Chapter IV: More Than Finger Prints

It was growing dark when there came a patter of steps upon the porch of Dad Anderson’s bachelor establishment, and a timid knock resounded through the little shack. The constable lowered his stockinged feet, adjusted his steel-rimmed spectacles, and opened the door.

“Well, well,” he remarked kindly, as he stood aside, “it’s little Margy Lamb. What are you doing out here, Margy?”

The girl looked up at him pathetically. In one arm she held a rag doll, clutched by a chubby hand, and there were the streaks of tears on her rosy cheeks; her eyes were swollen and red.

“They’re taking my daddy away to a big stone house with bars, where daddy can’t get out and come home to see us. My mummer is talking to the men that came for daddy, and she said for me to come and get you, and that you’d get my daddy away from them men.”

Dad Anderson made one bound for his shoes. Without a word he drew them on, then bent his face to that of the little girl.

“You sit down here by the fire, Margy, and rock your doll to sleep, while I get a saddle on Prince, and then we’ll go and see what all this is about. They ain’t goin’ to take your daddy to jail if I’ve got anything to say about it.”

Having soothed the girl and placed her in a comfortable chair, Dad Anderson hurried to the stable. Here he threw a saddle on his horse and then, returning to the house, stopped long enough to pick up the little girl, rag doll and all, and place her on the saddle before him. Presently they were making a wild dash to the store of Silas Mears.

Here he found the sheriff and district attorney; here also was the automobile of Big Bill Poindexter, and, milling about in the aimless way of a crowd, were some fifty or more men, women, and children.

“Yuh heard the news, Dad?” called out a voice, as the shape of the horse materialized from the gloom of the street. “They caught Dick Lamb, got him dead to rights, finger prints, stained clothes, and----”

The voice died away, as the speaker caught sight of the little girl whom Dad Anderson was holding before him on the saddle. Now the old man swung from the horse, lifted the girl to his shoulder, and made his way through the crowd which had suddenly become quiet. Within the store the officials were gathered about one of the show cases, while pompous old Judge Horn was gazing learnedly about from a chair behind the counter.

“We can hold the preliminary hearing right now,” the judge was saying, his tortoise-shelled spectacles glinting in the light, “and bind the defendant over.”

His words showed the extent to which his mind was made up, but there was no one in the crowd who caught the unconscious humor of the judicial announcement in advance of what his decision would be. Dick Lamb was standing beside the sheriff, and his young wife clung to her husband’s arm, her lips set, tears in her eyes. Big Bill Poindexter, a cigar standing almost straight up from the angle of his heavy jaw, was conferring earnestly with District Attorney Finch.

Dad Anderson addressed the official gathering, and for once there was absent from those old eyes the kindly twinkle which had been one of his identifying features for years.

“What’s all this foolishness? You fellows know that Dick Lamb never harmed any one in his life. He wouldn’t steal a dollar or a million dollars, and as for beatin’ in the head of poor Ben Drake, there ain’t a chance in ten million that he’d ever even think of such a thing.”

Big Bill Poindexter swung slowly around and pointed to the safe door. Then he extracted some photographs from his pocket.

“Finger prints don’t lie, constable. There’s the finger prints on the safe door, right where a crook would plant the soap to hold the ‘soup’ he was pouring into the safe. Finger prints don’t ever make a mistake, and they don’t lie. I’ve got no less than eighteen points of identification between the finger prints of this prisoner and the finger prints that are on the door of that safe. I’ve seen men hung on less than six points of similarity.”

Dad Anderson snorted, and those about him noticed that his gray eyes caught the light of the room and turned cold.

“Look here, yuh detective: finger prints may not lie, but there’s something else that don’t lie, too. Human nature is human nature, and character is character, and character don’t change overnight. I’ve known Dick Lamb since he was a kid, and I knew his wife when she wasn’t any bigger than this here little tot that I’m holdin’ on my shoulder. When a man builds up a character by years of clean livin’ an’ being a decent citizen, it’s worth a heck of a sight more than a finger print.”

The detective’s cigar drooped just a bit before the cold fire of the old man’s indignation, but, after a second, he regained his assurance, cocked up the cigar, and openly sneered at the prisoner.

“Law-abidin’ citizen, eh? There’s lots about this case you don’t know. You’ve been away all afternoon, while I was gatherin’ evidence. Those finger prints are just the things that cinch the case. There’s lots of evidence that we’ve dug up. What’d yuh go away for if you wanted to be so interested in the case?”

Dad Anderson glared coldly at the hulking man before him. “I went away because I was plumb sick and tired of every one not usin’ their senses and missing the obvious because of a lot of newfangled finger-print ideas.”

The detective’s cigar shifted a bit, as his jaw clamped. He was now on familiar ground.

“That’s what’s making it so easy for the criminal to-day. The automobile affords him a means of transportation away from the cities, and the local constabulary are ignorant of the scientific method of crime detection.” Big Bill was working into the formula of one of his weekly radio speeches, and he spoke with calm, sing-song assurance. “The average country constable or sheriff is elected because of political friendships rather than because of any ability to cope with crooks. He is merely a figurehead, an animated title, a name on the public pay roll.

“Why, look at this case! You have the finger prints to clinch things, and there isn’t a jury on earth that wouldn’t hang this man now. But would he have been arrested? Would he have been detected if I hadn’t shown up and investigated this crime? He would not. The mystery of the robbery and murder would have gone down in the annals of the community as one of the unsolved crimes.

“I first suspected the man when I heard his statement about the gold withdrawals of Silas Mears. Here was a man who had opportunity to know about the deposit in the safe, to realize that there must be something in that safe worth getting. I asked him questions and saw from his manner that he was concealing something, and then Mears remembered that Lamb had been in the store on several occasions of late, snooping around, looking at the safe, and always working over toward this corner where the safe is.

“I didn’t say much, but I went over into the dark room of the photographer to make some prints, and I took Mears with me. Mears showed me the way out of the back of the photographer’s place and up to the place where Lamb lives. We made a quiet little search around the place, and out in the little garden in the back there were some signs of digging, indications that the earth had been recently disturbed. We got a shovel and dug down and found some overalls that had bloodstains on ’em, and then we went from there and made a search of the woodshed and found a canvas bag that had some gold pieces in the bottom of it, a couple of fives that had stuck in the folds of the sack, when the gold had been dumped out. Then I came back and made this here Lamb put his finger prints on paper, and they checked up with the finger prints on the safe.”