A HOT SCENT
"Come in," called Trent.
Mr. Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early
evening of the day on which the coroner's jury, without leaving the box,
had pronounced the expected denunciation of a person or persons unknown.
Trent, with a hasty glance upward, continued his intent study of what
lay in a photographic dish of enameled metal, which he moved slowly
about in the light of the window. He looked very pale and his movements
were nervous.
"Sit on the sofa," he advised. "The chairs are a job lot bought at the
sale after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a
pretty good negative," he went on, holding it up to the light with his
head at the angle of discriminating judgment. "Washed enough now, I
think. Let us leave it to dry, and get rid of all this mess."
Mr. Cupples, as the other busily cleared the table of a confusion of
basins, dishes, racks, boxes and bottles, picked up first one and then
another of the objects and studied them with innocent curiosity.
"That is called hypo-eliminator," said Trent as Mr. Cupples uncorked and
smelled at one of the bottles. "Very useful when you're in a hurry with
a negative. I shouldn't drink it, though, all the same. It eliminates
sodium hypophosphite, but I shouldn't wonder if it would eliminate human
beings too." He found a place for the last of the litter on the crowded
mantel-shelf, and came to sit before Mr. Cupples on the table. "The
great thing about a hotel sitting-room is that its beauty does not
distract the mind from work. It is no place for the May-fly pleasures of
a mind at ease. Have you ever been in this room before, Cupples? I have,
hundreds of times. It has pursued me all over England for years. I
should feel lost without it if, in some fantastic, far-off hotel, they
were to give me some other sitting-room. Look at this table-cover; there
is the ink I spilled on it when I had this room in Halifax. I burnt that
hole in the carpet when I had it in Ipswich. But I see they have mended
the glass over the picture of 'Silent Sympathy,' which I threw a boot at
in Banbury. I do all my best work here. This afternoon, for instance,
since the inquest, I have finished several excellent negatives. There is
a very good dark-room downstairs."
"The inquest--that reminds me," said Mr. Cupples, who knew that this
sort of talk in Trent meant the excitement of action, and was wondering
what he could be about. "I came in to thank you, my dear fellow, for
looking after Mabel this morning. I had no idea she was going to feel
ill after leaving the box; she seemed quite unmoved, and really she is a
woman of such extraordinary self-command, I thought I could leave her to
her own devices and hear out the evidence, which I thought it important
I should do. It was a very fortunate thing she found a friend to assist
her, and she is most grateful. She is quite herself again now."
Trent, with his hands in his pockets and a slight frown on his brow,
made no reply to this. "I tell you what," he said after a short pause,
"I was just getting to the really interesting part of the job when you
came in. Come: would you like to see a little bit of high-class police
work? It's the very same kind of work that old Murch ought to be doing
at this moment. Perhaps he is; but I hope to glory he isn't." He sprang
off the table and disappeared into his bedroom. Presently he came out
with a large drawing-board on which a number of heterogeneous objects
was ranged.
"First I must introduce you to these little things," he said, setting
them out on the table. "Here is a big ivory paper-knife; here are two
leaves cut out of a diary--my own diary; here is a bottle containing
dentifrice; here is a little case of polished walnut. Some of these
things have to be put back where they belong in somebody's bedroom at
White Gables before night. That's the sort of man I am--nothing stops
me. I borrowed them this very morning when everyone was down at the
inquest, and I dare say some people would think it rather an odd
proceeding if they knew. Now there remains one object on the board. Can
you tell me, without touching it, what it is?"
"Certainly I can," said Mr. Cupples, peering at it with great interest.
"It is an ordinary glass bowl. It looks like a finger-bowl. I see
nothing odd about it," he added after some moments of close scrutiny.
"That," replied Trent, "is exactly where the fun comes in. Now take this
little fat bottle, Cupples, and pull out the cork. Do you recognize that
powder inside it? You have swallowed pounds of it in your time, I
expect. They give it to babies. Gray powder is its ordinary
name--mercury and chalk. It is great stuff. Now while I hold the basin
side-ways over this sheet of paper, I want you to pour a little powder
out of the bottle over this part of the bowl--just here.... Perfect! Sir
Edward Henry himself could not have handled the powder better. You have
done this before, Cupples, I can see. You are an old hand."
"I really am not," said Mr. Cupples seriously, as Trent returned the
fallen powder to the bottle. "I assure you it is all a complete mystery
to me. What did I do then?"
"I brush the powdered part of the bowl lightly with this camel-hair
brush. Now look at it again. You saw nothing odd about it before. Do you
see anything now?"
