At the end of the portfolio was a separate folder labelled "finger-prints," which I took out, doggedly, but with a sense of deep discouragement. Nothing could be much less illuminating than a collection of unidentified finger-prints. Nevertheless, I opened the folder and began to look through the collection. There were Badger’s prints, devoid of any meaning to me, and the photograph of Dobey’s, taken from the official paper that Miller had shown us, which told me nothing at all. Then I opened a smaller folder, labelled "Prints from cigar." There were two sets of photographs, one the natural size and the other enlarged to about four diameters. Discarding the smaller photographs, I examined the enlargements, and read the inscriptions written below them, with as much attention as I could muster; for, little as they conveyed to me, I realized that they constituted evidence of the highest importance, if only the opportunity should ever come to apply it.
The first was Inspector Badger’s left thumb, remarkably clear for a developed print. But, though it was, in effect, an indictment of murder, it gave me no help, since I knew already that poor Badger had been murdered. I laid it down and took up the next. "Right thumb of person unknown." Having read the inscription, I glanced at the print. This one, too, was admirably clear and distinct. The experts should have no difficulty in identifying it if they could get a known print with which to compare it. Not only was the general pattern—a very distinctive one—perfectly plain, but all the minor "characteristics" were easily legible.
I sat with the print in my hand and my eyes fixed on it musingly, reflecting on all that it meant and all that it did not mean. This thumb-print had been made by the man who had given the poisoned cigar to poor Badger—who had almost certainly murdered him; who had personated Dobey at the sham house-breaking, and who had entered Dobey’s flat and there planted the stolen document. It was capable of giving infallible proof of that villain’s identity; and yet it offered not the faintest hint as to what manner of man that villain might be. In spite of our possession of this infallible touchstone we might pass this murderer in the street a hundred times without the faintest glimmer of suspicion as to who he was. A finger-print is a poor instrument with which to start the search for an unknown criminal.
As I sat thus, with my eyes fixed only half-consciously on the print, I became aware of a dim sense of familiarity. A finger-print is, to an accustomed eye, much more easy to remember than might be supposed; and, as my eye rested on this print, I began to have the feeling that I had seen it before. At first the feeling was not more than vaguely reminiscent; but yet it was enough to arouse my attention. I looked, now, with a critical and purposeful scrutiny and a definite effort of memory. And then, suddenly, in a flash, the revelation came and left me gazing open-mouthed.
It was amazing, incredible; so incredible that I sought instantly for corroboration or disproof. Snatching up the measuring-glass, and picking out the natural-sized print, I placed the central dot of the scale of circles on the summit of the central character of the core and wrote down on the note-block the measurements shown. The pattern was intermediate between a whorl and a twinned loop; but, remembering Thorndyke’s rule, I treated it as a whorl. Then, as it was a left-handed, or anti-clockwise, whorl, and as the "core-character" lay entirely within the centre circle ("Space A"), the whorl was of the type A3. I wrote this down, and then measured the distance to the right delta. The latter was intersected by the circle, C, and therefore, by the rule, lay in the space, D. The ridge tracing was clearly outside the delta, and I therefore wrote down O. The left delta was outside the print, and therefore could not be located. The number of ridges between the centre of the core and the right delta was twelve, while the left ridge-count—since the left delta was outside the print—was unascertainable.
When I had finished, I set out my results in the regular formula, so far as I remembered the method, thus:
Right thumb—Unknown. W (? T.L.). Core, A3, ?, O, D, ?, 12.
Then I turned back through the portfolio until I found the slip of paper on which Thorndyke had copied the entry in his note-book. The first eager glance at it I showed me that my memory had not deceived me.
The entry ran:
Walter Hornby. Right thumb. W (? T.L.). Core, A3, ?, O, D, ?, 12.
In addition to the formula, Thorndyke had written down a few of the "ridge characteristics" with their ridge-counts from the centre of the core, and a direction-arrow to show their position, thus
3, Lake, 5, Bif., 8, End, 10, Bif., 7, Lake, 9, Bif., 11, Lake.
