Conclusion
Little more remains to be told.
When Gwen Lestrange, to give her the name by which she had been known
to French—she was really Mrs. James Sibley—saw from the cabin the turn
affairs had taken, she surrendered at discretion. It appeared that
there were no other members of the gang, and before morning all four
prisoners were safely lodged in the cells.
With the additional knowledge he now possessed, French immediately
began a more detailed inquiry into their misdeeds and before long the
entire details of the coining scheme were revealed.
It seemed that Jim Sibley had long been convinced as to the
possibility of profitably counterfeiting silver coins. Even with these
composed of nearly pure silver he believed the thing could be done,
but the passing of the Act of 1920 reducing the proportion of pure
silver to fifty per cent and the subsequent fall in the price of
silver left no doubt in his mind. When therefore he found himself
dismissed from the Mint it had occurred to him that an auspicious time
had arrived to test the truth of his convictions.
He was up, however, against one overwhelming difficulty. He had no
capital and the inception of his scheme required what was to him a big
sum. For a time his plans hung fire and then he saw his way.
From some of his dubious acquaintances he had heard from time to time
of a Mr. Curtice Welland, or, as he then called himself, Hervey
Westinghouse. Welland, to give him the name he afterwards took, was
looked upon by the fraternity of the underworld as an example of a
strikingly successful career. He was reported to live by blackmail and
it was hinted that on different occasions he had paid large sums for
“jobs,” mostly the burglary of some well-known persons’ houses for
letters of a profitable type. Sibley came to the conclusion that if
Welland could be interested in his scheme, the necessary capital would
materialize. He introduced himself, sounded the other, and to make a
long story short, the firm of Sibley, Sibley & Welland came into
being.
When they came to work out the details they found that a fourth member
would be required. Here again Welland filled the breach. In his toils
was a man called Webster, afterwards “Style.” Owing to an irregularity
in connection with the signature of a cheque, Style had handed over
his freedom to Welland and he was now told what he must do.
Unwillingly Style came in and the quartet started work.
The necessary machines were ordered to be sent to certain ports in the
names of various foreign medal making firms, to be kept till called
for. There Style, in the guise of an emissary from the foreign firms,
obtained them, ostensibly to arrange for their shipment. In reality he
ran them in his car to the house near Guildford, which in the meantime
had been rented by the Sibleys.
Some means of buying silver without arousing suspicion in the trade
being an essential, the silversmiths’ works was purchased, Style
becoming the “manager.” All the members of the staff who showed any
intelligence were dispensed with, enough being retained merely to keep
the place open. Style bought the silver in the name of Theobald &
Grudgin and secretly transferred what Sibley required to his garage,
bringing it home to Guildford in the car.
The guise of an author enabled Sibley to withdraw himself during long
periods on each day, and his wife helped him with the manufacture of
the coins. It was considered unsafe for either of these two or Style
to take part in their distribution, so this was undertaken by Welland
in the way French had already discovered.
Every morning and night, while passing along a quiet stretch of
byroad, Style changed the number of his car and slightly altered his
appearance by putting in a different set of false teeth, brushing his
hair and moustache differently, and putting on glasses and a
differently shaped hat. Because of this and also of the fact that in
his earlier circulars French had described the grey car used by
Welland instead of Style’s green vehicle, he succeeded in avoiding
recognition.
It was part of Style’s duty to spend a good part of his time in
shadowing the four box office girls whom they had made their dupes.
French’s inquiries were thus early known to the gang. Welland
instantly saw through the trick of the broken window and this
convinced the gang that they were in dangerous waters. The manufacture
of coins was suspended while Sibley and his wife, both disguised,
shadowed the girls. French’s interview with Molly in the Charing Cross
Gardens thus became known to them and they saw that they were on the
eve of discovery. At once a message was got through to Style to supply
Welland with “good” coins for the girls. Style kept a supply in his
safe for this purpose, and he passed good bundles to Welland,
replacing them with the four faked lots he had brought to town. It was
in this way that the coins obtained by French from Molly proved to be
good, while those which he found in Style’s safe were faked.
