Chapter 27
“So you think that Philip Stoneham is the mastermind of both the past counterfeiting conspiracy and the current murders?”
Hands clasped behind his back, Wrexford turned and moved away from Charlotte and the flames crackling in the hearth, throwing his face into shadow as he pondered the revelation.
He could feel the tiny change in temperature as the darkness touched against his skin.
But the chill wasn’t nearly as troubling as the ice forming in the pit of his stomach.
To think that a trusted colleague and respected man of science was the devil in disguise made him feel slightly nauseous. Surely there should have been some sign of evil. Granted, a pair of horns and cloven hooves were too much to expect, but still, there should have been some signal of warning.
And yet he could think of none.
Stoneham was from a well-respected family—bloody hell, his grandfather was a duke—and had attended the finest schools in the land. The door to the world of privilege and pleasure was always open to gentlemen like him. They simply waltzed in and took their unearned place in Polite Society.
The earl couldn’t fathom what sort of twisted thoughts would make a man so depraved and driven by greed that he would be willing to murder simply to have more.
“Can you think of any other alternative way to put together the pieces of the puzzle?” Charlotte’s question drew him back to the present moment.
“No,” he admitted. “I wish I could, but Stoneham’s connection to Archie Campbell and the Lisbon Conspiracy is, to me, the dagger in the heart.”
He shook his head. “I confess, I felt the facts were beginning to point to Ainsley. His position at the Bank of England would explain how the counterfeit banknotes were switched with the real ones. But given that his sister is Ainsley’s wife, Stoneham could easily have coaxed that information out of his brother-in-law. ”
“Fiend,” muttered Charlotte under her breath.
“Such betrayal is beyond contempt,” he agreed.
“I had already planned to pay a visit to the warehouse where Perkins and MacArthur are working with their collaborators in order to see how they are coming on their work. I will also ask MacArthur if he can remember anything about Stoneham’s interaction with his father.
I would like to have some hard evidence to offer Griffin rather than just conjecture. ”
“That makes sense.” Charlotte hesitated. “I trust that you’re taking Kit with you.”
“I sent Raven around earlier this evening to ask him, but it seems that he had just left on an errand of his own,” answered the earl. “If it makes you more at ease, I shall have Tyler accompany me.”
A grim nod. “Please do, Wrex. One wrong step …” She didn’t bother to finish her thought.
“Which is why we must proceed very carefully.” Wrexford stood quietly, contemplating the sinuous dance of the flames as they curled and crackled through the coals.
The whispery ticking of the mantel clock finally roused him from his reveries. After donning his overcoat, he took his loaded pistols from the wooden case on the work counter, checked that the safety locks were on, and slid them into his pockets.
“You needn’t wait up. I will likely be late.”
“Lord Wrexford! How fortuitous that you have come!” A note of excitement resonated in Perkins’s greeting as he closed the warehouse door and slid the bolts back into place. “I was just going to ask Jack to send you a message in the morning.”
The inventor tugged at the earl’s sleeve, forcing him to quicken his steps. “Come, we have something to show you.”
“I’ll wait out here, milord,” said Tyler, moving to the shuttered windows, “and keep an eye on the street through the slats. As m’lady says, we can’t be too careful.”
Wrexford followed Perkins through the storage area, the air pungent with pine spirits, whale oil, and printing inks, and down a short corridor that led to the main machinery room.
MacArthur was crouched down beside an impressive-looking printing press, fiddling with several of the adjustable quoins that locked the final intaglio plate—which featured multiple images of the same banknote design—into its iron chassis.
“Halloo,” he called to the earl. “I just need to tighten all the elements so they can’t shift, and then we’ll print a sample.”
A last turn of the quoin’s key, and MacArthur signaled that all was ready.
He stepped back from the machine, allowing the group’s English partner, Charles Heath, to approach with his ink balls—two wooden-handled sheepskin bags which were stuffed tight with horsehair.
After kneading the two balls together to create just the right consistency for the ink, he expertly applied it to the intaglio steel plate, then used a soft cloth to wipe away the excess pigment from the surfaces.
