Chapter VII.
The Flash Note Factory
To the lover of quiet and the admirer of urban comeliness, the ever-increasing noise and turmoil of London and its ever-decreasing architectural interest and charm give daily an added value to the Inns of Court, in whose peaceful precincts quiet and comeliness yet survive. And of the Inns of Court, if we except Old Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, The Temple with its cloisters, its fountain and its ancient church, makes the strongest appeal to the affections of that almost extinct creature, the Londoner; of which class the last surviving genuine specimens are to be found in its obsolete chambers, living on amidst the amenities of a bygone age.
But it was neither the quiet nor the architectural charm of the old domestic buildings that had caused Mr. Superintendent Miller of the Criminal Investigation Department to take the Temple on his way from Scotland Yard to Fleet Street (though it was as short a way as any), nor was it a desire to contemplate the houses attributed to Wren that made him slow down when he reached King’s Bench Walk and glance hesitatingly up and down that pleasant thoroughfare—if a thoroughfare it can be called. The fact is that Mr. Miller was engaged in certain investigations, which had led him, as investigations sometimes do, into a blind alley; and it was in his mind to see if the keen vision of Dr. John Thorndyke could detect a way out. But he did not want a formal consultation. Rather, he desired to let the matter arise, as it were, by chance, and he did not quite see how to manage it.
Here, as he stood hesitating opposite Thorndyke’s chambers, Providence came to his aid; for, at this moment, a tall figure emerged from the shadow of the covered passage from Mitre Court and came with an easy, long-legged swing down to tree-shaded foot-way. Instantly, the Superintendent strode forward to intercept the newcomer and the two met halfway up the Walk.
“You were not coming to see me, by any chance?” Thorndyke asked when the preliminary greetings had been exchanged.
“No,” replied Miller, “though I had half a mind to look in on you, just to pass the time of day. I am on my way to Clifford’s Inn to look into a rather queer discovery that has been made there.”
Here the Superintendent paused with an attentive eye on Thorndyke’s face, though experience should have told him that he might as well study the expression of a wig-maker’s block. As Thorndyke showed no sign of rising to the bait, he continued: “A remarkably queer affair. Mysterious, in fact. Our people are rather stuck, so I am going to have a look round the chambers to see if I can pick up any traces.”
“That is always a useful thing to do,” said Thorndyke. “Rooms, like clothes, tend to take certain impressions from those who live in them. Careful inspection, eked out by some imagination, will usually yield something of interest.”
“Precisely,” agreed Miller. “I realized that long ago from watching your own methods. You were always rather fond of poking about in empty houses and abandoned premises. By the way,” he added, forced into the open by Thorndyke’s impassiveness, “I wonder if you would care to stroll up with me and have a look at these chambers?”
“Are the facts of the case available?” asked Thorndyke.
“Certainly,” replied Miller, “to you—so far as they are known. If you care to walk up with me, I’ll tell you about the case as we go along.”
Thereupon Thorndyke (to whom the insoluble mystery and especially the untenanted chambers were as a hot scent to an eager fox-hound) turned and retraced his steps in company with the Superintendent.
“The history of the affair,” the latter began, “is this: At No. 92 Clifford’s Inn, a man named Bromeswell had chambers on the second floor. He had been there several years and was an excellent tenant, paying his rent and other liabilities with clockwork regularity on, or immediately after quarter day. He had never been known to be even a week in arrear with rent, gas or anything else. But at Midsummer he failed to pay up in his usual prompt manner, and after a fortnight had passed a polite reminder was dropped into his letter-box. But still he made no sign. However, as he was an old tenant and his character was so excellent, nothing was done beyond dropping in another reminder. Once or twice the porter went to the door of the chambers, but he always found the ‘oak’ shut and when he hammered on it with a stick, he got no answer.
“Well, the time ran on and the porter began to think that things looked a bit queer, but still nothing was done. Then, one day the postman brought a batch of letters—or rather circulars—to the Lodge, addressed to Bromeswell. He had tried to drop them into Bromeswell’s letter-box but couldn’t get them in as the box was choke-full. Now this made it pretty clear that Bromeswell had not been in his chambers for some considerable time, unless he was dead and his body shut up in them, so the porter acquainted the Treasurer with the state of affairs and consulted with him as to what was to be done. There were no means of getting into the chambers without breaking in, for the tenant had at some time fixed a new patent lock on the outer door and the porter had no duplicate key. But the chambers couldn’t be left indefinitely, especially as there was possibly a dead man inside, so the Treasurer decided to send a man up a ladder to break a window and let himself in. As a matter of fact, the porter went up, himself; and as soon as he got into the chambers and had a look round, he began to smell a rat.
