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THE RED THUMB MARK (1907) [part 2]

CHAPTER XI

THE AMBUSH

“I am going to ask for your collaboration in another case,” said Thorndyke, a day or two later. “It appears to be one of suicide, but the solicitors to the ‘Griffin’ office have asked me to go down to the place, which is in the neighbourhood of Barnet, and be present at the post-mortem and the inquest. They have managed to arrange that the inquest shall take place directly after the post-mortem, so that we shall be able to do the whole business in a single visit.”

“Is the case one of any intricacy?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he answered. “It looks like a common suicide; but you can never tell. The importance of the case at present arises entirely from the heavy insurance; a verdict of suicide will mean a gain of ten thousand pounds to the ‘Griffin,’ so, naturally, the directors are anxious to get the case settled and not inclined to boggle over a little expense.”

“Naturally. And when will the expedition take place?” I asked.

“The inquest is fixed for tomorrow—what is the matter? Does that fall foul of any arrangement of yours?”

“Oh, nothing of any importance,” I replied hastily, deeply ashamed of the momentary change of countenance that my friend had been so quick to observe.

“Well, what is it?” persisted Thorndyke. “You have got something on.”

“It is nothing, I tell you, but what can be quite easily arranged to suit your plans.”

“Cherchez la—h’m?” queried Thorndyke, with an exasperating grin.

“Yes,” I answered, turning as red as a pickled cabbage; “since you are so beastly inquisitive. Miss Gibson wrote, on behalf of Mrs. Hornby, asking me to dine with them en famille tomorrow evening, and I sent off an acceptance an hour ago.”

“And you call that ‘nothing of any importance’!” exclaimed Thorndyke. “Alas! And likewise alackaday (which is an approximately synonymous expression)! The age of chivalry is past, in­deed. Of course you must keep your appointment; I can manage quite well alone.”

“We shouldn’t be back early enough for me to go to Ken­sington from the station, I suppose?”

“No; certainly not. I find that the trains are very awkward; we should not reach King’s Cross until nearly one in the morning.”

“Then, in that case, I shall write to Miss Gibson and excuse myself.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” said Thorndyke; “it will disappoint them, and really it is not necessary.”

“I shall write forthwith,” I said firmly, “so please don’t try to dissuade me. I have been feeling quite uncomfortable at the thought that, all the time I have been in your employ, I seem to have done nothing but idle about and amuse myself. The opportunity of doing something tangible for my wage is too precious to be allowed to slip.”

Thorndyke chuckled indulgently. “You shall do as you please, my dear boy,” he said; “but don’t imagine that you have been eating the bread of idleness. When you see this Hornby case worked out in detail, you will be surprised to find how large a part you have taken in unravelling it. Your worth to me has been far beyond your poor little salary, I can assure you.”

“It is very handsome of you to say that,” I said, highly gratified to learn that I was really of use, and not, as I had begun to suspect, a mere object of charity.

“It is perfectly true,” he answered; “and now, since you are going to help me in this case, I will set you your task. The case, as I have said, appears to be quite simple, but it never does to take the simplicity for granted. Here is the letter from the solicitors giving the facts as far as they are known at present. On the shelves there you will find Casper, Taylor, Guy and Ferrier, and the other authorities on medical jurisprudence, and I will put out one or two other books that you may find useful. I want you to extract and make classified notes of everything that may bear on such a case as the present one may turn out to be. We must go prepared to meet any contingency that may arise. This is my invariable practice, and even if the case turns out to be quite simple, the labour is never wasted, for it represents so much experience gained.”

“Casper and Taylor are pretty old, aren’t they?” I objected.

“So is suicide,” he retorted drily. “It is a capital mistake to neglect the old authorities. ‘There were strong men before Agamemnon,’ and some of them were uncommonly strong, let me tell you. Give your best attention to the venerable Casper and the obsolete Taylor and you will not be without your reward.”

As a result of these injunctions, I devoted the remainder of the day to the consideration of the various methods by which a man might contrive to effect his exit from the stage of human activities. And a very engrossing study I found it, and the more interesting in view of the problem that awaited solution on the morrow; but yet not so engrossing but that I was able to find time to write a long, rather intimate and minutely explanatory letter to Miss Gibson, in which I even mentioned the hour of our return as showing the impossibility of my keeping my engagement. Not that I had the smallest fear of her taking offence, for it is an evidence of my respect and regard for her that I cancelled the appointment with­out a momentary doubt that she would approve of my action; but it was pleasant to write to her at length and to feel the intimacy of keeping her informed of the details of my life.

The case, when we came to inquire into it on the spot, turned out to be a suicide of the most transparent type; whereat both Thorndyke and I were, I think, a little disappointed—he at having apparently done so little for a very substantial fee, and I at having no opportunity for applying my recently augmented know­ledge.

“Yes,” said my colleague, as we rolled ourselves up in our rugs in adjacent corners of the railway carriage, “it has been a flat affair, and the whole thing could have been managed by the local solicitor. But it is not a waste of time after all, for, you see, I have to do many a day’s work for which I get not a farthing of payment, nor even any recognition, so that I do not complain if I occasionally find myself receiving more payment than my actual services merit. And as to you, I take it that you have acquired a good deal of valuable knowledge on the subject of suicide, and knowledge, as the late Lord Bacon remarked with more truth than originality, is power.”

To this I made no reply, having just lit my pipe and feeling uncommonly drowsy; and, my companion having followed my example, we smoked in silence, becoming more and more somnolent, until the train drew up in the terminus and we turned out, yawning and shivering, on to the platform.

“Bah!” exclaimed Thorndyke, drawing his rug round his should­ers; “this is a cheerless hour—a quarter past one. See how chilly and miserable all these poor devils of passengers look. Shall we cab it or walk?”

“I think a sharp walk would rouse our circulation after sitting huddled up in the carriage for so long,” I answered.

“So do I,” said Thorndyke, “so let us away; hark forward! And also Tally Ho! In fact one might go so far as to say Yoicks! That gentleman appears to favour the strenuous life, if one may judge by the size of his sprocket-wheel.”

He pointed to a bicycle that was drawn up by the kerb in the approach—a machine of the road-racer type, with an enormous sprocket-wheel, indicating a gear of, at least, ninety.

“Some scorcher or amateur racer, probably,” I said, “who takes the opportunity of getting a spin on the wood pavement when the streets are empty.” I looked round to see if I could identify the owner, but the machine appeared to be, for the moment, taking care of itself.

King’s Cross is one of those districts of which the inhabitants are slow in settling down for the night, and even at a quarter past one in the morning its streets are not entirely deserted. Here and there the glimmer of a street lamp or the far-reaching ray from a tall electric light reveals the form of some nocturnal prowler creeping along with catlike stealthiness, or bursting, catlike, into unmelodious song. Not greatly desirous of the society of these roysterers, we crossed quickly from the station into the Gray’s Inn Road, now silent and excessively dismal in aspect, and took our way along the western side. We had turned the curve and were crossing Manchester Street, when a series of yelps from ahead announced the presence of a party of merry-makers, whom we were not yet able to see, however, for the night was an exceptionally dark one; but the sounds of revelry continued to increase in volume as we proceeded, until, as we passed Sidmouth Street, we came in sight of the revellers. They were some half-dozen in number, all of them roughs of the hooligan type, and they were evidently in boisterous spirits, for, as they passed the entrance to the Royal Free Hospital, they halted and battered furiously at the gate. Shortly after this exploit they crossed the road on to our side, whereupon Thorndyke caught my arm and slackened his pace.

“Let them draw ahead,” said he. “It is a wise precaution to give all hooligan gangs a very wide berth at this time of night. We had better turn down Heathcote Street and cross Mecklenburgh Square.”

We continued to walk on at reduced speed until we reached Heathcote Street, into which we turned and so entered Meck­lenburgh Square, where we mended our pace once more.

“The hooligan,” pursued Thorndyke, as we walked briskly across the silent square, “covers a multitude of sins, ranging from highway robbery with violence and paid assassination (technically known as ‘bashing’) down to the criminal folly of the philanthropic magistrate, who seems to think that his function in the economy of nature is to secure the survival of the unfittest. There goes a cyclist along Guildford Street. I wonder if that is our strenuous friend from the station. If so, he has slipped past the hooligans.”

We were just entering Doughty Street, and, as Thorndyke spoke, a man on a bicycle was visible for an instant at the crossing of the two streets. When we reached Guildford Street we both looked down the long, lamp-lighted vista, but the cyclist had vanished.

“We had better go straight on into Theobald’s Road,” said Thorndyke, and we accordingly pursued our way up the fine old-world street, from whose tall houses our footfalls echoed, so that we seemed to be accompanied by an invisible multitude, until we reached that part where it unaccountably changes its name and becomes John Street.

“There always seems to me something very pathetic about these old Bloomsbury streets,” said Thorndyke, “with their faded grandeur and dignified seediness. They remind me of some prim and aged gentlewoman in reduced circumstances who—Hallo! What was that?”

A faint, sharp thud from behind had been followed instantly by the shattering of a ground-floor window in front.

We both stopped dead and remained, for a couple of seconds, staring into the gloom, from whence the first sound had come; then Thorndyke darted diagonally across the road at a swift run and I immediately followed.

At the moment when the affair happened we had gone about forty yards up John Street, that is, from the place where it is crossed by Henry Street, and we now raced across the road to the further corner of the latter street. When we reached it, however, the little thoroughfare was empty, and, as we paused for a mo­ment, no sound of retreating footsteps broke the silence.

“The shot certainly came from here!” said Thorndyke; “come on,” and he again broke into a run. A few yards up the street a mews turns off to the left, and into this my companion plunged, motioning me to go straight on, which I accordingly did, and in a few paces reached the top of the street. Here a narrow thoroughfare, with a broad, smooth pavement, bears off to the left, parallel with the mews, and, as I arrived at the corner and glanced up the little street, I saw a man on a bicycle gliding swiftly and silently towards Little James’ Street.

With a mighty shout of “Stop thief!” I started in hot pursuit, but, though the man’s feet were moving in an apparently leisurely manner, he drew ahead at an astonishing pace, in spite of my efforts to overtake him; and it then dawned upon me that the slow revolutions of his feet were due, in reality, to the unusually high gear of the machine that he was riding. As I realised this, and at the same moment recalled the bicycle that we had seen in the station, the fugitive swung round into Little James’ Street and vanished.

The speed at which the man was travelling made further pursuit utterly futile, so I turned and walked back, panting and perspiring from the unwonted exertion. As I re-entered Henry Street, Thorndyke emerged from the mews and halted on seeing me.

“Cyclist?” he asked laconically, as I came up.

“Yes,” I answered; “riding a machine geared up to about ninety.”

“Ah! He must have followed us from the station,” said Thorn­dyke. “Did you notice if he was carrying anything?”

“He had a walking-stick in his hand. I didn’t see anything else.”

“What sort of walking-stick?”

“I couldn’t see very distinctly. It was a stoutish stick—I should say a Malacca, probably—and it had what looked like a horn handle. I could see that as he passed a street lamp.”

“What kind of lamp had he?”

“I couldn’t see; but, as he turned the corner, I noticed that it seemed to burn very dimly.”

“A little vaseline, or even oil, smeared on the outside of the glass will reduce the glare of a lamp very appreciably,” my companion remarked, “especially on a dusty road. Ha! Here is the proprietor of the broken window. He wants to know, you know.”

We had once more turned into John Street and now perceived a man, standing on the wide doorstep of the house with the shattered window, looking anxiously up and down the street.

“Do either of you gents know anything about this here?” he asked, pointing to the broken pane.

“Yes,” said Thorndyke, “we happened to be passing when it was done; in fact,” he added, “I rather suspect that the missile, whatever it was, was intended for our benefit.”

“Oh!” said the man. “Who done it?”

“That I can’t say,” replied Thorndyke. “Whoever he was, he made off on a bicycle and we were unable to catch him.”

“Oh!” said the man once more, regarding us with growing suspicion. “On a bicycle, hay! Dam funny, ain’t it? What did he do it with?”

“That is what I should like to find out,” said Thorndyke. “I see this house is empty.”

“Yes, it’s empty—leastways it’s to let. I’m the caretaker. But what’s that got to do with it?”

“Merely this,” answered Thorndyke, “that the object—stone, bullet or whatever it may have been—was aimed, I believe, at me, and I should like to ascertain its nature. Would you do me the favour of permitting me to look for it?”

The caretaker was evidently inclined to refuse this request, for he glanced suspiciously from my companion to me once or twice before replying, but, at length, he turned towards the open door and gruffly invited us to enter.

A paraffin lamp was on the floor in a recess of the hall, and this our conductor took up when he had closed the street door.

“This is the room,” he said, turning the key and thrusting the door open; “the library they call it, but it’s the front parlour in plain English.” He entered and, holding the lamp above his head, stared balefully at the broken window.

Thorndyke glanced quickly along the floor in the direction that the missile would have taken, and then said—

“Do you see any mark on the wall there?”

As he spoke, he indicated the wall opposite the window, which obviously could not have been struck by a projectile en­tering with such extreme obliquity; and I was about to point out this fact when I fortunately remembered the great virtue of silence.

Our friend approached the wall, still holding up the lamp, and scrutinised the surface with close attention; and while he was thus engaged, I observed Thorndyke stoop quickly and pick up something, which he deposited carefully, and without remark, in his waistcoat pocket.

“I don’t see no bruise anywhere,” said the caretaker, sweeping his hand over the wall.

“Perhaps the thing struck this wall,” suggested Thorndyke, pointing to the one that was actually in the line of fire. “Yes, of course,” he added, “it would be this one—the shot came from Henry Street.”

The caretaker crossed the room and threw the light of his lamp on the wall thus indicated.

“Ah! Here we are!” he exclaimed, with gloomy satisfaction, pointing to a small dent in which the wall-paper was turned back and the plaster exposed; “looks almost like a bullet mark, but you say you didn’t hear no report.”

“No,” said Thorndyke, “there was no report; it must have been a catapult.”

The caretaker set the lamp down on the floor and proceeded to grope about for the projectile, in which operation we both assisted; and I could not suppress a faint smile as I noted the earnestness with which Thorndyke peered about the floor in search of the missile that was quietly reposing in his waistcoat pocket.

We were deep in our investigations when there was heard an uncompromising double knock at the street door, followed by the loud pealing of a bell in the basement.

“Bobby, I suppose,” growled the caretaker. “Here’s a bloom­ing fuss about nothing.” He caught up the lamp and went out, leaving us in the dark.

“I picked it up, you know,” said Thorndyke, when we were alone.

“I saw you,” I answered.

“Good; I applaud your discretion,” he rejoined. The caretaker’s supposition was correct. When he returned, he was ac­companied by a burly constable, who saluted us with a cheerful smile and glanced facetiously round the empty room.

“Our boys,” said he, nodding towards the broken window; “they’re playful lads, that they are. You were passing when it happened, sir, I hear.”

“Yes,” answered Thorndyke; and he gave the constable a brief account of the occurrence, which the latter listened to, notebook in hand.

“Well,” said he when the narrative was concluded, “if those hooligan boys are going to take to catapults they’ll make things lively all round.”

“You ought to run some of ’em in,” said the caretaker.

“Run ’em in!” exclaimed the constable in a tone of disgust; “yes! And then the magistrate will tell ’em to be good boys and give ’em five shillings out of the poor-box to buy illustrated Testaments. I’d Testament them, the worthless varmints!”

He rammed his notebook fiercely into his pocket and stalked out of the room into the street, whither we followed.

“You’ll find that bullet or stone when you sweep up the room,” he said, as he turned on to his beat; “and you’d better let us have it. Good night, sir.”

He strolled off towards Henry Street, while Thorndyke and I resumed our journey southward.

“Why were you so secret about that projectile?” I asked my friend as we walked up the street.

“Partly to avoid discussion with the caretaker,” he replied; “but principally because I thought it likely that a constable would pass the house and, seeing the light, come in to make inquiries.”

“And then?”

“Then I should have had to hand over the object to him.”

“And why not? Is the object a specially interesting one?”

“It is highly interesting to me at the present moment,” replied Thorndyke, with a chuckle, “because I have not examined it. I have a theory as to its nature, which theory I should like to test before taking the police into my confidence.”

“Are you going to take me into your confidence?” I asked.

“When we get home, if you are not too sleepy,” he replied.

On our arrival at his chambers, Thorndyke desired me to light up and clear one end of the table while he went up to the workshop to fetch some tools. I turned back the table cover, and, having adjusted the gas so as to light this part of the table, waited in some impatience for my colleague’s return. In a few minutes he re-entered bearing a small vice, a metal saw and a wide-mouthed bottle.

“What have you got in that bottle?” I asked, perceiving a metal object inside it.

“That is the projectile, which I have thought fit to rinse in distilled water, for reasons that will presently appear.”

He agitated the bottle gently for a minute or so, and then, with a pair of dissecting forceps, lifted out the object and held it above the surface of the water to drain, after which he laid it carefully on a piece of blotting-paper.

I stooped over the projectile and examined it with great curiosity, while Thorndyke stood by regarding me with almost equal interest.

“Well,” he said, after watching me in silence for some time, “what do you see?”

“I see a small brass cylinder,” I answered, “about two inches long and rather thicker than an ordinary lead pencil. One end is conical, and there is a small hole at the apex which seems to contain a steel point; the other end is flat, but has in the centre a small square projection such as might fit a watch-key. I notice also a small hole in the side of the cylinder close to the flat end. The thing looks like a miniature shell, and appears to be hollow.”

“It is hollow,” said Thorndyke. “You must have observed that, when I held it up to drain, the water trickled out through the hole at the pointed end.”

“Yes, I noticed that.”

“Now take it up and shake it.”

I did so and felt some heavy object rattle inside it.

“There is some loose body inside it,” I said, “which fits it pretty closely, as it moves only in the long diameter.”

“Quite so; your description is excellent. And now, what is the nature of this projectile?”

“I should say it is a miniature shell or explosive bullet.”

“Wrong!” said Thorndyke. “A very natural inference, but a wrong one.”

“Then what is the thing?” I demanded, my curiosity still further aroused.

“I will show you,” he replied. “It is something much more subtle than an explosive bullet—which would really be a rather crude appliance—admirably thought out and thoroughly well executed. We have to deal with a most ingenious and capable man.”

I was fain to laugh at his enthusiastic appreciation of the methods of his would-be assassin, and the humour of the situation then appeared to dawn on him, for he said, with an apologetic smile—

“I am not expressing approval, you must understand, but merely professional admiration. It is this class of criminal that creates the necessity for my services. He is my patron, so to speak; my ultimate employer. For the common crook can be dealt with quite efficiently by the common policeman!”

While he was speaking he had been fitting the little cylinder between two pads of tissue-paper in the vice, which he now screwed up tight. Then, with the fine metal saw, he began to cut the projectile, lengthwise, into two slightly unequal parts. This operation took some time, especially since he was careful not to cut the loose body inside, but at length the section was completed and the interior of the cylinder exposed, when he released it from the vice and held it up before me with an expression of triumph.

“Now, what do you make it?” he demanded.

I took the object in my fingers and looked at it closely, but was at first more puzzled than before. The loose body I now saw to be a cylinder of lead about half an inch long, accurately fitting the inside of the cylinder but capable of slipping freely backwards and forwards. The steel point which I had noticed in the hole at the apex of the conical end, was now seen to be the pointed termination of a slender steel rod which projected fully an inch into the cavity of the cylinder, and the conical end itself was a solid mass of lead.

“Well?” queried Thorndyke, seeing that I was still silent.

