’
‘Oh, come now, Mr Cullimore,’ Sir Mortimer said gravely. ‘Don’t make him incriminate himself. If you ask him questions like that you will have him telling you that things of the kind are not done at the Yard.’
French grinned.
‘That, sir, is the answer to the question. All the same if I had to find a scheme, I should try to avoid one which left me in the hands of four box office girls. That’s what gave the thing away. If the girls had been members of the conspiracy it might never have come out. But the fear that the girls would give the show away led to them doing so.’
‘I begin to appreciate the force of your remark, Sir Mortimer, about the Yard’s habit of begging the question,’ Cullimore declared dryly. ‘But I don’t quite appreciate Mr French’s point. You say, Mr French, that the girls gave the scheme away. But I understood they hadn’t?’
‘Not directly, sir. But the gang were afraid they might and adopted murder to safeguard themselves. The murder gave them away.’
‘Oh, quite. I see what you mean.’ Cullimore dismissed the point airily and turned to a new one. ‘I suppose there is no way of estimating how many of these faked half-crowns are in existence?’
‘You gave me some figures on that, French. Just turn them up, will you?’
‘All I can suggest is this, sir. Miss Moran told me that she passed out from one hunderd to one hundred and fifty a day. I took a minimum of between seven and eight hundred a week. If all four girls were doing the same that would be, say, three thousand a week or in round numbers 150,000 a year. We understand that the conspiracy has been running about that time.’
‘Nearly nineteen thousand pounds worth of spurious money in circulation!’ Cullimore shook his head. ‘It’s bad, but it might be worse.’
‘And nearly twelve thousand pounds a year netted,’ Sir Mortimer added. ‘Quite a profitable little enterprise, particularly if the profits had only to be divided among three. What will your department do about it, Mr Cullimore?’
Cullimore glanced at him keenly.
‘That really is rather a problem, Sir Mortimer,’ he admitted. ‘To all intents and purposes the money is good. Moreover, to recall it would be a virtual impossibility. At present I may as well admit that I do not see that we can do anything but accept it as genuine and let it continue to circulate. Of course, I am speaking off-hand and without proper consideration. But that is my present view.’
For some time they continued discussing the matter and then Cullimore remarked: ‘The thing I cannot get over is the extraordinary skill with which the coins were turned out. This gang must surely have some technical training and it’s not a trade that many men follow. You know nothing, of course, as to their identity?’
Sir Mortimer shook his head.
‘We have their descriptions, though up to the present it hasn’t helped us much. But I appreciate your point about technical training and we shall certainly make inquiries on these lines.’
‘Just the sort of thing one would expect from Jim Sibley. What do you say, Mr Cullimore?’ said a new voice, and French looked with a sort of surprised interest at Dove, who had not yet spoken.
‘’Pon my soul, I shouldn’t be at all surprised to hear he had something to do with it,’ Cullimore returned. ‘He’s the only man I know who could do such work. You haven’t come across a stout, red-haired man in your inquiries, I suppose, Sir Mortimer?’
‘Not so far. Who might Jim Sibley be, if it is not indiscreet to ask?’
‘Up till three years ago he was an engineer employed at the Mint. He was with us for about seven years and I don’t mind saying that, present company excepted, he was the most brilliantly clever man it has ever been my good fortune to meet. There was nothing about coining he didn’t know and nothing he couldn’t do with his hands. Extraordinarily resourceful too. It was a pleasure to see him tackle a difficulty, especially one which required some ingenious adaption of some tool or machine for its solution. As Mr Dove says, this coining business certainly suggests his hand.’
‘Why did he leave you, Mr Cullimore?’
The little man shrugged his shoulders.
‘Rejected coins were disappearing. We were satisfied that he was stealing them, but we couldn’t prove it. We asked him to leave.’
‘And did the thefts go on?’
‘No, when he left there was no further trouble. There was not the slightest doubt of his guilt, but he was clever enough to prevent us getting proof.’
Sir Mortimer not commenting, French asked if Mr Cullimore would kindly explain what rejected coins were and what was the object of stealing them.
‘By rejected coins I mean those which are complete, but which fail to pass some of the tests imposed. For instance, a half-crown, otherwise perfect, might not ring quite true. It would therefore be rejected and would go back to the furnace to be remelted. Its value to the thief, who would presumably put it into circulation, would be just two and sixpence.’
‘That seems a useful hint about this Sibley, sir,’ French said to the assistant commissioner. ‘With your permission I should like to ask these gentlemen for further particulars about him.’
‘By all means, French. Get what you can out of them while you have the chance.’
But neither of the visitors could give information which seemed likely to lead to Sibley’s apprehension. It was arranged, therefore, that French should send a man to the Mint to look up records and learn what he could from other members of the staff.
‘I would go myself, sir,’ French went on, ‘but I don’t want to leave the Yard for the present. I want to be here if any news of that girl should come in.’
‘Quite.’ Sir Mortimer turned to the others. ‘Inspector French is much upset as to the possible fate of one of the four girls who were changing coins for these ruffians. After worm—shall I say “obtaining her confidence,” French?—she has disappeared and there is evidence that she has been kidnapped. Three of her predecessors were kidnapped and, I regret to say, murdered, almost certainly under similar circumstances.’
‘When I asked her for her confidence I promised her protection,’ French explained in a low tone.
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Sir Mortimer declared. ‘I appreciate your feelings, but you mustn’t let sentiment run away with you. You acted for the best and no one is omniscient.’
‘Thank you, sir. But you see why I want to stay at the Yard?’
‘Yes, I approve of that. Well, gentlemen,’ he went on to the others, who had risen, ‘we are much obliged for your call and information. You may rest assured that we shall keep you posted in the developments of the case, and I trust you will advise us if further information comes to your knowledge.’
‘You may depend on us.’
‘Our friends are annoyed that we should have found out about this fraud before they did,’ Sir Mortimer remarked when the visitors had gone. ‘It evidently hurts their pride. Now, French, tell me exactly what you’re doing. You can have all the resources you want. I quite agree that you must save that girl’s life if it is humanly possible.’
French detailed his plans.
‘Is there anything else, sir, that you think I should do?’ he asked.
‘No, I think you have pretty well covered the ground. Carry on as you’re doing and let me know directly anything comes in.’
But nothing did come in. Every hour that passed made the affair seem more and more hopeless, while French grew more and more worried and despondent. That night he scarcely closed an eye, lying with the telephone beside him and hoping against hope to hear its bell summoning him to the Yard to follow up some clue which had just been reported. But though he had been disturbed on many a night when he was tired and would have given a good deal to remain in bed, on this occasion there was no call.
Next day at the Yard there was the same blank silence. He fretted and fumed through its insufferable hours until at last he told himself that he must give up hope, and began to fear that the only news he could expect would be that of the finding of the unhappy girl’s body. And then late in the evening his weariness and lassitude changed to fierce energy and excitement. News had come in!