“The appearance of the place, and especially the even coating of dust that covered everything, showed that no one had been in those rooms for two or three months at least; but what particularly attracted the attention of the porter—who is a retired police sergeant—was a rather queer-looking set of apparatus that suggested to him the outfit of a maker of flash notes. On this he began to make some inquiries; and then it transpired that nobody knew anything about Bromeswell. Mr. Duskin, the late porter, must have known him, since he must have let him the chambers; but Duskin left the Inn some years ago, and the present porter has never met this tenant. It seems an incredible thing but it appears to be a fact that no one even knows Bromeswell by sight.”
“That does really seem incredible,” said Thorndyke, “in the case of a man living in a place like Clifford’s Inn.”
“Ah, but he wasn’t living there. That was known, because no milk or bread was ever left there and no laundress ever called for washing. There are no resident chambers in Number 92. The porter had an idea that Bromeswell was a press artist or something of that kind and used the premises to work in. But of course it wasn’t any concern of his.”
“How was the rent paid?”
“By post, in treasury notes. And the gas was paid in the same way; never by cheque. But, to go on with the history: the porter’s suspicions were aroused, and he communicated them to the Treasurer, who agreed with him that the police ought to be informed. Accordingly they sent us a note and we instructed Inspector Monk, who is a first-class expert on flash notes, to go to Clifford’s Inn and investigate, but to leave things undisturbed as far as possible. So Monk went to the chambers and had a look at the apparatus; and what he saw made him pretty certain that the porter was right. The apparatus was a complete paper-maker’s plant in miniature, all except the moulds. There were no moulds to be seen, and until they were found it was impossible to say that the paper was not being made for some lawful purpose, though the size of the pressing plates—eighteen inches by seven—gave a pretty broad hint. However, there was an iron safe in the room—one of Wilkins’ make—and Monk decided that the moulds were probably locked up in it. He also guessed what the moulds were like. You may have heard of a long series of most excellent forgeries of Bank of England notes.”
“I have,” said Thorndyke. “They were five-pound and twenty-pound notes, mostly passed in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland.”
“That’s the lot,” said Miller, “and first-class forgeries they were; and for a very good reason. They were made with the genuine moulds. Some six years ago, two moulds were lost or stolen from the works at Maidstone where the Bank of England makes its paper. They were the moulds for five- and twenty-pound notes, respectively, and each mould would make a sheet that would cut into two notes—a long, narrow sheet sixteen and three-quarter inches by five and five thirty-seconds in the case of a five-pound note. Well, we have been on the lookout for those forgers for years, but, naturally, they were difficult to trace, for the forgeries were so good that no one could tell them from the real thing but the experts at the Bank. You see, it is the paper that the forger usually comes a cropper over. The engraving is much easier to imitate. But this paper was not only made in the proper moulds with all the proper water-marks, but it seemed to be made by a man who knew his job. So you can reckon that Monk was as keen as mustard on getting those moulds.
“And get them he did. On our authority, Wilkins made him a duplicate key—we didn’t want to blow the safe open—and sure enough, as soon as he opened the door, there were the two moulds. So that’s that. There is an end of those forgeries. But the question is, Who and where the devil is this fellow Bromeswell? And there is another question. This only accounts for the paper. The engraving and printing were done somewhere else and by some other artist. We should like to find out who he is. But, for the present, he is a bird in the bush. Bromeswell is our immediate quarry.”
“He seems to be pretty much in the bush, too,” remarked Thorndyke. “Is there no trace of him at all? What about his agreement and his references?”
“Gone,” replied Miller. “When the Inn was sold most of the old papers were destroyed. They were of no use.”
“It is astonishing,” said Thorndyke, “that a man should have been in occupation of those chambers for years and remain completely unknown. And yet one sees how it can have happened with the change of porters. Duskin was the only link that we have with Bromeswell and Duskin is gone. As to his not being known by sight, he probably came to the chambers only occasionally, to make a batch of paper; and if there were no residents in his block no one would be likely to notice him.”
“No,” Miller agreed; “Londoners are not inquisitive about their neighbours, especially in a business quarter. This is the place, and those are his rooms on the second floor.”
