"Going up to the old boy's cabin?" Griswold bent close to mutter. "They've just sent for me to come up."
"Now?"
"Now. Any idea what they asked me to bring? I'll tell you. My ink-roller, and that rubber-stamp pad of Benoit's. They're outside." Griswold himself braced his muscles for the foghorn. "I think something's going to blow up. And soon."
When they knocked at the door of H.M.'s cabin, it was Commander Matthews' voice which told them to come in. The cabin, which had a private bathroom, was now brilliantly lighted. Commander Matthews, very much ill at ease, smoked a cigar. H.M. was propped up to a sitting position in bed; the collar of his old-fashioned wool nightshirt was buttoned round his neck, and, headache or no, he smoked his black pipe. He had a drawing-board across his knees, with sheets of paper and a pencil. On the bedside-table Max noticed with some surprise a small portable radio set, a folder-plan of the Edwardic, and a clean handkerchief.
"Come in," growled H.M., taking the pipe out of his mouth. "Got the doings? The ink-roller and the ink-pad?"
"Right here," said the purser.
"Sit down, then," said H.M. with a certain grimness. "We got quite a lot of official business in front of us. Damn that fog-horn!"
"Can't be helped," Commander Matthews pointed out "Well? Have you got anything?"
For a time H. M. leaned back and eyed the roof-light, drawing slowly on his pipe and letting lazy clouds of smoke drift up. Round his mouth there was the edge of a sour smile. But his eyes remained grave even when he began to rock back and forth with ghoulish mirth.
"I was just sittin' and thinkin'," he said. "It's the funniest thing I've come across in a long time."
"What is?"
"This," replied H.M. broadly. "The way the murderer's been deceivin' us."
Commander Matthews changed color.
"You may think it's funny," he said. "But I'd use another word for it. By God, it's not funny to—" He stopped. "Deceiving us how?" he demanded.
"With his faked finger-prints, for one thing. But that's the least of it. The very least of it."
The purser interrupted. "Sir," he said fervently, "I expect to get sat upon. I'm waiting for it. And yet I'll take my dying oath, here and now, that the bloody thumb-prints in Mrs. Zia Bey's cabin were not—n-o-t, not—fakes."
"Admitted, son."
"But you just said they were!"
"Not exactly, son. No, no. I said they were faked. I didn't say they were fakes."
Commander Matthews, Griswold, and Max stared at each other.
"Not?" inquired the captain. "What's the difference, then?"
"Well . . . now," muttered H.M. argumentatively, and scratched his forehead. "It's a matter of hair-line definition, maybe. But it can make an awful lot of difference in drivin' people loony over the solving of a problem. The easiest way out of the tangle is not to argue over what constitutes the proper terms. The easiest way is to show you how the trick was worked. Now!" He smoked for a moment in silence, the ghoulish amusement still distorting his face. Then he nodded toward the drawer of the bedside-table.
"The cards with the various passengers' finger-prints," he went on, "are in that drawer. Will you get out the card bearing my own right and left thumb-prints. My finger-prints, mind!"
"But, sir—"
"Do as he asks, Mr. Griswold," said Commander Matthews.
Still shaking his head, the purser opened the drawer, riffled through the little heap of cards, and selected the card with H.M.'s sprawling signature across it
"Good!" said H.M. "Now, son, are you prepared to swear that those are my finger-prints? That they're the prints of my right and left thumb, taken in front of you and the third officer, and signed by me?" As Griswold's look of blackest suspicion deepened, H.M. held up his hand. "Hold on, son!
Word of honor, there's no trick about this part of it. I'll tell you: yes, they are my real, honest-Injun prints, taken In front
of you. Is that satisfactory?"
"If you say so."
"Uh-huh. All right. Did you bring your magnifyin' glass with you?"
"Got it right here in my pocket."
"Also good. I'm goin' to ask you to take my prints all over again. Have you got any more of those little cards?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
"Well, that won't matter," said H.M. "We can just UM this sheet of white paper. No, no: burn me, it's all right. It's an ordinary sheet of paper. It's not prepared in any way. Um one of your own, if you like."
