I took it from him, and laid it, face downwards, on the wooden table,
threw a little water on the back, and with a knife scraped away the
porous white paper. Instantly there gleamed up at us the baleful
yellow of the gold. I shrugged my shoulders and spread out my hands.
The Earl of Chizelrigg laughed aloud and very heartily.
'You see how it is,' I cried. 'The old man first covered the entire
wall with this whitish paper. He heated his sovereigns at the forge
and beat them out on the anvil, then completed the process rudely
between the sheets of this paper from France. Probably he pasted the
gold to the wall as soon as he shut himself in for the night, and
covered it over with the more expensive paper before Higgins entered
in the morning.'
We found afterwards, however, that he had actually fastened the thick
sheets of gold to the wall with carpet tacks.
His lordship netted a trifle over a hundred and twenty-three thousand
pounds through my discovery, and I am pleased to pay tribute to the
young man's generosity by saying that his voluntary settlement made my
bank account swell stout as a City alderman.
5. _The Absent-Minded Coterie_
Some years ago I enjoyed the unique experience of pursuing a man for
one crime, and getting evidence against him of another.
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