The learned said the production of such coin was an impossibility, but the Clareboroughs proved to them that it was not, and the Mint authorities were puzzled by the perfection attained. But at last it was remembered that about twenty years before, a very clever metallurgist and chemist, who had held a high position at the Mint, was discovered in an offence against the rules of the establishment, which resulted in his immediate discharge and degradation, he having escaped a criminal prosecution by the skin or his teeth.
This official had married a lady of the name of Clareborough, and it was suggested by an ingenious personage as being possible that to this man was due the manufacture of the base coinage.
The right nail was hit upon the head, for at the time when, some seven or eight years earlier, the Clareborough family were, through their wild expenditure, utterly penniless and hopelessly in debt, this man, after many experiments, so advanced his project that he laid it before James Clareborough, who jumped at the idea; his brother Dennis and cousin Robert, both helplessly aground and forced to enlist in cavalry regiments, eagerly joined, and in a very small way the coining was begun, but they were terribly crippled by the cost of each piece. James Clareborough was for producing something cheap, saying that it was absurd to be making imitation sovereigns the material for each of which cost ten shillings; but his uncle’s theory was that only by the great perfection of the coins could success and immunity from discovery be assured.
The uncle had the support of the two younger men, and after a while the skill begotten from practice enabled them to produce the coins more rapidly; improved machinery was obtained from Belgium; four more impecunious members of the family were sworn in to join in the secret of what they called their private bank; and at the end of three years the mansion in Highcombe Street was taken, fitted up by foreign workmen, and by degrees the machinery brought in through the book-collector’s house, and all done without a suspicion being raised.
The generally-accepted idea in fashionable sporting circles was that the wealth of the Clareboroughs came from their clever gambling transactions, and many a speculator was ruined by trying to imitate them, notably their two servants.
The various difficulties in the Clareboroughs’ way dissolved upon being attacked; wealth rolled in as fast as they liked to make it, working hard under the guidance of their uncle, the professor, who kept the position of captain over them, for in spite of James Clareborough’s overbearing ways, he gave up, as did the others, feeling that everything depended upon their being united. The old man’s occupancy of the adjoining house, where he made his genuine love for collecting old works act as a blind for the receiving of heavy cases of metal, served them well, and the servants never once had a suspicion that there was a communication between the two buildings, or that the stern old housekeeper was the professor’s wife.
Her part was well played, too. She never left the town mansion when all the servants went down to The Towers. And it was at these times that the young men came up frequently, ostensibly to visit Paris or attend meetings, but really to work hard in the well-fitted vaults to replenish the strong-room, whose contents they wasted fast.
Self-interest, as well as clannishness, held the family together. Use had made the labour of production familiar, and they might have gone on for years in their life of luxury unchecked, but for the one weak link in their chain—the strongest and most overbearing man among them. His plainly-displayed passion for his cousin had been the cause or quarrel after quarrel with Robert Clareborough, one of which culminated in blows, the use of the revolver, and Marion rushing off, believing her brother dying, for the aid of the surgeon with whose name a recent case had made her familiar.
Of the further career of the family nothing more was known in England. The police were indefatigable, but they had keen, shrewd men to deal with, and the culprits completely disappeared. Suspicions were entertained that they might have had something to do with the distribution of a great deal of base coin in Germany, but it was never traced home to them, and to all intents and purposes the name of Clareborough soon died out and the mysterious business in Highcombe Street was forgotten.