Sherlock Holmes & The Master Engraver (Sherlock Holmes Revival) (5 page)

“And the reference was furnished by...?”

“Let me recollect now; it was... ah yes, it was the Baroness Amanti, a lady of Italian extraction I believe, now resident in France.”

Holmes scrawled a further swift note on his cuff. “Then now let us move directly to the matter of the missing plates. Please start by telling me when and how you first discovered that they had vanished.”

“It happened in this way, Mr Holmes. Today morning I rose at my customary hour which is around six o’clock. Having made a pot of tea and examined my orchids, finding all as well as might be hoped under the trying circumstances visited upon me, I returned to the house where I determined to complete once and for all, a particularly complex design for some extremely high-value bearer-bonds I had started upon, now sadly fallen behind but still faithfully promised to no less august personages than the partners of the Swiss bank of Lombard Odier, upon our factory re-opening less than two weeks hence.

“Searching my document case I discovered to my great exasperation that I had neglected to bring home a folder containing some of the preliminary sketches, dimensions, textual matter and so on, so necessitating a return visit to our printing works.

“However, it happened my wife required me to collect a last-minute order of pheasant from the poulterer, so it was a matter of no great moment as I could accomplish both tasks with one excursion; our business premises are in Fleet Street and the poulterer is hard by in Leadenhall Market.

“I retrieved my keys from the bureau in my study, and walked to the local railway station, where I engaged a hansom, arriving at our premises in Fleet Street shortly after the day-watchman had started, around nine o’clock. He had nothing of consequence to report beyond the routine comings and goings of Mr Hollum the engineer, and the builders who had completed their work and departed upon the evening of the 21st. I made my way to my office where I retrieved the desired sketches and papers.

“About to depart, I was seized once more with the strong desire to enjoy one final glimpse of my plates, and so unlocked the safe. You may imagine if you will, Mr Holmes, my utter horror and shock at discovering that they were gone, taken, yet I and my partners had confirmed them safely under lock and key only days before!

“You may perhaps speculate as to my agitated state of mind! Curiously, two of my burins had also been removed from my bench!

“Now in a most fearful panic I investigated the remainder of our premises, including the stores, where I discovered that a large quantity of the unique water-marked Portals paper upon which the new notes were destined to be printed, was also gone! If the two stolen items, paper and plates, are proficiently brought together upon a suitable printing press, the consequences will be catastrophic.

“I have calculated, Mr Holmes, that the quantity of stolen paper – twenty-five boxes each of five thousand sheets – will be sufficient to create well over two millions in currency – two hundred and fifty thousand ten-pound notes – a huge increase in the present currency supply in circulation in Great Britain, constituted apparently of bona fide, but quite unauthorised money! With additional paper, the hardened steel plates themselves could generate many times more.

“The Bank Charter Act of 1844 requires all notes issued to be backed by gold reserves held by the Bank; this will not be the case if a vast quantity of credible but fraudulent money is known to be in circulation; inflation would be the inevitable consequence. Confidence in our British pound will vanish like a puff of smoke when word spreads!” Again he buried his face in his hands and returned to rocking in a state of pitiable misery.

Holmes closed his eyes in thought for a moment.

Our client mopped his brow with a large silk square and struggled to regain his earlier composure. “My apologies Mr Holmes; of course I am entirely at your disposal. You may ask me anything if it can help to avert this calamity.”

“Very well; you say you have keys to all the principal locks on the premises?” Petch nodded. “And you carry these upon your person at all times?” Again Petch nodded.

“I do Mr Holmes, upon my watch chain, except when at home, where I place them in my bureau” and he produced a bunch of most unusually complicated keys at the end of a heavy gold Albert chain. Holmes extended a sinewy white hand; “May I?”

Our client detached his watch and chain from his waistcoat buttonhole, removed the strange keys and passed them to Holmes.

“Now Mr Petch, please be good enough to describe the function of each of these keys; this, for example?”

