And by comparing these reproduced prints with the finger marks of criminals on file in all large police headquarters, it is sometimes possible to trace the guilty ones.
But Bob Dexter knew that it would be worse than useless in a case like this, for the reasons I have mentioned. So he resolved to do the next best thing, use the key to learn whether or not it was possible to have gotten it where it was found—near the hand of the prostrate Hiram Beegle on the floor of his strong room—by dropping the lock-opener down the fireplace.
“Is any one in the room to notice where the key falls when I drop it?” asked Bob, when he was up on the roof.
“I’ll go in,” offered Chief Drayton. “I’d like to see just how it does fall.”
“I’ll wait until you call up the chimney that you’re ready,” said Bob. “You can call to me up the flue.”
“All right, but don’t drop the key down on me while I’m hollering at you,” begged the Storm Mountain chief. “It’s heavy and it might bang me in the eye.”
“I’ll be careful,” promised Bob, with a smile, in which his chums joined.
The hand organ music was still wailing away out in the road, and the antics of the monkey must have been amusing, for the crowd was kept interested, and thus held away from the cabin for a time, for which Bob was glad.
The lad, up on the roof, was looking at the edges of the brick chimney, but they told him nothing. They were covered with soot from the wood smoke, and this did not appear to have been disturbed.
“Though,” mused Bob to himself as he waited for word from inside, and looked at the black stuff on the chimney, “there might be all sorts of marks and evidence here and I couldn’t see it without a magnifying glass. Guess maybe I’d better get one of those things. I’d look like a regular Sherlock Holmes with one, I reckon. But a photograph camera is better. I wonder how they could take any pictures of this black stuff?” and idly he lingered the soot on the edge of the chimney. “Guess it won’t pay to bother with that on this case,” he went on with his thoughts. “But if I’m going to continue in this line of work I’m going in for all that sort of thing.”