With intense excitement, I proceeded to verify these characters, not a little surprised at the ease with which they could be recognized and located. Taking first the right direction-arrow, and counting the ridges from the centre of the core, I found in the third ridge one of those little loops, or eyes, known, technically, as "lakes." The fifth ridge divided into a fork, or bifurcation; the eighth ridge terminated abruptly in a free end, and the tenth showed another bifurcation. Then, following the left direction-arrow, the seventh ridge showed a small lake, the ninth a bifurcation, and the eleventh a larger lake. The agreement was complete in every detail.
I laid down the print and reflected on this amazing discovery, still hardly able to credit the evidence of my eyes. For the thing seemed beyond belief. The murderous wretch whose tracks we had been following was none other than Walter Hornby. After all these years. during which I had almost forgotten his very existence, he had suddenly swum into the field of our vision like some strange and horrible apparition. Yet my astonishment was hardly justified; for no detail of his recent villainy was in any way out of character with his past, as it was known to me.
Presently my thoughts took another turn. By what means had Thorndyke been able to identify Badger’s murderer as Walter Hornby? It had been no chance shot. The discovery of Hornby’s thumb-print in the Thumbograph had been no mere accident. It was now evident to me that Thorndyke had come to our house with the express purpose of seeking that thumb-print, if it was in existence, as was manifest from the fact that he had come equipped with the measuring-glass, and from the anxiety that he had shown as to the fate of the Thumbograph. Clearly, that was the final verification of a theory that was already complete in his mind. Indeed, he had, in effect, said as much this very day in court. He had spoken of "a coherent theory of the crime," an expression that would have been quite inapplicable to the chance discovery of a finger-print. Now, how, from the information that we possessed, had he arrived at this astonishing conclusion?
It is proverbially easy to be wise after the event. "Jobbing back," as this mental exercise is named on the Stock Exchange, is considerably simpler than jobbing forward. So I found it on the present occasion. Now that the conclusion was known to me, I was in a favourable position to consider the processes of reasoning which had led to it. And when I did so, and when I recalled the hints that Thorndyke had dropped from time to time, I was surprised that no inkling of the truth had ever dawned on me. For what Thorndyke had said was perfectly true. When all the facts were considered, separately and as a whole, a consistent theory of the crime emerged, and inevitably brought the figure of Walter Hornby into the picture.
Taking the facts separately there were those that related to technique and method and those that related to motive. The technique in the present crime included the use of a poisoned cigar and of counterfeit finger-prints. But this was the technique employed, years ago, by Walter Hornby; and it was not only a peculiar and distinctive technique; it was absolutely unique. No other criminal, so far as I had ever heard, had employed it. Then the method of employing it was the same in both cases. In the Hornby case—the case of the Red Thumb Mark—an original finger-print (in the Thumbograph) had been obtained from the victim, Reuben Hornby, from which to make, by photo-mechanical process, the stamps for the counterfeits. In the Badger case, a sheet of finger-prints had been stolen, evidently for the same purpose. Again, in both cases, the forged finger-prints had been "planted" at the scene of the crime. In short, the technique and me
thod in the Badger case repeated, in the main, those of the Red Thumb Mark case.
Then the motive showed a like similarity in the two cases. When Walter Hornby had tried to murder Thorndyke (by means of a poisoned cigar) his motive was to get rid of the only person who suspected him. As to the motive for the murder of Badger, Miller was almost certainly right, although he had guessed wrong as to the identity of the murderer. Badger’s uncanny memory for faces had made him a dangerous enemy. And we had Miller’s statement that Badger was the only officer who was able to identify Walter Hornby.
Finally, taking the whole set of facts together, the similarity of the two cases was very striking. In each crime, the criminal act had been preceded by a careful preparation to incriminate an innocent person. There had been a systematic scheme of false evidence, thought out and arranged in advance with remarkable completeness and ingenuity, before the criminal had committed himself. Thus, as a whole and in detail, the murder of Inspector Badger virtually repeated a crime which was known to me, and which was utterly unlike any other crime of which I had ever heard. Reluctantly, I had to admit that I had been distinctly "slow in the uptake."
