Silence Observed Read Free

papers – “I think I may say I’m a good step ahead.”
    “I congratulate you,” Appleby said. “And the stuff really has the curious interest of being technically impeccable and undetectable? There are so many scientific tests nowadays.”
    “Very true, my dear fellow. Photography under all those deuced cunning rays, and that sort of thing. But Geoffrey Manallace was years ahead of his time. He thought of everything. For instance, I’ve been at the ink. This forged ‘Phoebus with Admetus’ stanza turns out to be written in ink that went out of production in 1907. One wonders how he came by that. It’s an example of the perfect detail. Meredith, you’ll remember, died in 1909.”
    “If he was a good enough chemist,” Appleby said, “Manallace could probably analyse old ink on a page, and then make up an ink which was chemically indistinguishable from it.”
    “Quite so. To be a really good forger or faker nowadays a fellow has to be both an artist and a scientist. A perfect Leonardo, in fact. That’s no doubt part of the fascination of it. Take the manufacture of paper. Materials and processes are always changing, and an eye has to be kept on that. And there’s some nice old paper here. I’ve been having a look at it.”
    As he said this, Gribble moved away from the empty fireplace before which he had been absent-mindedly thinking to warm himself and walked over to a window. There he held up the first sheet between himself and the view of Pall Mall.
    “Yes,” he said. “Yes, indeed.” And he held up the second sheet. There was a silence – rather a long silence, broken only by the resolute snores of the man beneath the newspaper.
    “Well?” Appleby said.
    But – very evidently – it wasn’t well. Gribble was standing frozen and like a man transformed. When he spoke, it was in a new and troubled voice.
    “Appleby – come over here. But I must be wrong, of course. I’ll be forgetting the date of my own birth next.” He gave a shaky laugh. “For God’s sake – come here !”
    Appleby crossed the room. Gribble’s index finger, trembling with agitation, was resting on the bottom left-hand corner of the sheet. Against the clear sunlight it was possible to distinguish a complicated little arabesque of lighter tone.
    “I suppose you know your watermarks?” Gribble asked huskily.
    “Good Lord, no!” Appleby laughed. “It’s something I remember having to get up once or twice, long ago. But I’ve clean forgotten all that technical stuff, I’m ashamed to say. At the Yard I’ve got a young man who knows the rudiments of paper – chemical processes, watermarks and all. And I’d go to a fellow in the British Museum, if I wanted more.”
    “You could come to me , for that matter. For I do know. And it’s no use pretending. I’m just not making a mistake now. This watermark” – and Gribble tapped the paper – “first appeared in 1924. Look – it’s on only one of the sheets of this Meredith stuff. And, indeed, there’s only about a third of it on that. But it’s fatal to the whole damned thing.”
    Appleby couldn’t help laughing. He could remember plenty of occasions on which little snags of this sort had meant the difference between guilt and innocence in grave matters. So Gribble’s seemed to him to be a very absurd and comical sort of dismay.
    “Too bad,” he said. “The great Geoffrey Manallace slipping up for once. But never mind. Perhaps it gives his Meredith forgery a bigger scarcity value than ever. It may represent the unique occasion on which Manallace did slip up.”
    But at this – very strangely – Gribble gave what could only be described as a howl of rage. It was so alarming a demonstration that Appleby could hear, behind him, the supposedly slumbering man jump up and hasten from the room.
    “You bloody fool!” Gribble cried – and it would have been impossible to tell whether he was addressing Appleby or apostrophizing himself. “Geoffrey Manallace –