In one corner a small box with glass sides constituted an office for the storeman. French led the way thither. The door was closed but not locked. The desk, which he next tried, was fastened. But above it in a rack he saw what he was looking for, a pile of blank bin-cards. He turned back.
“It doesn’t matter about the paper, after all,” he explained. “I see the desk is locked. I can make my sketches in my notebook, though it’s not so convenient. But many a sketch I’ve made in it before.”
Chatting pleasantly, he returned to the bins and began slowly to sketch the leg casting. He was purposely extremely slow and detailed in the work, measuring every possible dimension and noting it on his sketch. Gurney, as he had hoped, began to get fidgety. French continued talking and sketching. Suddenly he looked up.
“By the way,” he said, as if a new idea had suddenly entered his mind, “there is no earthly need for me to keep you here while I am working. It will take me an hour or two to finish these sketches. If you want to do your rounds and to get your supper, go ahead. I’ll find you in the boiler-house when I have done.”
Gurney seemed relieved. He explained that it really was time to make his rounds and that if French didn’t mind he would go and do so. French reassured him heartily, and he slowly disappeared.
No sooner had his shuffling footsteps died away than French became an extremely active man. Quickly slipping the four faked cards from their metal holders, he carried them to the office. Then taking four fresh cards from the rack, he began slowly and carefully to copy the others. He was not a skilful forger, but at the end of half an hour’s work he had produced four passable imitations. Two minutes later he breathed more freely. The copies were in the holders and the genuine cards in his pocket. Hurriedly he resumed his sketching.
French’s work amounted to genius in the infinite pains he took with detail. In twenty minutes his sketches were complete and he effectually banished any suspicion which his actions might have aroused in Gurney’s mind by showing them to him when he rejoined him in the boiler-house. Like an artist he proceeded to establish the deception.
“Copies of these sketches sent to the men who are searching for the duplicator will help them to recognise parts of it if it has been taken to pieces,” he explained. “You see the idea?”
Gurney appreciated the point, and French, after again warning him to be circumspect, left the works.
The problem of what he should do next was solved for French by the receipt of a letter by the early post. It was written on a half sheet of cheap notepaper in an uneducated hand and read: