“I was here, very busy,” he explained. “I rang you up twice on the ’phone, but each time you were engaged.”
“Well,” I asked, going straight to the point, “what have you discovered?”
“Very little,” he said. “I’ve searched all day for finger-prints, but up to the present have found none, save those of Antonio, Ethelwynn, and members of the household.”
“You do not suspect any of the servants?” I whispered, full of suspicion of the crafty-looking Italian.
“Of course not, my dear sir. What motive could they have in killing such an excellent, easygoing master as the Professor?”
“Revenge for some fancied grievance,” I suggested.
But he only laughed my theory to scorn.
I followed him upstairs, through the red boudoir to the laboratory, to which the fog had penetrated, and there watched him making his test for recent finger-prints. His examination was both careful and methodical. He drew a pair of old grey suède gloves over his hands, and, taking up one after another of the bottles and glass apparatus, he lightly coated them with some finely powdered chalk of a grey-green colour, afterwards dusting it off.
On one or two of the bottles prints of fingers were revealed, and each of these he very carefully examined beneath the light, rejecting them one after the other.
To me, unacquainted as I was with the various lines of the finger-tips, all looked alike. But this shabby, mysterious neighbour of mine apparently read them with the utmost ease, as he would a book.