by Ashton, Hugh
“I understand that your firm carries out engraving and printing of valuable items such as share certificates?” he asked.
“We do not actually do the engraving here,” explained Mr Bilton. “The preparation of the plates is carried out by specialist engravers, who then send the engraved plates to us.”
“I see,” said Holmes. “And then, after the certificates have been printed, what happens to the plates?”
“That depends,” was the answer. “In many cases, the plates are defaced and then destroyed, but occasionally they are retained in case of another issue at some time in the future. In such cases, the engraver will often simply re-engrave the date of the issue, using the old plate. Of course, we keep all plates which may be re-used safely under lock and key in the safe. After all, it would never do if someone were to start printing new share certificates. Why, it would almost be like printing money, would it not?” He said this last with great earnestness and sincerity, and it was impossible to believe that this venerable tradesman could in any way be connected to the counterfeiting which was threatening the world of the City.
“I understand,” said Holmes. “It would indeed be a terrible thing. May I ask what became of the plate for the Imperial & Colonial issue of three years back in March?”
“Dear me,” replied the old man. “I would have to refer to my books. What an extraordinary question, though. May I ask why you are making this enquiry?” Obviously the name of Sherlock Holmes that was printed on the card that Holmes had passed to him earlier meant little to him.
“I have reason to believe that someone is counterfeiting Imperial & Colonial stock certificates,” replied my friend. “I merely wish to reassure myself that the source of these forgeries is some place other than this.”
“I can assure you, sir, that it would not be from here that such forgeries would be issued.” He was almost comical in his vehement denial of the possibility. “But just to put your mind at rest, I will show you the ledger entry, where all our work is entered.” He reached behind him, and pulled down a large leather-bound volume. “In the month of March three years ago, you say?” he asked, as he scanned the pages. “Ah, here we are. This is one case where we retained the plate, and according to the ledger, we have not used it again for a re-issue.”
“Also the Eastern Union Railway issue which I believe to be of approximately the same date, and the Cobden Alkali manufactory. I confess, I do not know that these certificates were of your manufacture, but I have good reason to think this to be the case.” After further reference to the ledger, Bilton reported that these last-named securities had indeed been printed by his company, and that the plates had been retained and not destroyed.
“May we see the plates?” Holmes requested.
“Bless my soul! You really are inquisitive, are you not?” chuckled Bilton.
“It is my trade,” replied Holmes equably.
“Each to his own, I suppose. Still, there is no harm in your seeing the plates, if this will put your mind at rest.” He noted the numbers from the ledger on a piece of paper, felt in his pocket and pulled out a large bunch of keys. “This way, gentlemen, if you please.”
He led the way into the next room, where a large safe door, the size of a house front door, graced one wall. “As you can guess,” he explained, “some of the printed items that we produce are valuable, and we must store them securely before they are delivered to our customers.”
“A very wise precaution,” commented Holmes. “And who holds the keys to this safe, besides yourself?”
“My sons, Geoffrey and Colin. There are times when I am not available at the end of the day when the work is to be secured, and I would trust none of my workers with such a responsibility. Now,” he went on, inserting his key into the lock, “we will find the first plate for you, which is numbered as 1332 in the ledger. Please wait outside the safe, gentleman. I will be with you in a matter of a minute or two.” Having opened the door of the safe, which opened smoothly and almost silently, being counterweighted, he stepped inside, and snapped an electrical switch. “All the latest inventions, you see, Mr Holmes,” he explained with some pride, as an electrical lamp flooded the interior of the safe with light. “Now let me see...” His voice tailed off. “There must be some mistake here. And here. And here. Bless my soul!” His voice, from inside the safe, held a note of anxiety. “Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, may I ask you to step inside and join me?” We did so, and he gestured to racks lining one wall of the giant safe. “These, you see, are where we store the plates. They are all in order, as you can observe, but there is a gap between number 1331 and number 1333. That, Mr Holmes, is the first of the plates about which you were enquiring. And see here, and here. Two more gaps in the sequence, and the plates are not here. Dear me.” The little man appeared to be quite overcome, and mopped his brow with a large silk handkerchief. “What must you think of us, Mr Holmes?”
“I suppose there is no chance that these plates have slipped out of the rack or have been placed in the wrong location?” I suggested.
“It is a possibility,” he admitted. “Would you gentlemen care to assist me? My back not being as young as it once was makes it more difficult for me to bend and search underneath the racks and so on.”
Holmes and I joined in the search, but the missing plates were nowhere to be seen.
“I confess to you, Mr Holmes,” said Bilton, when we had exhausted the scant possibilities for concealment offered by the safe, which he had closed and re-secured before returning to his office, “that I believed we had a perfect system to keep track of such things. The fact that the plates are missing is bad enough, but what makes it worse is that if they have been removed, this can only have been done by one of two people. One of my sons.” He sat there, obviously shaken by this turn of events, but looking Holmes in the eye. “I am sorry that this has happened, and that such a scandal should affect this firm. It is really quite inconceivable that he should ever betray my trust in this way.”