Again Commander Matthews, Griswold, and Max exchanged glances. Putting his pipe down in an ashtray on the table, H.M. arranged the drawing-board across his knees. He pushed a sheet of paper to the center of it.
"Got your ink-roller there, son?"
"Ready for you, sir."
"Then let's get on with the printin'. . . . Cor, this is messy stuff! Gimme that handkerchief. ... So. Push that sheet of paper farther toward me. ... So. I'm now goin' to record my prints. Right thumb. Left thumb. There you are. Now take the paper. Get out your magnifyin' glass. Compare the prints on this paper with the prints on that card."
There was a silence.
Griswold, his jowl still full of suspicion, took the drawing-board from H.M.'s knees and sat down at the foot of the berth. He set the card and the paper side by side. The bright roof-light, misted by tobacco-smoke, shone down full on the drawing-board. Taking a large magnifying glass out of his pocket, the purser started to study them.
His glass moved from side to side. His painstaking study seemed to drag on for interminable minutes. Once he stopped, looked at H.M., and started to speak; but thought better of it. He begged a pencil from H.M. Then he began to make annotations, . like proofreader's marks, from the arches, loops, whorls, and composites of one set of prints to the arches, loops, whorls, and composites of the other. They saw the perspiration glitter on his forehead as he bent over the board. A drop of it fell on the paper.
Commander Matthews was impatient.
"Well?" the captain prompted. "What about it? They're the same, aren't they?"
"No, sir, they are not."
"They're not—" Commander Matthews stopped. His cigar had gone out, and he dropped it into the ashtray. He got to his feet. "What did you say?"
"I will take my oath," replied Griswold, "that these two sets of prints do not belong to the same man."
Again nobody spoke. The purser, seeking something to mop his forehead, picked up the inky handkerchief H.M. had discarded. It left a smudge over the purser's eye, but he paid no attention. All of them were looking at H.M.
"You're positive of that, son?" the latter asked.
"I am."
"Swear to it, would you?"
"Yes."
"And yet," H.M. pointed out, picking up his pipe and whacking it on the edge of the ashtray, "I made both sets of prints with my own thumbs, you know."
19
For the first time in minutes, Max had not been conscious of the fog-horn. Now it hooted out in a kind of vast derision and seemed to shake the cabin.
"I suppose we're not all mad?" inquired Commander Matthews, pushing back his cap.
"No," answered H.M. more soberly. His face pinched up. "It's time to stop foolin' you. But don't rub your head in ashes. Walk proudly. Once upon a time, that very same trick almost fooled the laboratory of technical police at Lyons; so you needn't crumple up with shame if it deceived you. In their case, it was the result of an accident In ours—oh, no!
"Lemme show you how it works.
"Now, imagine you're going to take my thumb-print. You take it in an inked surface. The surface of any human finger —like this, for instance—consists of a series of tiny ridges in the flesh, comprising arches, loops, whorls, and composites, with hollows in between. You follow that? When you look at a photograph of a finger-print, the black lines represent the inked ridges, and the white lines represent the hollows between. Got it?"
"Well?" demanded Commander Matthews.
H.M. re-lit his pipe.
"Why, he picks up a handkerchief and wipes it off. (As I did.) That's all right. He's simply cleared his thumb of too much ink, that's all. Ink remains. It'll still give a good, clear print. But what happens then?"
H.M. paused. He looked round the group.
And Max Matthews, with a mental groan, caught the clue and saw the picture take form.
"Don't you see?" insisted H.M. "On that surface of microscopic lines on his thumb, he's rubbed the ink the wrong way. The ink's still on his thumb. But he's rubbed it off the ridges and into the hollows. When the print is taken, it's now the hollows which appear as the black lines, and the ridges which appear as the white lines. Just the wrong way round. Like the positive and the negative of a photographic plate.
