Anthony laughed. “Just what I said, Miss Warren. They can’t. Now, about ferret-face—Belford, I mean. You seem to think his evidence wasn’t as good as the others’. What did he do? Or say?”
Hastings took up the tale. “Nothing very unusual in itself. But his manner was all wrong. Too wrong, I thought, to be merely natural nervousness. Margaret thinks the same. It wasn’t that he said anything one could catch hold of; he was just fishy. He made rather a bad impression on the court too. In fact, I think there’d have been a lot more of him later if the case against your limpid-eyed pet hadn’t come out so strong.
“Damn it all!” he went on, after a moment’s silence, “in any other circumstances I’d be quite willing to bow to your vastly greater experience, Gethryn. And to Margaret’s womanly intuition and all that sort of thing. But this is a bit too much. When you get such a lot of circumstantial and presumptive evidence as there is against this man Deacon and then add to it the fact that his finger-prints were the only ones on the weapon the other feller was killed with, it does seem insane to blither: ‘He couldn’t have done it! Just look at his sweet expression!’ and things like that!”
“I dare say,” Anthony said. “But then Miss Warren and I are so psychic, you see.”
“But the finger-prints, man! They——”
Anthony became sardonic. “Ah, yes! Those eternal finger-prints. Hastings, you’re an incorrigible journalist. Somebody says ‘finger-print’ to you, you shrug—and the case is over. The blunt instrument bears the thumb-mark of Jasper Standish, ergo Jasper’s was the hand which struck down the old squire. It’s so simple! why trouble any more? Hang Jasper! Hang him, damn him, hang him!”
“But look here, that’s not——”
Anthony lifted his hand. “Oh, yes, yes. I know what you’re going to say. And I know I’m talking like a fool. The finger-print system is wonderful; but its chief use is tracing old-established criminals. If you consider the ingenuity exercised by this murderer in everything else, doesn’t it strike you as queer that he should leave the damning evidence of finger-marks on only one thing, and that the actual weapon? Why, he might as well have stuck his card on Hoode’s shirt-front!”
Hastings looked doubtful. “I see what you’re driving at,” he said, “but I’m not convinced. Not yet, anyhow. And we’ve rather got away from Belford. Not that there’s any more to say, really. He merely struck us as being rather too scared.”
“What you really mean, I think,” said Anthony, “is that in your opinion Belford was very likely in it with Deacon.”