Chapter XIV

Hite rose from his seat and laid down his pipe when Jimmy led the little man into the busy city room, a mark of respect Hite rarely showed any one. After greetings were exchanged, Hite led the way into the office of the managing editor, who had not yet arrived. Seeing the little scientist seated, Hite growled:

"Well?"

"Thank you for the opportunity to investigate this, Mr. Hite. This is one of the most interesting criminal inquiries I have ever conducted."

"Were you up to Pleasantville, Professor?"

"Yes, we are coming from there now."

"Did you find anything?"

"Yes, I found this." He took from a folded slip of paper the bit of frayed thread he had found in the telephone box.

Hite looked from the bit of thread to the fine features of the man; he looked at the two young men who grinned at him. He said:

"All right, Professor, I'll bite. What is this?"

"Would you say, Mr. Hite, that this bit of thread belongs inside a properly constructed telephone box?"

When Hite still looked at him in puzzled silence, Professor Brierly, with delicate precision, using a hook on a pen knife, picked the lock of the telephone box fastened to the managing editor's desk.

"See, Mr. Hite. This box, wires, binding posts, terminals, and so forth, is identical with the box that was blown from a wall in the Flynn home in Pleasantville. On the bottom of this box you will find a number of holes; if you put your finger there you will feel them. Now, Mr. Hite, if you will examine this box carefully, you will find that there is no thread like this to be found. Indeed, you will not find any legitimate use for such a piece of thread in the box. And remember that this box locks and opens with a key owned by the man who installs the telephone. You noticed that I had to pick this lock. It looks like a screw head that opens with a screw driver, but it is not.

"Now, Mr. Hite, suppose I wanted to blow you to kingdom come with a bomb and you lived in an isolated house situated like the late Mr. Flynn's. Here is the way I might do it. There are hundreds of other safe ways but this is one of them.

"I should enter the house in your absence. I should place my bomb and run a fuse from the bomb to one of the holes in this telephone box. I should tie the clapper of the bell down in the box with a bit of weak thread, a bit of thread like this, Mr. Hite."

He held up the bit of gray thread and continued:

"I should predetermine precisely the strength of the thread with relation to the resistance offered by the tied down bell clapper. I should know exactly how many times the operator would have to ring your telephone before the thread broke, say fourteen times. I should watch you from a convenient patch of woods. When you came home I would go to the nearest telephone and call your number. At the fourteenth ring, the clapper would break loose and strike a nail that discharges a blank cartridge that I had fastened with a small wooden block. The flare from the cartridge ignites the fuse I told you about and--"

His open hands, palms upward, made an expressive gesture.

Hite was staring at him in wide-eyed astonishment, his rugged jaws clenching his corn cob pipe until his muscles on the sides of his jaw stood out in ridges. He took the pipe slowly from his mouth.

"Say, Professor, ain't you coverin' a little too much territory. Isn't that rather a bit--"

Professor Brierly exploded into wrath.

"You newspaper men!" he almost spat the words out. "You print the wildest, most improbable tales, stories that have no basis in fact or in logic. You print statements by charlatans, without taking the trouble to verify them. And here, when I give you the result of a simple scientific bit of reasoning, almost syllogistic in its scientific simplicity you--"

Hite ducked, from the storm. He sent a ferocious scowl in the direction of the two young men who were grinning behind Professor Brierly's back. He held out a large gnarled hand placatingly:

"Pardon me, Professor, but it does seem far--I mean--your logic is absolutely amazing. We who know you believe it, of course, but--"

"Oh," said the old man mollified. "You shall have proof of course. We found evidence that a person stood in sight of the house in a patch of woods. A short distance from that is a filling station, where there is a public telephone. I took the name," he handed the city editor a slip of paper with the name of the filling station.

"You have the means of finding such things out and verifying them. You have the exact time of the explosion. See if someone did not call Flynn's home at the time of the explosion without having the call completed."

Hite punched a button on the desk. To the copy boy who popped his head into the office, he roared:

"Send in Mac, George and Barney!"

Three young men came into the office, greeted Jimmy and waited. His words coming like the staccato roar of a machine gun, Hite addressed the three:

"George, a telephone call was made from this station," handing him the slip of paper, "find the number in the telephone book. The call was made last night at precisely the time that Flynn's house in Pleasantville was blown up. It might have been made from a station near there. The call was not completed, because there was no answer. Operator was asked to ring a long time. Verify this. Don't take any hooey from the telephone company that it's against the rules. It's against the rules in this office for a reporter to come back without what he was sent to get. Scram.

