An expression of satisfaction animated Borge’s pale green eyes. “The last man I fingerprinted,” he said, and paused dramatically as he flashed a look of triumph at the deputy district attorney, “was Carl Moar. I took his fingerprints at two o’clock this morning in the City Morgue, shortly after you had told the newspapers the body wasn’t that of Moar, but of some other person.”
Mason hesitated for several awkward seconds, then said, “You’re stating positively that this man was Carl Moar?”
“Of course I am,” Borge said. “The body had been in the water for a couple of days, but I was able to get his fingerprints without any trouble. A man’s fingerprints never change, not even in death. They’re absolute means of identification.
“And can’t the fingerprints of one person possibly be confused with those of another?”
“No,” Borge said scornfully “Every high school kid knows that.”
Judge Romley rapped with his gavel. “The witness will confine himself to answering the questions,” he said. “The witness is being interrogated as to his qualifications as an expert. The Court will not permit the examination to be unduly prolonged, but if Counsel wishes to inquire concerning the qualifications of the witness as an expert, he has a perfect right to do so, and the witness will observe a respectful attitude in answering such questions.”
“Then you must have had Carl Moar’s fingerprints,” Mason argued. “That is, you must have had something with which to compare the fingerprints of the corpse.”
“I did. Moar was bonded by a bonding company when he worked for a bank fifteen years ago. The bonding company required that fingerprints be filed with the application for a bond.”
“Oh,” Mason said, as though the information had knocked the props from under him.
“Any further cross-examination?” the Court asked.