“You tell me it is not an explosive bullet,” I replied, “otherwise I should have been confirmed in that opinion. I should have said that the percussion cap was carried by this lead plunger and struck on the end of that steel rod when the flight of the bullet was suddenly arrested.”

“Very good indeed,” said Thorndyke. “You are right so far that this is, in fact, the mechanism of a percussion shell.

“But look at this. You see this little rod was driven inside the bullet when the latter struck the wall. Let us replace it in its original position.”

He laid the end of a small flat file against the end of the rod and pressed it firmly, when the rod slid through the hole until it projected an inch beyond the apex of the cone. Then he handed the projectile back to me.

A single glance at the point of the steel rod made the whole thing clear, and I gave a whistle of consternation; for the “rod” was a fine tube with a sharply pointed end.

“The infernal scoundrel!” I exclaimed; “it is a hypodermic needle.”

“Yes. A veterinary hypodermic, of extra large bore. Now you see the subtlety and ingenuity of the whole thing. If he had had a reasonable chance he would certainly have succeeded.”

“You speak quite regretfully,” I said, laughing again at the oddity of his attitude towards the assassin.

“Not at all,” he replied. “I have the character of a single-handed player, but even the most self-reliant man can hardly make a post-mortem on himself. I am merely appreciating an admirable piece of mechanical design most efficiently carried out. Observe the completeness of the thing, and the way in which all the necessities of the case are foreseen and met. This projectile was discharged from a powerful air-gun—the walking-stick form—provided with a force-pump and key. The barrel of that gun was rifled.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Well, to begin with, it would be useless to fit a needle to the projectile unless the latter was made to travel with the point forwards; but there is direct evidence that the barrel was rifled. You notice the little square projection on the back surface of the cylinder. That was evidently made to fit a washer or wad—probably a thin plate of soft metal which would be driven by the pressure from behind into the grooves of the rifling and thus give a spinning motion to the bullet. When the latter left the barrel, the wad would drop off, leaving it free.”

“I see. I was wondering what the square projection was for. It is, as you say, extremely ingenious.”

“Highly ingenious,” said Thorndyke, enthusiastically, “and so is the whole device. See how perfectly it would have worked but for a mere fluke and for the complication of your presence. Supposing that I had been alone, so that he could have approached to a shorter distance. In that case he would not have missed, and the thing would have been done. You see how it was intended to be done, I suppose?”

“I think so,” I answered; “but I should like to hear your account of the process.”

“Well, you see, he first finds out that I am returning by a late train—which he seems to have done—and he waits for me at the terminus. Meanwhile he fills the cylinder with a solution of a powerful alkaloidal poison, which is easily done by dipping the needle into the liquid and sucking at the small hole near the back end, when the piston will be drawn up and the liquid will follow it. You notice that the upper side of the piston is covered with vaseline—introduced through the hole, no doubt—which would prevent the poison from coming out into the mouth, and make the cylinder secure from leakage. On my arrival, he follows me on his bicycle until I pass through a sufficiently secluded neighbourhood. Then he approaches me, or passes me and waits round a corner, and shoots at pretty close range. It doesn’t matter where he hits me; all parts are equally vital, so he can aim at the middle of my back. Then the bullet comes spinning through the air point foremost; the needle passes through the clothing and enters the flesh, and, as the bullet is suddenly stopped, the heavy piston flies down by its own great momentum and squirts out a jet of the poison into the tissues. The bullet then disengages itself and drops on to the ground.

“Meanwhile, our friend has mounted his bicycle and is off, and when I feel the prick of the needle, I turn, and, without stopping to look for the bullet, immediately give chase. I am, of course, not able to overtake a man on a racing machine, but still I follow him some distance. Then the poison begins to take effect—the more rapidly from the violent exercise—and presently I drop insensible. Later on, my body is found. There are no marks of violence, and probably the needle-puncture escapes observation at the post-mortem, in which case the verdict will be death from heart-failure. Even if the poison and the puncture are discovered, there is no clue. The bullet lies some streets away, and is probably picked up by some boy or passing stranger, who cannot conjecture its use, and who would never connect it with the man who was found dead. You will admit that the whole plan has been worked out with surprising completeness and foresight.”

“Yes,” I answered; “there is no doubt that the fellow is a most infernally clever scoundrel. May I ask if you have any idea who he is?”

“Well,” Thorndyke replied, “seeing that, as Carlyle has un­kindly pointed out, clever people are not in an overwhelming majority, and that, of the clever people whom I know, only a very few are interested in my immediate demise, I am able to form a fairly probable conjecture.”

“And what do you mean to do?”

“For the present I shall maintain an attitude of masterly inactivity and avoid the night air.”

“But, surely,” I exclaimed, “you will take some measures to protect yourself against attempts of this kind. You can hardly doubt now that your accident in the fog was really an attempted murder.”

“I never did doubt it, as a matter of fact, although I prevaricated at the time. But I have not enough evidence against this man at present, and, consequently, can do nothing but show that I suspect him, which would be foolish. Whereas, if I lie low, one of two things will happen; either the occasion for my removal (which is only a temporary one) will pass, or he will commit himself—will put a definite clue into my hands. Then we shall find the air-cane, the bicycle, perhaps a little stock of poison, and certain other trifles that I have in my mind, which will be good confirmatory evidence, though insufficient in themselves. And now, I think, I must really adjourn this meeting, or we shall be good for nothing tomorrow.”

CHAPTER XII

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

It was now only a week from the date on which the trial was to open. In eight days the mystery would almost certainly be solved (if it was capable of solution), for the trial promised to be quite a short one, and then Reuben Hornby would be either a convicted felon or a free man, clear of the stigma of the crime.

For several days past, Thorndyke had been in almost constant possession of the laboratory, while his own small room, devoted ordinarily to bacteriology and microscopical work was kept continually locked; a state of things that reduced Polton to a condition of the most extreme nervous irritation, especially when, as he told me indignantly, he met Mr. Anstey emerging from the holy of holies, grinning and rubbing his hands and giving utterance to genial but unparliamentary expressions of amused satisfaction.

I had met Anstey on several occasions lately, and each time liked him better than the last; for his whimsical, facetious manner covered a nature (as it often does) that was serious and thought­ful; and I found him, not only a man of considerable learning, but one also of a lofty standard of conduct. His admiration for Thorn­dyke was unbounded, and I could see that the two men collaborated with the utmost sympathy and mutual satisfaction.

But although I regarded Mr. Anstey with feelings of the liveliest friendship, I was far from gratified when, on the morning of which I am writing, I observed him from our sitting-room win­dow crossing the gravelled space from Crown Office Row and evidently bearing down on our chambers. For the fact is that I was awaiting the arrival of Juliet, and should greatly have preferred to be alone at the moment, seeing that Thorndyke had already gone out. It is true that my fair enslaver was not due for nearly half-an-hour, but then, who could say how long Anstey would stay, or what embarrassments might arise from my efforts to escape? By all of which it may be perceived that my disease had reached a very advanced stage, and that I was unequal to those tactics of concealment that are commonly attributed to the ostrich.

A sharp rap of the knocker announced the arrival of the disturber of my peace, and when I opened the door Anstey walked in with the air of a man to whom an hour more or less is of no consequence whatever. He shook my hand with mock solemnity, and, seating himself upon the edge of the table, proceeded to roll a cigarette with exasperating deliberation.

“I infer,” said he, “that our learned brother is practising par­lour magic upstairs, or peradventure he has gone on a journey?”

“He has a consultation this morning,” I answered. “Was he expecting you?”

“Evidently not, or he would have been here. No, I just looked in to ask a question about the case of your friend Hornby. You know it comes on for trial next week?”

“Yes; Thorndyke told me. What do you think of Hornby’s prospects? Is he going to be convicted, or will he get an acquittal?”

“He will be entirely passive,” replied Anstey, “but we”—here he slapped his chest impressively—“are going to secure an acquittal. You will be highly entertained, my learned friend, and Mr. The Enemy will be excessively surprised.” He inspected the newly-made cigarette with a critical air and chuckled softly.

“You seem pretty confident,” I remarked.

“I am,” he answered, “though Thorndyke considers failure possible—which, of course, it is if the jury-box should chance to be filled with microcephalic idiots and the judge should prove incapable of understanding simple technical evidence. But we hope that neither of these things will happen, and, if they do not, we feel pretty safe. By the way, I hope I am not divulging your principal’s secrets?”

“Well,” I replied, with a smile, “you have been more explicit than Thorndyke ever has.”

“Have I?” he exclaimed, with mock anxiety; “then I must swear you to secrecy. Thorndyke is so very close—and he is quite right too. I never cease admiring his tactics of allowing the enemy to fortify and barricade the entrance that he does not mean to attack. But I see you are wishing me at the devil, so give me a cigar and I will go—though not to that particular destination.”

“Will you have one of Thorndyke’s special brand?” I asked malignantly.

“What! Those foul Trichinopolies? Not while brown paper is to be obtained at every stationer’s; I’d sooner smoke my own wig.”

I tendered my own case, from which he selected a cigar with anxious care and much sniffing; then he bade me a ceremonious adieu and departed down the stairs, blithely humming a melody from the latest comic opera.

He had not left more than five minutes when a soft and elaborate rat-tat from the little brass knocker brought my heart into my mouth. I ran to the door and flung it open, revealing Juliet stand­ing on the threshold.

“May I come in?” she asked. “I want to have a few words with you before we start.”

I looked at her with some anxiety, for she was manifestly agitated, and the hand that she held out to me trembled.

“I am greatly upset, Dr. Jervis,” she said, ignoring the chair that I had placed for her. “Mr. Lawley has been giving us his views of poor Reuben’s case, and his attitude fills me with dismay.”

“Hang Mr. Lawley!” I muttered, and then apologised hastily. “What made you go to him, Miss Gibson?”

“I didn’t go to him; he came to us. He dined with us last night—he and Walter—and his manner was gloomy in the extreme. After dinner Walter took him apart with me and asked him what he really thought of the case. He was most pessimistic. ‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘the only advice I can give you is that you prepare yourself to contemplate disaster as philosophically as you can. In my opinion your cousin is almost certain to be convicted.’ ‘But,’ said Walter, ‘what about the defence? I understood that there was at least a plausible case.’ Mr. Lawley shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have a sort of alibi that will go for nothing, but I have no evidence to offer in answer to that of the prosecution, and no case; and I may say, speaking in confidence, that I do not believe there is any case. I do not see how there can be any case, and I have heard nothing from Dr. Thorndyke to lead me to suppose that he has really done anything in the matter.’ Is this true, Dr. Jervis? Oh! Do tell me the real truth about it! I have been so miserable and terrified since I heard this, and I was so full of hope before. Tell me, is it true? Will Reuben be sent to prison after all?”

In her agitation she laid her hands on my arm and looked up into my face with her grey eyes swimming with tears, and was so piteous, so trustful, and, withal, so bewitching that my reserve melted like snow before a July sun.

“It is not true,” I answered, taking her hands in mine and speaking perforce in a low tone that I might not betray my emotion. “If it were, it would mean that I have wilfully deceived you, that I have been false to our friendship; and how much that friendship has been to me, no one but myself will ever know.”

She crept a little closer to me with a manner at once penitent and wheedling.

“You are not going to be angry with me, are you? It was foolish of me to listen to Mr. Lawley after all you have told me, and it did look like a want of trust in you, I know. But you, who are so strong and wise, must make allowance for a woman who is neither. It is all so terrible that I am quite unstrung; but say you are not really displeased with me, for that would hurt me most of all.”

Oh! Delilah! That concluding stroke of the shears severed the very last lock, and left me—morally speaking—as bald as a billiard ball. Henceforth I was at her mercy and would have divulged, without a scruple, the uttermost secrets of my principal, but that that astute gentleman had placed me beyond the reach of temptation.

“As to being angry with you,” I answered, “I am not, like Thorndyke, one to essay the impossible, and if I could be angry it would hurt me more than it would you. But, in fact, you are not to blame at all, and I am an egotistical brute. Of course you were alarmed and distressed; nothing could be more natural. So now let me try to chase away your fears and restore your confidence.

“I have told you what Thorndyke said to Reuben: that he had good hopes of making his innocence clear to everybody. That alone should have been enough.”

“I know it should,” murmured Juliet remorsefully; “please forgive me for my want of faith.”

“But,” I continued, “I can quote you the words of one to whose opinions you will attach more weight. Mr. Anstey was here less than half-an-hour ago—”

“Do you mean Reuben’s counsel?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he say? Oh, do tell me what he said.”

“He said, in brief, that he was quite confident of obtaining an acquittal, and that the prosecution would receive a great surprise. He seemed highly pleased with his brief, and spoke with great admiration of Thorndyke.”

“Did he really say that—that he was confident of an ac­quittal?” Her voice was breathless and unsteady, and she was clearly, as she had said, quite unstrung. “What a relief it is,” she murmured incoherently; “and so very, very kind of you!” She wiped her eyes and laughed a queer, shaky little laugh; then, quite suddenly, she burst into a passion of sobbing.

Hardly conscious of what I did, I drew her gently towards me, and rested her head on my shoulder whilst I whispered into her ear I know not what words of consolation; but I am sure that I called her “dear Juliet,” and probably used other expressions equally improper and reprehensible. Presently she recovered herself, and, having dried her eyes, regarded me somewhat shamefacedly, blushing hotly, but smiling very sweetly nevertheless.

“I am ashamed of myself,” she said, “coming here and weep­ing on your bosom like a great baby. It is to be hoped that your other clients do not behave in this way.”

Whereat we both laughed heartily, and, our emotional equilibrium being thus restored, we began to think of the object of our meeting.

“I am afraid I have wasted a great deal of time,” said Juliet, looking at her watch. “Shall we be too late, do you think?”

“I hope not,” I replied, “for Reuben will be looking for us; but we must hurry.”

I caught up my hat, and we went forth, closing the oak behind us, and took our way up King’s Bench Walk in silence, but with a new and delightful sense of intimate comradeship. I glanced from time to time at my companion, and noted that her cheek still bore a rosy flush, and when she looked at me there was a sparkle in her eye, and a smiling softness in her glance, that stirred my heart until I trembled with the intensity of the passion that I must needs conceal. And even while I was feeling that I must tell her all, and have done with it, tell her that I was her abject slave, and she my goddess, my queen; that in the face of such a love as mine no man could have any claim upon her; even then, there arose the still, small voice that began to call me an unfaithful steward and to remind me of a duty and trust that were sacred even beyond love.

In Fleet Street I hailed a cab, and, as I took my seat beside my fair companion, the voice began to wax and speak in bolder and sterner accents.

“Christopher Jervis,” it said, “what is this that you are doing? Are you a man of honour or nought but a mean, pitiful blackguard? You, the trusted agent of this poor, misused gentleman, are you not planning in your black heart how you shall rob him of that which, if he is a man at all, must be more to him than his liberty, or even his honour? Shame on you for a miserable weakling! Have done with these philanderings and keep your covenants like a gentleman—or, at least, an honest man!”

At this point in my meditations Juliet turned towards me with a coaxing smile.

“My legal adviser seems to be revolving some deep and weighty matter,” she said.

I pulled myself together and looked at her—at her sparkling eyes and rosy, dimpling cheeks, so winsome and lovely and lovable.

“Come,” I thought, “I must put an end to this at once, or I am lost.” But it cost me a very agony of effort to do it—which agony, I trust, may be duly set to my account by those who may sit in judgement on me.

“Your legal adviser, Miss Gibson,” I said (and at that “Miss Gibson” I thought she looked at me a little queerly), “has been reflecting that he has acted considerably beyond his jurisdiction.”

“In what respect?” she asked.

“In passing on to you information which was given to him in very strict confidence, and, in fact, with an implied promise of secrecy on his part.”

“But the information was not of a very secret character, was it?”

“More so than it appeared. You see, Thorndyke thinks it so important not to let the prosecution suspect that he has anything up his sleeve, that he has kept even Mr. Lawley in the dark, and he has never said as much to me as Anstey did this morning.”

“And now you are sorry you told me; you think I have led you into a breach of trust. Is it not so?” She spoke without a trace of petulance, and her tone of dignified self-accusation made me feel a veritable worm.

“My dear Miss Gibson,” I expostulated, “you entirely misunderstand me. I am not in the least sorry that I told you. How could I have done otherwise under the circumstances? But I want you to understand that I have taken the responsibility of communicating to you what is really a professional secret, and that you are to consider it as such.”

“That was how I understood it,” replied Juliet; “and you may rely upon me not to utter a syllable on the subject to anyone.”

I thanked her for this promise, and then, by way of making conversation, gave her an account in detail of Anstey’s visit, not even omitting the incident of the cigar.

“And are Dr. Thorndyke’s cigars so extraordinarily bad?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I replied; “only they are not to every man’s taste. The Trichinopoly cheroot is Thorndyke’s one dissipation, and, I must say, he takes it very temperately. Under ordinary circumstances he smokes a pipe; but after a specially heavy day’s work, or on any occasion of festivity or rejoicing, he indulges in a Trichin­opoly, and he smokes the very best that can be got.”

“So even the greatest men have their weaknesses,” Juliet mor­al­ised; “but I wish I had known Dr. Thorndyke’s sooner, for Mr. Hornby had a large box of Trichinopoly cheroots given to him, and I believe they were exceptionally fine ones. However, he tried one and didn’t like it, so he transferred the whole consignment to Walter, who smokes all sorts and conditions of cigars.”

So we talked on from one commonplace to another, and each more conventional than the last. In my nervousness, I overdid my part, and having broken the ice, proceeded to smash it to impalpable fragments. Endeavouring merely to be unemotional and to avoid undue intimacy of manner, I swung to the opposite extreme and became almost stiff; and perhaps the more so since I was writhing with the agony of repression.

Meanwhile a corresponding change took place in my companion. At first her manner seemed doubtful and bewildered; then she, too, grew more distant and polite and less disposed for conversation. Perhaps her conscience began to rebuke her, or it may be that my coolness suggested to her that her conduct had not been quite of the kind that would have commended itself to Reuben. But however that may have been, we continued to draw farther and farther apart; and in that short half-hour we retraced the steps of our growing friendship to such purpose that, when we descended from the cab at the prison gate, we seemed more like strangers than on the first day that we met. It was a miserable ending to all our delightful comradeship, and yet what other end could one expect in this world of cross purposes and things that might have been? In the extremity of my wretchedness I could have wept on the bosom of the portly warder who opened the wicket, even as Juliet had wept upon mine; and it was almost a relief to me, when our brief visit was over, to find that we should not return together to King’s Cross as was our wont, but that Juliet would go back by omnibus that she might do some shopping in Oxford Street, leaving me to walk home alone.

I saw her into her omnibus, and stood on the pavement looking wistfully at the lumbering vehicle as it dwindled in the distance. At last, with a sigh of deepest despondency, I turned my face homeward, and, walking like one in a dream, retraced the route over which I had journeyed so often of late and with such different sensations.

CHAPTER XIII

MURDER BY POST

The next few days were perhaps the most unhappy that I have known. My life, indeed, since I had left the hospital had been one of many disappointments and much privation. Unfulfilled desires and ambitions unrealised had combined with distaste for the daily drudgery that had fallen to my lot to embitter my poverty and cause me to look with gloomy distrust upon the unpromising future. But no sorrow that I had hitherto experienced could compare with the grief that I now felt in contemplating the irretrievable ruin of what I knew to be the great passion of my life. For to a man like myself, of few friends and deep affections, one great emotional upheaval exhausts the possibilities of nature; leaving only the capacity for feeble and ineffective echoes. The edifice of love that is raised upon the ruins of a great passion can compare with the original no more than can the paltry mosque that perches upon the mound of Jonah with the glories of the palace that lies entombed beneath.