As he paused by an ancient lamp-post near the postern gate that opens on Fetter Lane, the Superintendent indicated a small, dark entry and then nodded at a range of dull windows at the top of the old house. Then he crossed a tiny courtyard, plunged into the dark entry and led the way up the narrow stair, groping with his hand along the unseen hand-rail, and closely followed by Thorndyke.
At the first floor they emerged for a moment into modified daylight and then ascended another flight of dark and narrow stairs, which opened on a grimy landing whose only ornaments were an iron dust-bin and a gas meter, and which displayed a single iron-bound door above which appeared in faded white lettering the inscription “Mr. Bromeswell.”
The Superintendent unlocked the massive outer door, which opened with a rusty creak, revealing an inner door fitted with a knocker. This Miller pushed open and the two men entered the outer room of the “set” of chambers, halting just inside the door to make a general survey of the room, of which the most striking feature was its bareness. And this was really a remarkable feature when the duration of the tenancy was considered. In the course of some years of occupation the mysterious tenant had accumulated no more furniture than a small kitchen table, a Windsor chair, a canvas-seated camp armchair, a military camp bedstead with a sleeping-bag and a couple of rugs and a small iron safe.
“It is obvious,” said Thorndyke, “that Bromeswell never lived here. Apparently he visited the place only at intervals, but when he came, he stayed until he had finished what he had come to do. Probably, he brought a supply of food and never went out between his arrival and departure.”
He strolled into the tiny kitchen, where a gas-ring, a teapot, a cup and saucer, one or two plates, a tin of milk-powder, one of sugar, another of tea and a biscuit tin containing an unrecognizable mildewy mass, bore out his suggestion. With a glance at the loaded letter-box, he crossed the room and, opening a door, entered what was intended to be the bedroom but had been made into a workshop. And very complete it was, being fitted with a roomy sink and tap, a small boiler—apparently a dentist’s vulcanizer—and a mixer or beater worked by a little electric motor, driven by a bichromate battery, there being no electric light in the premises. By the window was a strong bench on which was a powerful office press, a stack of long, narrow copper plates and a pile of pieces of felt of a similar shape but somewhat larger. Close to the bench was a trough made from a stout wooden box, lined with zinc and mounted on four legs, in which was folded newspaper containing a number of neat coils of cow-hair cord, each coil having an eye-splice at either end, evidently to fit on the hooks which had been fixed in the walls.
“Those cords,” Miller explained, as Thorndyke took them from the paper to examine them, “were used as drying lines to hang the damp sheets of paper on. They are always made of cow-hair because that is the only material that doesn’t mark the paper. But I expect you know all about that. Is there anything that catches your eye in particular? You seem interested in those cords.”
“I was looking at these two,” said Thorndyke, holding out two cords which he had uncoiled. “This one, you see, was too long, it had been cut the wrong length, or more probably was the remainder of a long piece. But, instead of cutting off the excess, our friend has thriftily shortened this rather expensive cord by working a sheepshank on it. Now it isn’t every one who knows how to make a sheepshank and the persons who do are not usually paper-makers.”
“That’s perfectly true, Doctor,” assented Miller. “I’m one of the people who don’t know how to make that particular kind of knot. What is the other point?”
“This other cord,” replied Thorndyke, “which looks new, has an eye-splice at one end only, but it is, as you see, about five inches longer than the other; just about the amount that would be taken up by working the eye-splice. That looks as if Bromeswell had worked the splices himself and if you consider the matter you will see that is probably the case. The length of these cords is roughly the width of this room. They have been cut to a particular measure; but the cord was most probably bought in a single length, as this extra long piece suggests.”
“Yes,” agreed Miller. “They wouldn’t have been sold with the eye-splices worked on them, and in fact, I don’t see what he wanted with the eye-splices at all. A simple knotted loop would have answered the purpose quite as well.”
“Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “They were not necessary. They were a luxury, a refinement; and that emphasizes the point that they suggest, which is that Bromeswell is a man who has some technical knowledge of cordage, is probably a sailor, or in some way connected with the sea. As you say, a common knotted loop, such as a bowline knot, would have answered the purpose perfectly. But that is true of most of the cases in which a sailor uses an eye-splice. Then why does he take the trouble to work the splice? Principally for the sake of neatness of appearance, because, to an expert eye, a tied loop with its projecting end looks slovenly.