“That who should betray your trust, Mr Bilton? Believe me, sir, no scandal need necessarily appear.”
“My elder son, Geoffrey, is the one whom I would suspect. He has fallen in with a bad set.”
“Cards? Horses?” I suggested.
The old man shook his head. “I know that he has been engaged in speculation on ‘Change,” he answered. “He is secretive about his finances, and I do not seek to pry, but I believe that he has encountered serious reverses in the field.”
“Do you know the name of his brokers?”
“I heard the name, but took little note of it, and it has slipped my mind. I would probably remember the name were it mentioned to me.”
“Knight and Conk-Singleton?” suggested Holmes.
“That name is definitely familiar to me,” said the unhappy Bilton. “Yes, I seem to remember his mentioning that he was using that firm some time ago. Perhaps six months before now.”
“And when would the presence of the plates last have been noted?” asked Holmes.
“We carry out an annual check of our inventory. It would have been in place then. About six months ago...” He broke off. “You feel there may be some connection?”
“I am positive of it,” replied Holmes. “But no blame can attach to you, of that I am sure. Would it be possible to see your son?”
“I would be delighted if you would speak to him on this matter.”
Bilton senior rang for a senior workman, and requested that “Mr Geoffrey” be sent to him.
“Do you wish to interview him in private?” he asked Holmes.
“He may speak more freely in your absence,” replied Holmes, reflectively. “On the other hand, your presence would remove any suspicion of coercion. I leave the question of whether you stay or leave to your discretion.”
“In which case, I will stay,” answered the old man. “I wish to hear with my own ears what my ne’er-do-well son has to say for himself. I am sorry to say that his behaviour since the death of his mother
some ten years ago has not always been of the most praiseworthy, and I have been too concerned with my business to be the father I should have been.”
“Do not blame yourself,” Holmes told him kindly. “We cannot all be responsible for others’ weaknesses.”
At that point, the door opened, and Geoffrey Bilton entered. He was a fine figure of a man, though his appearance was chiefly remarkable for a somewhat saturnine countenance, which turned to a scowl of displeasure as he registered the presence of Holmes and myself. There were distinct signs that he was not altogether comfortable at being summoned.
“You wished to speak to me, Pater?” he drawled, in a tone of voice that struck my ears as being somewhat insolent.
“It is not I who wishes to speak to you – at present,” answered his father. “Mr Sherlock Holmes here wishes to ask you a few questions.”
The effect of my friend’s name on the young man was remarkable. He turned pale, and clutched for support at the table in front of him.
“I see my name is familiar to you,” remarked Holmes, with a smile.
“You know all?” stammered Geoffrey Bilton. All his former arrogance and bluster appeared to have left him.
“No,” replied Sherlock Holmes, still smiling. “It would be somewhat of an exaggeration to say that I know all, but I have strong suspicions, and I would like your help in confirming them.”
The other seemed to relax a little. “I will help you if I can. If it will only rid me of the man who is poisoning my life.”
“You refer to Edward Masters?” asked Holmes.
“Yes, d—– him!” cried the other. “And Charles Conk-Singleton with him!” Following this outburst, he seemed to slump, almost in a gesture of defeat, and Holmes waved him to a vacant chair, into which he sank.
“Perhaps you can provide us with a history of what has happened,” invited Holmes.
“I will be happy to do so. I am ruined in any case. You should know, Pater, that my passage to America is booked on a steamer leaving Liverpool next week. I intended to leave a full account of my doings behind me. Mr Holmes here has only brought matters forward.”
I was touched, as who could not fail to be, by the evident distress now apparent in the young man’s voice. “Let me explain how this whole wretched business came to be,” he continued. “Games of chance and gambling had never attracted me, but I reckoned than a man of above average intellect, such as I know myself to be, could make investments that would secure a good return on his money. Accordingly, I started to make my investments, and things went well at first.”
“When was this?” asked Holmes, whose pencil was poised above his notebook.
“Some two years ago. I had heard that Imperial & Colonial was a ‘coming thing’, as they say in the City, and accordingly determined to invest in them. This was about nine months ago. The rumours about the firm were true, and my small holdings doubled in value in a very short space of time. But the very appreciation of their value meant that I was unable to purchase more of the same – they had risen beyond the reach of my purse. And then it was that I remembered that our firm had had the printing of the original bearer certificates. What, I asked myself, if I were to avail myself of the plates, and run off additional certificates? Naturally, I have skill in setting up and operating the presses, and it was easy for me to do this work late in the evening, when the workmen had all gone home. Of course, I cleaned everything after my labours, and replaced the plate in the safe.”
“You young dog!” exclaimed his father. “To think that I trusted you in everything regarding the business, and had planned for you to take my place at its head.”
His son accepted the reproof without protest. “I am not defending my actions, Pater, other than to state that I am ashamed of them. I am simply giving an account of what has transpired.”
“I am curious,” enquired Holmes. “I assume that these bearer certificates were signed by the officers of the company, and that they were numbered. How did you achieve your ends with regard to these features?”
