The Detective Megapack

by Various Writers

  “But surely the process you have described is a very difficult and intricate one?”

  “Not at all; it is very little more difficult than ordinary carbon printing, which is practised successfully by numbers of amateurs. Moreover, such a relief as I have described—which is practically nothing more than an ordinary process block—could be produced by any photo-engraver. The process that I have described is, in all essentials, that which is used in the reproduction of pen-and-ink drawings, and any of the hundreds of workmen who are employed in that industry could make a relief-block of a finger-print, with which an undetectable forgery could be executed.”

  “You have asserted that the counterfeit finger-print could not be distinguished from the original. Are you prepared to furnish proof that this is the case?”

  “Yes. I am prepared to execute a counterfeit of the prisoner’s thumb-print in the presence of the Court.”

  “And do you say that such a counterfeit would be indistinguishable from the original, even by the experts?”

  “I do.”

  Anstey turned towards the judge. “Would your lordship give your permission for a demonstration such as the witness proposes?”

  “Certainly,” replied the judge. “The evidence is highly material. How do you propose that the comparison should be made?” he added, addressing Thorndyke.

  “I have brought, for the purpose, my lord,” answered Thorndyke, “some sheets of paper, each of which is ruled into twenty numbered squares. I propose to make on ten of the squares counterfeits of the prisoner’s thumb-mark, and to fill the remaining ten with real thumb-marks. I propose that the experts should then examine the paper and tell the Court which are the real thumb-prints and which are the false.”

  “That seems a fair and efficient test,” said his lordship. “Have you any objection to offer, Sir Hector?”

  Sir Hector Trumpler hastily consulted with the two experts, who were sitting in the attorney’s bench, and then replied, without much enthusiasm—

  “We have no objection to offer, my lord.”

  “Then, in that case, I shall direct the expert witnesses to withdraw from the court while the prints are being made.”

  In obedience to the judge’s order, Mr. Singleton and his colleague rose and left the court with evident reluctance, while Thorndyke took from a small portfolio three sheets of paper which he handed up to the judge.

  “If your lordship,” said he, “will make marks in ten of the squares on two of these sheets, one can be given to the jury and one retained by your lordship to check the third sheet when the prints are made on it.”

  “That is an excellent plan,” said the judge; “and, as the information is for myself and the jury, it would be better if you came up and performed the actual stamping on my table in the presence of the foreman of the jury and the counsel for the prosecution and defence.”

  In accordance with the judge’s direction Thorndyke stepped up on the dais, and Anstey, as he rose to follow, leaned over towards me.

  “You and Polton had better go up too,” said he: “Thorndyke will want your assistance, and you may as well see the fun. I will explain to his lordship.”

  He ascended the stairs leading to the dais and addressed a few words to the judge, who glanced in our direction and nodded, whereupon we both gleefully followed our counsel, Polton carrying the box and beaming with delight.

  The judge’s table was provided with a shallow drawer which pulled out at the side and which accommodated the box comfortably, leaving the small table-top free for the papers. When the lid of the box was raised, there were displayed a copper inking-slab, a small roller and the twenty-four “pawns” which had so puzzled Polton, and on which he now gazed with a twinkle of amusement and triumph.

  “Are those all stamps?” inquired the judge, glancing curiously at the array of turned-wood handles.

  “They are all stamps, my lord,” replied Thorndyke, “and each is taken from a different impression of the prisoner’s thumb.”

  “But why so many?” asked the judge.

  “I have multiplied them,” answered Thorndyke, as he squeezed out a drop of finger-print ink on to the slab and proceeded to roll it out into a thin film, “to avoid the tell-tale uniformity of a single stamp. And I may say,” he added, “that it is highly important that the experts should not be informed that more than one stamp has been used.”

  “Yes, I see that,” said the judge. “You understand that, Sir Hector,” he added, addressing the counsel, who bowed stiffly, clearly regarding the entire proceeding with extreme disfavour.

  Thorndyke now inked one of the stamps and handed it to the judge, who examined it curiously and then pressed it on a piece of waste paper, on which there immediately appeared a very distinct impression of a human thumb.