“That first is merely the key to my domestic front door; the next two are respectively the garden back-door and my orchid-house. The small steel key winds the pedestrian door through the main gates to the delivery yard, the next opens the main door to the offices and printing works; then you will observe my private office key, next the special key to the paper store, and finally you now hold in your hand the compound key that releases the four locks of the plate safe.

“Since lunchtime, it occurred to me that an indication of the layout of our premises might be of value to you; while finishing my whisky I took the liberty of preparing this sketch, that you may be aware of the locations of the various offices, departments, and of the plate vault itself. It is correct in its general arrangement, but I regret I did not have sufficient time to create it to true scale.”

“My dear Mr Petch, you are the epitome of a model client! This appears to be extremely precise; I see you mark here the main gate, the watchmen’s hut; this, the main entrance and... Ah, here I observe your office marked and the safe indicated within, and off here the print room and paper store. Admirable, quite admirable; now, let us back to the keys.”

Holmes carefully separated the last four keys and at strikingly close range, at the very tip of his nose, almost as if he were sniffing them, he examined each most minutely and then again at some considerable length through his powerful lens.

“These are indeed most unusual keys – certainly not the variety which one might ordinarily take to a commonplace high-street locksmith to have copies made. The four that particularly interest me are these – to your office, to the paper store, the print room and to the plate vault. The safe is clearly a Chubb diagonal-bolt model is it not?”

“You are correct Mr Holmes, as are you in the matter of commissioning duplicate keys. No reputable locksmith would even consider making copies without solid proof of ownership of the safe – at the very least the certificate issued only to the legitimate and registered purchaser. In practice, a requirement for another key is customarily addressed directly to the manufacturer, thus eliminating the risk of additional keys being made and dishonestly retained by a villainous locksmith, without one’s knowledge.

“And we were assured at the time of the purchase that a criminal locksmith – even a skilled one – would apparently experience considerable, in all probability insurmountable, difficulty in creating working duplicate keys.”

Somewhat cryptically Holmes replied “That may be so Mr Petch, but in my experience, there is very little in this world that one man can devise, that another cannot discover. Who else possesses a full set of keys?”

“Only four sets exist, Mr Holmes; you hold one in your hand this minute; a complete set is carried by each of my two partners – again on their watch-chains – and there is a final set shared by the two watchmen.

“As the one always hands over duty to the other upon the nightly and morning change, he likewise hands the keys to his incoming colleague. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly; I shall return to the matter of the keys presently. Meanwhile, tell me why it was necessary to create a further set of plates; are they perhaps of a new design, or a new denomination?”

Petch grimaced despondently; “No they are not, and that is what makes the situation so very alarming. Were they so, the matter would resolve itself with great facility. We would simply put out a general notice that there is to be no new design or denomination of note, and thus, at a stroke, eliminate all possibility of financial reward for the perpetrators.”

“No Mr Holmes, it is the most unhappy of all possible situations; the plates are a direct replacement set for the current issue of £10 note; the present plates are showing significant signs of wear, and thus are producing inferior impressions, which makes them considerably simpler to counterfeit.

“The new plates do you see, will create, in every respect except one, vast quantities of £10 bank-notes, quite perfect in appearance and almost indistinguishable from those presently in lawful circulation throughout the world, except to an expert!” Holmes made no response, but instead stepped to his bench where at some length, with his back to us, he performed some intricate and arcane operations with the keys, whose objective I was quite unable to comprehend. Returning after some considerable time, he wiped the keys on a rag, handed them back to Mr Petch and said “Tell me more of this one singular characteristic in which any notes produced may not be quite perfect? The engraved plates are complete and finished, are they not?”

“Indeed they are, the most perfect I ever created as I have stated, and I pray I may now never see in my bill-fold or be handed a resulting impression from them!

“However, what they will lack, and what they must incorporate, for unqualified perfection, is a proper cipher and a run of allocated serial numbers of the correct sequence. That progression the criminals are most unlikely to guess; such numbers are applied in a second over-printing and in confidence I may inform you that the basic secret formula for those letters and numbers rests on the distinction between odd and even-numbered years.

