“That’s what I had to find out,” Shayne went on swiftly to Quinlan. “I can explain how her prints and mine got on the bottle. We drank out of it that afternoon. But the murderer is going to have a hard time explaining how his prints got on it.”
From the other end of the table Denton scowled with black anger. “How’d you snatch it?” he demanded. “Where was it hid when we searched the joint?”
Shayne continued to Quinlan, “I discovered her body when I went to my room to clean up from the beating Denton’s strong-arm boys gave me. And I found this bottle. You can see where that put me. Right square behind the eight ball. Damn it, there’d never have been an investigation if I’d called the cops right then and turned this over to them.”
Quinlan said, “Keep on talking.”
“Veigle wants to make a little test.” Shayne looked slowly at the faces around the table. “He wants to compare your fingerprints with the third set found on the death weapon.” He turned to Veigle. “Got your stuff with you?”
“Sure.” He groped in a sagging side pocket and brought out a small tin case. He opened it and got out an inking pad and a dozen small rectangles of paper. “Pass these around and I’ll get the prints.”
Shayne started at the head of the table with Henderson. “Just write your name on it,” he said pleasantly. “That way, there’ll be no mistake.”
“I’m afraid there’s already a mistake,” Henderson protested austerely. “Surely I’m not involved.”
“Just for the record. We need enough extra samples to show there’s no hocus-pocus in Veigle’s comparisons.” Shayne passed on to Joseph Little and Edmund Drake. He paused beside Lucile Hamilton.
She turned a worried face up to him. “That bottle,” she whispered, “I remember Margo showing it to us. Do I — have to — sign my name, too?”