“‘Call me a Jew if it aint!’ exclaimed Mr. Moss, taking it.
“‘Yes, it is certainly a plan of your office. See, here is the doorway, and there comes the other room. Then there is a cross against the fireplace in this room, on what I judge from the lines to mean the fourth board from the hearthstone, and another cross against the sixth from the hearthstone in the other room. Get a crowbar, Mr. Moss.’
“‘There’s one downstairs.’
“I do believe that if you’d asked for a crocodile, he’d have got one ‘downstairs.’
“Crowbar and a policeman to wield it were soon procured, and then the mystery was unravelled.
“Close to where I sat, were unearthed several copper-plates for the forging of Russian rouble notes of various amounts; and in the back room, under the flooring, were found several hundreds of well-executed forgeries carefully soldered up in a tin case, together with correspondence implicating Orloff and the baron.
“It appeared that Brunton was engaged by a New York gang to engrave the plates, and that he had never seen his employers, the agent between them being the Louise before mentioned, whose fair hand I had been compelled to decline.
“Brunton had evidently become frightened, and had fled.
“He was no traitor, or he would have decamped with the plates.
“Perhaps the dread of having to espouse Louise may have had something to do with his flight.