“I got the lot without any difficulty; and last night we photographed them all and enlarged the pictures. They’re all here.”
“You took Foss’s, I suppose?”
“Yes, and I managed to find some of Maurice Chacewater’s too.”
“That’s pretty sharp work,” Sir Clinton complimented his subordinate. “How did you manage to make sure they were his?”
“I asked for his set of razors, sir, and took them from the blades. He’d left prints here and there of his finger and thumb, either on the blade or on the handle. Of course I couldn’t get anything else very sharp; but there are quite enough for the purpose, as you’ll see.”
He laid out three enlarged photographs on the desk before Sir Clinton; then, below each of the first two, he put down a second print.
“This first print,” he said, pointing to it, “represents the finger-prints we found on the automatic pistol. You can see that it’s the arch pattern on the thumb. Now here”—he indicated the companion print—“is Foss’s thumb-print; and if you look at it, you’ll see almost at a glance that it’s identical with the print on the pistol. They’re identical. I’ve measured them. And there are no other prints except Foss’s on the pistol.”
“Good,” said Sir Clinton. “ ‘And that, said John, is that.’ We know where we are so far as the pistol’s concerned. Pass along, please.”
“I’ve examined the pistol,” the Inspector continued. “It’s fully loaded in the magazine and has an extra cartridge in the barrel; but it hasn’t been fired recently so far as I can see.”
“Now for the next pair of prints,” Sir Clinton suggested.