  “Marvellous!” he exclaimed. “Most ingenious! Too ingenious!” He chuckled softly and added, as he handed the stamp and the paper to the foreman of the jury: “It is well, Dr. Thorndyke, that you are on the side of law and order, for I am afraid that, if you were on the other side, you would be one too many for the police. Now, if you are ready, we will proceed. Will you, please, stamp an impression in square number three.”

  Thorndyke drew a stamp from its compartment, inked it on the slab, and pressed it neatly on the square indicated, leaving there a sharp, clear thumb-print.

  The process was repeated on nine other squares, a different stamp being used for each impression. The judge then marked the ten corresponding squares of the other two sheets of paper, and having checked them, directed the foreman to exhibit the sheet bearing the false thumb-prints to the jury, together with the marked sheet which they were to retain, to enable them to check the statements of the expert witnesses. When this was done, the prisoner was brought from the dock and stood beside the table. The judge looked with a curious and not unkindly interest at the handsome, manly fellow who stood charged with a crime so sordid and out of character with his appearance, and I felt, as I noted the look, that Reuben would, at least, be tried fairly on the evidence, without prejudice or even with some prepossession in his favour.

  With the remaining part of the operation Thorndyke proceeded carefully and deliberately. The inking-slab was rolled afresh for each impression, and, after each, the thumb was cleansed with petrol and thoroughly dried; and when the process was completed and the prisoner led back to the dock, the twenty squares on the paper were occupied by twenty thumb-prints, which, to my eye, at any rate, were identical in character.

  The judge sat for near upon a minute poring over this singular document with an expression half-way between a frown and a smile. At length, when we had all returned to our places, he directed the usher to bring in the witnesses.

  I was amused to observe the change that had come over the experts in the short interval. The confident smile, the triumphant air of laying down a trump card, had vanished, and the expression of both was one of anxiety, not unmixed with apprehension. As Mr. Singleton advanced hesitatingly to the table, I recalled the words that he had uttered in his room at Scotland Yard; evidently his scheme of the game that was to end in an easy checkmate, had not included the move that had just been made.

  “Mr. Singleton,” said the judge, “here is a paper on which there are twenty thumb-prints. Ten of them are genuine prints of the prisoner’s left thumb and ten are forgeries. Please examine them and note down in writing which are the true prints and which are the forgeries. When you have made your notes the paper will be handed to Mr. Nash.”

  “Is there any objection to my using the photograph that I have with me for comparison, my lord?” asked Mr. Singleton.

  “I think not,” replied the judge. “What do you say, Mr. Anstey?”

  “No objection whatever, my lord,” answered Anstey.

  Mr. Singleton accordingly drew from his pocket an enlarged photograph of the thumb-print and a magnifying glass, with the aid of which he explored the bewildering array of prints on the paper before him; and as he proceeded I r
emarked with satisfaction that his expression became more and more dubious and worried. From time to time he made an entry on a memorandum slip beside him, and, as the entries accumulated, his frown grew deeper and his aspect more puzzled and gloomy.

  At length he sat up, and taking the memorandum slip in his hand, addressed the judge.

  “I have finished my examination, my lord.”

  “Very well. Mr. Nash, will you kindly examine the paper and write down the results of your examination?”

  “Oh! I wish they would make haste,” whispered Juliet. “Do you think they will be able to tell the real from the false thumb-prints?”

  “I can’t say,” I replied; “but we shall soon know. They looked all alike to me.”

  Mr. Nash made his examination with exasperating deliberateness, and preserved throughout an air of stolid attention; but at length he, too, completed his notes and handed the paper back to the usher.

  “Now, Mr. Singleton,” said the judge, “let us hear your conclusions. You have been sworn.”

  Mr. Singleton stepped into the witness-box, and, laying his notes on the ledge, faced the judge.

  “Have you examined the paper that was handed to you?” asked Sir Hector Trumpler.

  “I have.”

  “What did you see on the paper?”

  “I saw twenty thumb-prints, of which some were evident forgeries, some were evidently genuine, and some were doubtful.”

  “Taking the thumb-prints seriatim, what have you noted about them?”