Mr. Cupples peered again. "How curious," he said. "Yes, there are two
large gray finger-marks on the bowl. They were not there before."
"I am Hawkshaw the detective," observed Trent. "Would it interest you to
hear a short lecture on the subject of glass finger-bowls? When you take
one up with your hand you leave traces upon it, usually practically
invisible, which may remain for days or months. You leave the marks of
your fingers. The human hand, even when quite clean, is never quite dry,
and sometimes--in moments of great anxiety, for instance, Cupples--it is
very moist. It leaves a mark on any cold smooth surface it may touch.
That bowl was moved by somebody with a rather moist hand quite lately."
He sprinkled the powder again. "Here on the other side, you see, is the
thumb-mark--very good impressions all of them." He spoke without raising
his voice, but Mr. Cupples could perceive that he was ablaze with
excitement as he stared at the faint gray marks. "This one should be the
index finger. I need not tell a man of your knowledge of the world that
the pattern of it is a single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically
disposed. This, the print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a
staple core and fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I have
just the same two prints on this negative, which I have examined in
detail. Look--!" he held one of the negatives up to the light of the
declining sun and demonstrated with a pencil point. "You can see they're
the same. You see the bifurcation of that ridge. There it is in the
other. You see that little scar near the center. There it is in the
other. There are a score of ridge-characteristics on which an expert
would swear in the witness-box that the marks on that bowl and the marks
I have photographed on this negative were made by the same hand."
"And where did you photograph them? What does it all mean?" asked Mr.
Cupples, wide-eyed.
"I found them on the inside of the left-hand leaf of the front-window in
Mrs. Manderson's bedroom. As I could not bring the window with me, I
photographed them, sticking a bit of black paper on the other side of
the glass for the purpose. The bowl comes from Manderson's room. It is
the bowl in which his false teeth were placed at night. I could bring
that away, so I did."
"But those cannot be Mabel's finger-marks."
"I should think not!" said Trent with decision. "They are twice the size
of any print Mrs. Manderson could make."
"Then they must be her husband's."
"Perhaps they are. Now shall we see if we can match them once more? I
believe we can." Whistling faintly, and very white in the face, Trent
opened another small squat bottle containing a dense black powder.
"Lamp-black," he explained. "Hold a bit of paper in your hand for a
second or two, and this little chap will show you the pattern of your
fingers." He carefully took up with a pair of tweezers one of the leaves
cut from his diary, and held it out for the other to examine. No marks
appeared on the leaf. He tilted some of the powder out upon one surface
of the paper, then, turning it over, upon the other; then shook the leaf
gently to rid it of the loose powder. He held it out to Mr. Cupples in
silence. On one side of the paper appeared unmistakably, clearly printed
in black, the same two finger-prints that he had already seen on the
bowl and on the photographic plate. He took up the bowl and compared
them. Trent turned the paper over, and on the other side was a bold
black replica of the thumb-mark that was printed in gray on the glass in
his hand.
"Same man, you see," Trent said with a short laugh. "I felt that it must
be so, and now I know." He walked to the window and looked out. "Now I
know," he repeated in a low voice, as if to himself. His tone was
bitter. Mr. Cupples, understanding nothing, stared at his motionless
back for a few moments.
"I am still completely in the dark," he ventured presently. "I have
often heard of this finger-print business, and wondered how the police
went to work about it. It is of extraordinary interest to me, but upon
my life I cannot see how in this case Manderson's finger-prints are
going--"
"I am very sorry, Cupples," Trent broke in upon his meditative speech
with a swift return to the table. "When I began this investigation I
meant to take you with me every step of the way. You mustn't think I
have any doubts about your discretion if I say now that I must hold my
tongue about the whole thing, at least for a time. I will tell you this:
I have come upon a fact that looks too much like having terrible
consequences if it is discovered by any one else." He looked at the
other with a hard and darkened face, and struck the table with his hand.
"It is terrible for me here and now. Up to this moment I was hoping
against hope that I was wrong about the fact. I may still be wrong in
the surmise that I base upon that fact. There is only one way of finding
out that is open to me, and I must nerve myself to take it." He smiled
suddenly at Mr. Cupples' face of consternation. "All right--I'm not
going to be tragic any more, and I'll tell you all about it when I can.
Look here, I'm not half through my game with the powder-bottles yet."
He drew one of the defamed chairs to the table and sat down to test the
broad ivory blade of the paper knife. Mr. Cupples, swallowing his
amazement, bent forward in an attitude of deep interest and handed Trent
the bottle of lamp-black.