"Mac, you heard what I said to George. Go to the filling station I told him about. The bird who made the call hung around there a long time, probably in a car. Mebbe somebody caught the number of the car. See if someone remembers this bird who made the call. Take a taxi and tell him to step on it. If any dumb cop stops you, tell him I'll have him broke if he won't let you go. Go on, get out, what the hell you waitin' for?

"Barney, go up to Center Street and see the stuffed shirt in the Commissioner's office. If he ain't in he ought to be; a public servant ought to be at his desk by this time. It's after eight o'clock. Lookit me. Get him out of bed if you have to and ask him how long the public is going to be fed on hooey when there's such an important murder case. Ask him what the hell are the police doing on these murders besides making statements. Get going and if you don't bring in a story for the first edition I'll drop you out the window."

He turned to Professor Brierly:

"Excuse me a little while, Professor, I've got to give out some assignments." He turned to Jimmy and growled:

"Say, lissen, young feller, in the last wire you sent, you misspelt a name. How many times have I got to tell you--"

He stopped. For the first time that morning did he get a good look at Jimmy's swollen, purple eye. He whistled. His face wrinkled in what passed with him for a smile. He murmured in reverent awe:

"What a shiner, what a peach. Where did you get--"

He opened the door into the noisy city room. His roar cut through the conglomerate clatter. The room hushed.

"Hey, gang, come here quick. Lookit Jimmy. Ask him where he got it. Bet he tells each of you a different lie." The doorway was instantly filled with grinning faces. The hubbub subsided after a few minutes and Hite shooed them out of the room. He turned to Professor Brierly, his hand on the door knob.

"Oh, by the way. I had somebody chased up to Pleasantville to see about the cops who wanted to arrest you. They were all gone. The pilot up there says it was a peach of a scrap and he ought to know; he's been in some himself. Rather lucky for you, you were not alone, eh Professor? They didn't expect any one to be with you."

"It was not luck, Mr. Hite. John insisted on coming along with me. Anyone would think to hear him talk that I am unable to take care of myself, but perhaps it was fortunate after all that he and Hale were there. Don't laugh at Hale's eye; he got it in that fight."

"Huh, huh, I see. Anything I can do for you, Professor, while we're waiting for a report?"

"I should like to send some telegrams, Mr. Hite, please."

"Why, sure, wires, phones, anything. Jimmy'l help you; he knows the ropes."

The door closed behind him. Professor Brierly murmured:

"What a perfectly astonishing person. He literally takes your breath away. Is that his manner all the time, Hale?"

"No, not all the time, Professor. Usually he's worse."

The two young men left him and for the next hour and a half Professor Brierly kept several copy boys and the telephone operator on the jump. He was not disturbed. The managing editor was told who was in his office when he came in and he took a desk in the city room, where he transacted his routine morning business.

Professor Brierly was sitting at the desk mentally going over the tangled threads of the case. He was rejecting one by one the many fanciful hypotheses that imaginative newspaper writers had woven about the case. With cold, precise logic, he was fastening link to link in his strange chain of evidence. Such was his impersonal absorption in the case that the attack on him with its possible consequences, was now forgotten.

The telephone bell tinkled. Orders had been given the operator not to disturb Professor Brierly and to ring the phone in the managing editor's office only if the call was for the old scientist. He picked up the instrument; this might be the answer he was awaiting to a telegram.

He was hanging the instrument back in its pronged cradle with a shade of disappointment, when the door was thrown open. Hite came in.

"Professor, they got the bird who bumped off Schurman. The D.A. was on the phone about it, up in that camp of his. He gave orders that you be permitted to cross-examine this bird. He told 'em to hold him for you."

Professor Brierly scrambled to his feet.

"Indeed, I shall be glad to see him. How interesting."

He was taken to the office of the district attorney, where an assistant and a sergeant of police met him. Sergeant Conners, who had met Professor Brierly on previous matters, said to the scientist.

"We should 'a' had this bird sooner, but it seems he was sleepin' off a drunk somewhere and no one knew where he was. 'Fingy' Smith is his name, Professor. We got his record. His finger prints are the ones we found on the file. And he is the bird who always eats a lot whenever he does a job, specially eggs. How this bird can put away eggs is a wonder; he's a little feller, too." The monologue was cut short by the entrance of the prisoner who was chained to a burly headquarters man, accompanied by another officer in civil clothes.

'Fingy' Smith was a small, dark man who greeted the assembly cheerfully. Professor Brierly looked at him curiously. The little finger on his left hand, was missing; it had been shot away in a brawl. The lobe of his left ear was also missing. Jimmy later learned that it had been chewed off in a rough and tumble fight in a Chinese joint on the Pacific coast.

