With the knowledge of the injury to Duperré’s hand I felt confident that the great coup was due to him. And I was not mistaken.
The bank thieves had got clear away, it was true, but they had left those tell-tale finger-prints behind! As everyone knows, the ridges and whorls upon the hands of no two men are alike, therefore it seemed clear that Scotland Yard, now aroused, would very quickly—owing to its marvelous classification of the finger-prints of every criminal who has passed through the hands of the police during the past quarter of a century—fix upon the person who had laid his hands upon the steel safe door.
An hour after I had read the report in the paper, Duperré rang me up.
“I’m going to Overstow by the nine-thirty from King’s Cross to-night,” he said. “If you can join me, do. The air is better in Yorkshire than in London, don’t you think so, old chap?”
“Right-oh!” I replied. “I’ll travel up with you.”
We met, and early next morning we were back at Overstow. Yet I managed to suppress any untoward curiosity.
It was only when about a week later I read in the paper of the result of the discovery of Scotland Yard finger-print department and of a consequent arrest that I sat aghast.
A notorious jewel-thief named Hersleton, alias Hugh Martyn, an American, had been arrested at a hotel at Brighton, and had been charged at Bow Street with the murderous attack upon the night watchman at the Chartered Bank of Liberia, his finger-prints, taken some years before, coinciding exactly with those left at the bank. He had violently protested his innocence, but had been committed for trial.
At the Old Bailey six weeks later, the night watchman having fortunately recovered from his injuries, Hugh Martyn was brought before Mr. Justice Harland, and though very ably defended by his counsel, he was quite unable to account for his movements on the night in question.
“I was never there!” the prisoner shrieked across the court to the judge as I sat in the public gallery watching the scene. “I know nothing of the affair—nothing whatever. I am innocent.”