"We first came together some eight years ago in Amsterdam."
"Would you mind telling me what your business was?"
"So far as I can recollect it was connected with some old silver—William and Mary and Queen Anne cups and jardinières. We had made a bit of a find that we could authenticate, but we wanted a lot of the stuff, well—faked. You see, Van Sneck was an authority on that kind of thing, and we employed him to cut marks off small genuine things and attach them to spurious large ones. On the whole, we made a very successful business of it for a long time."
"You found Van Sneck an excellent copyist. Did he ever copy anything for you?"
"No. But Henson employed him now and again. Van Sneck could construct a thing from a mere description. There was a ring he did for Henson—"
"Was that called Prince Rupert's ring, by any chance?"
"That was the name of the ring. Why?"
"We will come to that presently. Did you ever see Prince Rupert's ring?"
"Well, I did. It was in Amsterdam again, about a year later than the time I mentioned just now. Henson brought the real ring for Van Sneck to copy. Van Sneck went into raptures over it. He said he had never seen anything of the kind so beautiful. He made a copy of the ring, which he handed back with the original to Henson."
Chris nodded. This pretty faithful copy of the ring was the one that Henson had used as a magnet to draw Lady Littimer's money and the same one that had found its way into Steel's possession. But Chris had another idea to follow up.