“As to the signature, I confess to having a minor talent for forgery, which I swear I had not employed for unlawful business before this. At school I achieved a certain notoriety for my ability to imitate any boy’s hand. As regards the numbering, it was there that I made my mistake that led to the situation in which I now find myself. The numbers were hand-written by the company officers after delivery. I had some idea of the system employed for the numbering, since I already held some legitimate bearer stock, but I was forced to use conjecture as to the actual numbers of the certificates. It was also necessary, if I were to realise any gain from the sale of these certificates, to deal with another broker than the one whose services I had hitherto employed. I chose the house of Knight and Conk-Singleton almost at random.”
“And this would be about six months ago?” asked Holmes.
“Closer to seven,” corrected Bilton. “I took my forged certificates with me on my first appointment to see Conk-Singleton, confident that my use of the original plates and paper made them undetectable as counterfeits. I presented the certificates to Conk-Singleton, explaining that they had been left to me as part of a legacy, and he promised to dispose of them on my behalf, and asked me to visit the offices to collect the proceeds of the sale the next week.” Here the young man paused, and mopped his brow. “When I entered Conk-Singleton’s office, his manner was markedly less affable than it had been on the previous occasion.
“‘What the deuce do you mean,’ he fairly roared at me, ‘by offering me forgeries for sale?’
“I confess that I was so dumbfounded by his words that I had no thought of denying the charge. ‘How do you know they are forgeries?’ I asked him.
“He leaned back in his chair and smiled, with the lazy ease of a tiger that has scented its prey. ‘My dear Mr Bilton,’ he said to me. ‘Your skill as a printer does credit to your father’s firm and to his teaching of his trade to you. However, you should know that bearer certificates with the same numbers as the ones you presented to me recently passed through our hands.’
“I was, as you can imagine, completely taken aback. ‘What do you propose doing?’ I asked him.
“‘Why, nothing at present. The question you should be asking, my dear Mr Bilton, is what you should be doing to ensure that I continue to do nothing.’ He smiled, Mr Holmes, and it was such a smile as I never wish to see again.
“To cut a long story short, he agreed to keep the forgeries a secret from the police, and even to dispose of them on the market at the market price, and to hand over the proceeds to me.”
“But there were conditions?” asked Holmes.
“Of course, and I think you have already guessed what they are. He made detailed enquiries as to the operation of the business, and requested me to deliver the plates of the Imperial & Colonial certificates to him through an intermediary, immediately following the annual check of the contents of the safe.”
“Did he say why you should not carry out the printing yourself as you had before?”
“He explained to me that it there was less risk of discovery if he were to arrange for the printing to be carried out away from the works. He also told me that the plate would be returned to me for replacement in the safe before the next check, so there would be no risk of the deception being uncovered. I also had to procure some of the paper that is used for the certificates, but since it is of a common type, used for many purposes other than the production of bearer shares; it was a relatively easy matter for me to remove a good number of sheets without attracting any notice.”
“And what of the other plates?”
“Conk-Singleton requested those plates about a month after I had delivered the Imperial & Colonial plate to him. Somehow, he was aware that Bilton and Sons had been responsible for the preparation and printing of these bearer certificates.”
“Have you any idea where and how the plates are being used for the production of the counterfeits?”
“I am
certain that Masters, whom Conk-Singleton later designated as his intermediary in this matter is involved in the production,” replied Geoffrey Bilton, “but I am unable to tell you where the work is being done. We have met by pre-arrangement in a public house, where I have handed over such materials – plates or paper – as had previously been requested in letters from Conk-Singleton.”
“You do not know that Masters has taken premises here in Ealing?” asked Holmes. “And that those premises are in fact owned by Charles Conk-Singleton, who lets them out to him.”
The surprise on the other’s face was unfeigned. “Believe me, I had no idea of this,” he exclaimed. “Why, if I had known these things, I would have exposed him to the police and taken my own chances with the law.”
“Which is probably why he never informed you of the fact,” commented Holmes drily. “Well, Mr Bilton,” turning to the father, “it is not my place to tell a father how to treat his sons, but I can tell you that if your son were to turn Queen’s Evidence, it would go a long way towards mitigating any sentence that might be passed on him in a future trial, if indeed there were to be a trial. In such an event, I would be inclined to extend an olive branch of forgiveness. I have to tell you,” addressing the son, “that you have informed us of your decision to leave the country, and it would be my duty to inform the authorities of that fact, advising them to keep a watch at the ports. I would strongly advise you to assist the police to the utmost of your abilities, rather than running away. If you take the former course, be sure that I will use whatever influence I have with the police on your behalf.”
“Believe me, Mr Holmes, and believe me, Pater, you cannot begin to understand what I am feeling at this time at having betrayed your trust in this way.” Tears started to his eyes as he spoke these words, and I could see his father visibly relax his stiff posture as he beheld his son’s remorse. “I will not fly,” he continued. “I will stand and help the rogues receive the punishment they so richly merit, even if it means my accepting penalties myself.”
“I am proud of your decision, my son,” replied his father, with a catch in his voice. “With the aid of Mr Holmes here, I am sure we can restore the good name of our firm. Rest assured that you have my full support in this.”