I had made a pretext to write to Juliet and had received a reply quite frank and friendly in tone, by which I knew that she had not—as some women would have done—set the blame upon me for our temporary outburst of emotion. And yet there was a subtle difference from her previous manner of writing that only em­phasised the finality of our separation.

I think Thorndyke perceived that something had gone awry, though I was at great pains to maintain a cheerful exterior and keep myself occupied, and he probably formed a pretty shrewd guess at the nature of the trouble; but he said nothing, and I only judged that he had observed some change in my manner by the fact that there was blended with his usual quiet geniality an almost insensible note of sympathy and affection.

A couple of days after my last interview with Juliet, an event occurred which served, certainly, to relieve the tension and distract my thoughts, though not in a very agreeable manner.

It was the pleasant, reposeful hour after dinner when it was our custom to sit in our respective easy chairs and, as we smoked our pipes, discuss some of the many topics in which we had a common interest. The postman had just discharged into the capacious letter-box an avalanche of letters and circulars, and as I sat glancing through the solitary letter that had fallen to my share, I looked from time to time at Thorndyke and noticed, as I had often done before, with some surprise, a curious habit that he had of turning over and closely scrutinising every letter and package before he opened it.

“I observe, Thorndyke,” I now ventured to remark, “that you always examine the outside of a letter before looking at the inside. I have seen other people do the same, and it has always appeared to me a singularly foolish proceeding. Why speculate over an unopened letter when a glance at the contents will tell you all there is to know?”

“You are perfectly right,” he answered, “if the object of the inspection is to discover who is the sender of the letter. But that is not my object. In my case the habit is one that has been deliberately cultivated—not in reference to letters only, but to everything that comes into my hands—the habit of allowing nothing to pass without a certain amount of conscious attention. The observant man is, in reality, the attentive man, and the so-called power of observation is simply the capacity for continuous attention. As a matter of fact, I have found in practice, that the habit is a useful one even in reference to letters; more than once I have gleaned a hint from the outside of a letter that has proved valuable when applied to the contents. Here, for instance, is a letter which has been opened after being fastened up—apparently by the aid of steam. The envelope is soiled and rubbed, and smells faintly of stale tobacco, and has evidently been carried in a pocket along with a well-used pipe. Why should it have been opened? On reading it I perceive that it should have reached me two days ago, and that the date has been skilfully altered from the thirteenth to the fifteenth. The inference is that my correspondent has a highly untrustworthy clerk.”

“But the correspondent may have carried the letter in his own pocket,” I objected.

“Hardly,” replied Thorndyke. “He would not have troubled to steam his own letter open and close it again; he would have cut the envelope and addressed a fresh one. This the clerk could not do, because the letter was confidential and was addressed in the principal’s handwriting. And the principal would have almost certainly added a postscript; and, moreover, he does not smoke. This, however, is all very obvious; but here is something rather more subtle which I have put aside for more detailed examination. What do you make of it?”

He handed me a small parcel to which was attached by string a typewritten address label, the back of which bore the printed inscription, “James Bartlett and Sons, Cigar Manufacturers, Lon­don and Havana.”

“I am afraid,” said I, after turning the little packet over and examining every part of it minutely, “that this is rather too subtle for me. The only thing that I observe is that the typewriter has bungled the address considerably. Otherwise this seems to me a very ordinary packet indeed.”

“Well, you have observed one point of interest, at any rate,” said Thorndyke, taking the packet from me. “But let us examine the thing systematically and note down what we see. In the first place, you will notice that the label is an ordinary luggage label such as you may buy at any stationer’s, with its own string at­tached. Now, manufacturers commonly use a different and more substantial pattern, which is attached by the string of the parcel. But that is a small matter. What is much more striking is the address on the label. It is typewritten and, as you say, typed very badly. Do you know anything about typewriters?”

“Very little.”

“Then you do not recognise the machine? Well, this label was typed with a Blickensderfer—an excellent machine, but not the form most commonly selected for the rough work of a manufacturer’s office; but we will let that pass. The important point is this: the Blickensderfer Company make several forms of machine, the smallest and lightest of which is the literary, specially designed for the use of journalists and men of letters. Now this label was typed with the literary machine, or, at least, with the literary typewheel; which is really a very remarkable circumstance indeed.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“By this asterisk, which has been written by mistake, the inexpert operator having pressed down the figure lever instead of the one for capitals. The literary typewheel is the only one that has an asterisk, as I noticed when I was thinking of purchasing a machine. Here, then, we have a very striking fact, for even if a manufacturer chose to use a ‘Blick’ in his factory, it is inconceivable that he should select the literary form in preference to the more suitable ‘commercial’ machine.”

“Yes,” I agreed; “it is certainly very singular.”

“And now,” pursued Thorndyke, “to consider the writing itself. It has been done by an absolute beginner. He has failed to space in two places, he has written five wrong letters, and he has written figures instead of capitals in two instances.”

“Yes; he has made a shocking muddle of it. I wonder he didn’t throw the label away and type another.”

“Precisely,” said Thorndyke. “And if we wish to find out why he did not, we have only to look at the back of the label. You see that the name of the firm, instead of being printed on the label itself in the usual manner, is printed on a separate slip of paper which is pasted on the label—a most foolish and clumsy arrangement, involving an immense waste of time. But if we look closely at the printed slip itself we perceive something still more remarkable; for that slip has been cut down to fit the label, and has been cut with a pair of scissors. The edges are not quite straight, and in one place the ‘overlap,’ which is so characteristic of the cut made with scissors, can be seen quite plainly.”

He handed the packet to me with a reading-lens, through which I could distinctly make out the points he had mentioned.

“Now I need not point out to you,” he continued, “that these slips would, ordinarily, have been trimmed by the printer to the correct size in his machine, which would leave an absolutely true edge; nor need I say that no sane business man would adopt such a device as this. The slip of paper has been cut with scissors to fit the label, and it has then been pasted on to the surface that it has been made to fit, when all this waste of time and trouble—which, in practice, means money—could have been saved by printing the name on the label itself.”

“Yes, that is so; but I still do not see why the fellow should not have thrown away this label and typed another.”

“Look at the slip again,” said Thorndyke. “It is faintly but evenly discoloured and, to me, has the appearance of having been soaked in water. Let us, for the moment, assume that it has been. That would look as if it had been removed from some other package, which again would suggest that the person using it had only the one slip, which he had soaked off the original package, dried, cut down and pasted on the present label. If he pasted it on before typing the address—which he would most probably have done—he might well be unwilling to risk destroying it by soaking it a second time.”

“You think, then, there is a suspicion that the package may have been tampered with?”

“There is no need to jump to conclusions,” replied Thorn­dyke. “I merely gave this case as an instance showing that careful examination of the outside of a package or letter may lead us to bestow a little extra attention on the contents. Now let us open it and see what those contents are.”

With a sharp knife he divided the outside cover, revealing a stout cardboard box wrapped in a number of advertisement sheets. The box, when the lid was raised, was seen to contain a single cigar—a large cheroot—packed in cotton wool.

“A ‘Trichy,’ by Jove!” I exclaimed. “Your own special fancy, Thorndyke.”

“Yes; and another anomaly, at once, you see, which might have escaped our notice if we had not been on the qui vive.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t see,” said I. “You will think me an awful blockhead, but I don’t perceive anything singular in a cigar manufacturer sending a sample cigar.”

“You read the label, I think?” replied Thorndyke. “However, let us look at one of these leaflets and see what they say. Ah! Here we are: ‘Messrs. Bartlett and Sons, who own extensive plantations on the island of Cuba, manufacture their cigars exclusively from selected leaves grown by themselves.’ They would hardly make a Trichinopoly cheroot from leaf grown in the West Indies, so we have here a striking anomaly of an East Indian cigar sent to us by a West Indian grower.”

“And what do you infer from that?”

“Principally that this cigar—which, by the way, is an uncommonly fine specimen and which I would not smoke for ten thousand pounds—is deserving of very attentive examination.” He produced from his pocket a powerful doublet lens, with the aid of which he examined every part of the surface of the cigar, and finally, both ends.

“Look at the small end,” he said, handing me the cigar and the lens, “and tell me if you notice anything.”

I focussed the lens on the flush-cut surface of closely-rolled leaf, and explored every part of it minutely.

“It seems to me,” I said, “that the leaf is opened slightly in the centre, as if a fine wire had been passed up it.”

“So it appeared to me,” replied Thorndyke; “and, as we are in agreement so far, we will carry our investigations a step further.”

He laid the cigar down on the table, and, with the keen, thin-bladed penknife, neatly divided it lengthwise into two halves.

“Ecce signum!” exclaimed Thorndyke, as the two parts fell asunder; and for a few moments we stood silently regarding the dismembered cheroot. For, about half an inch from the small end, there appeared a little circular patch of white, chalky material which, by the even manner in which it was diffused among the leaf, had evidently been deposited from a solution.

“Our ingenious friend again, I surmise,” said Thorndyke at length, taking up one of the halves and examining the white patch through his lens. “A thoughtful soul, Jervis, and original too. I wish his talents could be applied in some other direction. I shall have to remonstrate with him if he becomes troublesome.”

“It is your duty to society, Thorndyke,” I exclaimed passionately, “to have this infernal, cold-blooded scoundrel arrested in­stantly. Such a man is a standing menace to the community. Do you really know who sent this thing?”

“I can form a pretty shrewd guess, which, however, is not quite the same thing. But, you see, he has not been quite so clever this time, for he has left one or two traces by which his identity might be ascertained.”

“Indeed! What traces has he left?”

“Ah! Now there is a nice little problem for us to consider.” He settled himself in his easy chair and proceeded to fill his pipe with the air of a man who is about to discuss a matter of merely general interest.

“Let us consider what information this ingenious person has given us about himself. In the first place, he evidently has a strong interest in my immediate decease. Now, why should he feel so urgent a desire for my death? Can it be a question of property? Hardly; for I am far from a rich man, and the provisions of my will are known to me alone. Can it then be a question of private enmity or revenge? I think not. To the best of my belief I have no private enemies whatever. There remains only my vocation as an investigator in the fields of legal and criminal research. His interest in my death must, therefore, be connected with my professional activities. Now, I am at present conducting an exhumation which may lead to a charge of murder; but if I were to die tonight the inquiry would be carried out with equal efficiency by Professor Spicer or some other toxicologist. My death would not affect the prospects of the accused. And so in one or two other cases that I have in hand; they could be equally well conducted by someone else. The inference is that our friend is not connected with any of these cases, but that he believes me to possess some exclusive information concerning him—believes me to be the one person in the world who suspects and can convict him. Let us assume the ­existence of such a person—a person of whose guilt I alone have evidence. Now this person, being unaware that I have com­municated my knowledge to a third party, would reasonably suppose that by making away with me he had put himself in a position of security.

“Here, then, is our first point. The sender of this offering is probably a person concerning whom I hold certain exclusive information.

“But see, now, the interesting corollary that follows from this. I, alone, suspect this person; therefore I have not published my suspicions, or others would suspect him too. Why, then, does he suspect me of suspecting him, since I have not spoken? Evidently, he too must be in possession of exclusive information. In other words, my suspicions are correct; for if they were not, he could not be aware of their existence.

“The next point is the selection of this rather unusual type of cigar. Why should he have sent a Trichinopoly instead of an ordinary Havana such as Bartletts actually manufacture? It looks as if he were aware of my peculiar predilection, and, by thus consulting my personal tastes, had guarded against the chance of my giving the cigar to some other person. We may, therefore, infer that our friend probably has some knowledge of my habits.

“The third point is, What is the social standing of this gentle stranger, whom we will call X? Now, Bartletts do not send their advertisements and samples to Thomas, Richard and Henry. They send, chiefly, to members of the professions and men of means and position. It is true that the original package might have been annexed by a clerk, office boy or domestic servant; but the probabilities are that X received the package himself, and this is borne out by the fact that he was able to obtain access to a powerful alkaloidal poison—such as this undoubtedly is.”

“In that case he would probably be a medical man or a chemist,” I suggested.

“Not necessarily,” replied Thorndyke. “The laws relating to poisons are so badly framed and administered that any well-to-do person, who has the necessary knowledge, can obtain almost any poison that he wants. But social position is an important factor, whence we may conclude that X belongs, at least, to the middle class.

“The fourth point relates to the personal qualities of X. Now it is evident, from this instance alone, that he is a man of exceptional intelligence, of considerable general information, and both ingenious and resourceful. This cigar device is not only clever and original, but it has been adapted to the special circumstances with remarkable forethought. Thus the cheroot was selected, apparently, for two excellent reasons: first, that it was the most likely form to be smoked by the person intended, and second, that it did not require to have the end cut off—which might have led to a discovery of the poison. The plan also shows a certain knowledge of chemistry; the poison was not intended merely to be dissolved in the moisture of the mouth. The idea evidently was that the steam generated by the combustion of the leaf at the distal end, would condense in the cooler part of the cigar and dissolve the poison, and the solution would then be drawn into the mouth. Then the nature of the poison and certain similarities of procedure seem to identify X with the cyclist who used that ingenious bullet. The poison in this case is a white, non-crystalline solid; the poison contained in the bullet was a solution of a white, non-crystalline solid, which analysis showed to be the most poisonous of all alkaloids.

“The bullet was virtually a hypodermic syringe; the poison in this cigar has been introduced, in the form of an alcoholic or ethereal solution, by a hypodermic syringe. We shall thus be justified in assuming that the bullet and the cigar came from the same person; and, if this be so, we may say that X is a person of considerable knowledge, of great ingenuity and no mean skill as a mech­an­ician—as shown by the manufacture of the bullet.

“These are our principal facts—to which we may add the surmise that he has recently purchased a second-hand Blickens­derf­er of the literary form or, at least, fitted with a literary typewheel.”

“I don’t quite see how you arrive at that,” I said, in some surprise.

“It is merely a guess, you know,” he replied, “though a probable one. In the first place he is obviously unused to typing, as the numerous mistakes show; therefore he has not had the machine very long. The type is that which is peculiar to the Blickensderfer, and, in one of the mistakes, an asterisk has been printed in place of a letter. But the literary typewheel is the only one that has the asterisk. As to the age of the machine, there are evident signs of wear, for some of the letters have lost their sharpness, and this is most evident in the case of those letters which are the most used—the ‘e,’ you will notice, for instance, is much worn; and ‘e’ occurs more frequently than any other letter of the alphabet. Hence the machine, if recently purchased, was bought second-hand.”

“But,” I objected, “it may not have been his own machine at all.”

“That is quite possible,” answered Thorndyke, “though, considering the secrecy that would be necessary, the probabilities are in favour of his having bought it. But, in any case, we have here a means of identifying the machine, should we ever meet with it.”

He picked up the label and handed it to me, together with his pocket lens.

“Look closely at the ‘e’ that we have been discussing; it occurs five times; in ‘Thorndyke,’ in ‘Bench,’ in ‘Inner,’ and in ‘Temple.’ Now in each case you will notice a minute break in the loop, just at the summit. That break corresponds to a tiny dent in the type—caused, probably, by its striking some small, hard object.”

“I can make it out quite distinctly,” I said, “and it should be a most valuable point for identification.”

“It should be almost conclusive,” Thorndyke replied, “especially when joined to other facts that would be elicited by a search of his premises. And now let us just recapitulate the facts which our friend X has placed at our disposal.

“First: X is a person concerning whom I possess certain exclusive information.

“Second: He has some knowledge of my personal habits.

“Third: He is a man of some means and social position.

“Fourth: He is a man of considerable knowledge, ingenuity and mechanical skill.

“Fifth: He has probably purchased, quite recently, a second-hand ‘Blick’ fitted with a literary typewheel.

“Sixth: That machine, whether his own or some other person’s property, can be identified by a characteristic mark on the small ‘e.’

“If you will note down those six points and add that X is probably an expert cyclist and a fairly good shot with a rifle, you may possibly be able, presently, to complete the equation, X = ?”

“I am afraid,” I said, “I do not possess the necessary data; but I suspect you do, and if it is so, I repeat that it is your duty to society—to say nothing of your clients, whose interests would suffer by your death—to have this fellow laid by the heels before he does any mischief.”

“Yes; I shall have to interfere if he becomes really troublesome, but I have reasons for wishing to leave him alone at pre­sent.”

“You do really know who he is, then?”

“Well, I think I can solve the equation that I have just offered to you for solution. You see, I have certain data, as you suggest, which you do not possess. There is, for instance, a certain ingenious gentleman concerning whom I hold what I believe to be exclusive information, and my knowledge of him does not make it appear unlikely that he might be the author of these neat little plans.”

“I am much impressed,” I said, as I put away my notebook, after having jotted down the points that Thorndyke had advised me to consider—“I am much impressed by your powers of observation and your capacity for reasoning from apparently trivial data; but I do not see, even now, why you viewed that cigar with such immediate and decided suspicion. There was nothing actually to suggest the existence of poison in it, and yet you seemed to form the suspicion at once and to search for it as though you expected to find it.”

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke; “to a certain extent you are right. The idea of a poisoned cigar was not new to me—and thereby hangs a tale.”

He laughed softly and gazed into the fire with eyes that twinkled with quiet amusement. “You have heard me say,” he resumed, after a short pause, “that when I first took these chambers I had practically nothing to do. I had invented a new variety of medico-legal practice and had to build it up by slow degrees, and the natural consequence was that, for a long time, it yielded nothing but almost unlimited leisure. Now, that leisure was by no means wasted, for I employed it in considering the class of cases in which I was likely to be employed, and in working out theoretical examples; and seeing that crimes against the person have nearly always a strong medical interest, I gave them special attention. For in­stance, I planned a series of murders, selecting royal personages and great ministers as the victims, and on each murder I brought to bear all the special knowledge, skill and ingenuity at my command. I inquired minutely into the habits of my hypothetical victims; ascertained who were their associates, friends, enemies and servants; considered their diet, their residences, their modes of conveyance, the source of their clothing and, in fact, everything which it was necessary to know in order to achieve their deaths with certainty and with absolute safety to the murderer.”

“How deeply gratified and flattered those great personages would have felt,” I remarked, “if they had known how much attention they were receiving.”

“Yes; I suppose it would have been somewhat startling, to the Prime Minister, for instance, to have learned that he was being watched and studied by an attentive observer and that the ar­rangements for his decease had been completed down to the minutest detail. But, of course, the application of the method to a particular case was the essential thing, for it brought into view all the incidental difficulties, in meeting which all the really interesting and instructive details were involved. Well, the particulars of these crimes I wrote out at length, in my private shorthand, in a journal which I kept for the purpose—and which, I need not say, I locked up securely in my safe when I was not using it. After completing each case, it was my custom to change sides and play the game over again from the opposite side of the board; that is to say, I added, as an appendix to each case, an analysis with a complete scheme for the detection of the crime. I have in my safe at the present moment six volumes of cases, fully indexed; and I can assure you that they are not only highly instructive reading, but are really valuable as works of reference.”

“That I can readily believe,” I replied, laughing heartily, nevertheless, at the grotesqueness of the whole proceeding, “though they might have proved rather incriminating documents if they had passed out of your possession.”

“They would never have been read,” rejoined Thorndyke. “My shorthand is, I think, quite undecipherable; it has been so made intentionally with a view to secrecy.”

“And have any of your theoretical cases ever turned up in real life?”

“Several of them have, though very imperfectly planned and carried out as a rule. The poisoned cigar is one of them, though, of course I should never have adopted such a conspicuous device for presenting it; and the incident of the other night is a modification—for the worse—of another. In fact, most of the intricate and artistic crimes with which I have had to deal professionally have had their more complete and elaborate prototypes in my journals.”