“Now this man will have had quite a lot of time on his hands. He will have had to wait about for hours while the pulp was boiling and while it was being beaten up. A sailor would very naturally spend a part of his idle time in tidying up the cordage.”
The Superintendent nodded reflectively. “Yes,” he said, “I think you are right, Doctor; and it is an important point. This fellow was a fairly expert paper-maker. He wasn’t a mere amateur like most of the note-forgers. If he was some kind of sailor man as well, that would make him a lot easier to identify if we should get on his track. But that’s just what we can’t do. There is nothing to start from. He is a mere name, and pretty certainly a false name at that.”
As he spoke, Miller looked about him discontentedly, running his eye over the bench and its contents. Suddenly he stepped over to the press and diving into the shadowed space between it and the wall, brought up his hand grasping a silver-mounted briar pipe.
“Now, Doctor,” he said with a grin, handing it to Thorndyke when he had inspected it, “here is something in your line. Just run your eye over that pipe and tell me what the man is like.”
Thorndyke laughed as he took the pipe in his hand. “You are thinking of the mythical anatomist and the fossil bone,” said he. “I am afraid this relic will not tell us much. It is a good pipe; it must have cost half a guinea, which would have meant more if its owner had been honest. The maker’s name tells us that it was bought in Cheapside near the Bank, its weight and the marks on the mouthpiece tell us that the owner has a strong jaw and a good set of teeth, its good condition suggests a careful, orderly man and its presence here makes it likely that the owner was Mr. Bromeswell. That isn’t much but it confirms the other appearances.”
“What other appearances?” demanded Miller.
“Those of the bed, the chair, the bench, the hooks and the trough. They all point to a big, heavy man. The bedstead is about six feet, six inches long but the heel-marks are near the foot and the pillow is right at the head, This bench and the trough have been put up for this man’s use—they were apparently knocked up by himself; and they are both of a suitable height for you or me. A short man couldn’t work at either. The hooks are over seven feet from the floor. The canvas seat of the chair is deeply sagged although the woodwork looks in nearly new condition, and the canvas of the bed is in the same condition. Add this massive, hard-bitten pipe to those indications and you have the picture of a tall, burly, powerful man. We must have a look at his pillow and rugs to see if we can pick up a stray hair or two, and get an idea of his complexion. What did he make the pulp from? I don’t see any traces of rags.”
“He didn’t use rags. He used Whatman’s water-colour paper, which is a pure linen paper. Apparently he tore it up into tiny fragments and boiled it in soda lye until it was ready to go into the beater. Monk found a supply of the paper in a cupboard and some half-cooked stuff in the boiler.” As he spoke, Miller unscrewed and raised the lid of the boiler, which was then seen to be half-filled with a clear liquid at the bottom of which was a mass of sodden fragments of shredded paper. From the boiler he turned to a small cupboard and opened the door. “That seems to be his stock of material,” he said, indicating a large roll of thick white paper. He took out a sheet and handed it to Thorndyke, who held it up to the light and read the name “Whatman” which formed the water-mark.
“Yes,” said Thorndyke, as he returned the sheet. “His method of work seems clear enough, but that is not of much interest as you have the moulds. What we want is the man himself. You have no description of him, I suppose?”
“Not if your description of him is correct,” replied Miller. “The suspected person, according to the Belgian police, is a smallish, slight, dark man. They may be on the wrong track, or their man may be a confederate. There must have been a confederate, perhaps more than one. But Bromeswell only made the paper. Some one else must have done the engraving and the printing. As to planting the notes, that may have been done by some other parties, or by either or both of these two artists. I should think they probably kept the game to themselves, judging by what we have seen here. This seems to be a one man show, and it looks as if even the engraver didn’t know where the paper was made, or the moulds wouldn’t have been left in this way. Shall we go and look for those hairs that you spoke of?”
They returned to the outer room, where they both subjected the little pillow of the camp bed to a searching scrutiny. But though they examined both sides and even took off the dusty pillow-case, not a single hair was to be found. Then they turned their attention to the rugs, which had been folded neatly and placed on the canvas—there was no mattress—unfolding them carefully and going over them inch by inch. Here, too, they seemed to have drawn a blank, for they had almost completed their examination when the Superintendent uttered an exclamation and delicately picked a small object from near the edge of the rug.
“This seems to be a hair, Doctor,” said he, holding it up between his finger and thumb. “Looks like a moustache hair, but it’s a mighty short one.”
