Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/70

 "Well, such as three good-sized presses for printing their counterfeit notes, a stock of the finest inks I ever saw outside a government plant, etching tools, and a complete collection of plate-steel and copper. They've got dies for striking off silver coins, and a lathe for rimming gold."

"Then everything's grist for their mill!"

"But that's nothing compared to their stock of paper! Wilsnach, those people have paper for bank-notes of about every power in the world. They've got an imitation water-lined Irish linen, five by eight, with ragged edges, for Bank of England work. They've got an equally good white water-lined paper for their Banque de France stuff. They've got silk-fibre stock for their German thousand-mark bills. They've even got South American currency-paper done up in cinnamon brown and slate blues. They've also got the trick of process-hardening steel. I imagine that partly explains the clearness of their counterfeit print-work. They don't print from the original plate. That woman artist of theirs works out their plate first, on soft steel—and it must take her many a week to do one of those plates I They take an impression from this, and process-harden it, doing the Government trick, except that instead of printing from a cylinder they pound it off on a bed-press."

"God, what a find!" gasped Wilsnach. Kestner did not seem to share in his exultation.

"But, don't you see, the plant's not what we want! The plant's an incident. We could wire Rome and have the Italian authorities close in on that plant, of