I had just reached this rather unsatisfactory conclusion when I heard a latchkey inserted in the outer door. A moment later, Thorndyke entered, and, as his eye lighted on the open portfolio, he greeted me with the enquiry:
"Well, what says my learned friend? Has he reached any conclusion?"
By way of answer, I wrote on a scrap of paper: "X=Walter Hornby," and pushed it along the table towards him.
"Yes," he said, when he had glanced at it, "history repeats itself. We had this equation once before, you remember."
"I remember," said I, "and I ought to have remembered sooner. But, tell me, Thorndyke, when did you first suspect Hornby in this case?"
"The word ‘suspect,’" he replied, "is a little indefinite. But I may say that when we established the fact of a poisoned cigar, the name of Walter Hornby inevitably floated into my mind, especially as the cigar was associated with a stolen sheet of finger-prints which were pretty evidently not those of the person who stole them. In fact, I adopted, provisionally, the hypothesis that the murderer was Walter Hornby, but only as a mere possibility which had to be borne in mind while further developments were being watched for. I argued that if the hypothesis was correct, certain events might be confidently expected to follow. There would be some crime, probably committed in daylight by a man with red hair and a red nose, who would leave Frederick Smith’s finger-prints at the scene of the crime; and the stolen paper would be found in some place connected with Frederick Smith.
"As you know, these events occurred exactly according to plan. Thereupon, the mere hypothesis became a very weighty probability. But the ex mentum crucis was made possible by Juliet. When the Thumbograph had spoken the hypothesis passed into the domain of established fact."
"Yes," I said; "you have established the murderer’s identity beyond any reasonable doubt. The next thing is to ascertain his whereabouts. At present he is no more than a name."
"That," he replied, "is Miller’s problem. The police have all the facilities for finding a wanted man. We have none. By the way, have, you seen Polton?"
"No," I replied, "but I expect you will see him before long. He always knows, in some occult way, when you come in. In fact, I think I hear him approaching at this moment."
Almost as I spoke, the door opened and Polton entered, bearing a large vulcanite dish and a long strip of cinematograph film. There was no need to ask for his news, for his face was one large and incredibly crinkly smile of triumph and satisfaction.
"We’ve brought it off, sir," he announced, gleefully, "first shot. I went down to the Manor House this morning, and I waited by the camera until I heard the twelve-o’clock exposure go off. Then I took out the roll-holder and put in a fresh one. But I don’t think you will want it. I have developed the strip—nine exposures, altogether, but only two of them matter, and those two I have enlarged to half-plate. They are those made at twelve o’clock on Tuesday and twelve o’clock to-day."
He laid the dish on the table, and watched Thorndyke ecstatically as the latter stooped over it to examine the enlargements.
"The top one is the Tuesday exposure," he explained. "Shows the room just as you saw it, with the box on the table. The bottom one is to-day’s. You see there’s no box there, and the arm-chair has been moved about a couple of inches, as you can see by the sash of the case behind it."
"Yes," Thorndyke agreed, "it is a true bill, Polton. The box is gone from the table; and boxes don’t fly away of themselves. By the way, Polton, what do you make of that box?"
"Well, sir," was the reply, "if it didn’t seem so unlikely, I should have said that it looked like a casting-box; one of those biggish flasks that silversmiths use for casting the blanks of things like spoons. It is certainly a metal box, and those things at the side look very much like pin-lugs."
"So I thought," said Thorndyke; "but we shall probably know all about it, before long. At any rate, Polton, you have solved our problem for us, and now we can go ahead with confidence. I shall send Mr. Woodburn a letter and a telegram. He will probably get the letter to-morrow morning, but the telegram will make it safer."
"There’s the telephone, sir," Polton suggested.
