untered was my plain-clothes
policeman. I told him that I thought I was on the track of a little
bit of business in his line and I took him back into the office of the
copperplate printer and introduced him. It had just occurred to me that
if the two plates I had seen were accurately registered they might
fit into each other and make out a consecutive document, and so in the
sequel it proved to be. A gang of Polish forgers had conceived the
idea that in a foreign country it would be possible to get two separate
engravers to imitate each a portion of a fifty-rouble note and they had
made arrangements to do their own printing when they had secured the
plates. I made arrangements with my detective that he should bring me
first hand and exclusive information with respect to the development of
the case and within eight and forty hours he had effected his arrest and
I was the only journalist in the town who was allowed to know anything
about it. Had I stayed on in Birmingham I might have developed a sort of
specialism in this direction, but circumstances drifted me away and it
was not until some years later that I met my friend again and found him
to be occupying a position on the detective staff at Scotland Yard.
He told me how he came there and, in its way, it is one of the most
remarkable little stories I remember to have heard.

There was a manufacturing jeweller in Camberwell whose name was
Whitehead, who had a showroom somewhere in the neighbourhood of St.
Paul's Cathedral. Seventeen years there had been in his employ a
commercial traveller in whom he reposed the completest confidence. This
traveller had a very pretty turn for the invention of ornamental designs
in fgold and precious stones and he was an accomplished draughtsman. In
his journeys about the country he carried with him a tray of pinchbeck
and of coloured glass, which represented in duplicate a tray of real
jewellery and precious stones which was kept under lock and key at the
showroom. It happened, whether by accident or design, that the one tray
was substituted for the other, the pinchbeck imitations being left in
the jeweller's safe and the real thing carried away by the commercial
traveller. The fact of the substitution was not discovered for some days
and by that time the traveller, following his ordinary route, should
have been in Manchester or Liverpool. He was wired to at both places but
no reply was received from him. Not a doubt of the man's probit