Sergeant Conners greeted him pleasantly, the assistant district attorney, somberly. He did not hold with being on pleasant terms with criminals. Conners said:

"'Fingy', this is Professor Brierly, he is gonna ask you some questions."

"How de do, Prof. I heard about ye. You got a reputash. Don't get too intimate with the dicks.

His response to Heath's steady look was a cheerful smile. Professor Brierly asked:

"Do you know what you were arrested for, Mr. Smith?"

"Naw! Somebody must be makin' a holler about a crime wave. Whenever they do that the cops get busy and make a pinch. They got it easy with a guy like me. I'll be frank with you, Prof, I got a record. But what of it? I been runnin' straight, lately."

Professor Brierly did not try to interrupt him. He was enormously interested in this first-hand contact with a prominent member of the criminal classes. He said, gently:

"I will tell you what you were arrested for, Smith. You are charged with murdering August Schurman."

Smith's mouth opened wide, as did his eyes. If this was acting it was very well done. The look of surprise faded and the smile, a little forced perhaps, was once more in evidence.

"Don't give me a laugh, Professor. You got a reputation for bein' on the level. Don't let the police bull you into lettin' 'em frame me. Me commit murder? Ask the police and if they're honest, they'll tell you I never carried a rod or anything else with me. Ain't that so, Sarge?" he asked.

The police officer merely stared at him, he did not answer.

Professor Brierly was looking intently at the prisoner. He arose and asked the prisoner to sit in a chair where he would face the light that came in from a tall window. Here, Professor Brierly stepped close to him and, in the manner of a dentist, asked him to open his mouth.

Everybody, including the prisoner, looked at the old scientist with surprise. 'Fingy' had recovered his composure by this time. He asked Professor Brierly:

"What is it, Prof, is it me tonsils or me teeth? I had me tonsils out and a tooth carpenter recently socked me a hell of a wad for fixin' up me grinders."

When the old man did not respond to this humor, he said, resignedly:

"Oh, all right, Prof, you're the doctor. I don't know what the hell this is about but--"

He threw his head back and opened his mouth wide. Professor Brierly peered intently into the mouth of the prisoner. He stepped back and said to Conners and the assistant district attorney:

"I am through with Mr. Smith; I have no further questions to ask. I should be glad, however, to stay here and--"

Conners turned to the prisoner savagely. His apparent good humor was gone. This was the kind of business he understood; he was at home cross-examining prisoners. He would show Professor Brierly how to make a crook wilt.

"'Fingy,' where was you on the night of July third and early mornin' July fourth?"

The prisoner wrinkled his brow in thought. He had regained his composure entirely, although he was not now in the jovial mood he presented when he came in.

"The night of July third? Lemme see." His brows drew together. "Well, that night, I was givin' a little party to some friends in me apartment."

"Who all was there, 'Fingy'?"

The prisoner gave the names of four men and two women, Conners jotting down the names on a slip of paper.

"That little job, o' yours four years ago in Rye, 'Fingy' you wasn't framed on that was you?"

"Well, I guess they had the goods on me all right. But what of that? I done my bit, didn't I?"

"I ain't talkin' about that, 'Fingy,' I jest wanted to get it straight. You got in like the police said and you opened the safe like they said too, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I guess I did."

"And you ate a lotta food, didn't you, 'Fingy', some seven or eight eggs on that job?"

"Yeah, I'm always hungry on--I mean for a little guy, I can eat an awful lot and I sure do like eggs."

"Well, 'Fingy,' the guy that bumped off Schurman ate a big meal; he ate six eggs; he opened the safe like you do, he entered the apartment like you do. What you got to say about that?"

"What of it? I ain't got nothin' to say about it. I was givin' a party to some friends, I'm tellin' you. You can ask 'em."

"Yeah, we'll ask 'em all right, 'Fingy'. What time did your friends come to the party?"

"They began droppin' in about eleven o'clock."

"And where was you about two or three hours before that?"

"I was home in my apartment."

"Anybody with you there during that time?"

Smith wet his lips. His features had become drawn. He was a long time answering this question. Finally he shook his head.

"I don't remember."

"Oh, you don't remember, huh. Well, 'Fingy,' you'd better remember. You don't know how important it is for you to remember that little thing, 'Fingy'."

He walked close to the prisoner and stood huge, bulging and threatening over him.

"Do you recognize this?" He held out a small nail file wrapped in tissue.

The prisoner looked at it. He was now very much ill at ease.

"What do you mean, do I recognize it?"

"Did you ever see this before, 'Fingy'?"

"I seen thousands of nail files like this."

"Did you ever own one like it?"

"Sure, I owned dozens, what of it?"

"Well, 'Fingy,' this was found under Schurman's safe. Your finger prints is on it."