Thorndyke produced his pocket lens and a sheet of note-paper; and holding the latter while Miller cautiously dropped the hair on it, he inspected the find through his lens.
“Yes,” he said, “it is a moustache hair, about half an inch long, decidedly thick, cleanly cut and of a lightish red-brown colour. Somehow it seems to fit the other characters. A close-cropped, bristly, sandy moustache appears to go appropriately with the stature and weight of the man and that massive pipe. There is a tendency for racial characters to go together, and the blond races run to height and weight. Well, we have a fairly complete picture of the man, unless we have made some erroneous inferences, and we seem to have finished our inspection. Have you been through the stuff in the letter-box?”
“Monk went through it, but we may as well have a look at it to make sure that he hasn’t missed anything. I’ll hand the things out if you will put them on the table and check them.”
As Miller took out the letters in handfuls Thorndyke received them from him and laid them out on the table. Then he and Miller examined the collection systematically.
“You see, Doctor,” said the latter, “they are all circulars; not a private letter among them excepting the two notes from the Treasurer about the rent. And they are quite a miscellaneous lot. None of these people knew anything about Bromeswell, apparently, they just copied the address out of the directory. Here’s one from a money-lender. Bromeswell could have given him a tip or two. The earliest post-mark is the eleventh of June, so we may take it that he wasn’t here after the tenth, or the morning of the eleventh.”
“There is a slight suggestion that he left at night,” said Thorndyke, as he made a note of the date. “The place where you found the pipe would be in deep shadow by gaslight, but not by daylight. Certainly the blind was up, but he would probably have drawn it up after he turned the gas out, as its being down during the day might attract attention.”
“Yes,” said Miller, “you are probably right about the time; and that reminds me that Monk found a small piece of paper under the bench—I’ve got it in my pocket—which seems to bear out your suggestion.” He took from his pocket a bulky letter-case, from an inner recess of which he extracted a little scrap of Whatman paper.
“Here it is,” he said, handing it to Thorndyke. “He seems to have just jotted down the times of two trains; and, as you say, they were probably night trains.”
Thorndyke looked with deep attention at the fragment, on which was written, hastily but legibly in very black ink, “8:15 and 11:1. P,” and remarked:
“Quite a valuable find in its way. The writing is very characteristic, and so is the ink. Probably it would be more so when seen through the microscope. Magnification brings out shades of colour that are invisible to the naked eye.”
“Well, Doctor,” said Miller, “if you can spare the time to have a look at it through the microscope, I wish you would, and let us know if you discover anything worth noting. And perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking a glance at the hair, too, to settle the colour more exactly.”
He transferred the latter, which he had carefully folded in paper and put in his pocketbook, to Thorndyke, who deposited it, with the scrap of paper, in his letter-case, after pencilling on the wrapper a note of the nature and source of the object.
“And that,” said the Superintendent, “seems to be the lot. We haven’t done so badly, after all. If you are right—as I expect you are—we have got quite a serviceable description of the man Bromeswell. But it is a most mysterious affair. I can’t imagine what the deuce can have happened. It is pretty clear that he came here about the tenth of June and probably made a batch of paper which we shall hear of later. But what can have happened to the man? Something out of the common, evidently. He would never have stayed away voluntarily with the certainty that the premises would be entered, his precious moulds found and the whole thing blown upon. If he had intended to clear out he would certainly have taken the moulds with him, or at least destroyed them if he thought that the game was up. What do you think, Doctor?”
“It seems to me,” replied Thorndyke, “that there are three possibilities. He may be dead, and if so he probably died suddenly, before he was able to make any arrangements; he may be in prison on some other charge; or he may have got a scare that we know nothing of and had to keep out of sight. You said that the Belgian police were taking some action.”
“Yes, they have got an officer over here, by agreement with us, who is making inquiries about the man who planted the notes in Belgium. But he isn’t after Bromeswell. He is looking for quite a different man, as I told you. But he doesn’t pretend that he could recognize him.”
“It doesn’t follow that Bromeswell knows that. If the confederate has discovered that inquiries are being made, he may have given his friend a hint, and the pair of them may have absconded. But that is mere speculation. As you say, something extraordinary must have happened, and it must have been something sudden and unforeseen. And that is all that we can say at present.”
By the time that this conclusion was reached, they had emerged from Clifford’s Inn Passage into Fleet Street; and here they parted, the Superintendent setting a course westward and Thorndyke crossing the road to the gateway of Middle Temple Lane.