The Silent Bullet. Arthur B. Reeve
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I will,” I replied, glad to get my errand done in first-class fashion in that way.
Things must have been running smoothly, for while I was sitting in our apartment after dinner, impatiently waiting for half-past eight, when the commissioner had promised to call for me and go up to the laboratory, the telephone rang. It was Craig.
“Walter, might I ask a favour of you?” he said. “When the commissioner comes ask him to stop at the Louis Quinze and bring Miss Bisbee up, too. Tell her it is important. No more now. Things are going ahead fine.”
Promptly at nine we were assembled, a curious crowd. The health commissioner and the inspector, being members of the same political party, greeted each other by their first names. Miss Bisbee was nervous, Bridget was abusive, Denny was sullen. As for Kennedy, he was, as usual, as cool as a lump of ice. And I—well, I just sat on my feelings to keep myself quiet.
At one end of the room Craig had placed a large white sheet such as he used in his stereopticon lectures, while at the top of the tier of seats that made a sort of little amphitheatre out of his lecture-room his stereopticon sputtered.
“Moving pictures to-night, eh?” said Inspector O'Connor.
“Not exactly,” said Craig, “though—yes, they will be moving in another sense. Now, if we are all ready, I'll switch off the electric lights.”
The calcium sputtered some more, and a square of light was thrown on the sheet.
Kennedy snapped a little announcer such as lecturers use. “Let me invite your attention to these enlargements of finger-prints,” he began, as a huge thumb appeared on the screen. “Here we have a series of finger-prints which I will show one after another slowly. They are all of the fingers of the same person, and they were found on some empty bottles of spring water used at Bisbee Hall during the two weeks previous to the departure of Mr. Bisbee for New York.
“Here are, in succession, the finger-prints of the various servants employed about the house—and of a guest,” added Craig, with a slight change of tone. “They differ markedly from the finger-prints on the glass,” he continued, as one after another appeared, “all except this last one. That is identical. It is, Inspector, what we call a composite type of finger-print—in this case a combination of what is called the 'loop' and 'whorl' types.”
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