I was silent for some time, reflecting on the strange personality of my gifted friend and the singular fitness that he presented for the part he had chosen to play in the drama of social life; but presently my thoughts returned to the peril that overshadowed him, and I came back, once more, to my original question.

“And now, Thorndyke,” I said, “that you have penetrated both the motives and the disguise of this villain, what are you going to do? Is he to be put safely under lock and key, or is he to be left in peace and security to plan some other, and perhaps more successful, scheme for your destruction?”

“For the present,” replied Thorndyke, “I am going to put these things in a place of safety. Tomorrow you shall come with me to the hospital and see me place the ends of the cigar in the custody of Dr. Chandler, who will make an analysis and report on the nature of the poison. After that we shall act in whatever way seems best.”

Unsatisfactory as this conclusion appeared, I knew it was useless to raise further objections, and, accordingly, when the cigar with its accompanying papers and wrappings had been deposited in a drawer, we dismissed it, if not from our thoughts, at least from our conversation.

CHAPTER XIV

A STARTLING DISCOVERY

The morning of the trial, so long looked forward to, had at length arrived, and the train of events which it has been my business to chronicle in this narrative was now fast drawing to an end. To me those events had been in many ways of the deepest moment. Not only had they transported me from a life of monotonous drudgery into one charged with novelty and dramatic interest; not only had they introduced me to a renascence of scien­tific culture and revived under new conditions my intimacy with the comrade of my student days; but, far more momentous than any of these, they had given me the vision—all too fleeting—of happiness untold, with the reality of sorrow and bitter regret that promised to be all too enduring.

Whence it happened that on this morning my thoughts were tinged with a certain greyness. A chapter in my life that had been both bitter and sweet was closing, and already I saw myself once more an Ishmaelite and a wanderer among strangers.

This rather egotistical frame of mind, however, was soon dispelled when I encountered Polton, for the little man was in a veritable twitter of excitement at the prospect of witnessing the clear­ing up of the mysteries that had so severely tried his curiosity; and even Thorndyke, beneath his habitual calm, showed a trace of expectancy and pleasurable anticipation.

“I have taken the liberty of making certain little arrangements on your behalf,” he said, as we sat at breakfast, “of which I hope you will not disapprove. I have written to Mrs. Hornby, who is one of the witnesses, to say that you will meet her at Mr. Lawley’s office and escort her and Miss Gibson to the court. Walter Horn­by may be with them, and, if he is, you had better leave him, if possible, to come on with Lawley.”

“You will not come to the office, then?”

“No. I shall go straight to the court with Anstey. Besides, I am expecting Superintendent Miller from Scotland Yard, who will probably walk down with us.”

“I am glad to hear that,” I said; “for I have been rather uneasy at the thought of your mixing in the crowd without some kind of protection.”

“Well, you see that I am taking precautions against the as­saults of the too-ingenious X, and, to tell the truth—and also to commit a flagrant bull—I should never forgive myself if I allowed him to kill me before I had completed Reuben Hornby’s defence. Ah, here is Polton—that man is on wires this morning; he has been wandering in and out of the rooms ever since he came, like a cat in a new house.”

“It’s quite true, sir,” said Polton, smiling and unabashed, “so it’s no use denying it. I have come to ask what we are going to take with us to the court.”

“You will find a box and a portfolio on the table in my room,” replied Thorndyke. “We had better also take a microscope and the micrometers, though we are not likely to want them; that is all, I think.”

“A box and a portfolio,” repeated Polton in a speculative tone. “Yes, sir, I will take them with me.” He opened the door and was about to pass out, when, perceiving a visitor ascending the stairs, he turned back.

“Here’s Mr. Miller, from Scotland Yard, sir; shall I show him in?”

“Yes, do.” He rose from his chair as a tall, military-looking man entered the room and saluted, casting, at the same time, an inquiring glance in my direction.

“Good morning, Doctor,” he said briskly. “I got your letter and couldn’t make such of it, but I have brought down a couple of plain-clothes men and a uniform man, as you suggested. I understand you want a house watched?”

“Yes, and a man, too. I will give you the particulars presently—that is, if you think you can agree to my conditions.”

“That I act entirely on my own account and make no communication to anybody? Well, of course, I would rather you gave me all the facts and let me proceed in the regular way; but if you make conditions I have no choice but to accept them, seeing that you hold the cards.”

Perceiving that the matter in hand was of a confidential na­ture, I thought it best to take my departure, which I accordingly did, as soon as I had ascertained that it wanted yet half-an-hour to the time at which Mrs. Hornby and Juliet were due at the lawyer’s office.

Mr. Lawley received me with stiffness that bordered on hostility. He was evidently deeply offended at the subordinate part that he had been compelled to play in the case, and was at no great pains to conceal the fact.

“I am informed,” said he, in a frosty tone, when I had ex­plained my mission, “that Mrs. Hornby and Miss Gibson are to meet you here. The arrangement is none of my making; none of the arrangements in this case are of my making. I have been treated throughout with a lack of ceremony and confidence that is positively scandalous. Even now, I—the solicitor for the de­fence—am completely in the dark as to what defence is contemplated, though I fully expect to be involved in some ridiculous fiasco. I only trust that I may never again be associated with any of your hybrid practitioners. Ne sutor ultra crepidam, sir, is an excellent motto; let the medical cobbler stick to his medical last.”

“It remains to be seen what kind of boot he can turn out on the legal last,” I retorted.

“That is so,” he rejoined; “but I hear Mrs. Hornby’s voice in the outer office, and as neither you nor I have any time to waste in idle talk, I suggest that you make your way to the court without delay. I wish you good morning!”

Acting on this very plain hint, I retired to the clerks’ office, where I found Mrs. Hornby and Juliet, the former undisguisedly tearful and terrified, and the latter calm, though pale and agitated.

“We had better start at once,” I said, when we had exchanged greetings. “Shall we take a cab, or walk?”

“I think we will walk, if you don’t mind,” said Juliet. “Mrs. Hornby wants to have a few words with you before we go into court. You see, she is one of the witnesses, and she is terrified lest she should say something damaging to Reuben.”

“By whom was the subpoena served?” I asked.

“Mr. Lawley sent it,” replied Mrs. Hornby, “and I went to see him about it the very next day, but he wouldn’t tell me anything—he didn’t seem to know what I was wanted for, and he wasn’t at all nice—not at all.”

“I expect your evidence will relate to the ‘Thumbograph,’” I said. “There is really nothing else in connection with the case that you have any knowledge of.”

“That is just what Walter said,” exclaimed Mrs. Hornby. “I went to his rooms to talk the matter over with him. He is very upset about the whole affair, and I am afraid he thinks very badly of poor Reuben’s prospects. I only trust he may be wrong! Oh dear! What a dreadful thing it is, to be sure!” Here the poor lady halted to mop her eyes elaborately, to the surprise and manifest scorn of a passing errand boy.

“He was very thoughtful and sympathetic—Walter, I mean, you know,” pursued Mrs. Hornby, “and most helpful. He asked me all I knew about that horrid little book, and took down my answers in writing. Then he wrote out the questions I was likely to be asked, with my answers, so that I could read them over and get them well into my head. Wasn’t it good of him! And I made him print them with his machine so that I could read them without my glasses, and he did it beautifully. I have the paper in my pocket now.”

“I didn’t know Mr. Walter went in for printing,” I said. “Has he a regular printing press?”

“It isn’t a printing press exactly,” replied Mrs. Hornby; “it is a small thing with a lot of round keys that you press down—Dickensblerfer, I think it is called—ridiculous name, isn’t it? Walter bought it from one of his literary friends about a week ago; but he is getting quite clever with it already, though he does make a few mistakes still, as you can see.”

She halted again, and began to search for the opening of a pocket which was hidden away in some occult recess of her clothing, all unconscious of the effect that her explanation had produced on me. For, instantly, as she spoke, there flashed into my mind one of the points that Thorndyke had given me for the identification of the mysterious X. “He has probably purchased, quite recently, a second-hand Blickensderfer, fitted with a literary type­wheel.” The coincidence was striking and even startling, though a moment’s reflection convinced me that it was nothing more than a coincidence; for there must be hundreds of second-hand “Blicks” on the market, and, as to Walter Hornby, he certainly could have no quarrel with Thorndyke, but would rather be interested in his preservation on Reuben’s account.

These thoughts passed through my mind so rapidly that by the time Mrs. Hornby had run her pocket to earth I had quite recovered from the momentary shock.

“Ah! Here it is,” she exclaimed triumphantly, producing an obese Morocco purse. “I put it in here for safety, knowing how liable one is to get one’s pocket picked in these crowded London streets.” She opened the bulky receptacle and drew it out after the manner of a concertina, exhibiting multitudinous partitions, all stuffed with pieces of paper, coils of tape and sewing silk, buttons, samples of dress materials and miscellaneous rubbish, mingled indiscriminately with gold, silver, and copper coins.

“Now just run your eye through that, Dr. Jervis,” she said, handing me a folded paper, “and give me your advice on my answers.”

I opened the paper and read: “The Committee of the Society for the Protection of Paralysed Idiots, in submitting this—”

“Oh! That isn’t it; I have given you the wrong paper. How silly of me! That is the appeal of—you remember, Juliet, dear, that troublesome person—I had, really, to be quite rude, you know, Dr. Jervis; I had to tell him that charity begins at home, although, thank Heaven! None of us are paralysed, but we must consider our own, mustn’t we? And then—”

“Do you think this is the one, dear?” interposed Juliet, in whose pale cheek the ghost of a dimple had appeared. “It looks cleaner than most of the others.”

She selected a folded paper from the purse which Mrs. Horn­by was holding with both hands extended to its utmost, as though she were about to produce a burst of music, and, opening it, glanced at its contents.

“Yes, this is your evidence,” she said, and passed the paper to me.

I took the document from her hand and, in spite of the conclusion at which I had arrived, examined it with eager curiosity. And at the very first glance I felt my head swim and my heart throb violently. For the paper was headed: “Evidence respecting the Thumbograph,” and in every one of the five small “e’s” that occurred in that sentence I could see plainly by the strong out-door light a small break or interval in the summit of the loop.

I was thunderstruck.

One coincidence was quite possible and even probable; but the two together, and the second one of so remarkable a character, were beyond all reasonable limits of probability. The identification did not seem to admit of a doubt, and yet—

“Our legal adviser appears to be somewhat preoccupied,” remarked Juliet, with something of her old gaiety of manner; and, in fact, though I held the paper in my hand, my gaze was fixed unmeaningly on an adjacent lamp-post. As she spoke, I pulled myself together, and, scanning the paper hastily, was fortunate enough to find in the first paragraph matter requiring comment.

“I observe, Mrs. Hornby,” I said, “that in answer to the first question, ‘Whence did you obtain the “Thumbograph”?’ you say, ‘I do not remember clearly; I think I must have bought it at a railway bookstall.’ Now I understood that it was brought home and given to you by Walter himself.”

“That was what I thought,” replied Mrs. Hornby, “but Walter tells me that it was not so, and, of course, he would remember better than I should.”

“But, my dear aunt, I am sure he gave it to you,” interposed Juliet. “Don’t you remember? It was the night the Colleys came to dinner, and we were so hard pressed to find amusement for them, when Walter came in and produced the ‘Thumbograph.’”

“Yes, I remember quite well now,” said Mrs. Hornby. “How fortunate that you reminded me. We must alter that answer at once.”

“If I were you, Mrs. Hornby,” I said, “I would disregard this paper altogether. It will only confuse you and get you into difficulties. Answer the questions that are put, as well as you can, and if you don’t remember, say so.”

“Yes, that will be much the wisest plan,” said Juliet. “Let Dr. Jervis take charge of the paper and rely on your own memory.”

“Very well, my dear,” replied Mrs. Hornby, “I will do what you think best, and you can keep the paper, Dr. Jervis, or throw it away.”

I slipped the document into my pocket without remark, and we proceeded on our way, Mrs. Hornby babbling inconsequently, with occasional outbursts of emotion, and Juliet silent and ab­stracted. I struggled to concentrate my attention on the elder lady’s conversation, but my thoughts continually reverted to the paper in my pocket, and the startling solution that it seemed to offer of the mystery of the poisoned cigar.

Could it be that Walter Hornby was in reality the miscreant X? The thing seemed incredible, for, hitherto, no shadow of suspicion had appeared to fall on him. And yet there was no denying that his description tallied in a very remarkable manner with that of the hypothetical X. He was a man of some means and social position; he was a man of considerable knowledge and mechanical skill, though as to his ingenuity I could not judge. He had recently bought a second-hand Blickensderfer which probably had a literary typewheel, since it was purchased from a literary man; and that machine showed the characteristic mark on the small “e.” The two remaining points, indeed, were not so clear. Obviously I could form no opinion as to whether or not Thorn­dyke held any exclusive information concerning him, and, with reference to his knowledge of my friend’s habits, I was at first inclined to be doubtful until I suddenly recalled, with a pang of remorse and self-accusation, the various details that I had communicated to Juliet and that she might easily, in all innocence, have handed on to Walter. I had, for instance, told her of Thorn­dyke’s preference for the Trichinopoly cheroot, and of this she might very naturally have spoken to Walter, who possessed a supply of them. Again, with regard to the time of our arrival at King’s Cross, I had informed her of this in a letter which was in no way confidential, and again there was no reason why the information should not have been passed on to Walter, who was to have been one of the party at the family dinner. The coincidence seemed complete enough, in all truth; yet it was incredible that Reuben’s cousin could be so blackhearted a villain or could have any motive for these dastardly crimes.

Suddenly a new idea struck me. Mrs. Hornby had obtained access to this typewriting machine; and if Mrs. Hornby could do so, why not John Hornby? The description would, for the most part, fit the elder man as well as the younger, though I had no evidence of his possessing any special mechanical skill; but my suspicions had already fastened upon him, and I remembered that Thorndyke had by no means rejected my theory which connected him with the crime.

At this point, my reflections were broken in upon by Mrs. Hornby, who grasped my arm and uttered a deep groan. We had reached the corner of the Old Bailey, and before us were the frowning walls of Newgate. Within those walls, I knew—though I did not mention the fact—that Reuben Hornby was confined with the other prisoners who were awaiting their trial; and a glance at the massive masonry, stained to a dingy grey by the grime of the city, put an end to my speculations and brought me back to the drama that was so nearly approaching its climax.

Down the old thoroughfare, crowded with so many memories of hideous tragedy; by the side of the gloomy prison; past the debtors’ door with its forbidding spiked wicket; past the gallows gate with its festoons of fetters; we walked in silence until we reached the entrance to the Sessions House.

Here I was not a little relieved to find Thorndyke on the lookout for us, for Mrs. Hornby, in spite of really heroic efforts to control her emotion, was in a state of impending hysteria, while Juliet, though outwardly calm and composed, showed by the waxen pallor of her cheeks and a certain wildness of her eyes that all her terror was reviving; and I was glad that they were spared the unpleasantness of contact with the policemen who guarded the various entrances.

“We must be brave,” said Thorndyke gently, as he took Mrs. Hornby’s hand, “and show a cheerful face to our friend who has so much to bear and who bears it so patiently. A few more hours, and I hope we shall see restored, not only his liberty, but his honour. Here is Mr. Anstey, who, we trust, will be able to make his innocence apparent.”

Anstey, who, unlike Thorndyke, had already donned his wig and gown, bowed gravely, and, together, we passed through the mean and grimy portals into a dark hall. Policemen in uniform and unmistakable detectives stood about the various entries, and little knots of people, evil-looking and unclean for the most part, lurked in the background or sat on benches and diffused through the stale, musty air that distinctive but indescribable odour that clings to police vans and prison reception rooms; an odour that, in the present case, was pleasantly mingled with the suggestive aroma of disinfectants. Through the unsavoury throng we hurried, and up a staircase to a landing from which several passages diverged. Into one of these passages—a sort of “dark entry,” furnished with a cage-like gate of iron bars—we passed to a black door, on which was painted the inscription, “Old Court. Counsel and clerks.”

Anstey held the door open for us, and we passed through into the court, which at once struck me with a sense of disappointment. It was smaller than I had expected, and plain and mean to the point of sordidness. The woodwork was poor, thinly disguised by yellow graining, and slimy with dirt wherever a dirty hand could reach it. The walls were distempered a pale, greenish grey; the floor was of bare and dirty planking, and the only suggestions of dignity or display were those offered by the canopy over the judge’s seat—lined with scarlet baize and surmounted by the royal arms—the scarlet cushions of the bench, and the large, circular clock in the gallery, which was embellished with a gilded border and asserted its importance by a loud, aggressive tick.

Following Anstey and Thorndyke into the well of the court, we were ushered into one of the seats reserved for counsel—the third from the front—where we sat down and looked about us, while our two friends seated themselves in the front bench next to the central table. Here, at the extreme right, a barrister—presumably the counsel for the prosecution—was already in his place and absorbed in the brief that lay on the desk before him. Straight before us were the seats for the jury, rising one above the other, and at their side the witness-box. Above us on the right was the judge’s seat, and immediately below it a structure somewhat re­sembling a large pew or a counting-house desk, surmounted by a brass rail, in which a person in a grey wig—the clerk of the court—was mending a quill pen. On our left rose the dock—suggestively large and roomy—enclosed at the sides with high glazed frames; and above it, near the ceiling, was the spectators’ gallery.

“What a hideous place!” exclaimed Juliet, who separated me from Mrs. Hornby. “And how sordid and dirty everything looks!”

“Yes,” I answered. “The uncleanness of the criminal is not confined to his moral being; wherever he goes, he leaves a trail of actual, physical dirt. It is not so long ago that the dock and the bench alike used to be strewn with medicinal herbs, and I believe the custom still survives of furnishing the judge with a nosegay as a preventive of jail-fever.”

“And to think that Reuben should be brought to a place like this!” Juliet continued bitterly; “to be herded with such people as we saw downstairs!”

She sighed and looked round at the benches that rose behind us, where a half-dozen reporters were already seated and apparently in high spirits at the prospect of a sensational case.

Our conversation was now interrupted by the clatter of feet on the gallery stairs, and heads began to appear over the wooden parapet. Several junior counsel filed into the seats in front of us; Mr. Lawley and his clerk entered the attorney’s bench; the ushers took their stand below the jury-box; a police officer seated himself at a desk in the dock; and inspectors, detectives and miscellaneous officers began to gather in the entries or peer into the court through the small glazed openings in the doors.

CHAPTER XV

THE FINGER-PRINT EXPERTS

The hum of conversation that had been gradually increasing as the court filled suddenly ceased. A door at the back of the dais was flung open; counsel, solicitors, and spectators alike rose to their feet; and the judge entered, closely followed by the Lord Mayor, the sheriff, and various civic magnates, all picturesque and gorgeous in their robes and chains of office. The Clerk of Arraigns took his place behind his table under the dais; the counsel suspended their conversation and fingered their briefs; and, as the judge took his seat, lawyers, officials, and spectators took their seats, and all eyes were turned towards the dock.

A few moments later Reuben Hornby appeared in the enclosure in company with a warder, the two rising, apparently, from the bowels of the earth, and, stepping forward to the bar, stood with a calm and self-possessed demeanour, glancing somewhat curiously around the court. For an instant his eye rested upon the group of friends and well-wishers seated behind the counsel, and the faintest trace of a smile appeared on his face; but immediately he turned his eyes away and never again throughout the trial looked in our direction.