  Mr. Singleton examined his notes and replied—“The thumb-print on square one is evidently a forgery, as is also number two, though it is a passable imitation. Three and four are genuine; five is an obvious forgery. Six is a genuine thumb-print; seven is a forgery, though a good one; eight is genuine; nine is, I think, a forgery, though it is a remarkably good imitation. Ten and eleven are genuine thumb-marks; twelve and thirteen are forgeries; but as to fourteen I am very doubtful, though I am inclined to regard it as a forgery. Fifteen is genuine, and I think sixteen is also; but I will not swear to it. Seventeen is certainly genuine Eighteen and nineteen I am rather doubtful about, but I am disposed to consider them both forgeries. Twenty is certainly a genuine thumb-print.”

  As Mr. Singleton’s evidence proceeded, a look of surprise began to make its appearance on the judge’s face, while the jury glanced from the witness to the notes before them and from their notes to one another in undisguised astonishment.

  As to Sir Hector Trumpler, that luminary of British jurisprudence was evidently completely fogged; for, as statement followed statement, he pursed up his lips and his broad, red face became overshadowed by an expression of utter bewilderment.

  For a few seconds he stared blankly at his witness and then dropped on to his seat with a thump that shook the court.

  “You have no doubt,” said Anstey, “as to the correctness of your conclusions? For instance, you are quite sure that the prints one and two are forgeries?”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “You swear that those two prints are forgeries?”

  Mr. Singleton hesitated for a moment. He had been watching the judge and the jury and had apparently misinterpreted their surprise, assuming it to be due to his own remarkable powers of discrimination; and his confidence had revived accordingly.

  “Yes,” he answered; “I swear that they are forgeries.”

  Anstey sat down, and Mr. Singleton, having passed his notes up to the judge, retired from the box, giving place to his colleague.

  Mr. Nash, who had listened with manifest satisfaction to the evidence, stepped into the box with all his original confidence restored. His selection of the true and the false thumb-prints was practically identical with that of Mr. Singleton, and his knowledge of this fact led him to state his conclusions with an air that was authoritative and even dogmatic.

  “I am quite satisfied of the correctness of my statements,” he said, in reply to Anstey’s question, “and I am prepared to swear, and do swear, that those thumb-prints which I have stated to be forgeries, are forgeries, and that their detection presents no difficulty to an observer who has an expert acquaintance with finger-prints.”

  “There is one question that I should like to ask,” said the judge, when the expert had left the box and Thorndyke had re-entered it to continue his evidence. “The conclusions of the expert witnesses—manifestly bona fide conclusions, arrived at by individual judgement, without collusion or comparison of results—are practically identical. They are virtually in complete agreement. Now, the strange thing is this: their conclusions are wrong in every instance” (here I nearly laughed aloud, for, as I glanced at the two experts, the expression of smug satisfaction on their countenances changed with lightning rapidity to a ludicrous spasm of consternation); “not sometimes wrong and sometimes right, as would have been the case if they had made mere guesses, but wrong every time. When they are quite certain, they are quite wrong; and when they are doubtful, they incline to the wrong conclusion. This is a very strange coincidence, Dr. Thorndyke. Can you explain it?”

  Thorndyke’s face, which throughout the proceedings had been as expressionless as that of a wooden figurehead, now relaxed into a dry smile.

  “I think I can, my lord,” he replied. “The object of a forger in executing a forgery is to produce deception on those who shall examine the forgery.”

  “Ah!” said the judge; and his face relaxed into a dry smile, while the jury broke out into unconcealed grins.

  “It was evident to me,” continued Thorndyke, “that the experts would be unable to distinguish the real from the forged thumb-prints, and, that being so, that they would look for some collateral evidence to guide them. I, therefore, supplied that collateral evidence. Now, if ten prints are taken, without special precautions, from a single finger, it will probably happen that no two of them are exactly alike; for the finger being a rounded object of which only a small part touches the paper, the impressions produced will show little variations according to the part of the finger by which the print is made. But a stamp such as I have used has a flat surface like that of a printer’s type, and, like a type, it always prints the same impression. It does not reproduce the finger-tip, but a particular print of the finger, and so, if ten prints are made with a single stamp, each print will be a mechanical repetition of the other nine. Thus, on a sheet bearing twenty finger-prints, of which ten were forgeries made with a single stamp, it would be easy to pick out the ten forged prints by the fact that they would all be mechanical repetitions of one another; while the genuine prints could be distinguished by the fact of their presenting trifling variations in the position of the finger.