"Of course, the result is a print very different from one taken with a proper ink-surface, and without hocus-pocus. In particular the 'pockets,' or small core at the center of the whorls, will be so totally different that even an amateur can swear they're not the same. An expert would be still more positive. In France, years ago, the very same thing happened by accident: and very nearly cost one woman a whole lot of money, because they wouldn't believe she was herself.3 For years now I've been waitin' for some clever blighter to apply the same dodge to deliberate crime; and, lo and behold, somebody has.
"You follow it now.
"The murderer killed Mrs. Zia, with the deliberate intention of leavin' false finger-prints on the scene of the crime.
He took along a bottle of ink: intending to spill it, as though by accident or in a struggle, and leave fine prints after he'd carefully wiped his thumbs. Instead, he changed his mind and used blood—which is better stuff than ink for the purpose. So the ink was discarded; the Sign of the Shocker appeared; and the bloody thumb-print affronted our be-dazzled eyes. There's the explanation of your ghostly fingers, my fatheads. That's all."
His audience had been listening with varying degrees of emotion. The purser again mopped his forehead with the stained handkerchief. The captain sat like a man thunderstruck: presently, feeling the same heat, he took off his cap and began to fan himself rapidly with it.
"As easy as that, eh?" asked Commander Matthews flatly.
"As easy as that."
"And all very simple," mused Commander Matthews, "when you know the secret."
"O temporal" howled H.M., shaking the pipe in the air. "O mores! O hell! Sure it's simple—after I've told you. I'm always hearing that. Never mind. Hasn't anybody got any comment to make?"
There was a new note in his voice. Max felt that he was watching them narrowly; that he was asking for something; that he was prodding their imaginations, with gentle persistence, to take a step still further.
Max, whose own eyes were on the portable radio set, found something else troubling him. Though the light burned behind the dial to show that the set had been turned on, no sound issued from it: not even the atmospheric shrieking you visually get at sea. But he did not concern himself with this. He hardly even heard the fog-horn now. He said:
"H.M., it's all wrong."
"So?" queried H.M. softly. "What is?"
"This finger-print business. You say the murderer deliberately left the fake, or faked, prints when he killed Mrs. Zia Bey?"
"I do."
"But is he crazy?"
"No. Far from it. Why?"
If his finger-nails had been longer, Max would have gnawed at them. "Well, it's difficult to explain. Something like this. If the murder had been committed on shore—or nearly anywhere else except aboard ship—I admit it would have been a stroke of genius. Kill your victim. Plant your false prints. Then watch the police go haring off after somebody who doesn't exist, with millions of possibilities everywhere. They're more or less bound to give up, with such a number of people it might be. But aboard ship . . ." He hesitated, and turned to Griswold. 'Tell me. Does every ship's purser have to have a working knowledge of fingerprints?"
"They should." Griswold frowned. "And most of them do. Why?"
Max frowned in reply. "All right. The murderer knew, of course, that the finger-prints of everybody aboard would be taken; and compared. He himself will simply have his real finger-prints taken in the proper way, and they won't match with the blood-stained ones. Is that the general idea?"
"It is," agreed H.M.
"Then that's the point. His real prints won't match. But neither will anybody else's! All he's done is commit a ghost murder. He's upset his own apple-cart. He's deliberately called attention to the fact that there's something very fishy somewhere. Where's the advantage? Why leave any prints at all? For, mind you, if anyone once tumbles to the trick, he's done for. Unless he just wants to be spectacular, isn't that risking too much for too little?"
Commander Francis Matthews, R.N.R., raised his arms in the air and uttered a snort of weary impatience.
"Stow it," he said.
"But, Frank—"
"I said stow it," repeated Commander Matthews. He turned to H.M. "I was telling Max the other night, he's the one in our family who gets the funny ideas. All imagination. No stability." The blood rushed into Commander Matthew's face. "What I want to get straight is—"
He stopped short, for H.M. had begun to rub his hands together with every evidence of evil satisfaction.
"Ah! Aha!" chortled H.M., looking at Max. "Now you're beginning to use your brain. Mind, I still say the murderer did just that: deliberately left hocused prints on the scene of the crime. But why did he do it? That's what's caused me all the difficult sittin' and thinkin.' Find the reason why, and you'll tear the wrapping-paper off one of the slickest and shrewdest crimes I ever had the pleasure to grapple with. Think, now!"