The Clerk of Arraigns now rose and, reading from the indictment which lay before him on the table, addressed the prisoner—

“Reuben Hornby, you stand indicted for that you did, on the ninth or tenth day of March, feloniously steal a parcel of diamonds of the goods and chattels of John Hornby. Are you guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty,” replied Reuben.

The Clerk of Arraigns, having noted the prisoner’s reply, then proceeded—

“The gentlemen whose names are about to be called will form the jury who are to try you. If you wish to object to any of them, you must do so as each comes to the book to be sworn, and before he is sworn. You will then be heard.”

In acknowledgment of this address, which was delivered in clear, ringing tones, and with remarkable distinctness, Reuben bowed to the clerk, and the process of swearing-in the jury was commenced, while the counsel opened their briefs and the judge conversed facetiously with an official in a fur robe and a massive neck chain.

Very strange, to unaccustomed eyes and ears, was the effect of this function—half solemn and half grotesque, with an effect intermediate between that of a religious rite and that of a comic opera. Above the half-suppressed hum of conversation the clerk’s voice arose at regular intervals, calling out the name of one of the jurymen, and, as its owner stood up, the court usher, black-gowned and sacerdotal of aspect, advanced and proffered the book. Then, as the juryman took the volume in his hand, the voice of the usher resounded through the court like that of a priest intoning some refrain or antiphon—an effect that was increased by the rhythmical and archaic character of the formula—

“Samuel Seppings!”

A stolid-looking working-man rose and, taking the Testament in his hand, stood regarding the usher while that official sang out in a solemn monotone—

“You shall well and truly try and true deliverance make be­tween our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, whom you shall have in charge, and a true verdict give according to the evidence. So help you God!”

“James Piper!” Another juryman rose and was given the Book to hold; and again the monotonous sing-song arose—

“You shall well and truly try and true deliverance make, etc.”

“I shall scream aloud if that horrible chant goes on much longer,” Juliet whispered. “Why don’t they all swear at once and have done with it?”

“That would not meet the requirements,” I answered. “However, there are only two more, so you must have patience.”

“And you will have patience with me, too, won’t you? I am horribly frightened. It is all so solemn and dreadful.”

“You must try to keep up your courage until Dr. Thorndyke has given his evidence,” I said. “Remember that, until he has spoken, everything is against Reuben; so be prepared.”

“I will try,” she answered meekly; “but I can’t help being terrified.”

The last of the jurymen was at length sworn, and when the clerk had once more called out the names one by one, the usher counting loudly as each man answered to his name, the latter officer turned to the Court and spectators, and proclaimed in solemn tones—

“If anyone can inform my Lords the King’s justices, the King’s attorney-general, or the King’s serjeant, ere this inquest be now taken between our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, of any treason, murder, felony or misdemeanour, committed or done by him, let him come forth and he shall be heard; for the prisoner stands at the bar upon his deliverance.”

This proclamation was followed by a profound silence, and after a brief interval the Clerk of Arraigns turned towards the jury and addressed them collectively—

“Gentlemen of the jury, the prisoner at the bar stands indicted by the name of Reuben Hornby, for that he, on the ninth or tenth of March, feloniously did steal, take and carry away a parcel of diamonds of the goods of John Hornby. To this indictment he has pleaded that he is not guilty, and your charge is to inquire whether he be guilty or not and to hearken to the evidence.”

When he had finished his address the clerk sat down, and the judge, a thin-faced, hollow-eyed elderly man, with bushy grey eyebrows and a very large nose, looked attentively at Reuben for some moments over the tops of his gold-rimmed pince-nez. Then he turned towards the counsel nearest the bench and bowed slightly.

The barrister bowed in return and rose, and for the first time I obtained a complete view of Sir Hector Trumpler, K.C., the coun­sel for the prosecution. His appearance was not prepossessing nor—though he was a large man and somewhat florid as to his countenance—particularly striking, except for a general air of untidiness. His gown was slipping off one shoulder, his wig was perceptibly awry, and his pince-nez threatened every moment to drop from his nose.

“The case that I have to present to you, my lord and gentlemen of the jury,” he began in a clear, though unmusical voice, “is one the like of which is but too often met with in this court. It is one in which we shall see unbounded trust met by treacherous deceit, in which we shall see countless benefactions rewarded by the basest ingratitude, and in which we shall witness the deliberate renunciation of a life of honourable effort in favour of the tortuous and precarious ways of the criminal. The facts of the case are briefly as follows: The prosecutor in this case—most un­willing prosecutor, gentlemen—is Mr. John Hornby, who is a metallurgist and dealer in precious metals. Mr. Hornby has two nephews, the orphan sons of his two elder brothers, and I may tell you that since the decease of their parents he has acted the part of a father to both of them. One of these nephews is Mr. Walter Hornby, and the other is Reuben Hornby, the prisoner at the bar. Both of these nephews were received by Mr. Hornby into his business with a view to their succeeding him when he should retire, and both, I need not say, occupied positions of trust and responsibility.

“Now, on the evening of the ninth of March there was delivered to Mr. Hornby a parcel of rough diamonds of which one of his clients asked him to take charge pending their transfer to the brokers. I need not burden you with irrelevant details concerning this transaction. It will suffice to say that the diamonds, which were of the aggregate value of about thirty thousand pounds, were delivered to him, and the unopened package deposited by him in his safe, together with a slip of paper on which he had written in pencil a memorandum of the circumstances. This was on the evening of the ninth of March, as I have said. Having deposited the parcel, Mr. Hornby locked the safe, and shortly afterwards left the premises and went home, taking the keys with him.

“On the following morning, when he unlocked the safe, he perceived with astonishment and dismay that the parcel of diamonds had vanished. The slip of paper, however, lay at the bottom of the safe, and on picking it up Mr. Hornby perceived that it bore a smear of blood, and in addition, the distinct impression of a human thumb. On this he closed and locked the safe and sent a note to the police station, in response to which a very intelligent officer—Inspector Sanderson—came and made a preliminary examination. I need not follow the case further, since the details will appear in the evidence, but I may tell you that, in effect, it has been made clear, beyond all doubt, that the thumb-print on that paper was the thumb-print of the prisoner, Reuben Hornby.”

He paused to adjust his glasses, which were in the very act of falling from his nose, and hitch up his gown, while he took a leisurely survey of the jury, as though he were estimating their im­pressionability. At this moment I observed Walter Hornby enter the court and take up a position at the end of our bench nearest the door; and, immediately after, Superintendent Miller came in and seated himself on one of the benches opposite.

“The first witness whom I shall call,” said Sir Hector Trump­ler, “is John Hornby.”

Mr. Hornby, looking wild and agitated, stepped into the witness-box, and the usher, having handed him the Testament, sang out—

“The evidence you shall give to the court and jury sworn, between our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; so help you God!”

Mr. Hornby kissed the Book, and, casting a glance of unutterable misery at his nephew, turned towards the counsel.

“Your name is John Hornby, is it not?” asked Sir Hector.

“It is.”

“And you occupy premises in St. Mary Axe?”

“Yes. I am a dealer in precious metals, but my business consists principally in the assaying of samples of ore and quartz and bars of silver and gold.”

“Do you remember what happened on the ninth of March last?”

“Perfectly. My nephew Reuben—the prisoner—delivered to me a parcel of diamonds which he had received from the purser of the Elmina Castle, to whom I had sent him as my confidential agent. I had intended to deposit the diamonds with my banker, but when the prisoner arrived at my office, the banks were already closed, so I had to put the parcel, for the night, in my own safe. I may say that the prisoner was not in any way responsible for the delay.”

“You are not here to defend the prisoner,” said Sir Hector. “Answer my questions and make no comments, if you please. Was anyone present when you placed the diamonds in the safe?”

“No one was present but myself.”

“I did not ask if you were present when you put them in,” said Sir Hector (whereupon the spectators sniggered and the judge smiled indulgently). “What else did you do?”

“I wrote in pencil on a leaf of my pocket memorandum block, ‘Handed in by Reuben at 7.3 p.m., 9.3.01,’ and initialled it. Then I tore the leaf from the block and laid it on the parcel, after which I closed the safe and locked it.”

“How soon did you leave the premises after this?”

“Almost immediately. The prisoner was waiting for me in the outer office—”

“Never mind where the prisoner was; confine your answers to what is asked. Did you take the keys with you?”

“Yes.”

“When did you next open the safe?”

“On the following morning at ten o’clock.”

“Was the safe locked or unlocked when you arrived?”

“It was locked. I unlocked it.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about the safe?”

“No.”

“Had the keys left your custody in the interval?”

“No. They were attached to a key-chain, which I always wear.”

“Are there any duplicates of those keys?—the keys of the safe, I mean.”

“No, there are no duplicates.”

“Have the keys ever gone out of your possession?”

“Yes. If I have had to be absent from the office for a considerable time, it has been my custom to hand the keys to one of my nephews, whichever has happened to be in charge at the time.”

“And never to any other person?”

“Never to any other person.”

“What did you observe when you opened the safe?”

“I observed that the parcel of diamonds had disappeared.”

“Did you notice anything else?”

“Yes. I found the leaf from my memorandum block lying at the bottom of the safe. I picked it up and turned it over, and then saw that there were smears of blood on it and what looked like the print of a thumb in blood. The thumb-mark was on the under-surface, as the paper lay at the bottom of the safe.”

“What did you do next?”

“I closed and locked the safe, and sent a note to the police station saying that a robbery had been committed on my premises.”

“You have known the prisoner several years, I believe?”

“Yes; I have known him all his life. He is my eldest brother’s son.”

“Then you can tell us, no doubt, whether he is left-handed or right-handed?”

“I should say he was ambidextrous, but he uses his left hand by preference.”

“A fine distinction, Mr. Hornby; a very fine distinction. Now tell me, did you ascertain beyond all doubt that the diamonds were really gone?”

“Yes; I examined the safe thoroughly, first by myself and afterwards with the police. There was no doubt that the diamonds had really gone.”

“When the detective suggested that you should have the thumb-prints of your two nephews taken, did you refuse?”

“I refused.”

“Why did you refuse?”

“Because I did not choose to subject my nephews to the indignity. Besides, I had no power to make them submit to the proceeding.”

“Had you any suspicions of either of them?”

“I had no suspicions of anyone.”

“Kindly examine this piece of paper, Mr. Hornby,” said Sir Hector, passing across a small oblong slip, “and tell us if you recognise it.”

Mr. Hornby glanced at the paper for a moment, and then said—

“This is the memorandum slip that I found lying at the bot­tom of the safe.”

“How do you identify it?”

“By the writing on it, which is in my own hand, and bears my initials.”

“Is it the memorandum that you placed on the parcel of diamonds?”

“Yes.”

“Was there any thumb-mark or blood-smear on it when you placed it in the safe?”

“No.”

“Was it possible that there could have been any such marks?”

“Quite impossible. I tore it from my memorandum block at the time I wrote upon it.”

“Very well.” Sir Hector Trumpler sat down, and Mr. Anstey stood up to cross-examine the witness.

“You have told us, Mr. Hornby,” said he, “that you have known the prisoner all his life. Now what estimate have you formed of his character?”

“I have always regarded him as a young man of the highest character—honourable, truthful, and in every way trustworthy. I have never, in all my experience of him, known him to deviate a hair’s-breadth from the strictest honour and honesty of conduct.”

“You regarded him as a man of irreproachable character. Is that so?”

“That is so; and my opinion of him is unchanged.”

“Has he, to your knowledge, any expensive or extravagant habits?”

“No. His habits are simple and rather thrifty.”

“Have you ever known him to bet, gamble, or speculate?”

“Never.”

“Has he ever seemed to be in want of money?”

“No. He has a small private income, apart from his salary, which I know he does not spend, since I have occasionally em­ployed my broker to invest his savings.”

“Apart from the thumb-print which was found in the safe, are you aware of any circumstances that would lead you to suspect the prisoner of having stolen the diamonds?”

“None whatever.”

Mr. Anstey sat down, and as Mr. Hornby left the witness-box, mopping the perspiration from his forehead, the next witness was called.

“Inspector Sanderson!”

The dapper police officer stepped briskly into the box, and having been duly sworn, faced the prosecuting counsel with the air of a man who was prepared for any contingency.

“Do you remember,” said Sir Hector, after the usual preliminaries had been gone through, “what occurred on the morning of the tenth of March?”

“Yes. A note was handed to me at the station at 10.23 a.m. It was from Mr. John Hornby, and stated that a robbery had oc­curred at his premises in St. Mary Axe. I went to the premises and arrived there at 10.31 a.m. There I saw the prosecutor, Mr. John Hornby, who told me that a parcel of diamonds had been stolen from the safe. At his request I examined the safe. There were no signs of its having been forced open; the locks seemed to be quite uninjured and in good order. Inside the safe, on the bottom, I found two good-sized drops of blood, and a slip of paper with pencil-writing on it. The paper bore two blood-smears and a print of a human thumb in blood.”

“Is this the paper?” asked the counsel, passing a small slip across to the witness.

“Yes,” replied the inspector, after a brief glance at the document.

“What did you do next?”

“I sent a message to Scotland Yard acquainting the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department with the facts, and then went back to the station. I had no further connection with the case.”

Sir Hector sat down, and the judge glanced at Anstey.

“You tell us,” said the latter, rising, “that you observed two good-sized drops of blood on the bottom of the safe. Did you notice the condition of the blood, whether moist or dry?”

“The blood looked moist, but I did not touch it. I left it undisturbed for the detective officers to examine.”

The next witness called was Sergeant Bates, of the Criminal Investigation Department. He stepped into the box with the same ready, businesslike air as the other officer, and, having been sworn, proceeded to give his evidence with a fluency that suggested careful preparation, holding an open notebook in his hand but making no references to it.

“On the tenth of March, at 12.8 p.m., I received instructions to proceed to St. Mary Axe to inquire into a robbery that had taken place there. Inspector Sanderson’s report was handed to me, and I read it in the cab on my way to the premises. On arriving at the premises at 12.30 p.m., I examined the safe carefully. It was quite uninjured, and there were no marks of any kind upon it. I tested the locks and found them perfect; there were no marks or indications of any picklock having been used. On the bottom of the inside I observed two rather large drops of a dark fluid. I took up some of the fluid on a piece of paper and found it to be blood. I also found, in the bottom of the safe, the burnt head of a wax match, and, on searching the floor of the office, I found, close by the safe, a used wax match from which the head had fallen. I also found a slip of paper which appeared to have been torn from a perforated block. On it was written in pencil, ‘Handed in by Reuben at 7.3 p.m. 9.3.01. J.H.’ There were two smears of blood on the paper and the impression of a human thumb in blood. I took possession of the paper in order that it might be examined by the experts. I inspected the office doors and the outer door of the premises, but found no signs of forcible entrance on any of them. I questioned the housekeeper, but obtained no information from him. I then returned to headquarters, made my report and handed the paper with the marks on it to the Superintendent.”

“Is this the paper that you found in the safe?” asked the counsel, once more handing the leaflet across.

“Yes; this is the paper.”

“What happened next?”

“The following afternoon I was sent for by Mr. Singleton, of the Finger-print Department. He informed me that he had gone through the files and had not been able to find any thumb-print resembling the one on the paper, and recommended me to en­deavour to obtain prints of the thumbs of any persons who might have been concerned in the robbery. He also gave me an enlarged photograph of the thumb-print for reference if necessary. I ac­cordingly went to St. Mary Axe and had an interview with Mr. Hornby, when I requested him to allow me to take prints of the thumbs of all the persons employed on the premises, including his two nephews. This he refused, saying that he distrusted fingerprints and that there was no suspicion of anyone on the premises. I asked if he would allow his nephews to furnish their thumb-prints privately, to which he replied, ‘Certainly not.’”

“Had you then any suspicion of either of the nephews?”

“I thought they were both open to some suspicion. The safe had certainly been opened with false keys, and as they had both had the real keys in their possession it was possible that one of them might have taken impressions in wax and made counterfeit keys.”

“Yes.”

“I called on Mr. Hornby several times and urged him, for the sake of his nephews’ reputations, to sanction the taking of the thumb-prints; but he refused very positively and forbade them to submit, although I understood that they were both willing. It then occurred to me to try if I could get any help from Mrs. Hornby, and on the fifteenth of March I called at Mr. Hornby’s private house and saw her. I explained to her what was wanted to clear her nephews from the suspicion that rested on them, and she then said that she could dispose of those suspicions at once, for she could show me the thumb-prints of the whole family: she had them all in a ‘Thumbograph.’”

“A ‘Thumbograph’?” repeated the judge. “What is a ‘Thumb­o­graph’?”

Anstey rose with the little red-covered volume in his hand.

“A ‘Thumbograph,’ my lord,” said he, “is a book, like this, in which foolish people collect the thumb-prints of their more fool­ish acquaintances.”

He passed the volume up to the judge, who turned over the leaves curiously and then nodded to the witness.

“Yes. She said she had them all in a ‘Thumbograph.’”

“Then she fetched from a drawer a small red-covered book which she showed to me. It contained the thumb-prints of all the family and some of her friends.”

“Is this the book?” asked the judge, passing the volume down to the witness.

The sergeant turned over the leaves until he came to one which he apparently recognised, and said—

“Yes, m’lord; this is the book. Mrs. Hornby showed me the thumb-prints of various members of the family, and then found those of the two nephews. I compared them with the photograph that I had with me and discovered that the print of the left thumb of Reuben Hornby was in every respect identical with the thumb-print shown in the photograph.”

“What did you do then?”

“I asked Mrs. Hornby to lend me the ‘Thumbograph’ so that I might show it to the Chief of the Finger-print Department, to which she consented. I had not intended to tell her of my discovery, but, as I was leaving, Mr. Hornby arrived home, and when he heard of what had taken place, he asked me why I wanted the book, and then I told him. He was greatly astonished and horrified, and wished me to return the book at once. He proposed to let the whole matter drop and take the loss of the diamonds on himself; but I pointed out that this was impossible as it would practically amount to compounding a felony. Seeing that Mrs. Hornby was so distressed at the idea of her book being used in evidence against her nephew, I promised her that I would return it to her if I could obtain a thumb-print in any other way.

“I then took the ‘Thumbograph’ to Scotland Yard and showed it to Mr. Singleton, who agreed that the print of the left thumb of Reuben Hornby was in every respect identical with the thumb-print on the paper found in the safe. On this I applied for a warrant for the arrest of Reuben Hornby, which I executed on the following morning. I told the prisoner what I had promised Mrs. Hornby, and he then offered to allow me to take a print of his left thumb so that his aunt’s book should not have to be used in evidence.”

“How is it, then,” asked the judge, “that it has been put in evidence?”

“It has been put in by the defence, my lord,” said Sir Hector Trumpler.

“I see,” said the judge. “‘A hair of the dog that bit him.’ The ‘Thumbograph’ is to be applied as a remedy on the principle that similia similibus curantur. Well?”

“When I arrested him, I administered the usual caution, and the prisoner then said, ‘I am innocent. I know nothing about the robbery.’”

The counsel for the prosecution sat down, and Anstey rose to cross-examine.

“You have told us,” said he, in his clear musical voice, “that you found at the bottom of the safe two rather large drops of a dark fluid which you considered to be blood. Now, what led you to believe that fluid to be blood?”

“I took some of the fluid up on a piece of white paper, and it had the appearance and colour of blood.”

“Was it examined microscopically or otherwise?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Was it quite liquid?”

“Yes, I should say quite liquid.”

“What appearance had it on paper?”

“It looked like a clear red liquid of the colour of blood, and was rather thick and sticky.”

Anstey sat down, and the next witness, an elderly man, an­swering to the name of Francis Simmons, was called.

“You are the housekeeper at Mr. Hornby’s premises in St. Mary Axe?” asked Sir Hector Trumpler.

