“But I’d like to have you help me out a bit,” complained Chief Drayton. “Course Storm Mountain isn’t any such place as Cliffside, but we police chiefs ought to stick together.”
“Oh, I’ll help you all I can,” readily agreed Mr. Duncan. “But Bob here can do more than I can.”
“Shucks! a youngster like him!” sniffed Mr. Drayton.
“That’s all right—he’s got an old head on young shoulders,” declared Mr. Duncan in a low voice.
Fortunately Bob was engaged just then in climbing up a tree by which easy access could be had to the sloping roof of the log cabin. The lad carried with him the brass key, which he had first carefully examined for any marks that might lead to the discovery of anything. So Bob heard nothing of this alternating talk against him and in his favor.
His examination of the key had disclosed nothing. It was a heavy, ponderous affair, almost as if it had been made by a local locksmith who might have forged it by hand, as he might also have done in respect to the lock on the strong room where Hiram Beegle had been overpowered and robbed.
And aside from numerous scratches on the key Bob could see nothing. The scratches, he knew, must have come there naturally, for they would have resulted from the many times Hiram must have taken the lock-opener from his secret niche and put it back. Also, the key would have been scratched by being put in and taken out of the lock.
“And as for looking for fingerprints on it, I believe it would be worth while to have this photographed with that end in view,” thought Bob. He knew the value of fingerprint comparisons as a means of tracing criminals.
But Bob knew the brass key had passed through many hands that very morning, since the discovery of the crime. And Hiram’s own fingers and thumbs would have left on the surface marks that would have obliterated any of the whorls, curves and twists of the criminal.
As you doubtless know if you take up a shiny piece of metal in your fingers you will leave on it the impression of the tips, or balls, of your fingers or thumbs, as is also the case if you thus handle a piece of looking-glass. And it is possible, by taking a photograph of these marks, to get a picture of the fingerprints of the person handling the metal or glass. Sometimes prints invisible to the unaided eye are brought out in the photograph.