"Counterfeit coining," Grady said crisply. "Oh, we know all about it, so you need not try to bluff it out in that way. I'll call a cab, and we can drive off comfortably to Bow Street."
All the swaggering impudence vanished from Blossett. As for his companion, he had not said a word from start to finish. It was about an hour later that Venner and his companions were seated at lunch at a hotel in Covent Garden, and Venner was impatiently waiting to hear what was the charge which had laid Blossett and his companion by the heels. Grady smiled as he drew from his pocket what appeared to be a brand new sovereign.
"This is it," he said. "A counterfeit. You wouldn't think so to look at it, would you? It appears to be perfectly genuine. If you will balance it on your finger you will find that it is perfect weight, and as to the finish it leaves nothing to be desired. And yet that coin is false, though it contains as much gold as any coin that you have in your purse."
"Now I begin to understand," Venner exclaimed. "I have already told you all about my discovery at the Empire Hotel, also what happened quite recently at Merton Grange. I could not for the life of me understand what those fellows had to gain by making sovereigns red-hot. Of course, I took them to be real sovereigns—"
"Well, so they are practically," Egan said. "They contain absolutely as much gold as an English coin of equal value. They are made from the metal Fenwick managed to loot from the Four Finger Mine."
"What, do you know all about that?" Venner cried.
"We know all about everything," Grady said gravely. "We have been tracking Fenwick for years, and it is a terrible indictment we shall have to lay against him when the proper time comes. We shall prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was one of the murderers of Mr. George Le Fenu —but we need not go into that now, for I see you are anxious to know all about the trick of the sovereigns. After Fenwick was compelled to abandon the Four Finger Mine, he found himself with a great deal less gold than he had expected. Then he hit upon the ingenious scheme which we are here to expose. His plan was to make sovereigns and half-sovereigns, and put them on the market as genuine coins. Now do you see what he had to gain by this ingenious programme?"
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MOUTH OF THE NET
"I am afraid I am very dense," Venner said, "but I quite fail to see how a man could make a fortune by selling for a sovereign an article that cost him twenty shillings, to say nothing of the trouble and cost of labor and the risk of being discovered—"