Mr. Cullimore Expounds
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 inquiries which he had set
on foot, but unfortunately it was all negative.
The first news he had was from the men whom 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 turned up 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 ever met Welland or were 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 Mr. 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 to 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, Mr. 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 that 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”—Mr. Cullimore monopolized 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 Mr.
Cullimore, “are fifty per cent silver and fifty per cent alloy,
principally copper. You will see what I mean when I tell you that
these fake coins contained not less than forty-eight point sixty-three
nor more than fifty-one point twelve 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.”
Mr. 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 the 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,” Mr. 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 Mr. 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 of 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?”
Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 present was reduced. Formerly
it was ninety-two point five per cent, but in nineteen-twenty it was
reduced to the fifty per cent of which I spoke a moment ago. Since
nineteen-twenty 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 the manufacture, including overhead, might be at the very
most 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
counterfeit coining?”
“A pertinent question, French. I was considering it myself. Difficulty
of distribution, I presume.”
“That’s it, Sir Mortimer,” Mr. 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 worth
while, 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 of the whole scheme.”
“So it has proved,” Mr. Cullimore admitted. “But I consider it an
extremely clever scheme all the same. The more you consider the
problem involved, the more you will realize, 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 their doing
so.”
“I begin to appreciate the force of your remark, Sir Mortimer, about
the Yard’s habit of begging the question,” Mr. Cullimore declared
drily. “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.” Mr. 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 hundred 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 a hundred and fifty thousand a year. We understand that the
conspiracy has been running for about that time.”
“Nearly nineteen thousand pounds’ worth of spurious money in
circulation!” Mr. 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?”
Mr. 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 offhand and without
proper consideration. But that is my present view.”
For some time they continued discussing the matter and then Mr.
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 that 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,” Mr. 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 adaptation 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 we 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!