The eventuality which the quartet found themselves up against they had
long foreseen and provided against. Their idea was that if England
should get too hot to hold them, they would transfer their activities
to France. Welland had therefore bought the launch, storing it at
Ryde. They were determined, however, not to go without their plant,
and preparations for the removal of this were in hand when the whole
situation was altered by Molly’s recognition of Style at the
silversmiths’.
Style instantly saw that if Molly were allowed to see French again
they were done for. French would get on his trail and would find the
house at Guildford before the plant had been got away. He therefore
decided to kidnap her, so as to gain the necessary time for this
operation.
The question of whether she should not be murdered like those of her
predecessors who had shown a desire to communicate with Scotland Yard
was carefully considered and her life was spared as a sort of forlorn
hope. If by some unlikely chance French should discover their flight
before they got clear away, Molly was to be exhibited and French was
to be told that if he attempted to prevent their escape she should be
shot then and there in cold blood. They thought this might make him
hesitate sufficiently to enable them to effect their purpose.
By the evening of the day on which Molly was kidnapped all the
preparations for the flight were complete and if the gang had then
bolted in all probability they would have got clear away. But an
unexpected hitch at the last minute delayed them for two days and led
to their undoing. Welland found that he could not start the engine of
the launch, and he lost two vital days at Ryde in getting the defect
put right.
The working out of a method of trans-shipping their plant from car to
launch proved one of their most difficult problems. The need for
secrecy forbade the use of a wharf and crane and they knew of no
natural harbour or rock from which the machines could be embarked.
They therefore chose the position on Southampton Water, one of the
rare “hards” on a shore of soft and sedgy flats. At low water they ran
the car down on the beach, unloaded and buoyed the machines, and when
the tide rose floated the launch to the place and hoisted the machines
on board. Two journeys of the car had been necessary to transport all
the plant, the second being that by which Molly had been taken. On
reaching the shore for the second time the balance of the machines had
been unloaded and the whole of the party except Style had gone on
board. Style utilized the time until the tide rose high enough to lift
the machines in attempting a further safeguard. With the object of
confusing the chase, should one materialize, he had run the car into
Southampton, and it was when walking back after abandoning it there
that French and his party met him.
Though French found out all these details without much difficulty, he
was at more of a loss to prove the responsibility of the gang for
Thurza Darke’s murder. But eventually he managed this also. The
attendant at the Milan identified Gwen Lestrange as the young woman
who had called for Thurza on the night of her disappearance, and Dr.
Lappin, of Lee-on-the-Solent, swore that Style exactly met the
description of the man who was attending to the engine of the grey car
on the road near Hill Head. This evidence, added to the rest that
French had collected, secured a verdict of guilty, and eventually all
four paid for their crimes, Welland and Sibley on the scaffold and the
other two with life sentences.
Before his death Welland made a full confession. In it he admitted
that he and Sibley had murdered all three girls in the horrible and
revolting way with which Style had threatened Molly. Following the
example of Smith, the “brides in the bath” murderer, they had drowned
their unfortunate victims in the bath in the house at Guildford before
disposing of their bodies in the quarry hole, the river, and the sea
respectively.
Of all the parties to the transaction, Molly came off the best. Not
only was she not prosecuted, but on the grounds that the amount was
unknown, the question of her ill-gotten gains was not raised. Most
immorally, therefore, she found herself in possession of the nice
little sum of nearly four hundred pounds as her share of the affair.
As for French, the consciousness of work well (if slowly) done was his
reward. The case had been an unusually troublesome and disappointing
one, but he had at least the satisfaction of knowing that he had not
only in all probability saved Molly Moran’s life and the lives of
other girls who might have fallen into the hands of the gang, but had
cleared out a nest of evildoers whose removal was essential to the
welfare of the entire country.
The End
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
This transcription follows the text of 1929 US edition published by
Grosset & Dunlap. (The book was published in England under the title
_The Box Office Murders_.) The following errors have been corrected
from the original text:
* “She seem” was changed to “She seems” (Chapter VI).
* “electrial” was changed to “electrical” (Chapter VII).
* “chauffering” was changed to “chauffeuring” (Chapter VIII).
* “musn’t” was changed to “mustn’t” (Chapter XII).
* “Orsmby” was changed to “Ormsby” (Chapter XIV).
* “consumated” was changed to “consummated” (Chapter XVIII).