“I reread your report of the incident on the Seattle waterfront. No doubt in your mind then that Darrow died from his wound, submersion in the icy harbor, or a combination of both.”
“None, despite the fact that the body was never found. There hasn’t been a whisper of him since, so far as I know.”
“No. But he may have survived, unlikely as it seems.”
“What makes you think he might have?”
“I’ll let you judge for yourself, John.”
From a drawer in his cigar-burned desk Boggs took a banknote and a thick-lensed magnifying glass, both of which he handed to Quincannon. The note was a hundred-dollar series 1891 silver certificate bearing the portrait of James Monroe. Quincannon examined both sides of it through the glass.
“Counterfeit,” he said. “Nearly perfect.”
“Recognize the coney work?”
“It appears to be familiar, yes.”
“Take a closer look.”
Quincannon did so. The counterfeit had been made, he judged, using one of the new processes of photolithography or photoengraving. The latter, most likely; the quality of reproduction was excellent, though not remarkably so, and the note bore the rich dark lines of genuine government bills. There was a certain loss of detail, too, of the sort caused by the erratic biting of acid during the etching process. The loss of detail was one thing that marked the hundred as bogus. There were others, too: the Treasury seal was lightly inked and looked pink instead of carmine; the bill’s dimensions were a fraction of an inch too small in both width and length; and the formation of the letters spelling “James” under President Monroe’s portrait showed evidence of either poor etchwork or acid burn. All of these flaws were minor enough to escape the naked eye, even a well-trained one. A glass such as this one was necessary to spot them.
The paper appeared to be genuine, carrying both the “U.S.” watermark in several places and the large, prominent-colored silk threads used by the government’s official papermaker, Crane & Co. of Dalton, Massachusetts. This would have been startling, given the rigid Treasury Department safeguards against the theft of banknote paper, except for two things. One was that the bogus bill was a mite too thick. The other was that crisscrossing the engraved scroll lines were fine, colorless marks that ran in seeming confusion — the imprints of previous engraving.
When Quincannon lowered the glass, Boggs said, “Well?”
“Certainly looks like Darrow’s work. But it’s not old enough to have been a leftover from the Seattle operation just come to light.”
“No, it’s not. But would you say it’s the same expert job of bleaching and bill-splitting?”
“Perhaps. Close, though the paste appears to have been applied a bit too thickly.”
“You haven’t lost your eye. I compared it to one of Darrow’s bogus certificates from our archives. Except for the paste, I found the two to be quite similar, as well.”
“How many of these have been confiscated?”
“Sixteen, so far.”
“All here in the city?”
“No. Eleven here, five in the East Bay.”
“The first one when?”
“Just last week. The president of the First Western Bank spotted it and brought it to us.”
“No other counterfeit hundreds like this one turned up in the past decade, I take it?”
“None that have come to our attention. And they surely would have during that time, sooner or later.”
Quincannon studied the bill again through the glass. “The plates that made this were certainly photoengraved.”
“I agree. Every letter and line cut into the metal by hand, following the tracings of the photographic image — the same process used in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. Except that Darrow, if it was Darrow, didn’t have the advantage of a geometric lathe.”
“But the process hadn’t been perfected yet when he was operating in the Pacific Northwest. The forgery method in those days was to place a genuine hundred on a zinc plate and transfer its ink to the metal with a solvent, then engrave the plate by following the inked lines and letters.”
“Anastatic printing,” Boggs said, nodding. “A long, slow, and imperfect process. Besides, according to your report those anastatic plates of his were destroyed in the fire along with the rest of his equipment.”
“They must have been, yes.”
“So in order to begin afresh, he would have had to have had new ones made, and photoengraving being faster and more certain, naturally he would have found an engraver able to employ that method.”
“You’ve had your operatives canvassing printing and engraving shops in the city and outlying areas, of course.”
“And with no luck so far. There are a damned lot of them, and as usual we’re shorthanded. Still more than two dozen to be checked, better than half of those outside the city.” Boggs shook his head. “A futile endeavor, I’m afraid, without some indication of guilt that would permit us to conduct a thorough search of the premises.”
“The shop would have to have a fairly large printing press to produce bills of this caliber,” Quincannon mused. “That should narrow the field a bit. Unless...”
“Unless the operation here is similar to the one in Seattle, set up in a warehouse or abandoned building rather than a regular printing shop. Darrow’s a sly fox. He could have bought the press secondhand somewhere close by, or had it shipped in in parts and reassembled.”
“Any koniaker could’ve thought of that. What about the man passing the queer? Or have there been more than one?”
“At least two.”
“No useful descriptions?”
“One, provided by the owner of an Oakland haberdashery. A middle-aged, heavyset fellow with two distinguishing features: a thick black mustache and eyes of a different color — one brown, one blue.”
“A traceable trait, that last, if he has a criminal record.”
“He doesn’t, so far as we’ve been able to determine,” Boggs said. “The few known felons with different-color eyes either don’t match the rest of this one’s description, or are dead or locked away in prison. Our one hope is that he continues to shove queer and another sharp-eyed banker or businessman recognizes him and he’s caught before he can get away. Flyers have been distributed to every bank and large business establishment on both sides of the Bay and as far south as San Jose. But for all we know, Darrow or whoever is running the game is using several passers rather than just a handful. That was how he operated in the Northwest.”
Quincannon said, “I still find it difficult to believe that Darrow is alive and back in business after a ten-year hiatus. The man responsible could be someone who learned bleaching and bill-splitting from him.”
“I’ve considered that,” Boggs said. “But it couldn’t be any of his henchmen in Seattle. Two were killed in the raid and warehouse fire, including his engraver, Cooley, and of the remaining two, one died in prison and the other is still incarcerated. The fact remains, John, that the coney work could still be Darrow’s, with the slight differences in bill-splitting technique explained by ten years’ advancement in age.”
“You’ve checked with the authorities in Seattle regarding Darrow, of course.”
“The authorities in Tacoma, Portland, and other Pacific Northwest cities, as well. Wired the description of him you included in your report and all the known details of his past activities and known associates. None of the agencies has a record of anyone who might be Darrow or of counterfeiting or other crimes during the past decade that he might have been involved in. Frustrating, but hardly conclusive.”
“I don’t suppose the local constabulary could shed any light on the situation.”
Boggs said, “Hah. Those inept dolts couldn’t catch wind of a clever crook if he went around town advertising his crimes on a signboard. You know that as well as I do.”