The witness consulted his notebook, took a finely marked scale from his pocket, then looked up at the judge and nodded. “These two,” he said, indicating two photographs, “are both photographs of prints made by the right index finger of the man I assume was Roger P. Cartman, since I found his fingerprints on the wheel chair.”
Mason said, “Will you mark these right on the photographs, so there can be no mistake, with a cross in pen and ink?”
The witness, looking bored and contemptuous, took a pen from his pocket, made a cross on each of the photographs.
Mason triumphantly removed the paper and said, “Now, then, Mr. Borge, since you’ve qualified as an expert, and since you’ve said that any high school pupil knows that it’s impossible to confuse the fingerprints of two different people, will you kindly tell me how it happens that you have just identified a fingerprint made from the right index finger of Carl Moar, deceased, as being identical with a print of the right index finger of the man whom you have stated was Roger P. Cartman?”
Borge stared with incredulous eyes at the annotations on the two photographs. Scudder, jumping to his feet, hurried to the side of the witness.
Judge Romley regarded Mason with a puzzled frown. “Do I understand, Mr. Mason, that it is your contention the witness has confused two photographs?”
“No,” Mason said with a grin, “what your Honor should understand is that when my learned friend, the deputy district attorney, discovers the true significance of the testimony of this witness, the case against Anna Moar will be dismissed. Otherwise, the Prosecution will find itself confronted with the necessity of explaining to a jury in this case just how it happens the man the witnesses have sworn this defendant murdered on the night of the sixth instantly left fingerprints in a San Francisco flat on the afternoon of the seventh.”
“There’s trickery here someplace, your Honor,” Scudder said.
Mason smiled. “If Counsel is interested in discovering just where the trickery lies, I can give him two clues. One is that when Della Street stepped out on deck on the evening of the sixth, she inadvertently took a position almost exactly where Aileen Fell had been standing before she ran up to the boat deck. The second one is that at the time when the decedent, Moar, was about to sail from Honolulu, someone opened Moar’s locked suitcase and substituted a picture of Winnie Joyce, whom Miss Newberry greatly resembles, for a photograph of Belle Newberry. As for the rest, Counsel will have to figure it out for himself.”
Scudder bent forward to engage in a whispered conversation with Borge. Then, in a voice which showed all too plainly his bewilderment, said, “May I ask the Court for a brief recess? I wish to correlate certain facts.”