“Merely as an example, let us take the numbering on this London £5 note.” His gnarled finger traced over the components of the serial number.

“In even years the Bank generally uses the first half of the month, and in odd numbered years, the second half.” He indicated the relevant characters. And here, Mr Holmes is a perfectly genuine London £10 note, essentially identical to that embodied in the new, stolen plates, bearing this cipher and in this example, the serial number 41512, as you can see from the impress; however this complex but consistent formula the thieves are most unlikely to fathom. “You will note, too, gentlemen, that the top, right and left edges of this particular note are not cleanly cut – or guillotined as we say – but exhibit the Portal’s manufactured deckled, or ragged edge of the paper; only the lower edge is sharply cut.

“This is on account of the notes being printed in pairs – two-up as we term it; the twin of this note will have been impressed immediately below on the same sheet, and after the cutting process between the two, will exhibit a sharp upper edge, with the right, left and lower edges remaining deckled and uncut. This effect, too, the villains will achieve with consummate ease as they are now in possession of the correct paper. They lack only a simple guillotine.

“My greatest fear, however, is that any sequence of letters and numbers of apparently plausible appearance, correctly placed and overprinted, will not deter the criminal underworld from eagerly purchasing the notes at a discounted value and selling them on down a chain of ever-more petty criminals, until they start insidiously to flood the market.

“You will appreciate, Mr Holmes that large-scale forgeries of currency are rarely uttered – or circulated by the forger himself – rather, he passes that perilous risk on to lesser villains. Within my own lifetime, the penalty for circulating forged currency was hanging or transportation – this heinous crime quite rightly being regarded as high treason. However, I digress.

“Such lesser criminals will purchase counterfeit currency in exchange for, perhaps a forty percent amount of the face value; conceivably more if the forgeries are of an exceptionally high standard.

“These, as you now know, will be little short of perfection. Every £10 note in circulation, legitimate or fraudulent, will become suspect until checked by the bank.

“And what man, having been paid £10 for his services, will take the note to the bank to be verified, knowing full well that should the note be a forgery, it will instantly be confiscated and he will lose all, with no hope of recompense whatever?

“No, gentlemen, he will of a certainty retain it and pass it on in turn as settlement of his own obligations.

“That, Mr Holmes, in a very small nutshell is our very considerable dilemma. Time is now of the essence; somewhere a printing press may be running even as we speak.

“Clearly we cannot withdraw all the legal notes now in circulation, but unless you can use your powers to assist us in tracing the whereabouts of the stolen plates and paper before a deluge of counterfeit money makes its malign appearance we must, I fear, prepare ourselves for a national crisis of the very gravest proportion!”

*        *       *

CHAPTER THREE

Mr Nathan Madgwick

The parlour at 221B Baker Street fell silent. I was shocked by these startling revelations and their grim implications; Petch returned to rocking distractedly, his hands clenched tight until the bony knuckles showed white, while Holmes had reclined back in his chair, looking for the entire world as if he had fallen asleep, though I knew different.

I could almost hear that remarkable brain of his whirring like Babbage’s analytical engine running through numerous permutations of possibilities, most of which would of a certainty not appear worthy even of scant consideration by run-of-the-mill Yarders like Lestrade and Gregson.

But then again, Holmes was no run-of-the-mill Yarder.

Mr Henry Petch evidently mistook this apparent lethargy for disinterest, or perhaps a resignation to failure. “Good Heavens Mr Holmes! I beg your pardon but is this your response to the looming disaster that faces us? Is the matter too opaque or too complex for resolution, for assuredly if you accept defeat, then so must we all! Do you see no hope whatever?” Holmes remained silent throughout this little diatribe, smiled, and then opened his eyes slowly and lazily. “Defeat, Mr Petch? Defeat? Never in life my dear Sir; as to a resolution, some aspects of the conundrum are even now becoming apparent to me.