"I'm from the States. Willoughby's in my line. I'd heard of Cash-Down Willoughby. I never ran across him. But, when this young fellow said something about his habits with money, I remembered something else. I remembered a counterfeiter by the name of Shell Fields, who used to operate in the Middle West about sixty years ago. He ran a counterfeiting plant. He had a gang to shove the queer for him. He didn't trust 'em. He liked to keep money on tap. And so he doped out a scheme to do it — so his own gang would never know where he kept his money — so the police themselves wouldn't, if they nabbed him. He hid his money in a place where nobody on God's green earth would ever look for it,
He hid it in his own counterfeiting plant.
"See?" asked Stone, with a sort of toiling lucidity. "Like that old Poe thing; what's-its-name? The most obvious place. Money stacked up against the wall, open to view in a counterfeiter's hang-out..’
"He'd take a bundle of twenty-dollar bills, maybe. Or fifty-dollar bills. Twenty in a bundle, with a band around them. The first three would be counterfeits on each side of the bundle, like a sandwich. Nobody would look further, after seeing they were rotten counterfeits. And inside the sandwich there'd be fourteen real honest-to-God bills. That's what Willoughby did right here in England. And you were the only one who saw through it."
For the first time Serpos's expression began to change. It may have been the effect of the muddy dawn on his face, but I do not think it was altogether that. Stone spoke with the same toiling lucidity, now fast and eager. The light of the lamp over the desk seemed even more uncannily bright on his face, on all our faces, when Stone turned towards H.M.
"No, I'm a liar," Stone said. "You saw through it, too. That was why you asked him He'd have known it was counterfeit money. He wouldn't have stolen it unless it was real. He thought it was real. But he had to be sure. So friend Serpos, he just makes sure. Great-goddelmighty, I can see everything! He takes specimens of all of it, he sneaks them out of the safe, and takes them to the great authority on the stuff-Hogenauer. Hogenauer tells him it's genuine. But Hogenauer won't take a cut of the profits and keep his mouth shut. Hogenauer's too honest. Hogenauer's been like a cat on hot bricks for fear the police will throw him out of the country. So Hogenauer's going to get in the good graces of l the police by telling the truth about this `counterfeit' stuff, the stuff the police think is counterfeit " Stone stopped, as though in a mighty uplift of understanding. "And that's why," he added, "friend Serpos has got to kill him."
Against the noise of the dying rain, we were aware of a new sound: which was silence. H.M. had ceased to tap his pencil on the skull. Stone turned towards him. Also we became aware-which Stone seemed to sense as well-that all through the night H.M. had been managing dark affairs after his own fashion. And now he had ceased to tap on the skull.
"You agree with me," said Stone, "don't you?"
"Me?" said H.M. He' scowled and seemed to wake from dozing. "Oh yes. More or less. I mean, I agree with you all except on one point."
Here Serpos (as though on a spring) got up from his chair. He pushed his hands out in front of him, and sheer exhaustion made his speech incoherent. "You can never say I did it," he insisted. "Nobody is going to say I did it. It's not true. You fools, you colossal fools, don't you see who really did do it? I'll tell. I don't care. I — "