"All yours?"
"I guess so. I made 'em, anyway."
"There must be thousands."
Benny flung himself into the cleared armchair.
"I'm about the richest man in the world, Mr. Tombs," he said. "I guess I must be the richest, because I can make money as fast as I can turn a handle. I meant exactly what I said to you just now. I made those notes!"
Mr. Tombs touched the pile with his finger tips, as if he half expected them to bite him. His eyes were rounder and wider than ever.
"You don't mean — forgeries?" he whispered.
"I don't," said Benny. "Take those notes to the nearest bank — tell the cashier you have doubts about them — and ask him to look them over. Take 'em to the Bank of England. There isn't a forgery in the whole lot — but I made 'em! Sit down and I'll tell you."
Mr. Tombs sat down, stiffly. His eyes kept straying back to the heaps of wealth on the floor and the table, as though at each glance he would have been relieved rather than surprised if they had vanished.
"It's like this, Mr. Tombs. I'm taking you into my confidence because I've known you a couple of hours and I've made up my mind about you. I like you. Those notes, Mr. Tombs, were printed from a proof plate that was stolen out of the Bank of England itself by a fellow who worked there. He was in the engraving department, and when they were making the plates they made one more than they needed. It was given to him to destroy — and he didn't destroy it. He was like the man we were talking about — the man in the taxi. He had a genuine plate that would print genuine pound notes, and he could keep it for himself if he wanted to. All he had to do was to make an imitation plate that no one was going to examine closely — you can't tell a lot from a plate, just looking at it — and cut a couple of lines across it to cancel it. Then that would be locked up in the vaults and probably never looked at again, and he'd have the real one. He didn't even know quite what he'd do with the plate when he had it, but he kept it. And then he got scared about it being found out, and he ran away. He went over to New York, where I come from.