“I am.”

“Did you notice anything unusual on the night of the ninth of March?”

“I did not.”

“Did you make your usual rounds on that occasion?”

“Yes. I went all over the premises several times during the night, and the rest of the time I was in a room over the private office.”

“Who arrived first on the morning of the tenth?”

“Mr. Reuben. He arrived about twenty minutes before anybody else.”

“What part of the building did he go to?”

“He went into the private office, which I opened for him. He remained there until a few minutes before Mr. Hornby arrived, when he went up to the laboratory.”

“Who came next?”

“Mr. Hornby, and Mr. Walter came in just after him.”

The counsel sat down, and Anstey proceeded to cross-ex­am­ine the witness.

“Who was the last to leave the premises on the evening of the ninth?”

“I am not sure.”

“Why are you not sure?”

“I had to take a note and a parcel to a firm in Shoreditch. When I started, a clerk named Thomas Holker was in the outer office and Mr. Walter Hornby was in the private office. When I returned they had both gone.”

“Was the outer door locked?”

“Yes.”

“Had Holker a key of the outer door?”

“No. Mr. Hornby and his two nephews had each a key, and I have one. No one else had a key.”

“How long were you absent?”

“About three-quarters of an hour.”

“Who gave you the note and the parcel?”

“Mr. Walter Hornby.”

“When did he give them to you?”

“He gave them to me just before I started, and told me to go at once for fear the place should be closed before I got there.”

“And was the place closed?”

“Yes. It was all shut up, and everybody had gone.”

Anstey resumed his seat, the witness shuffled out of the box with an air of evident relief, and the usher called out, “Henry James Singleton.”

Mr. Singleton rose from his seat at the table by the solicitors for the prosecution and entered the box. Sir Hector adjusted his glasses, turned over a page of his brief, and cast a steady and impressive glance at the jury.

“I believe, Mr. Singleton,” he said at length, “that you are connected with the Finger-print Department at Scotland Yard?”

“Yes. I am one of the chief assistants in that department.”

“What are your official duties?”

“My principal occupation consists in the examination and comparison of the fingerprints of criminals and suspected persons. These fingerprints are classified by me according to their characters and arranged in files for reference.”

“I take it that you have examined a great number of fingerprints?”

“I have examined many thousands of fingerprints, and have studied them closely for purposes of identification.”

“Kindly examine this paper, Mr. Singleton” (here the fatal leaflet was handed to him by the usher); “have you ever seen it before?”

“Yes. It was handed to me for examination at my office on the tenth of March.”

“There is a mark upon it—the print of a finger or thumb. Can you tell us anything about that mark?”

“It is the print of the left thumb of Reuben Hornby, the prisoner at the bar.”

“You are quite sure of that?”

“I am quite sure.”

“Do you swear that the mark upon that paper was made by the thumb of the prisoner?”

“I do.”

“Could it not have been made by the thumb of some other person?”

“No; it is impossible that it could have been made by any other person.”

At this moment I felt Juliet lay a trembling hand on mine, and, glancing at her, I saw that she was deathly pale. I took her hand in mine and, pressing it gently, whispered to her, “Have courage; there is nothing unexpected in this.”

“Thank you,” she whispered in reply, with a faint smile; “I will try; but it is all so horribly unnerving.”

“You consider,” Sir Hector proceeded, “that the identity of this thumb-print admits of no doubt?”

“It admits of no doubt whatever,” replied Mr. Singleton.

“Can you explain to us, without being too technical, how you have arrived at such complete certainty?”

“I myself took a print of the prisoner’s thumb—having first obtained the prisoner’s consent after warning him that the print would be used in evidence against him—and I compared that print with the mark on this paper. The comparison was made with the greatest care and by the most approved method, point by point and detail by detail, and the two prints were found to be identical in every respect.

“Now it has been proved by exact calculations—which calculations I have personally verified—-that the chance that the print of a single finger of any given person will be exactly like the print of the same finger of any other given person is as one to sixty-four thousand millions. That is to say that, since the number of the entire human race is about sixteen thousand millions, the chance is about one to four that the print of a single finger of any one person will be identical with that of the same finger of any other member of the human race.

“It has been said by a great authority—and I entirely agree with the statement—that a complete, or nearly complete, accordance between two prints of a single finger affords evidence requiring no corroboration that the persons from whom they were made are the same.

“Now, these calculations apply to the prints of ordinary and normal fingers or thumbs. But the thumb from which these prints were taken is not ordinary or normal. There is upon it a deep but clean linear scar—the scar of an old incised wound—and this scar passes across the pattern of the ridges, intersecting the latter at certain places and disturbing their continuity at others. Now this very characteristic scar is an additional feature, having a set of chances of its own. So that we have to consider not only the chance that the print of the prisoner’s left thumb should be identical with the print of some other person’s left thumb—which is as one to sixty-four thousand millions—but the further chance that these two identical thumb-prints should be traversed by the impression of a scar identical in size and appearance, and intersecting the ridges at exactly the same places and producing failures of continuity in the ridges of exactly the same character. But these two chances, multiplied into one another, yield an ultimate chance of about one to four thousand trillions that the prisoner’s left thumb will exactly resemble the print of some other person’s thumb, both as to the pattern and the scar which crosses the pattern; in other words such a coincidence is an utter impossibility.”

Sir Hector Trumpler took off his glasses and looked long and steadily at the jury as though he should say, “Come, my friends; what do you think of that?” Then he sat down with a jerk and turned towards Anstey and Thorndyke with a look of triumph.

“Do you propose to cross-examine the witness?” inquired the judge, seeing that the counsel for the defence made no sign.

“No, my lord,” replied Anstey.

Thereupon Sir Hector Trumpler turned once more towards the defending counsel, and his broad, red face was illumined by a smile of deep satisfaction. That smile was reflected on the face of Mr. Singleton as he stepped from the box, and, as I glanced at Thorndyke, I seemed to detect, for a single instant, on his calm and immovable countenance, the faintest shadow of a smile.

“Herbert John Nash!”

A plump, middle-aged man, of keen, though studious, aspect, stepped into the box, and Sir Hector rose once more.

“You are one of the chief assistants in the Finger-print Depart­ment, I believe, Mr. Nash?”

“I am.”

“Have you heard the evidence of the last witness?”

“I have.”

“Do you agree with the statements made by that witness?”

“Entirely. I am prepared to swear that the print on the paper found in the safe is that of the left thumb of the prisoner, Reuben Hornby.”

“And you are certain that no mistake is possible?”

“I am certain that no mistake is possible.”

Again Sir Hector glanced significantly at the jury as he re­sumed his seat, and again Anstey made no sign beyond the entry of a few notes on the margin of his brief.

“Are you calling any more witnesses?” asked the judge, dipping his pen in the ink.

“No, my lord,” replied Sir Hector. “That is our case.”

Upon this Anstey rose and, addressing the judge, said—

“I call witnesses, my lord.”

The judge nodded and made an entry in his notes while Anstey delivered his brief introductory speech—

“My lord and gentlemen of the jury, I shall not occupy the time of the Court with unnecessary appeals at this stage, but shall proceed to take the evidence of my witnesses without delay.”

There was a pause of a minute or more, during which the silence was broken only by the rustle of papers and the squeaking of the judge’s quill pen. Juliet turned a white, scared face to me and said in a hushed whisper—

“This is terrible. That last man’s evidence is perfectly crush­ing. What can possibly be said in reply? I am in despair; oh! Poor Reuben! He is lost, Dr. Jervis! He hasn’t a chance now.”

“Do you believe that he is guilty?” I asked.

“Certainly not!” she replied indignantly. “I am as certain of his innocence as ever.”

“Then,” said I, “if he is innocent, there must be some means of proving his innocence.”

“Yes. I suppose so,” she rejoined in a dejected whisper. “At any rate we shall soon know now.”

At this moment the usher’s voice was heard calling out the name of the first witness for the defence.

“Edmund Horford Rowe!”

A keen-looking, grey-haired man, with a shaven face and close-cut side-whiskers, stepped into the box and was sworn in due form.

“You are a doctor of medicine, I believe,” said Anstey, ad­dressing the witness, “and lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence at the South London Hospital?”

“I am.”

“Have you had occasion to study the properties of blood?”

“Yes. The properties of blood are of great importance from a medico-legal point of view.”

“Can you tell us what happens when a drop of blood—say from a cut finger—falls upon a surface such as the bottom of an iron safe?”

“A drop of blood from a living body falling upon any non-absorbent surface will, in the course of a few minutes, solidify into a jelly which will, at first, have the same bulk and colour as the liquid blood.”

“Will it undergo any further change?”

“Yes. In a few minutes more the jelly will begin to shrink and become more solid so that the blood will become separated into two parts, the solid and the liquid. The solid part will consist of a firm, tough jelly of a deep red colour, and the liquid part will consist of a pale yellow, clear, watery liquid.”

“At the end, say, of two hours, what will be the condition of the drop of blood?”

“It will consist of a drop of clear, nearly colourless liquid, in the middle of which will be a small, tough, red clot.”

“Supposing such a drop to be taken up on a piece of white paper, what would be its appearance?”

“The paper would be wetted by the colourless liquid, and the solid clot would probably adhere to the paper in a mass.”

“Would the blood on the paper appear as a clear, red liquid?”

“Certainly not. The liquid would appear like water, and the clot would appear as a solid mass sticking to the paper.”

“Does blood always behave in the way you have described?”

“Always, unless some artificial means are taken to prevent it from clotting.”

“By what means can blood be prevented from clotting or solidifying?”

“There are two principal methods. One is to stir or whip the fresh blood rapidly with a bundle of fine twigs. When this is done, the fibrin—the part of the blood that causes solidification—adheres to the twigs, and the blood that remains, though it is unchanged in appearance, will remain liquid for an indefinite time. The other method is to dissolve a certain proportion of some alkaline salt in the fresh blood, after which it no longer has any tendency to solidify.”

“You have heard the evidence of Inspector Sanderson and Sergeant Bates?”

“Yes.”

“Inspector Sanderson has told us that he examined the safe at 10.31 a.m. and found two good-sized drops of blood on the bottom. Sergeant Bates has told us that he examined the safe two hours later, and that he took up one of the drops of blood on a piece of white paper. The blood was then quite liquid, and, on the paper, it looked like a clear, red liquid of the colour of blood. What should you consider the condition and nature of that blood to have been?”

“If it was really blood at all, I should say that it was either defibrinated blood—that is, blood from which the fibrin has been extracted by whipping—or that it had been treated with an alkaline salt.”

“You are of opinion that the blood found in the safe could not have been ordinary blood shed from a cut or wound?”

“I am sure it could not have been.”

“Now, Dr. Rowe, I am going to ask you a few questions on another subject. Have you given any attention to fingerprints made by bloody fingers?”

“Yes. I have recently made some experiments on the subject.”

“Will you give us the results of those experiments?”

“My object was to ascertain whether fingers wet with fresh blood would yield distinct and characteristic prints. I made a great number of trials, and as a result found that it is extremely difficult to obtain a clear print when the finger is wetted with fresh blood. The usual result is a mere red blot showing no ridge pattern at all, owing to the blood filling the furrows between the ridges. But if the blood is allowed to dry almost completely on the finger, a very clear print is obtained.”

“Is it possible to recognise a print that has been made by a nearly dry finger?”

“Yes; quite easily. The half-dried blood is nearly solid and adheres to the paper in a different way from the liquid, and it shows minute details, such as the mouths of the sweat glands, which are always obliterated by the liquid.”

“Look carefully at this paper, which was found in the safe, and tell me what you see.”

The witness took the paper and examined it attentively, first with the naked eye and then with a pocket-lens.

“I see,” said he, “two blood-marks and a print, apparently of a thumb. Of the two marks, one is a blot, smeared slightly by a finger or thumb; the other is a smear only. Both were evidently produced with quite liquid blood. The thumb-print was also made with liquid blood.”

“You are quite sure that the thumb-print was made with liquid blood?”

“Quite sure.”

“Is there anything unusual about the thumb-print?”

“Yes. It is extraordinarily clear and distinct. I have made a great number of trials and have endeavoured to obtain the clearest prints possible with fresh blood; but none of my prints are nearly as distinct as this one.”

Here the witness produced a number of sheets of paper, each of which was covered with the prints of bloody fingers, and compared them with the memorandum slip.

The papers were handed to the judge for his inspection, and Anstey sat down, when Sir Hector Trumpler rose, with a somewhat puzzled expression on his face, to cross-examine.

“You say that the blood found in the safe was defibrinated or artificially treated. What inference do you draw from that fact?”

“I infer that it was not dropped from a bleeding wound.”

“Can you form any idea how such blood should have got into the safe?”

“None whatever.”

“You say that the thumb-print is a remarkably distinct one. What conclusion do you draw from that?”

“I do not draw any conclusion. I cannot account for its distinctness at all.”

The learned counsel sat down with rather a baffled air, and I observed a faint smile spread over the countenance of my colleague.

“Arabella Hornby.”

A muffled whimpering from my neighbour on the left hand was accompanied by a wild rustling of silk. Glancing at Mrs. Hornby, I saw her stagger from the bench, shaking like a jelly, mopping her eyes with her handkerchief and grasping her open purse. She entered the witness-box, and, having gazed wildly round the court, began to search the multitudinous compartments of her purse.

“The evidence you shall give,” sang out the usher—whereat Mrs. Hornby paused in her search and stared at him apprehensively—“to the court and jury sworn, between our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar shall be the truth,—”

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Hornby stiffly, “I—”

“—the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; so help you God!”

He held out the Testament, which she took from him with a trembling hand and forthwith dropped with a resounding bang on to the floor of the witness-box, diving after it with such precipitancy that her bonnet jammed violently against the rail of the box.

She disappeared from view for a moment, and then rose from the depths with a purple face and her bonnet flattened and cocked over one ear like an artillery-man’s forage cap.

“Kiss the Book, if you please,” said the usher, suppressing a grin by an heroic effort, as Mrs. Hornby, encumbered by her purse, her handkerchief and the Testament, struggled to unfasten her bonnet-strings. She clawed frantically at her bonnet, and, having dusted the Testament with her handkerchief, kissed it tenderly and laid it on the rail of the box, whence it fell instantly on to the floor of the court.

“I am really very sorry!” exclaimed Mrs. Hornby, leaning over the rail to address the usher as he stooped to pick up the Book, and discharging on to his back a stream of coins, buttons and folded bills from her open purse; “you will think me very awkward, I’m afraid.”

She mopped her face and replaced her bonnet rakishly on one side, as Anstey rose and passed a small red book across to her.

“Kindly look at that book, Mrs. Hornby.”

“I’d rather not,” said she, with a gesture of repugnance. “It is associated with matters of so extremely disagreeable a character—”

“Do you recognise it?”

“Do I recognise it! How can you ask me such a question when you must know—”

“Answer the question,” interposed the judge. “Do you or do you not recognise the book in your hand?”

“Of course I recognise it. How could I fail to—”

“Then say so,” said the judge.

“I have said so,” retorted Mrs. Hornby indignantly.

The judge nodded to Anstey, who then continued—“It is called a ‘Thumbograph,’ I believe.”

“Yes: the name ‘Thumbograph’ is printed on the cover, so I suppose that is what it is called.”

“Will you tell us, Mrs. Hornby, how the ‘Thumbograph’ came into your possession?”

For one moment Mrs. Hornby stared wildly at her interrogator; then she snatched a paper from her purse, unfolded it, gazed at it with an expression of dismay, and crumpled it up in the palm of her hand.

“You are asked a question,” said the judge.

“Oh! Yes,” said Mrs. Hornby. “The Committee of the Society—no, that is the wrong one—I mean Walter, you know—at least—”

“I beg your pardon,” said Anstey, with polite gravity.

“You were speaking of the committee of some society,” interposed the judge. “What society were you referring to?”

Mrs. Hornby spread out the paper and, after a glance at it, replied—

“The Society of Paralysed Idiots, your worship,” whereat a rumble of suppressed laughter arose from the gallery.

“But what has that society to do with the ‘Thumbograph’?” inquired the judge.

“Nothing, your worship. Nothing at all.”

“Then why did you refer to it?”

“I am sure I don’t know,” said Mrs. Hornby, wiping her eyes with the paper and then hastily exchanging it for her handkerchief.

The judge took off his glasses and gazed at Mrs. Hornby with an expression of bewilderment. Then he turned to the counsel and said in a weary voice—“Proceed, if you please, Mr. Anstey.”

“Can you tell us, Mrs. Hornby, how the ‘Thumbograph’ came into your possession?” said the latter in persuasive accents.

“I thought it was Walter, and so did my niece, but Walter says it was not, and he ought to know, being young and having a most excellent memory, as I had myself when I was his age, and really, you know, it can’t possibly matter where I got the thing—”

“But it does matter,” interrupted Anstey. “We wish particularly to know.”

“If you mean that you wish to get one like it—”

“We do not,” said Anstey. “We wish to know how that particular ‘Thumbograph’ came into your possession. Did you, for instance, buy it yourself, or was it given to you by someone?”

“Walter says I bought it myself, but I thought he gave it to me, but he says he did not, and you see—”

“Never mind what Walter says. What is your own impression?”

“Why I still think that he gave it to me, though, of course, seeing that my memory is not what it was—”

“You think that Walter gave it to you?”

“Yes, in fact I feel sure he did, and so does my niece.”

“Walter is your nephew, Walter Hornby?”

“Yes, of course. I thought you knew.”

“Can you recall the occasion on which the ‘Thumbograph’ was given to you?”

“Oh yes, quite distinctly. We had some people to dinner—some people named Colley—not the Dorsetshire Colleys, you know, although they are exceedingly nice people, as I have no doubt the other Colleys are, too, when you know them, but we don’t. Well, after dinner we were a little dull and rather at a loss, because Juliet, my niece, you know, had cut her finger and couldn’t play the piano excepting with the left hand, and that is so monotonous as well as fatiguing, and the Colleys are not musical, excepting Adolphus, who plays the trombone, but he hadn’t got it with him, and then, fortunately, Walter came in and brought the ‘Thumbograph’ and took all our thumb-prints and his own as well, and we were very much amused, and Matilda Colley—that is the eldest daughter but one—said that Reuben jogged her elbow, but that was only an excuse—”

“Exactly,” interrupted Anstey. “And you recollect quite clearly that your nephew Walter gave you the ‘Thumbograph’ on that occasion?”

“Oh, distinctly; though, you know, he is really my husband’s nephew—”

“Yes. And you are sure that he took the thumb-prints?”

“Quite sure.”

“And you are sure that you never saw the ‘Thumbograph’ before that?”

“Never. How could I? He hadn’t brought it.”

“Have you ever lent the ‘Thumbograph’ to anyone?”

“No, never. No one has ever wanted to borrow it, because, you see—”

“Has it never, at any time, gone out of your possession?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that; in fact, I have often thought, though I hate suspecting people, and I really don’t suspect anybody in particular, you know, but it certainly was very peculiar and I can’t explain it in any other way. You see, I kept the ‘Thumbograph’ in a drawer in my writing table, and in the same drawer I used to keep my handkerchief-bag—in fact I do still, and it is there at this very moment, for in my hurry and agitation, I forgot about it until we were in the cab, and then it was too late, because Mr. Lawley—”

“Yes. You kept it in a drawer with your handkerchief-bag.”