The prisoner's head jerked back as if struck a blow. He looked at the file, he reached out for it and drew his hand back. He looked with startled eyes at his inquisitor. He sat back in his chair. He sneered:

"Aw, hell, it's a frame up. How can my finger prints be on--" he sprang to his feet. "I wasn't there, I tell you, I wasn't there." The last word ended in a scream. He stood tense, rigid and fell back into his chair. He took an ornate handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his palms. He passed the handkerchief over his face.

Conners looked toward the men who had brought in the prisoner. He asked:

"Got him booked?"

"No, we're jest holdin' him."

"Take him away and book him. Charge him with the murder of August Schurman."

During the cross-examination, Professor Brierly had not once taken his eyes from the prisoner. He was staring at him with the intent absorption he gave to an interesting specimen under the microscope. As they were about to lead Smith away, Professor Brierly started forward.

"Just a moment, Sergeant, before you take him away, I'd like to have an impression of his mouth, rather his teeth, his upper and lower teeth. If there is a dentist near by--"

"His teeth, Professor. In the name of God what do you want with an impression of his teeth."

The assistant district attorney injected himself into the proceedings:

"District Attorney McCall, Sergeant, gave explicit orders that Professor Brierly be given every opportunity to make a complete examination; that he be afforded every facility--"

"Oh, all right. We'll have some dentistry. Dan, go over across the street and ask Doc Harris to come over here with the material for takin' an impression. Step on it."

When the impression had been taken, Professor Brierly said to the dentist:

"Doctor, we should like to have a model of this right away, please. It is important."

"It may not be a very good one, Professor, a stone model would be better, but it will take--"

"Yes, I know, that will take too long. Speed is essential. It will be accurate enough. Hasten the setting, please, doctor."

When the prisoner was taken away, the Sergeant turned to Professor Brierly; he said with gracious condescension:

"I dunno what that impression is for, Professor, but I guess mebbe you know what you're doin'. But we got the man who bumped off Schurman, ain't we?"

Professor Brierly took from his pocket an object that he showed to Conners:

"Do you recognize this, Sergeant?"

"Why, ain't this the apple with the teeth marks you found in Schurman's refrigerator? How could it keep like this?"

"No, it is not, Sergeant; it is a replica. Take it into your hand and you will see it is not an apple. It is a model of the apple you saw. Alphonse Poller was the brilliant scientist who devised this method of taking impressions and making models. He called it 'moulage.' The word is used either as a verb or a noun.

"Off hand, I should say that 'Fingy' Smith's teeth will not fit into the marks made in this apple. When the plaster model comes up here we will see."

"What of it?" belligerently protested Conners. "We have his fingerprints; that's good enough for me. Someone else could have taken the bite in the apple."

"Who, Sergeant, who? Who could have taken that bite? Mr. Schurman did not do it. His teeth did not fit; I looked. The teeth of the housekeeper and the maid did not do it; I looked at their teeth. All of the housekeeper's upper teeth are artificial, she wears a plate. The maid has all her own teeth.

"This model shows that the person who bit into the apple, has a two tooth bridge on the upper jaw. The left lateral incisor is attached to the left canine, the eye tooth."

"But my God, Professor, you are setting up teeth marks against fingerprints. Teeth marks, well what's the difference between teeth marks. Some may be different, but--"

"Tooth marks, Sergeant, are as distinctive as fingerprints. No two single objects in the whole wide world are alike. No two red blood corpuscles coming from the same blood stream are precisely alike. True, they may differ only microscopically, but they differ nevertheless."

"Professor," asked Jimmy, "couldn't two artificial sets of teeth be alike?"

"Of course not! While the teeth are moulded by machinery, they are set up on a model of the individual's mouth by hand. And can you conceive a human pair of hands setting up two sets of teeth precisely alike? It is unthinkable."

"But, Professor," pursued Conners, "lookit the case we got against this bird. There's his record. He always works his jobs this way; he left what we call his 'callin' card.' The large meal, the eggs the housekeeper says was missin' and last of all there's the nail file with his fingerprints.

"You heard his alibi, Professor. He spent part of the night with friends of his, other crooks. He can't account at all for the hour or two before and after Schurman was killed."

"The plaster models will be here, shortly, Sergeant. You can then see for yourself. All you say is correct but you must, before you convict him, account for the tooth marks in that apple. That is of the utmost importance, Sergeant."

The plaster models of the upper and lower teeth of the prisoner came up in a short time. Professor Brierly held out the models and the moulage to the police officer:

"Here, Sergeant, see if you can make them fit. You don't have to be a dentist to see that the teeth that bit into the apple are not the teeth of which these are models."