“I notice that this coin has a plain elephant under the bust; but I seem to have heard of a guinea, bearing this date, which had an elephant and castle under the bust. You are sure there was no such guinea?”
Our official friend shook his head as he took the coin from Thorndyke and replaced it in its cell. “As sure,” he replied, “as one can be of a universal negative. The elephant and castle did not appear until 1685.” He picked up the drawer and was just moving away towards the cabinet when there came a sudden change in his manner.
“Wait!” he exclaimed, stopping and putting down the drawer. “You are quite right. Only it was not an issue; it was a trial piece, and only a single coin was struck. I will tell you about it. There is a rather curious story hanging to that piece.
“This guinea, as you probably know, was struck from dies cut by John Roettier, and was one of the first coined by the mill-and-screw process in place of the old hammer-and-pile method. Now when Roettier had finished the dies, a trial piece was struck; and in striking that piece the obverse die cracked right across, but apparently only at the last turn of the screw, for the trial piece was quite perfect. Of course, Roettier had to cut a new die; and for some reason he made a slight alteration. The first die had an elephant and castle under the bust. In the second one he changed this to a plain elephant. So your impression was, so far, correct; but the coin, if it still exists, is absolutely unique.”
“Is it not known, then, what became of that trial piece?”
“Oh, yes—up to a point. That is the queerest part of the story. For a time it remained in the possession of the Slingsby family—Slingsby was the Master of the Mint when it was struck. Then it passed through the hands of various collectors, and finally was bought by an American collector named Van Zellen. Now Van Zellen was a millionaire, and his collection was a typical millionaire’s collection. It consisted entirely of things of enormous value which no ordinary man could afford, or of unique things of which nobody could possibly have a duplicate. It seems that he was a rather solitary man, and that he spent most of his evenings alone in his museum, gloating over his possessions.
“One morning Van Zellen was found dead in the little study attached to the museum. That was about eighteen months ago. There was an empty champagne bottle on the table and a half-emptied glass, which smelt of bitter almonds, and in his pocket was an empty phial labelled ‘Hydrocyanic Acid.’ At first it was assumed that he had committed suicide, but when, later, the collection was examined, it was found that a considerable part of it was missing. A clean sweep had been made of the gems, jewels, and other portable objects of value, and, among other things, this unique trial guinea had vanished. Surely you remember the case?”
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “I do, now you mention it, but I never heard what was stolen. Do you happen to know what the later developments were?”
“There were none. The identity of the murderer was never even guessed at, and not a single item of the stolen property has ever been traced. To this day the crime remains an impenetrable mystery—unless you know something about it,” and again our friend cast an inquisitive glance at Thorndyke.
“My practice,” the latter replied, “does not extend to the United States. Their own very efficient investigators seem to be able to do all that is necessary. But I am very much obliged to you for having given us so much of your time, to say nothing of this extremely interesting information. I shall make a note of it, for American crime occasionally has its repercussions on this side.”