“That was what I said. Well, when Mr. Hornby was staying at Brighton he wrote to ask me to go down for a week and bring Juliet—Miss Gibson, you know—with me. So we went, and, just as we were starting, I sent Juliet to fetch my handkerchief-bag from the drawer, and I said to her, ‘Perhaps we might take the thumb-book with us; it might come in useful on a wet day.’ So she went, and presently she came back and said that the ‘Thumbo­graph’ was not in the drawer. Well, I was so surprised that I went back with her and looked myself, and sure enough the drawer was empty. Well, I didn’t think much of it at the time, but when we came home again, as soon as we got out of the cab, I gave Juliet my handkerchief-bag to put away, and presently she came running to me in a great state of excitement. ‘Why, Auntie,’ she said,’ the “Thumbograph” is in the drawer; somebody must have been meddling with your writing table.’ I went with her to the drawer, and there, sure enough, was the ‘Thumbograph.’ Somebody must have taken it out and put it back while we were away.”

“Who could have had access to your writing table?”

“Oh, anybody, because, you see, the drawers were never locked. We thought it must have been one of the servants.”

“Had anyone been to the house during your absence?”

“No. Nobody, except, of course, my two nephews; and neither of them had touched it, because we asked them, and they both said they had not.”

“Thank you.” Anstey sat down, and Mrs. Hornby having given another correcting twist to her bonnet, was about to step down from the box when Sir Hector rose and bestowed upon her an intimidating stare.

“You made some reference,” said he, “to a society—the So­ciety of Paralysed Idiots, I think, whatever that may be. Now what caused you to make that reference?”

“It was a mistake; I was thinking of something else.”

“I know it was a mistake. You referred to a paper that was in your hand.”

“I did not refer to it, I merely looked at it. It is a letter from the Society of Paralysed Idiots. It is nothing to do with me really, you know; I don’t belong to the society, or anything of that sort.”

“Did you mistake that paper for some other paper?”

“Yes, I took it for a paper with some notes on it to assist my memory.”

“What kind of notes?”

“Oh, just the questions I was likely to be asked.”

“Were the answers that you were to give to those questions also written on the paper?”

“Of course they were. The questions would not have been any use without the answers.”

“Have you been asked the questions that were written on the paper?”

“Yes; at least, some of them.”

“Have you given the answers that were written down?”

“I don’t think I have—in fact, I am sure I haven’t, because, you see—”

“Ah! You don’t think you have.” Sir Hector Trumpler smiled significantly at the jury, and continued—

“Now who wrote down those questions and answers?”

“My nephew, Walter Hornby. He thought, you know—”

“Never mind what he thought. Who advised or instructed him to write them down?”

“Nobody. It was entirely his own idea, and very thoughtful of him, too, though Dr. Jervis took the paper away from me and said I must rely on my memory.”

Sir Hector was evidently rather taken aback by this answer, and sat down suddenly, with a distinctly chapfallen air.

“Where is this paper on which the questions and answers are written?” asked the judge. In anticipation of this inquiry I had already handed it to Thorndyke, and had noted by the significant glance that he bestowed on me that he had not failed to observe the peculiarity in the type. Indeed the matter was presently put beyond all doubt, for he hastily passed to me a scrap of paper, on which I found, when I opened it out, that he had written “X = W.H.”

As Anstey handed the rather questionable document up to the judge, I glanced at Walter Hornby and observed him to flush angrily, though he strove to appear calm and unconcerned, and the look that he directed at his aunt was very much the reverse of benevolent.

“Is this the paper?” asked the judge, passing it down to the witness.

“Yes, your worship,” answered Mrs. Hornby, in a tremulous voice; whereupon the document was returned to the judge, who proceeded to compare it with his notes.

“I shall order this document to be impounded,” said he stern­ly, after making a brief comparison. “There has been a distinct attempt to tamper with witnesses. Proceed with your case, Mr. Anstey.”

There was a brief pause, during which Mrs. Hornby tottered across the court and resumed her seat, gasping with excitement and relief; then the usher called out—

“John Evelyn Thorndyke!”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Juliet, clasping her hands. “Oh! Will he be able to save Reuben? Do you think he will, Dr. Jervis?”

“There is someone who thinks he will,” I replied, glancing towards Polton, who, clasping in his arms the mysterious box and holding on to the microscope case, gazed at his master with a smile of ecstasy. “Polton has more faith than you have, Miss Gibson.”

“Yes, the dear, faithful little man!” she rejoined. “Well, we shall know the worst very soon now, at any rate.”

“The worst or the best,” I said. “We are now going to hear what the defence really is.”

“God grant that it may be a good defence,” she exclaimed in a low voice; and I—though not ordinarily a religious man—murmured “Amen!”

CHAPTER XVI

THORNDYKE PLAYS HIS CARD

As Thorndyke took his place in the box I looked at him with a sense of unreasonable surprise, feeling that I had never before fully realised what manner of man my friend was as to his externals. I had often noted the quiet strength of his face, its infinite intelligence, its attractiveness and magnetism; but I had never before appreciated what now impressed me most: that Thorndyke was actually the handsomest man I had ever seen. He was dressed simply, his appearance unaided by the flowing gown or awe-inspiring wig, and yet his presence dominated the court. Even the judge, despite his scarlet robe and trappings of office, looked commonplace by comparison, while the jurymen, who turned to look at him, seemed like beings of an inferior order. It was not alone the distinction of the tall figure, erect and dignified, nor the power and massive composure of his face, but the actual symmetry and comeliness of the face itself that now arrested my attention; a comeliness that made it akin rather to some classic mask, wrought in the ivory-toned marble of Pentelicus, than to the eager faces that move around us in the hurry and bustle of a life at once strenuous and trivial.

“You are attached to the medical school at St. Margaret’s Hospital, I believe, Dr. Thorndyke?” said Anstey.

“Yes. I am the lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology.”

“Have you had much experience of medico-legal inquiries?”

“A great deal. I am engaged exclusively in medico-legal work.”

“You heard the evidence relating to the two drops of blood found in the safe?”

“I did.”

“What is your opinion as to the condition of that blood?”

“I should say there is no doubt that it had been artificially treated—probably by defibrination.”

“Can you suggest any explanation of the condition of that blood?”

“I can.”

“Is your explanation connected with any peculiarities in the thumb-print on the paper that was found in the safe?”

“It is.”

“Have you given any attention to the subject of fingerprints?”

“Yes. A great deal of attention.”

“Be good enough to examine that paper” (here the usher handed to Thorndyke the memorandum slip). “Have you seen it before?”

“Yes. I saw it at Scotland Yard.”

“Did you examine it thoroughly?”

“Very thoroughly. The police officials gave me every facility and, with their permission, I took several photographs of it.”

“There is a mark on that paper resembling the print of a human thumb?”

“There is.”

“You have heard two expert witnesses swear that that mark was made by the left thumb of the prisoner, Reuben Hornby?”

“I have.”

“Do you agree to that statement?”

“I do not.”

“In your opinion, was the mark upon that paper made by the thumb of the prisoner?”

“No. I am convinced that it was not made by the thumb of Reuben Hornby.”

“Do you think that it was made by the thumb of some other person?”

“No. I am of opinion that it was not made by a human thumb at all.”

At this statement the judge paused for a moment, pen in hand, and stared at Thorndyke with his mouth slightly open, while the two experts looked at one another with raised eyebrows.

“By what means do you consider that the mark was produced?”

“By means of a stamp, either of india-rubber or, more probably, of chromicized gelatine.”

Here Polton, who had been, by degrees, rising to an erect posture, smote his thigh a resounding thwack and chuckled aloud, a proceeding that caused all eyes, including those of the judge, to be turned on him.

“If that noise is repeated,” said the judge, with a stony stare at the horrified offender—who had shrunk into the very smallest space that I have ever seen a human being occupy—“I shall cause the person who made it to be removed from the court.”

“I understand, then,” pursued Anstey, “that you consider the thumb-print, which has been sworn to as the prisoner’s, to be a forgery?”

“Yes. It is a forgery.”

“But is it possible to forge a thumb-print or a fingerprint?”

“It is not only possible, but quite easy to do.”

“As easy as to forge a signature, for instance?”

“Much more so, and infinitely more secure. A signature, being written with a pen, requires that the forgery should also be written with a pen, a process demanding very special skill and, after all, never resulting in an absolute facsimile. But a fingerprint is a stamped impression—the fingertip being the stamp; and it is only necessary to obtain a stamp identical in character with the fingertip, in order to produce an impression which is an absolute facsimile, in every respect, of the original, and totally indistinguishable from it.”

“Would there be no means at all of detecting the difference between a forged fingerprint and the genuine original?”

“None whatever; for the reason that there would be no difference to detect.”

“But you have stated, quite positively, that the thumb-print on this paper is a forgery. Now, if the forged print is indistinguishable from the original, how are you able to be certain that this particular print is a forgery?”

“I was speaking of what is possible with due care, but, obviously, a forger might, through inadvertence, fail to produce an absolute facsimile and then detection would be possible. That is what has happened in the present case. The forged print is not an absolute facsimile of the true print. There is a slight discrepancy. But, in addition to this, the paper bears intrinsic evidence that the thumb-print on it is a forgery.”

“We will consider that evidence presently, Dr. Thorndyke. To return to the possibility of forging a fingerprint, can you explain to us, without being too technical, by what methods it would be possible to produce such a stamp as you have referred to?”

“There are two principal methods that suggest themselves to me. The first, which is rather crude though easy to carry out, consists in taking an actual cast of the end of the finger. A mould would be made by pressing the finger into some plastic material, such as fine modelling clay or hot sealing wax, and then, by pouring a warm solution of gelatine into the mould, and allowing it to cool and solidify, a cast would be produced which would yield very perfect fingerprints. But this method would, as a rule, be useless for the purpose of the forger, as it could not, ordinarily, be carried out without the knowledge of the victim; though in the case of dead bodies and persons asleep or unconscious or under an anaesthetic, it could be practised with success, and would offer the advantage of requiring practically no technical skill or knowledge and no special appliances. The second method, which is much more efficient, and is the one, I have no doubt, that has been used in the present instance, requires more knowledge and skill.

“In the first place it is necessary to obtain possession of, or access to, a genuine fingerprint. Of this fingerprint a photograph is taken, or rather, a photographic negative, which for this purpose requires to be taken on a reversed plate, and the negative is put into a special printing frame, with a plate of gelatine which has been treated with potassium bichromate, and the frame is exposed to light.

“Now gelatine treated in this way—chromicized gelatine, as it is called—has a very peculiar property. Ordinary gelatine, as is well known, is easily dissolved in hot water, and chromicized gelatine is also soluble in hot water as long as it is not exposed to light; but on being exposed to light, it undergoes a change and is no longer capable of being dissolved in hot water. Now the plate of chromicized gelatine under the negative is protected from the light by the opaque parts of the negative, whereas the light passes freely through the transparent parts; but the transparent parts of the negative correspond to the black marks on the fingerprint, and these correspond to the ridges on the finger. Hence it follows that the gelatine plate is acted upon by light only on the parts corresponding to the ridges; and in these parts the gelatine is rendered insoluble, while all the rest of the gelatine is soluble. The gelatine plate, which is cemented to a thin plate of metal for support, is now carefully washed with hot water, by which the soluble part of the gelatine is dissolved away leaving the insoluble part (corresponding to the ridges) standing up from the surface. Thus there is produced a facsimile in relief of the fingerprint having actual ridges and furrows identical in character with the ridges and furrows of the fingertip. If an inked roller is passed over this relief, or if the relief is pressed lightly on an inked slab, and then pressed on a sheet of paper, a fingerprint will be produced which will be absolutely identical with the original, even to the little white spots which mark the orifices of the sweat glands. It will be impossible to discover any difference between the real fingerprint and the counterfeit because, in fact, no difference exists.”

“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 fingerprint, with which an undetectable forgery could be executed.”

“You have asserted that the counterfeit fingerprint 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 fingerprint 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 remarked 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 fingerprints.”

“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 fingertip, 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 fingerprints, 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.”

“Do you say that—having regard to the facts which you have stated—it is certain that the red thumb-mark is a forgery?”

“I do; and I also say that it is certain that the forgery was executed by means of the ‘Thumbograph.’”

“Might not the resemblances be merely a coincidence?”

“No. By the law of probabilities which Mr. Singleton ex­plained so clearly in his evidence, the adverse chances would run into untold millions. Here are two thumb-prints made in different places and at different times—an interval of many weeks intervening. Each of them bears an accidental mark which is due not to any peculiarity of the thumb, but to a peculiarity of the paper. On the theory of coincidences it is necessary to suppose that each piece of paper had a loose fibre of exactly identical shape and size and that this fibre came, by accident, in contact with the thumb at exactly the same spot. But such a supposition would be more opposed to probabilities even than the supposition that two exact­ly similar thumb-prints should have been made by different persons. And then there is the further fact that the paper found in the safe had no loose fibre to account for the mark.”

“What is your explanation of the presence of defibrinated blood in the safe?”

“It was probably used by the forger in making the thumb-print, for which purpose fresh blood would be less suitable by reason of its clotting. He would probably have carried a small quantity in a bottle, together with the pocket slab and roller invented by Mr. Galton. It would thus be possible for him to put a drop on the slab, roll it out into a thin film and take a clean impression with his stamp. It must be remembered that these precautions were quite necessary, since he had to make a recognisable print at the first attempt. A failure and a second trial would have destroyed the accidental appearance, and might have aroused suspicion.”

“You have made some enlarged photographs of the thumb-prints, have you not?”

“Yes. I have here two enlarged photographs, one of the ‘Thumb­o­graph’ print and one of the red thumb-print. They both show the white mark very clearly and will assist comparison of the originals, in which the mark is plainly visible through a lens.”

He handed the two photographs up to the judge, together with the ‘Thumbograph,’ the memorandum slip, and a powerful doublet lens with which to examine them.

The judge inspected the two original documents with the aid of the lens and compared them with the photographs, nodding approvingly as he made out the points of agreement. Then he passed them on to the jury and made an entry in his notes.

While this was going on my attention was attracted by Walter Hornby. An expression of terror and wild despair had settled on his face, which was ghastly in its pallor and bedewed with sweat. He looked furtively at Thorndyke and, as I noted the murderous hate in his eyes, I recalled our midnight adventure in John Street and the mysterious cigar.

Suddenly he rose to his feet, wiping his brow and steadying himself against the bench with a shaking hand; then he walked quietly to the door and went out. Apparently, I was not the only onlooker who had been interested in his doings, for, as the door swung to after him, Superintendent Miller rose from his seat and went out by the other door.

“Are you cross-examining this witness?” the judge inquired, glancing at Sir Hector Trumpler.

“No, my lord,” was the reply.

“Are you calling any more witnesses, Mr. Anstey?”

“Only one, my lord,” replied Anstey—“the prisoner, whom I shall put in the witness-box, as a matter of form, in order that he may make a statement on oath.”

Reuben was accordingly conducted from the dock to the witness-box, and, having been sworn, made a solemn declaration of his innocence. A brief cross-examination followed, in which no­thing was elicited, but that Reuben had spent the evening at his club and gone home to his rooms about half-past eleven and had let himself in with his latchkey. Sir Hector at length sat down; the prisoner was led back to the dock, and the Court settled itself to listen to the speeches of the counsel.

“My lord and gentlemen of the jury,” Anstey commenced in his clear, mellow tones, “I do not propose to occupy your time with a long speech. The evidence that has been laid before you is at once so intelligible, so lucid, and so conclusive, that you will, no doubt, arrive at your verdict uninfluenced by any display of rhetoric either on my part or on the part of the learned counsel for the prosecution.

“Nevertheless, it is desirable to disentangle from the mass of evidence those facts which are really vital and crucial.

“Now the one fact which stands out and dominates the whole case is this: The prisoner’s connection with this case rests solely upon the police theory of the infallibility of fingerprints. Apart from the evidence of the thumb-print there is not, and there never was, the faintest breath of suspicion against him. You have heard him described as a man of unsullied honour, as a man whose character is above reproach; a man who is trusted implicitly by those who have had dealings with him. And this character was not given by a casual stranger, but by one who has known him from childhood. His record is an unbroken record of honourable conduct; his life has been that of a clean-living, straightforward gentleman. And now he stands before you charged with a miserable, paltry theft; charged with having robbed that generous friend, the brother of his own father, the guardian of his childhood and the benefactor who has planned and striven for his well-being; charged, in short, gentlemen, with a crime which every circumstance connected with him and every trait of his known character renders utterly inconceivable. Now upon what grounds has this gentleman of irreproachable character been charged with this mean and sordid crime? Baldly stated, the grounds of the accusation are these: A certain learned and eminent man of science has made a statement, which the police have not merely accepted but have, in practice, extended beyond its original meaning. That statement is as follows: ‘A complete, or nearly complete, accordance between two prints of a single finger…affords evidence requiring no corroboration, that the persons from whom they were made are the same.’

“That statement, gentlemen, is in the highest degree misleading, and ought not to have been made without due warning and qualification. So far is it from being true, in practice, that its exact contrary is the fact; the evidence of a fingerprint, in the absence of corroboration, is absolutely worthless. Of all forms of forgery, the forgery of a fingerprint is the easiest and most secure, as you have seen in this court today. Consider the character of the high-class forger—his skill, his ingenuity, his resource. Think of the forged banknotes, of which not only the engraving, the design and the signature, but even the very paper with its private watermarks, is imitated with a perfection that is at once the admiration and the despair of those who have to distinguish the true from the false; think of the forged cheque, in which actual perforations are filled up, of which portions are cut out bodily and replaced by indistinguishable patches; think of these, and then of a fingerprint, of which any photo-engraver’s apprentice can make you a forgery that the greatest experts cannot distinguish from the original, which any capable amateur can imitate beyond detection after a month’s practice; and then ask yourselves if this is the kind of evidence on which, without any support or corroboration, a gentleman of honour and position should be dragged before a criminal court and charged with having committed a crime of the basest and most sordid type.

“But I must not detain you with unnecessary appeals. I will remind you briefly of the salient facts. The case for the prosecution rests upon the assertion that the thumb-print found in the safe was made by the thumb of the prisoner. If that thumb-print was not made by the prisoner, there is not only no case against him but no suspicion of any kind.

“Now, was that thumb-print made by the prisoner’s thumb? You have had conclusive evidence that it was not. That thumb-print differed in the size, or scale, of the pattern from a genuine thumb-print of the prisoner’s. The difference was small, but it was fatal to the police theory; the two prints were not identical.

“But, if not the prisoner’s thumb-print, what was it? The resemblance of the pattern was too exact for it to be the thumb-print of another person, for it reproduced not only the pattern of the ridges on the prisoner’s thumb, but also the scar of an old wound. The answer that I propose to this question is, that it was an intentional imitation of the prisoner’s thumb-print, made with the purpose of fixing suspicion on the prisoner, and so ensuring the safety of the actual criminal. Are there any facts which support this theory? Yes, there are several facts which support it very strongly.

“First, there are the facts that I have just mentioned. The red thumb-print disagreed with the genuine print in its scale or dimen­sions. It was not the prisoner’s thumb-print; but neither was it that of any other person. The only alternative is that it was a forgery.

“In the second place, that print was evidently made with the aid of certain appliances and materials, and one of those materials, namely defibrinated blood, was found in the safe.

“In the third place, there is the coincidence that the print was one which it was possible to forge. The prisoner has ten digits—eight fingers and two thumbs. But there were in existence actual prints of the two thumbs, whereas no prints of the fingers were in existence; hence it would have been impossible to forge a print of any of the fingers. So it happens that the red thumb-print resembled one of the two prints of which forgery was possible.

