Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries – Complete Series: 21 Novels & 40 Short Stories (Illustrated Edition). R. Austin Freeman
make haste," whispered Juliet. "Do you think they will be able to tell the real from the false thumb-prints?"
"I can't say," I replied; "but we shall soon know. They looked all alike to me."
Mr. Nash made his examination with exasperating deliberateness, and preserved throughout an air of stolid attention; but at length he, too, completed his notes and handed the paper back to the usher.
"Now, Mr. Singleton," said the judge, "let us hear your conclusions. You have been sworn."
Mr. Singleton stepped into the witness-box, and, laying his notes on the ledge, faced the judge.
"Have you examined the paper that was handed to you?" asked Sir Hector Trumpler.
"I have."
"What did you see on the paper?"
"I saw twenty thumb-prints, of which some were evident forgeries, some were evidently genuine, and some were doubtful."
"Taking the thumb-prints seriatim, what have you noted about them?"
Mr. Singleton examined his notes and replied—"The thumb-print on square one is evidently a forgery, as is also number two, though it is a passable imitation. Three and four are genuine; five is an obvious forgery. Six is a genuine thumb-print; seven is a forgery, though a good one; eight is genuine; nine is, I think, a forgery, though it is a remarkably good imitation. Ten and eleven are genuine thumb-marks; twelve and thirteen are forgeries; but as to fourteen I am very doubtful, though I am inclined to regard it as a forgery. Fifteen is genuine, and I think sixteen is also; but I will not swear to it. Seventeen is certainly genuine Eighteen and nineteen I am rather doubtful about, but I am disposed to consider them both forgeries. Twenty is certainly a genuine thumb-print."
As Mr. Singleton's evidence proceeded, a look of surprise began to make its appearance on the judge's face, while the jury glanced from the witness to the notes before them and from their notes to one another in undisguised astonishment.
As to Sir Hector Trumpler, that luminary of British jurisprudence was evidently completely fogged; for, as statement followed statement, he pursed up his lips and his broad, red face became overshadowed by an expression of utter bewilderment.
For a few seconds he stared blankly at his witness and then dropped on to his seat with a thump that shook the court.
"You have no doubt," said Anstey, "as to the correctness of your conclusions? For instance, you are quite sure that the prints one and two are forgeries?"
"I have no doubt."
"You swear that those two prints are forgeries?"
Mr. Singleton hesitated for a moment. He had been watching the judge and the jury and had apparently misinterpreted their surprise, assuming it to be due to his own remarkable powers of discrimination; and his confidence had revived accordingly.
"Yes," he answered; "I swear that they are forgeries."
Anstey sat down, and Mr. Singleton, having passed his notes up to the judge, retired from the box, giving place to his colleague.
Mr. Nash, who had listened with manifest satisfaction to the evidence, stepped into the box with all his original confidence restored. His selection of the true and the false thumb-prints was practically identical with that of Mr. Singleton, and his knowledge of this fact led him to state his conclusions with an air that was authoritative and even dogmatic.
"I am quite satisfied of the correctness of my statements," he said, in reply to Anstey's question, "and I am prepared to swear, and do swear, that those thumb-prints which I have stated to be forgeries, are forgeries, and that their detection presents no difficulty to an observer who has an expert acquaintance with finger-prints."
"There is one question that I should like to ask," said the judge, when the expert had left the box and Thorndyke had re-entered it to continue his evidence. "The conclusions of the expert witnesses—manifestly bona fide conclusions, arrived at by individual judgement, without collusion or comparison of results—are practically identical. They are virtually in complete agreement. Now, the strange thing is this: their conclusions are wrong in every instance" (here I nearly laughed aloud, for, as I glanced at the two experts, the expression of smug satisfaction on their countenances changed with lightning rapidity to a ludicrous spasm of consternation); "not sometimes wrong and sometimes right, as would have been the case if they had made mere guesses, but wrong every time. When they are quite certain, they are quite wrong; and when they are doubtful, they incline to the wrong conclusion. This is a very strange coincidence, Dr. Thorndyke. Can you explain it?"
Thorndyke's face, which throughout the proceedings had been as expressionless as that of a wooden figurehead, now relaxed into a dry smile.
"I think I can, my lord," he replied. "The object of a forger in executing a forgery is to produce deception on those who shall examine the forgery."
"Ah!" said the judge; and his face relaxed into a dry smile, while the jury broke out into unconcealed grins.
"It was evident to me," continued Thorndyke, "that the experts would be unable to distinguish the real from the forged thumb-prints, and, that being so, that they would look for some collateral evidence to guide them. I, therefore, supplied that collateral evidence. Now, if ten prints are taken, without special precautions, from a single finger, it will probably happen that no two of them are exactly alike; for the finger being a rounded object of which only a small part touches the paper, the impressions produced will show little variations according to the part of the finger by which the print is made. But a stamp such as I have used has a flat surface like that of a printer's type, and, like a type, it always prints the same impression. It does not reproduce the finger-tip, but a particular print of the finger, and so, if ten prints are made with a single stamp, each print will be a mechanical repetition of the other nine. Thus, on a sheet bearing twenty finger-prints, of which ten were forgeries made with a single stamp, it would be easy to pick out the ten forged prints by the fact that they would all be mechanical repetitions of one another; while the genuine prints could be distinguished by the fact of their presenting trifling variations in the position of the finger.
"Anticipating this line of reasoning, I was careful to make each print with a different stamp and each stamp was made from a different thumb-print, and I further selected thumb-prints which varied as widely as possible when I made the stamps. Moreover, when I made the real thumb-prints, I was careful to put the thumb down in the same position each time as far as I was able; and so it happened that, on the sheet submitted to the experts, the real thumb-prints were nearly all alike, while the forgeries presented considerable variations. The instances in which the witnesses were quite certain were those in which I succeeded in making the genuine prints repeat one another, and the doubtful cases were those in which I partially failed."
"Thank you, that is quite clear," said the judge, with a smile of deep content, such as is apt to appear on the judicial countenance when an expert witness is knocked off his pedestal. "We may now proceed, Mr. Anstey."
"You have told us," resumed Anstey, "and have submitted proofs, that it is possible to forge a thumb-print so that detection is impossible. You have also stated that the thumb-print on the paper found in Mr. Hornby's safe is a forgery. Do you mean that it may be a forgery, or that it actually is one?"
"I mean that it actually is a forgery."
"When did you first come to the conclusion that it was a forgery?"
"When I saw it at Scotland Yard. There are three facts which suggested this conclusion. In the first place the print was obviously produced with liquid blood, and yet it was a beautifully clear and distinct impression. But such an impression could not be produced with liquid blood without the use of a slab and roller, even if great care were used, and still less could it have been produced by an accidental smear.
"In the second place, on measuring the print with a micrometer, I found that it did not agree in dimensions with a genuine thumb-print of Reuben Hornby. It was appreciably larger. I photographed the print with the micrometer in contact and on comparing this with a genuine thumb-print, also photographed with the same micrometer