“Yes. But he might give us false diagrams,” Owen remarked, shaking his head dubiously.
“Make him write a statement that the money has been found upon him, and in order to avoid arrest and scandal he undertakes to hand over to us to-night his diagrams, and also his working apparatus. We will motor down with him to Warley for that purpose.”
To this course the two men agreed. Therefore Paget drew up a confession and undertaking which, under compulsion, Geoffrey signed, rather than be brought before the magistrates next day.
Afterwards all four descended together and went out into the street, where the taxi was still awaiting them.
Just as they were about to enter it Geoffrey slipped a police whistle from his vest pocket and blew it, when instantly four constables and a man in plain clothes closed upon them, and Geoffrey gave all three in charge! The man who had posed as a detective was one of the blackmailing gang!
The faces of the trio were a study. Their plot had been a clever one, but the counterplot which Geoffrey had laid for them had been complete.
The man Paget and his two friends appeared in due course at the Old Bailey, and all three returned to penal servitude, thus freeing poor May Farncombe—whom they had compelled to be their accomplice. They had held her in their power by first compelling her to sign a confession of theft in a similar manner, and then holding over her threats of exposure to her family and her friends.
The plot which the girl revealed to Falconer was a deeply-laid and cleverly-conceived one in order to obtain the secret of his invention, which they had planned to sell to some German firm in New York for a very considerable sum.
Indeed, Paget had already booked his passage across the Atlantic, and would have sailed from Liverpool on the following day had not Geoffrey laid his plans to entrap the unscrupulous trio.
Needless to say that on the day following their arrest steps were taken to patent the new device—which is now safe from infringement.