“In the fourth place, the red thumb-print reproduces an accidental peculiarity of the ‘Thumbograph’ print. Now, if the red thumb-print is a forgery, it must have been made from the ‘Thumbo­graph’ print, since there exists no other print from which it could have been made. Hence we have the striking fact that the red thumb-print is an exact replica—including accidental peculiarities—of the only print from which a forgery could have been made. The accidental S-shaped mark in the ‘Thumbograph’ print is accounted for by the condition of the paper; the occurrence of this mark in the red thumb-print is not accounted for by any peculiarity of the paper, and can be ac­counted for in no way, excepting by assuming the one to be a copy of the other. The conclusion is thus inevitable that the red thumb-print is a photo-mechanical reproduction of the ‘Thumbograph’ print.

“But there is yet another point. If the red thumb-print is a forgery reproduced from the ‘Thumbograph’ print, the forger must at some time have had access to the ‘Thumbograph.’ Now, you have heard Mrs. Hornby’s remarkable story of the mysterious disappearance of the ‘Thumbograph’ and its still more mysterious reappearance. That story can have left no doubt in your minds that some person had surreptitiously removed the ‘Thumbograph’ and, after an unknown interval, secretly replaced it. Thus the theory of forgery receives confirmation at every point, and is in agreement with every known fact; whereas the theory that the red thumb-print was a genuine thumb-print, is based upon a gratuitous assumption, and has not had a single fact advanced in its support.

“Accordingly, gentlemen, I assert that the prisoner’s innocence has been proved in the most complete and convincing manner, and I ask you for a verdict in accordance with that proof.”

As Anstey resumed his seat, a low rumble of applause was heard from the gallery. It subsided instantly on a gesture of disapproval from the judge, and a silence fell upon the court, in which the clock, with cynical indifference, continued to record in its brusque monotone the passage of the fleeting seconds.

“He is saved, Dr. Jervis! Oh! Surely he is saved!” Juliet ex­claimed in an agitated whisper. “They must see that he is innocent now.”

“Have patience a little longer,” I answered. “It will soon be over now.”

Sir Hector Trumpler was already on his feet and, after be­stowing on the jury a stern hypnotic stare, he plunged into his reply with a really admirable air of conviction and sincerity.

“My lord and gentlemen of the jury: The case which is now before this Court is one, as I have already remarked, in which human nature is presented in a highly unfavourable light. But I need not insist upon this aspect of the case, which will already, no doubt, have impressed you sufficiently. It is necessary merely for me, as my learned friend has aptly expressed it, to disentangle the actual facts of the case from the web of casuistry that has been woven around them.

“Those facts are of extreme simplicity. A safe has been opened and property of great value abstracted from it. It has been opened by means of false keys. Now there are two men who have, from time to time, had possession of the true keys, and thus had the opportunity of making copies of them. When the safe is opened by its rightful owner, the property is gone, and there is found the print of the thumb of one of these two men. That thumb-print was not there when the safe was closed. The man whose thumb-print is found is a left-handed man; the print is the print of a left thumb. It would seem, gentlemen, as if the conclusion were so obvious that no sane person could be found to contest it; and I submit that the conclusion which any sane person would arrive at—the only possible conclusion—is, that the person whose thumb-print was found in the safe is the person who stole the property from the safe. But the thumb-print was, admittedly, that of the prisoner at the bar, and therefore the prisoner at the bar is the person who stole the diamonds from the safe.

“It is true that certain fantastic attempts have been made to explain away these obvious facts. Certain far-fetched scientific theories have been propounded and an exhibition of legerdemain has taken place which, I venture to think, would have been more appropriate to some place of public entertainment than to a court of justice. That exhibition has, no doubt, afforded you considerable amusement. It has furnished a pleasing relaxation from the serious business of the court. It has even been instructive, as showing to what extent it is possible for plain facts to be perverted by misdirected ingenuity. But unless you are prepared to consider this crime as an elaborate hoax—as a practical joke carried out by a facetious criminal of extraordinary knowledge, skill and general attainments—you must, after all, come to the only conclusion that the facts justify: that the safe was opened and the property abstracted by the prisoner. Accordingly, gentlemen, I ask you, having regard to your important position as the guardians of the well-being and security of your fellow-citizens, to give your verdict in accordance with the evidence, as you have solemnly sworn to do; which verdict, I submit, can be no other than that the prisoner is guilty of the crime with which he is charged.”

Sir Hector sat down, and the jury, who had listened to his speech with solid attention, gazed expectantly at the judge, as though they should say: “Now, which of these two are we to believe?”

The judge turned over his notes with an air of quiet composure, writing down a word here and there as he compared the various points in the evidence. Then he turned to the jury with a manner at once persuasive and confidential—

“It is not necessary, gentlemen,” he commenced, “for me to occupy your time with an exhaustive analysis of the evidence. That evidence you yourselves have heard, and it has been given, for the most part, with admirable clearness. Moreover, the learned counsel for the defence has collated and compared that evidence so lucidly, and, I may say, so impartially, that a detailed repetition on my part would be superfluous. I shall therefore confine myself to a few comments which may help you in the consideration of your verdict.

“I need hardly point out to you that the reference made by the learned counsel for the prosecution to far-fetched scientific theories is somewhat misleading. The only evidence of a theoretical character was that of the fingerprint experts. The evidence of Dr. Rowe and of Dr. Thorndyke dealt exclusively with matters of fact. Such inferences as were drawn by them were accompanied by statements of the facts which yielded such inferences.

“Now, an examination of the evidence which you have heard shows, as the learned counsel for the defence has justly observed, that the entire case resolves itself into a single question, which is this: ‘Was the thumb-print that was found in Mr. Hornby’s safe made by the thumb of the prisoner, or was it not?’ If that thumb-print was made by the prisoner’s thumb, then the prisoner must, at least, have been present when the safe was unlawfully opened. If that thumb-print was not made by the prisoner’s thumb, there is nothing to connect him with the crime. The question is one of fact upon which it will be your duty to decide; and I must remind you, gentlemen, that you are the sole judges of the facts of the case, and that you are to consider any remarks of mine as merely suggestions which you are to entertain or to disregard according to your judgement.

“Now let us consider this question by the light of the evidence. This thumb-print was either made by the prisoner or it was not. What evidence has been brought forward to show that it was made by the prisoner? Well, there is the evidence of the ridge-pattern. That pattern is identical with the pattern of the prisoner’s thumb-print, and even has the impression of a scar which crosses the pattern in a particular manner in the prisoner’s thumb-print. There is no need to enter into the elaborate calculations as to the chances of agreement; the practical fact, which is not disputed, is that if this red thumb-print is a genuine thumb-print at all, it was made by the prisoner’s thumb. But it is contended that it is not a genuine thumb-print; that it is a mechanical imitation—in fact a forgery.

“The more general question thus becomes narrowed down to the more particular question: ‘Is this a genuine thumb-print or is it a forgery?’ Let us consider the evidence. First, what evidence is there that it is a genuine thumb-print? There is none. The identity of the pattern is no evidence on this point, because a forgery would also exhibit identity of pattern. The genuineness of the thumb-print was assumed by the prosecution, and no evidence has been offered.

“But now what evidence is there that the red thumb-print is a forgery?

“First, there is the question of size. Two different-sized prints could hardly be made by the same thumb. Then there is the evidence of the use of appliances. Safe-robbers do not ordinarily provide themselves with inking-slabs and rollers with which to make distinct impressions of their own fingers. Then there is the accidental mark on the print which also exists on the only genuine print that could have been used for the purpose of forgery, which is easily explained on the theory of a forgery, but which is otherwise totally incomprehensible. Finally, there is the strange disappearance of the ‘Thumbograph’ and its strange reappearance. All this is striking and weighty evidence, to which must be added that adduced by Dr. Thorndyke as showing how perfectly it is possible to imitate a fingerprint.

“These are the main facts of the case, and it is for you to consider them. If, on careful consideration, you decide that the red thumb-print was actually made by the prisoner’s thumb, then it will be your duty to pronounce the prisoner guilty; but if, on weighing the evidence, you decide that the thumb-print is a for­gery, then it will be your duty to pronounce the prisoner not guilty. It is now past the usual luncheon hour, and, if you desire it, you can retire to consider your verdict while the Court adjourns.”

The jurymen whispered together for a few moments and then the foreman stood up.

“We have agreed on our verdict, my lord,” he said.

The prisoner, who had just been led to the back of the dock, was now brought back to the bar. The grey-wigged clerk of the court stood up and addressed the jury.

“Are you all agreed upon your verdict, gentlemen?”

“We are,” replied the foreman.

“What do you say, gentlemen? Is the prisoner guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty,” replied the foreman, raising his voice and glanc­ing at Reuben.

A storm of applause burst from the gallery and was, for the moment, disregarded by the judge. Mrs. Hornby laughed aloud—a strange, unnatural laugh—and then crammed her handkerchief into her mouth, and so sat gazing at Reuben with the tears coursing down her face, while Juliet laid her head upon the desk and sobbed silently.

After a brief space the judge raised an admonitory hand, and, when the commotion had subsided, addressed the prisoner, who stood at the bar, calm and self-possessed, though his face bore a slight flush—

“Reuben Hornby, the jury, after duly weighing the evidence in this case, have found you to be not guilty of the crime with which you were charged. With that verdict I most heartily agree. In view of the evidence which has been given, I consider that no other verdict was possible, and I venture to say that you leave this court with your innocence fully established, and without a stain upon your character. In the distress which you have recently suffered, as well as in your rejoicing at the verdict of the jury, you have the sympathy of the Court, and of everyone present, and that sympathy will not be diminished by the consideration that, with a less capable defence, the result might have been very different.

“I desire to express my admiration at the manner in which that defence was conducted, and I desire especially to observe that not you alone, but the public at large, are deeply indebted to Dr. Thorn­dyke, who, by his insight, his knowledge and his ingenuity, has probably averted a very serious miscarriage of justice. The Court will now adjourn until half-past two.”

The judge rose from his seat and everyone present stood up; and, amidst the clamour of many feet upon the gallery stairs, the door of the dock was thrown open by a smiling police officer and Reuben came down the stairs into the body of the court.

CHAPTER XVII

AT LAST

“We had better let the people clear off,” said Thorndyke, when the first greetings were over and we stood around Reuben in the fast-emptying court. “We don’t want a demonstration as we go out.”

“No; anything but that, just now,” replied Reuben. He still held Mrs. Hornby’s hand, and one arm was passed through that of his uncle, who wiped his eyes at intervals, though his face glowed with delight.

“I should like you to come and have a little quiet luncheon with me at my chambers—all of us friends together,” continued Thorndyke.

“I should be delighted,” said Reuben, “if the programme would include a satisfactory wash.”

“You will come, Anstey?” asked Thorndyke.

“What have you got for lunch?” demanded Anstey, who was now disrobed and in his right mind—that is to say, in his usual whimsical, pseudo-frivolous character.

“That question savours of gluttony,” answered Thorndyke. “Come and see.”

“I will come and eat, which is better,” answered Anstey, “and I must run off now, as I have to look in at my chambers.”

“How shall we go?” asked Thorndyke, as his colleague vanished through the doorway. “Polton has gone for a four-wheeler, but it won’t hold us all.”

“It will hold four of us,” said Reuben, “and Dr. Jervis will bring Juliet; won’t you, Jervis?”

The request rather took me aback, considering the circumstances, but I was conscious, nevertheless, of an unreasonable thrill of pleasure and answered with alacrity: “If Miss Gibson will allow me, I shall be very delighted.” My delight was, apparently, not shared by Juliet, to judge by the uncomfortable blush that spread over her face. She made no objection, however, but merely replied rather coldly: “Well, as we can’t sit on the roof of the cab, we had better go by ourselves.”

The crowd having by this time presumably cleared off, we all took our way downstairs. The cab was waiting at the kerb, surrounded by a group of spectators, who cheered Reuben as he appeared at the doorway, and we saw our friends enter and drive away. Then we turned and walked quickly down the Old Bailey towards Ludgate Hill.

“Shall we take a hansom?” I asked.

“No; let us walk,” replied Juliet; “a little fresh air will do us good after that musty, horrible court. It all seems like a dream, and yet what a relief—oh! What a relief it is.”

“It is rather like the awakening from a nightmare to find the morning sun shining,” I rejoined.

“Yes; that is just what it is like,” she agreed; “but I still feel dazed and shaken.”

We turned presently down New Bridge Street, towards the Embankment, walking side by side without speaking, and I could not help comparing, with some bitterness, our present stiff and distant relations with the intimacy and comradeship that had existed before the miserable incident of our last meeting.

“You don’t look so jubilant over your success as I should have expected,” she said at length, with a critical glance at me; “but I expect you are really very proud and delighted, aren’t you?”

“Delighted, yes; not proud. Why should I be proud? I have only played jackal, and even that I have done very badly.”

“That is hardly a fair statement of the facts,” she rejoined, with another quick, inquisitive look at me; “but you are in low spirits today—which is not at all like you. Is it not so?”

“I am afraid I am a selfish, egotistical brute,” was my gloomy reply. “I ought to be as gay and joyful as everyone else today, whereas the fact is that I am chafing over my own petty troubles. You see, now that this case is finished, my engagement with Dr. Thorndyke terminates automatically, and I relapse into my old life—a dreary repetition of journeying amongst strangers—and the prospect is not inspiriting. This has been a time of bitter trial to you, but to me it has been a green oasis in the desert of a colourless, monotonous life. I have enjoyed the companionship of a most lovable man, whom I admire and respect above all other men, and with him have moved in scenes full of colour and interest. And I have made one other friend whom I am loth to see fade out of my life, as she seems likely to do.”

“If you mean me,” said Juliet, “I may say that it will be your own fault if I fade out of your life. I can never forget all that you have done for us, your loyalty to Reuben, your enthusiasm in his cause, to say nothing of your many kindnesses to me. And, as to your having done your work badly, you wrong yourself grievously. I recognised in the evidence by which Reuben was cleared today how much you had done, in filling in the details, towards making the case complete and convincing. I shall always feel that we owe you a debt of the deepest gratitude, and so will Reuben, and so, perhaps, more than either of us, will someone else.”

“And who is that?” I asked, though with no great interest. The gratitude of the family was a matter of little consequence to me.

“Well, it is no secret now,” replied Juliet. “I mean the girl whom Reuben is going to marry. What is the matter, Dr. Jervis?” she added, in a tone of surprise.

We were passing through the gate that leads from the Em­bankment to Middle Temple Lane, and I had stopped dead under the archway, laying a detaining hand upon her arm and gazing at her in utter amazement.

“The girl that Reuben is going to marry!” I repeated. “Why, I had always taken it for granted that he was going to marry you.”

“But I told you, most explicitly, that was not so!” she ex­claimed with some impatience.

“I know you did,” I admitted ruefully; “but I thought—well, I imagined that things had, perhaps, not gone quite smoothly and—”

“Did you suppose that if I had cared for a man, and that man had been under a cloud, I should have denied the relation or pretended that we were merely friends?” she demanded indignantly.

“I am sure you wouldn’t,” I replied hastily. “I was a fool, an idiot—by Jove, what an idiot I have been!”

“It was certainly very silly of you,” she admitted; but there was a gentleness in her tone that took away all bitterness from the reproach.

“The reason of the secrecy was this,” she continued; “they became engaged the very night before Reuben was arrested, and, when he heard of the charge against him, he insisted that no one should be told unless, and until, he was fully acquitted. I was the only person who was in their confidence, and as I was sworn to secrecy, of course I couldn’t tell you; nor did I suppose that the matter would interest you. Why should it?”

“Imbecile that I am,” I murmured. “If I had only known!”

“Well, if you had known,” said she; “what difference could it have made to you?”

This question she asked without looking at me, but I noted that her cheek had grown a shade paler.

“Only this,” I answered. “That I should have been spared many a day and night of needless self-reproach and misery.”

“But why?” she asked, still keeping her face averted. “What had you to reproach yourself with?”

“A great deal,” I answered, “if you consider my supposed position. If you think of me as the trusted agent of a man, helpless and deeply wronged—a man whose undeserved misfortunes made every demand upon chivalry and generosity; if you think of me as being called upon to protect and carry comfort to the woman whom I regarded as, virtually, that man’s betrothed wife; and then if you think of me as proceeding straightway, before I had known her twenty-four hours, to fall hopelessly in love with her myself, you will admit that I had something to reproach myself with.”

She was still silent, rather pale and very thoughtful, and she seemed to breathe more quickly than usual.

“Of course,” I continued, “you may say that it was my own lookout, that I had only to keep my own counsel, and no one would be any the worse. But there’s the mischief of it. How can a man who is thinking of a woman morning, noon and night; whose heart leaps at the sound of her coming, whose existence is a blank when she is away from him—a blank which he tries to fill by recalling, again and again, all that she has said and the tones of her voice, and the look that was in her eyes when she spoke—how can he help letting her see, sooner or later, that he cares for her? And if he does, when he has no right to, there is an end of duty and chivalry and even common honesty.”

“Yes, I understand now,” said Juliet softly. “Is this the way?” She tripped up the steps leading to Fountain Court and I followed cheerfully. Of course it was not the way, and we both knew it, but the place was silent and peaceful, and the plane-trees cast a pleasant shade on the gravelled court. I glanced at her as we walked slowly towards the fountain. The roses were mantling in her cheeks now and her eyes were cast down, but when she lifted them to me for an instant, I saw that they were shining and moist.

“Did you never guess?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied in a low voice, “I guessed; but—but then,” she added shyly, “I thought I had guessed wrong.”

We walked on for some little time without speaking again until we came to the further side of the fountain, where we stood listening to the quiet trickle of the water, and watching the sparrows as they took their bath on the rim of the basin. A little way off another group of sparrows had gathered with greedy joy around some fragments of bread that had been scattered abroad by the benevolent Templars, and hard by a more sentimentally-minded pigeon, unmindful of the crumbs and the marauding sparrows, puffed out his breast and strutted and curtsied before his mate with endearing gurgles.

Juliet had rested her hand on one of the little posts that support the chain by which the fountain is enclosed and I had laid my hand on hers. Presently she turned her hand over so that mine lay in its palm; and so we were standing hand-in-hand when an elderly gentleman, of dry and legal aspect, came up the steps and passed by the fountain. He looked at the pigeons and then he looked at us, and went his way smiling and shaking his head.

“Juliet,” said I.

She looked up quickly with sparkling eyes and a frank smile that was yet a little shy, too.

“Yes.”

“Why did he smile—that old gentleman—when he looked at us?”

“I can’t imagine,” she replied mendaciously.

“It was an approving smile,” I said. “I think he was remembering his own spring-time and giving us his blessing.”

“Perhaps he was,” she agreed. “He looked a nice old thing.” She gazed fondly at the retreating figure and then turned again to me. Her cheeks had grown pink enough by now, and in one of them a dimple displayed itself to great advantage in its rosy setting.

“Can you forgive me, dear, for my unutterable folly?” I asked presently, as she glanced up at me again.

“I am not sure,” she answered. “It was dreadfully silly of you.”

“But remember, Juliet, that I loved you with my whole heart—as I love you now and shall love you always.”

“I can forgive you anything when you say that,” she answered softly.

Here the voice of the distant Temple clock was heard uttering a polite protest. With infinite reluctance we turned away from the fountain, which sprinkled us with a parting benediction, and slowly retraced our steps to Middle Temple Lane and thence into Pump Court.

“You haven’t said it, Juliet,” I whispered, as we came through the archway into the silent, deserted court.

“Haven’t I, dear?” she answered; “but you know it, don’t you? You know I do.”

“Yes, I know,” I said; “and that knowledge is all my heart’s desire.”

She laid her hand in mine for a moment with a gentle pressure and then drew it away; and so we passed through into the cloisters.