“Charlie.”
He turned to the three men. “You observe the sign in the window, gentlemen?” he said.
“W. F. Purveyor,” said Archer.
“This was the location of the first vandalism,” said Lenox. “Now — moving along.”
Fripp looked confused. “Excepting what is that to mean?”
“You may come along if you like,” said Lenox. “We’re only walking ten doors down. I think your shop was vandalized by mistake, Mr. Fripp.”
“To Wells’s?” asked Frederick quietly.
Lenox nodded. “The location of the second vandalism.”
Wells’s shop was empty, though the man himself was behind his counter, apron on, barrels of seed full and gleaming, a pencil stub in his hand and a ledger before him. He looked up just as the bell, strung tightly to the door, clanged.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“You observed the sign in the window, as we came in, Mr. Archer?” said Lenox.
“F. W. Purveyor,” said Archer with a nod.
“Outsiders, nervous about a job, knowing they’re to commit a violation of a property on the east side of the village green — it is a mistake I understand. They came back a second time to do the job correctly, and took a clock, too.”
There was a sudden strain, an airlessness, in the room. “What is the meaning of this?” asked the grain merchant.
“Mr. Wells,” said Lenox, “I have come into your shop three times now, including this visit.”
“I recall,” said Wells coolly.
“On none of those occasions have I seen a single customer. Yet what was it you told me, Freddie — that he has changed it all out of countenance from the sleepy shop that it was in his father’s day, that he had a gold watch chain now, a carriage for his mother. Is that correct?”
“My customers buy in bulk, not in dribs and drabs. But then I would not expect a politician to understand the ways of business.”
Lenox laughed. “A point fairly taken, though I’ve seen grain shops busier than this. No, I grant you that — if it was only the watch chain, the carriage, then I would be on an unstable footing.” He went silent. The laughter left his face. “But your expansion,” he said. “The expansion of your store.”
“What of it?” asked Wells.
“Are we to arrest this man?” said Archer. Oates murmured his concordance with the question.
Only Dallington knew Lenox’s methods. He was quiet. “How long did the expansion take, Mr. Wells?” asked Lenox.
“Two months.”
Lenox gestured at the narrow strip of new flooring in one corner of the room. “I noticed this when I was here before. Two months! It is a very small return on a very great investment of time and, I presume, money. Freddie, you called it a hellish noise, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And — I thought this was telling — he brought in men from Bath to do the work, too? Despite the town railing against Captain Musgrave for taking his custom to Taunton.”
“I confess that I am still in the dark, Charles,” said Frederick. “May we come to the point? Did Mr. Wells kill Weston?”
“Never!” said Wells, and indeed his face was filled with a convincing outrage.
Lenox strode toward a door at the back of the room. “Dallington, it was something you said about Fontaine that finally tipped me.”
The junior detective’s face — paled with guilt for these last few days, so eager to be of aid — seemed to flush with happiness now. He restrained it long enough to ask, in a casual voice, “Oh? Which was it? Glad to help, of course.”
Lenox stopped at the door. “Mr. Wells, may we visit your cellar? As I remember there appears to be a heavy padlock on this door.”
“Can that surprise you, after this shop was vandalized and a prize clock taken?” said Wells. “Am I accused of some wrongdoing, sirs?”
“I suspect the padlock predates the vandalism — but never mind that, may we see your cellar?”
Wells’s face was, for a moment, reluctant, but then he said, “By all means. I have nothing to hide.”
“Take us down, if you would.”
There was a ring of keys tied to Wells’s apron string. He selected a large iron one and opened the padlocked door, then led them along a short passage and down a flight of stairs, single file.
The cellar was disappointing. There were sacks of grain, old bits of machinery, a few papers.
Lenox felt the tide of the room turning against him; indeed, he was puzzled.
Then it came to him: The room was too small.
“Why is the cellar only a quarter of the size of the house?” he asked. He turned to Dallington, Archer, Oates, Frederick. Fripp had stayed upstairs, evidently. “Help me find the concealed door. It will be on this wall.”
Now at last Wells broke. With a cry of fury he flung himself toward the stairs, but it was Constable Archer of Bath, as strong as an oak tree, who blocked his way and, with Oates’s help, put handcuffs over his wrists.
“A concealed door?” said Dallington. “Concealing what?”
“Help me look,” said Lenox.
They spent ten minutes going over the back wall minutely until, at last, it was Fredrick, puffing slightly from the exertion of stooping and crawling along the floor, who found the small latch. “It needs a key,” he said. “There’s a keyhole in the floor here.”
Archer took Wells’s ring of keys. It was the third key that worked, releasing the door in the wall a quarter of an inch. It was obvious now, in retrospect, where it had been all along.
“Here is the reason for your Bath workmen — your two-month renovation,” said Lenox. “Dallington, it was the bad coin you mentioned that finally tipped me, one of the charges against Fontaine’s in Bath. You recall, too, Uncle, Jack Randall, passing false bits. I suspect both of them worked for Mr. Wells. This room is the reason for all the trouble Plumbley has had.”
All of them surged forward around the door as Lenox opened it, except for Wells, who was leaning, forlorn, against the stairs.
Lenox knew what he expected, but even he gasped when he saw it; the others went slack-jawed. Within a long chamber stood an enormous bronze machine, gleaming under lamplight, and even now pumping out row upon row upon row of counterfeit coins.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Plumbley police station had a back room with a table and chairs in it. The transfer of Wells from his shop’s cellar to that room — a distance of perhaps fifty yards — took place quickly, in under a minute. Still it wasn’t quick enough to prevent people from seeing. Freddie had ventured outside and found a bedlam of people pressed up against the windows of the police station, hoping for a glimpse of the suspect.
Now he returned to the room and sat with Archer and Lenox on one side of the table, Wells on the other, a pitcher of water and several glasses between them. Oates stood in the corner, watching.
Dallington was out looking for the farmhand Jack Randall, with the aid of Oates’s temporary subordinate, the farmer, Mr. Hutchinson. As Lenox pointed out, Randall might have been involved or there might simply have been an uncommon quantity of false coin passing around Plumbley. Meanwhile Archer had sent a telegram back to his headquarters to report of the arrest and to ask that Fontaine be questioned about his relationship with Wells.
“Tell it from the start, please, Mr. Lenox,” said Plumbley’s constable. His wits seemed sharper today, uninterfered with by any morning tipple. “I still don’t claim to understand it all.”
Lenox shrugged. “Mr. Wells can recount the story better than I can.”
Wells was silent.
“Help him along, perhaps,” said Frederick. The squire looked heartily disappointed to be in the room, even in his relief at having caught the criminal.