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"But the thumb-mark, my dear fellow!" I exclaimed. "How can you possibly get over that?" "I don't know that I can," answered Thorndyke calmly; "but I see you are taking the same view as the police, who persist in regarding a finger-print as a kind of magical touchstone, a final proof, beyond which inquiry need not go. Now, this is an entire mistake.
"'But John Smith is the person who made the finger-print. "'Therefore the crime was committed by John Smith." "Well, that is a perfectly good syllogism, isn't it?" I asked. "Perfectly," he replied. "But, you see, it begs the whole question, which is, 'Was the crime committed by the person who made this finger-print? That is where the corroboration is required."
"I cannot be identified with this unhappy affair by so much as a finger-print." The Portuguese scowled down at him. "So that's the game, is it? You're going to double-cross us? You're going to be out of it and we're going to be in it." "Sit down, you fool. Double-cross you! You are easily scared at a little leg-pulling.
Blakeley," he said, "when you get tired of monkeying around with the blood-stain and finger-print specialist up-stairs, you come to me. I've had that fellow you want under surveillance for ten days!" At ten minutes before two the following day, Monday, I arrived at my office. I had spent the morning putting my affairs in shape, and in a trip to the stable.
No more bows and smiles after that; but what could they do, and what offence had she committed? That was just what the 'tec asked me, and I could not answer. "We know most of 'em," he said, "but she's a right-down finger-print from the backwoods. Nathaniel St. John cables from New York that he doesn't know her, but will be pleased to make her acquaintance, if we'll frank her over.
His tone was bitter. Mr. Cupples, understanding nothing, stared at his motionless back for a few moments. "I am still completely in the dark," he ventured presently. "I have often heard of this finger-print business, and wondered how the police went to work about it. It is of extraordinary interest to me, but upon my life I cannot see how in this case Manderson's finger-prints are going "
From an inner pocket, he produced a sheaf of photographs, laid them beside the prints, and carefully compared them. Finally he straightened up and looked at us, his face working. "Do you know what this does, gentlemen?" he asked, in a voice husky with emotion. "It strikes at the foundation of the whole system of finger-print identification!
But," and he leaned forward earnestly and brought his fist down hard on the table with a resounding Irish oath, "the finger-print system, the infallible finger-print system, has gone to pieces. We've just imported this new 'portrait parle' fresh from Paris and London, invented by Bertillon and all that sort of thing it has gone to pieces, too.
Seated near the finger-print expert was a police official of middle-age, Inspector Weyling, of the Sussex County Police. He was a saturnine sort of man, with a hooked nose, a skin like parchment, and a perfectly bald sugar-loaf head, surmounted at the top by a wen as large as a duck-egg.
As Foyle switched on the lights in the finger-print department, Green sat down at a table and with the aid of a magnifying-glass carefully scrutinised the prints which he carried on a sheet of paper. Ranged on one side of the room were high filing cabinets divided into pigeon-holes, numbered from 1 to 1024.
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