'The first thing to be done is to enclose this bill to Denny and Co.,
booksellers, Strand. Tell them you have lost the volume, and ask them
to send another. There is likely someone in the shop who can decipher
the illegible writing. I am certain the book will give us a clue. Now,
I shall write to Braun and Sons, Budge Row. This is evidently a French
company; in fact, the name as connected with paper-making runs in my
mind, although I cannot at this moment place it. I shall ask them the
use of this paper that they furnished to the late earl.'
This was done accordingly, and now, as we thought, until the answers
came, we were two men out of work. Yet the next morning, I am pleased
to say, and I have always rather plumed myself on the fact, I solved
the mystery before replies were received from London. Of course, both
the book and the answer of the paper agents, by putting two and two
together, would have given us the key.
After breakfast, I strolled somewhat aimlessly into the library, whose
floor was now strewn merely with brown wrapping paper, bits of string,
and all that. As I shuffled among this with my feet, as if tossing
aside dead autumn leaves in a forest path, my attention was suddenly
drawn to several squares of paper, unwrinkled, and never used for
wrapping. These sheets seemed to me strangely familiar. I picked one
of them up, and at once the significance of the name Braun and Sons
occurred to me. They are paper makers in France, who produce a smooth,
very tough sheet, which, dear as it is, proves infinitely cheap
compared with the fine vellum it deposed in a certain branch of
industry. In Paris, years before, these sheets had given me the
knowledge of how a gang of thieves disposed of their gold without
melting it. The paper was used instead of vellum in the rougher
processes of manufacturing gold-leaf. It stood the constant beating of
the hammer nearly as well as the vellum, and here at once there
flashed on me the secret of the old man's midnight anvil work. He was
transforming his sovereigns into gold-leaf, which must have been of a
rude, thick kind, because to produce the gold-leaf of commerce he
still needed the vellum as well as a 'clutch' and other machinery, of
which we had found no trace.
'My lord,' I called to my assistant; he was at the other end of the
room; 'I wish to test a theory on the anvil of your own fresh common
sense.'
'Hammer away,' replied the earl, approaching me with his usual
good-natured, jocular expression.
'I eliminate the safe from our investigations because it was purchased
thirteen years ago, but the buying of the book, of wall covering, of
this tough paper from France, all group themselves into a set of
incidents occurring within the same month as the purchase of the anvil
and the building of the forge; therefore, I think they are related to
one another. Here are some sheets of paper he got from Budge Row. Have
you ever seen anything like it? Try to tear this sample.'
'It's reasonably tough,' admitted his lordship, fruitlessly
endeavouring to rip it apart.
'Yes. It was made in France, and is used in gold beating. Your uncle
beat his sovereigns into gold-leaf. You will find that the book from
Denny's is a volume on gold beating, and now as I remember that
scribbled word which I could not make out, I think the title of the
volume is "Metallurgy". It contains, no doubt, a chapter on the
manufacture of gold-leaf.'
'I believe you,' said the earl; 'but I don't see that the discovery
sets us any further forward. We're now looking for gold-leaf instead
of sovereigns.'
'Let's examine this wallpaper,' said I.
I placed my knife under a corner of it at the floor, and quite easily
ripped off a large section. As Higgins had said, the brown paper was
on top, and the coarse, light-coloured paper underneath. But even that
came away from the oak panelling as easily as though it hung there
from habit, and not because of paste.
'Feel the weight of that,' I cried, handing him the sheet I had torn
from the wall.
'By Jove!' said the earl, in a voice almost of awe.
I took it from him, and laid it, face downwards, on the wooden table,
threw a little water on the back, and with a knife scraped away the
porous white paper. Instantly there gleamed up at us the baleful
yellow of the gold. I shrugged my shoulders and spread out my hands.
The Earl of Chizelrigg laughed aloud and very heartily.
'You see how it is,' I cried. 'The old man first covered the entire
wall with this whitish paper. He heated his sovereigns at the forge
and beat them out on the anvil, then completed the process rudely
between the sheets of this paper from France. Probably he pasted the
gold to the wall as soon as he shut himself in for the night, and
covered it over with the more expensive paper before Higgins entered
in the morning.'
We found afterwards, however, that he had actually fastened the thick
sheets of gold to the wall with carpet tacks.
His lordship netted a trifle over a hundred and twenty-three thousand
pounds through my discovery, and I am pleased to pay tribute to the
young man's generosity by saying that his voluntary settlement made my
bank account swell stout as a City alderman.