The pressman clamped in a sheet of printing paper atop the packing and slowly spun the handle of the heavy metal roller, causing it to move along the flat bed. At the end of the press, Heath plucked the paper free of its fastenings and regarded the image.
A smile slowly spread across his ink-streaked face as he handed it to Perkins. “By Jove, I think we are ready for the final step to turn our vision into reality …”
As Heath turned to their third partner, Gideon Fairman, the two of them began hooting in triumph and slapping each other on the back, Perkins carried the printed page over to Wrexford.
“This is the prototype design.” He passed it to the earl.
“We’ve developed a method for adding color embellishments to the final version, and once we transform them into a pair of siderographic plates to print on our special press, I challenge anyone to create a better or more foolproof technology for making banknotes. ”
“Extraordinary,” murmured Wrexford after studying it closely. “I am no expert in art or currency, but this sort of precise detail seems beyond the capability of a forger, no matter how talented.”
“Indeed! And we have yet another clever defense against counterfeiters, but I shall keep that under my hat for now, sir,” said Perkins.
“I’m curious …” The earl moved to the press and leaned down to study the steel plate for a few moments before continuing.
“A colleague from the Royal Society, who is working with Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Congreve to create a submission for the Inimitable Banknote Competition, had explained to me the basic three-part process of siderography. But he was a trifle vague on how one hardens the steel plates and dies for optimal printing quality.”
Perkins smiled. “The exact process is a technical secret that I prefer not to divulge—even to you, milord. However, I’ll simply say it involves heating the soft steel plate and roller die to a high temperature in a carbon-rich environment, which hardens the surface of the plate.
It’s then quickly quenched—that is, rapidly cooled in a bath of water or oil. ”
“Ah.” Wrexford nodded in understanding. “That makes great sense, now that I think of it.” He, too, smiled. “You’re very wise to guard your secrets carefully.”
And I shall do all in my power to keep them safe from Stoneham’s murderous greed and ambition.
“The key is hardening only the surface, so that the rest of the steel remains soft enough not to crack under the extreme pressure of the printing process,” explained Perkins. “I’ve also designed a special printing press to work with my plates and dies.”
“So,” mused the earl. “In a nutshell, your momentous innovation works like this—a soft steel plate is hand-engraved by an artist like Jack, and you can use a rose engine to add intricate guilloche designs. The plate is then hardened, and a soft steel roller die is run over the hardened plate at great pressure so it creates a perfect relief image of the banknote design. The die is then hardened, and used to created multiple copies of the banknote on another printing plate—all of them exactly the same—”
“Precisely, milord,” interjected Perkins. “That final plate is then hardened, and banknotes can be printed far more efficiently, with a far higher quality than a counterfeiter can create with copper engravings.”
“I salute you, sir.” Wrexford gave an admiring nod.
“As a man of science, I find it very exciting to see such imagination and innovation at work.” He took another look at the press before asking, “How long until you create the final siderographic plates and are ready to submit the sample to the Royal Society’s committee? ”
Perkins tapped a finger to his chin. “The date for submission is five weeks from now. With luck, we’ll be ready in four.
” He made a face. “A harder task may be convincing Sir Joseph to accept the inventions of an American—as if scientific knowledge knows any nationality. However, we will deal with that obstacle once we hit up against it. For now, there are still challenges.”
He waved to Fairman. “Come, Gideon, I want to check some of the settings on the rose engine, and see if a slight adjustment to the gap between the overlapping figure-eight patterns will be even more effective.”
As the two men moved off to one of the side rooms, Wrexford joined MacArthur by the press work counter, where he was cleaning his ink-smudged hands with a rag dipped in diluted pine spirits.
“I am aware that it’s a fraught subject, but may I ask you some more questions about your father and his cronies during the time of the Lisbon Conspiracy?”
“Of course, milord. Though I’ve already racked my brain to see if there is anything of note that I haven’t told you.”
“Let me be the judge of what’s important,” he counseled.
A nod, and then a sigh. “D-Do you think that I shall ever be able to put the past behind me?”