"Yes, I know," said Thorndyke "but when I whisper secrets, I like to know whose ear they are going into."
"What are you going to say to him?" I asked.
"I shall ask him to meet us to-morrow morning and bring the key of the gallery door. That is what we arranged."
"Then you are going to break the seals and explore the rooms?"
"Certainly. There is now no doubt that someone visits those rooms; and as the next visit seems to be due to-morrow night, we may as well be there to give the visitor a hospitable reception."
"Shall you want me to come with you, sir?" Polton enquired, anxiously.
My impression was that Thorndyke did not particularly want him. But the wistfulness of the little man’s face proved irresistible.
"I think you had better come, Polton," he said, "and bring a few tools with you. But it would be as well if you went on ahead of us, so that we don’t make too large a party. We mustn’t be too noticeable."
"No, sir," Polton agreed, undisguisedly jubilant at being included in the expeditionary party; "I will go down by the early train. Are there any tools in particular that you wish me to bring?"
"Well, Polton," Thorndyke replied, "you know what our problem is. Someone has got into these rooms by some means other than an ordinary door. We may have to pick one or two locks, and they may be rather unusual locks. I would not suggest burglars’ tools, because, of course, you haven’t any. If you had, they might be useful."
Polton crinkled knowingly as he protested "There is nothing improper about burglars’ tools in themselves. It is the use that is made of them. The tools are quite innocent if they are used for a lawful purpose."
Having delivered himself of this slightly questionable legal dictum, he departed, leaving the photographs for us to examine at our leisure.
Very curious productions they were. I took up the strip of film and examined the tiny negatives through my pocket lens. Small as they were—barely an inch and a half square—they were full of minute detail, and the enlargements, magnified about four diameters, were as clear as if they had been taken with a full-sized camera. The "Automatic Watcher" had turned out, in respect of its efficiency, far beyond my expectations.
"Yes," said Thorndyke, in reply to my admiring comments, "with first-class lenses, you can get surprising results; in fact, the only limit to enlargement is the grain of the film. But we had better put the photographs away for the present, as I am expecting Miller to drop in at any moment. He is dreadfully disgruntled at the result of the trial, though the fiasco is very largely of his own producing. Still, we shall have to try to comfort him, and it had occurred to me that we might take him into this Hartsden adventure. Wh
at do you think? We really ought to have a police officer with us."
"Yes, I think it is rather necessary," I agreed. "We don’t want a search warrant, as we are acting with Woodburn’s authority, but, as we may have to make an arrest, it would be more regular to have a police officer to direct that part of the business. Besides, we don’t know how many we may have to deal with. It looks like a one-man job, but we don’t know. It may turn out to be a gang. Let us have Miller’s beef and experience, by all means."
On this, Thorndyke took the photographs and retired to the laboratory to write and dispatch his letter and telegram. When he returned, he brought in with him the Superintendent, whom he had encountered on the landing.
"Well," growled Miller, as I placed an arm-chair for him, with the usual creature comforts, "we’ve brought our pigs to a pretty fine market."
Thorndyke chuckled, but refrained from pointing out that the market was of his own choosing.
"What I can’t understand," the Superintendent continued, "is why that fool couldn’t have trotted out his infernal alibi when we charged him. Then there needn’t have been any trial."
Again we refrained from the obvious answer to this question. Instead, Thorndyke proceeded at once to the "comforting" operation.
"Well, Miller," said he, "now that we have cleared Dobey off the stage, we can give our attention to realities. I suppose you will now agree with me that the man who gave Badger that poisoned cigar is the man who murdered him."
"Yes," Miller admitted, "I’ll agree to that much. But it doesn’t get us a great deal forrarder. The fellow is a mere abstraction. He isn’t even a name. He is just a finger-print that we haven’t got on our files."
"Not at all," said Thorndyke. "We can tell you who he is. It will then be for you to find out where he is."
The Superintendent laid down a match that he had just struck, and stared at Thorndyke, open-mouthed.
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