  “Anticipating this line of reasoning, I was careful to make each print with a different stamp and each stamp was made from a different thumb-print, and I further selected thumb-prints which varied as widely as possible when I made the stamps. Moreover, when I made the real thumb-prints, I was careful to put the thumb down in the same position each time as far as I was able; and so it happened that, on the sheet submitted to the experts, the real thumb-prints were nearly all alike, while the forgeries presented considerable variations. The instances in which the witnesses were quite certain were those in which I succeeded in making the genuine prints repeat one another, and the doubtful cases were those in which I partially failed.”

  “Thank you, that is quite clear,” said the judge, with a smile of deep content, such as is apt to appear on the judicial countenance when an expert witness is knocked off his pedestal. “We may now proceed, Mr. Anstey.”

  “You have told us,” resumed Anstey, “and have submitted proofs, that it is possible to forge a thumb-print so that detection is impossible. You have also stated that the thumb-print on the paper found in Mr. Hornby’s safe is a forgery. Do you mean that it may be a forgery, or that it actually is one?”

  “I mean that it actually is a forgery.”

  “When did you first come to the conclusion that it was a forgery?�
�

  “When I saw it at Scotland Yard. There are three facts which suggested this conclusion. In the first place the print was obviously produced with liquid blood, and yet it was a beautifully clear and distinct impression. But such an impression could not be produced with liquid blood without the use of a slab and roller, even if great care were used, and still less could it have been produced by an accidental smear.

  “In the second place, on measuring the print with a micrometer, I found that it did not agree in dimensions with a genuine thumb-print of Reuben Hornby. It was appreciably larger. I photographed the print with the micrometer in contact and on comparing this with a genuine thumb-print, also photographed with the same micrometer in contact, I found that the suspected print was larger by the fortieth of an inch, from one given point on the ridge-pattern to another given point. I have here enlargements of the two photographs in which the disagreement in size is clearly shown by the lines of the micrometer. I have also the micrometer itself and a portable microscope, if the Court wishes to verify the photographs.”

  “Thank you,” said the judge, with a bland smile; “we will accept your sworn testimony unless the learned counsel for the prosecution demands verification.”

  He received the photographs which Thorndyke handed up and, having examined them with close attention, passed them on to the jury.

  “The third fact,” resumed Thorndyke, “is of much more importance, since it not only proves the print to be a forgery, but also furnishes a very distinct clue to the origin of the forgery, and so to the identity of the forger.” (Here the court became hushed until the silence was so profound that the ticking of the clock seemed a sensible interruption. I glanced at Walter, who sat motionless and rigid at the end of the bench, and perceived that a horrible pallor had spread over his face, while his forehead was covered with beads of perspiration.) “On looking at the print closely, I noticed at one part a minute white mark or space. It was of the shape of a capital S and had evidently been produced by a defect in the paper—a loose fibre which had stuck to the thumb and been detached by it from the paper, leaving a blank space where it had been. But, on examining the paper under a low power of the microscope, I found the surface to be perfect and intact. No loose fibre had been detached from it, for if it had, the broken end or, at least, the groove in which it had lain, would have been visible. The inference seemed to be that the loose fibre had existed, not in the paper which was found in the safe, but in the paper on which the original thumb-mark had been made. Now, as far as I knew, there was only one undoubted thumb-print of Reuben Hornby’s in existence—the one in the ‘Thumbograph.’ At my request, the ‘Thumbograph’ was brought to my chambers by Mrs. Hornby, and, on examining the print of Reuben Hornby’s left thumb, I perceived on it a minute, S-shaped white space occupying a similar position to that in the red thumb-mark; and when I looked at it through a powerful lens, I could clearly see the little groove in the paper in which the fibre had lain and from which it had been lifted by the inked thumb. I subsequently made a systematic comparison of the marks in the two thumb-prints; I found that the dimensions of the mark were proportionally the same in each—that is to say, the mark in the ‘Thumbograph’ print had an extreme length of 26/1000 of an inch and an extreme breadth of 14.5/1000 of an inch, while that in the red thumb-mark was one-fortieth larger in each dimension, having an extreme length of 26.65/1000 of an inch and an extreme breadth of 14.86/1000 of an inch; that the shape was identical, as was shown by superimposing tracings of greatly enlarged photographs of each mark on similar enlargements of the other; and that the mark intersected the ridges of the thumb-print in the same manner and at exactly the same parts in the two prints.”