11 The Brighter Buccaneer

He took up a handful of the litter that remained on the chair and thrust it under Mr. Tombs's nose. It was generally green in colour; as Mr. Tombs blinked at it, words and pat­terns took shape on it, and he blinked still harder.

'Pound notes,' said Benny. He pointed to the pile he had dumped in the corner. 'More of 'em.' He flattened the brown paper around the carelessly-opened parcel on the table, re­vealing neat stacks of treasure packed in thick uniform bun­dles. 'Any amount of it. Help yourself.'

Mr. Tombs's blue eyes went wider and wider, with the lids blinking over them rapidly as if to dispel an hallucination.

'Are they-are they really all pound notes?'

'Every one of 'em.'

'All yours?'

'I guess so. I made 'em, anyway.'

'There must be thousands.'

Benny flung himself into the cleared armchair.

'I'm about the richest man in the world, Mr. Tombs,' he said. 'I guess I must be the richest, because I can make money as fast as I can turn a handle. I meant exactly what I said to you just now. I made those notes!'

Mr. Tombs touched the pile with his finger tips, as if he half expected them to bite him. His eyes were rounder and wider than ever.

'You don't mean-forgeries?' he whispered.

'I don't,' said Benny. 'Take those notes to the nearest bank -tell the cashier you have doubts about them-and ask him to look them over. Take 'em to the Bank of England. There isn't a forgery in the whole lot-but I made 'em! Sit down and I'll tell you.'

Mr. Tombs sat down, stiffly. His eyes kept straying back to the heaps of wealth on the floor and the table, as though at each glance he would have been relieved rather than surprised if they had vanished.

'It's like this, Mr. Tombs. I'm taking you into my confidence because I've known you a couple of hours and I've made up my mind about you. I like you. Those notes, Mr. Tombs, were printed from a proof plate that was stolen out of the Bank of England itself by a fellow who worked there. He was in the engraving department, and when they were making the plates they made one more than they needed. It was given to him to destroy-and he didn't destroy it. He was like the man we were talking about-the man in the taxi. He had a genuine plate that would print genuine pound notes, and he could keep it for himself if he wanted to. All he had to do was to make an imitation plate that no one was going to examine closely-you can't tell a lot from a plate, just looking at it-and cut a couple of lines across it to cancel it. Then that would be locked up in the vaults and probably never looked at again, and he'd have the real one. He didn't even know quite what he'd do with the plate when he had it, but he kept it. And then he got scared about it being found out, and he ran away. He went over to New York, where I come from.

'He stopped in the place I lived at, over in Brooklyn. I got to know him a bit, though he was always very quiet and seemed to have something on his mind. I didn't ask what it was, and I didn't care. Then he got pneumonia.

'Nobody else had ever paid any attention to him, so it seemed to be up to me. I did what I could for him-it didn't amount to much, but he appreciated it. I paid some of the rent he owed. The doctor found he was half starved-he'd landed in New York with just a few pounds, and when those were gone he'd lived on the leavings he could beg from chop houses. He was starving himself to death with a million pounds in his grip! But I didn't know that then. He got worse and worse; and then they had to give him oxygen one night, but the doctor said he wouldn't see the morning anyhow. He'd starved himself till he was too weak to get well again.

'He came to just before the end, and I was with him. He just looked at me and said: 'Thanks, Benny.' And then he told me all about himself and what he'd done. 'You keep the plate,' he said. 'It may be some good to you.'

'Well, he died in the morning, and the landlady told me to hurry up and get his things out of the way as there was another lodger coming in. I took 'em off to my own room. There wasn't much; but I found the plate.

'Maybe you can imagine what it meant to me, after I'd got it all figured out. I was just an odd-job man in a garage then, earning a few dollars a week. I was the man in the taxi again. But I had a few dollars saved up; I'd have to find the right paper, and get the notes printed-I didn't know anything about the technical side of it. It'd cost money; but if it went through all right that poor fellow's legacy would make me a millionaire. He'd starved to death because he was too scared to try it; had I got the guts?'

Benny Lucek closed his eyes momentarily, as if he were reliving the struggle with his conscience.

'You can see for yourself which way I decided,' he said. 'It took time and patience, but it was still the quickest way of making a million I'd ever heard of. That was six years ago. I don't know how much money I've got in the bank now, but I know it's more than I can ever spend. And it was like that all of three years ago.

'And then I started thinking about the other people who needed money, and I began to square my conscience by help­ing them. I was working over in the States then, of course, changing this English money in small packets at banks all over the continent. And I started giving it away-charities, down-and-outs, any good thing I could think of. That was all right so far as it went. But then I started thinking, that fellow who gave me the plate was English, and some of the money ought to go back to people in England who needed it. That's why I came across. Did I tell you that fellow left a wife behind when he ran away? It took me two months to find her, with the best agents I could buy; but I located her at last serving in a tea-shop, and now I've set her on her feet for life, though she thinks it was an uncle she never had who died and left her the money. But if I can find any other fellow whose wife needs some money he can't earn for her,' said Benny nobly, 'I want to help him too.'

Mr. Tombs swallowed. Benny Lucek was a master of elocu­tion among his other talents, and the manner of his recital was calculated to bring a lump into the throat of an impressiona­ble listener.

'Would you like some money, Mr. Tombs?' he inquired.

Mr. Tombs coughed.

'I-er-well-I can't quite get over the story you've told me.'

He picked up a handful of the notes, peered at them mi­nutely, screwed them in his fingers, and put them down again rather abruptly and experimentally, as if he were trying to discover whether putting temptation from him