"Stop," said Max, so sharply that even his brother jumped.
"Well?"
"Benoit," Max began, with vivid but confusing images in his mind. "How does Benoit fit into this? After Mrs. Zia Bey was killed, Griswold and Cruikshank went round to get Benoit's finger-prints. There Benoit was sitting, with an ink-pad—a messy ink-pad—carefully prepared, on which he wanted to take his own prints. Only they wouldn't let him. It sounds as though Benoit wanted to give them a set of faked prints then! What in God's name was he doing?"
Silence.
"But Benoit's dead!" the purser protested.
"Oh, sure. Benoit's dead," agreed H.M. "And yet, lads, Benoit's character, Benoit's ways, everything about Benoit, is the key to this whole problem. Don't you see it?"
"No," returned three voices.
"Then lemme sort of trace it out for you," mumbled H.M., with one drowsy eye on the ceiling, and taking slow puffs at the pipe in one corner of his mouth.
"On Sunday night, just before Benoit was murdered," he went on, "Max Matthews gave me a full and detailed account of everything that had been happenin'. There was where I got the first real suggestion of rumminess. H'mf. Young Matthews was tellin' me about a mysterious character wearing a gas-mask, who wandered about the passages looking into people's cabins. It was one of those pig-snouted civilian gas-masks they served out to all of us. I asked whether the character in the mask could have been this person, or that person, until I mentioned the Frenchman. Then I realized that wouldn't do. I said, 'But a French officer wouldn't be wearing . .
"And, oh, my eye, did I get a mental wallop when I thought about that! For I had seen, seen for myself, the Frenchman wearin' a mask just like that. I was watchin' from a distance, out of the picture, but it stuck in my mind. Don't you remember that boat-drill on Saturday morning? Don't you remember how Benoit appeared there, wearin' just such a mask?"
Max did remember it.
"So the question
was," said H.M., with emphasis, "where was Benoit's service respirator?"
"His what?" demanded Max, merely bewildered. But Commander Matthews translated.
"His Army gas-mask," said the captain.
"Exactly," said H.M. "I couldn't believe my eyes. Every member of the fighting forces is equipped with a service respirator, much larger and more elaborate and comprehensive than the civilian ones, and carried in a canvas case slung round the neck. Every soldier in uniform must carry his respirator at all times. Yet here was Benoit walking about in an ordinary civilian gas-mask.
"Oh, gents! That was so rummy that I yearned for a look at his cabin. And, when I did look at it, the service gas-mask wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere. On the contrary, there was the little civilian mask carefully put down on a chair with life-jacket and blanket.
"Which wasn't all. I opened the wardrobe (you remember?), and got the shock of my life. There was the feller's spare uniform hanging up, bold as brass. And the insignia on that uniform was all wrong."
Max, still partly dazed, entered a protest.
"Wait!" he requested. "What was wrong with it? It's three stripes for a captain in the French army—I'm positive of that And Benoit had 'em."
"Ho ho," said H.M. "Yes, he had 'em. But he had 'em in the wrong place. He had his stripes on the shoulder-epaulettes. Listen, son. A French officer wears his stripes in just two places: round his cap, and round his sleeve. Never on the shoulder. Look it up in a military dictionary. I hadn't got a close look at Benoit's clothes before, so I didn't notice until then. But there it was. I even, if you recall, picked up the sleeve of the coat and had a good look at it; because I couldn't believe my eyes.
"But, combined, with the gas-mask question, it was conclusive. Benoit was a fake of some kind. He wasn't a French officer; he knew nothing about the French army, and probably blinkin' little about any army at all. Even then—with six good-sized clues starin' me straight in the face—I still didn't tumble to it. But Cruikshank suggested that he might be a member of the French Intelligence service...."
H.M. paused.
Max, listening with the back of his mind for the roar of the fog-horn, heard instead something which made him jump up out of his chair. The portable radio was speaking to them.
Nine and Death Makes Ten Page 17