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Page 48
"You are making me your debtor," Gwen replied slowly, "beyond my
power ever to repay you."
"It is in the hope that no payment may ever be demanded of you,"
he rejoined, "that I am busying myself in your affairs." The colour
sprang to Gwen's cheeks, but she only replied by a grateful glance.
I knew what was passing through her mind. She was thinking of her
promise--of her father's last words, and of the terrible
possibilities thereof from which Maitland was seeking to rescue her.
She felt that she could safely owe him any debt of gratitude, however
great, while he, on his part, took what I fancied, both then and
afterward, were unnecessary pains to assure her that, in the event
of his finding the assassin, she need have no fear of his making
any claim whatsoever upon her. And so the whole affair was dropped
for the time being and the rest of the evening devoted to listening
to Maitland's account of his experiences while abroad.
The next morning I called upon our detective at his laboratory and
asked him what he intended to do next. He replied that he had no
plans as yet, but that he wished to review with me all the evidence
at hand.
"You see," he said, "the thing that renders the solution of this
mystery so difficult is the fact that all our clues, while they
would be of the utmost service in the conviction of the assassin
had we found him, are almost destitute of any value until he has
been located. Add to this that we are now unable to find any
motive for the crime and you can see how slight are our hopes of
success. If ever we chance to find the man,--for I feel that
such a consummation would result more from chance than from
anything else,--I think we can convict him.
"Here, for example," he said, taking up a small slip of glass
which he had cut from the eastern parlour window of the Darrow
house, "is something I have never shown either you or Miss Darrow.
It is utterly worthless, so far as assisting us to track the
assassin is concerned, but, if ever we suspect the right man, the
evidence on that glass would probably convict him, though there
were ten thousand other suspects."
I took the glass from him and, examining it with the utmost care,
I detected a smutch of yellowish paint upon it, nothing more.
"For Heaven's sake, Maitland!" I said in astonishment, "of what
possible use can that formless daub of paint be, or is there
something else on the glass that has escaped me?" He laughed at
my excitement as he replied:
"There is nothing there but the paint spot. Regarding that, however,
you have come to a very natural though erroneous conclusion. It is
not formless"; and he passed me a jeweller's eye-glass to assist me
in a closer examination. He was right. The paint lay upon the
glass in little irregular furrows which arranged themselves
concentrically about a central oval groove somewhat imperfect in
shape. "Well," continued. Maitland, as I returned him the
magnifying glass, "what do you make of it?" "If you hadn't already
attached so much importance to the thing," I said, "I should
pronounce it a daub of paint transferred to the glass by somebody's
thumb, but, as such a thing would be clearly useless, I am at a loss
to know what it is."
"Well," he rejoined, "you've hit the nail on the head,--that's just
what it is, but you are entirely wrong in your assumption that the
thumb-mark can have no value as evidence. Do you not know that
there are no two thumbs in the world which are capable of making
indistinguishable marks?" I was not aware of this. "How do you
know," I asked, "that this mark was made by the assassin? It seems
to me there can hardly be a doubt that one of the painters, while
priming the sill, accidentally pressed his thumb against the glass.
His hands would naturally have been painty, and this impression
would as naturally have resulted."
"What you say," replied Maitland, "is very good, so far as it goes.
My reasons for believing this thumb-mark was made by the assassin are
easily understood. First: there was another impression of a thumb
in the moist paint of the sill directly under that upon the glass.
Both marks were made by the same thumb and, in the lower one, the
microscope revealed minute traces of gravel dust, not elsewhere
discernible upon the sill. The thumb carried the dust there, and
was the thumb of the hand pressed into the gravel,--the hand of
which I have a cast. You see how this shows how the thumb came to
have paint upon it when pressed upon the glass. Second: the two
men engaged in priming the house, James Cogan and Charles Rice, were
the only persons save the assassin known to have been upon that side
of the house the day of the murder. "Here," he said, carefully
removing two strips of glass from a box, "are the thumb-marks of
Cogan and Rice made with the same paint. You see that neither of
these men could, by any possibility, have made the mark upon the
glass. So there you are. But we are missing the question before
us. What line of procedure can you suggest, Doc? I'm all at sea."
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