The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

that’s all. He got them prints doped wrong.”

      “McDonald never gets anything wrong!” And T. Ashley thumped the desk again. “The modern science of fingerprinting never makes a mistake. Out of all the millions of prints in the world, there are no—”

      “Oh, yes, I know all about that. I’m hep. You don’t have to flash no lec­ture on fingerprints on me! All I’m sayin’ is that if Mac ‘made’ them prints as a guy’s that croaked six months ago, either he’s made a misplay or you’re wrong.”

      “Wrong about what?”

      “About this here Dutch Pete bein’ dead.”

      T. Ashley jerked open a drawer of his desk, took out a letter, shoved it at Scanlon.

      “How about that?” demanded he.

      Scanlon glanced at the signature. “From Warden Hotchkiss, eh?” said he. “Prestonville pen?”

      “Yes. If you want proof—”

      “‘Murder, first degree—’” read Scanlon. “‘Electrocuted, February 17th, 1922.’ Well, that’s official, all O.K.”

      “Rather!”

      “So then there’s only one answer.”

      “You mean,” demanded T. Ashley, “two men had the same name?”

      “Looks like it.”

      “Nothing of the kind happened in this case. When I got that word from Hotchkiss, I made another set of microphotographs and sent them to him. He wasn’t long in reporting. I just today got this letter from him.”

      “What’s he say?”

      “Read it for yourself!” And T. Ash­ley handed over another letter. Amazed, Scanlon read:

      The prints submitted have been carefully verified by comparison with our records. They are those of the man you refer to, viz.: Peter W. Blau.

      For a moment Scanlon paused, his brow knit. A dry smile curved the lips of T. Ashley.

      “Ye gods, I—I don’t get this at all!” admitted Scanlon, beginning to weaken.

      “Oh, I see you’re waking up to the situation, at last,” declared T. Ashley. “You understand, don’t you, that this report absolutely eliminates the double-identity hypothesis?”

      “Sure, sure. Well, then, the only flash I can take at it is that some fresh guy—but, no, that couldn’t be!”

      “You mean, somebody may have given you some prints of this Dutch Pete’s, made before his execution?”

      “Nobody could of,” insisted Scanlon, his mind a daze. “Why, I picked up them pieces of glass myself at the boss’s house!”

      “Well, then,” concluded T. Ashley, “those pieces were ‘planted’ there by somebody, for some purpose that, frankly, is beyond me.”

      “Not a-tall! Some o’ them prints was on pieces o’ glass that still stuck in the window sash. I put on a pair o’ gloves, careful, an’ worked ’em loose, myself. Wrapped ’em up, never touchin’ ’em with my own bare fingers, and brought ’em to you, without ever openin’ ’em.”

      “Then that package was changed somewhere on the way.”

      Scanlon laughed, with tense nerves. “You’re pretty good now an’ then, Ash­ley,” said he, “but once in a while you don’t even hit the outside ring. That there package never left my pocket from the time I shoved it in there till I laid it on this here desk!”

      “I tell you there must have been some substitution, somewhere along the line.”

      “And I tell you there wasn’t! Say, I even remember the shape of some o’ them pieces. I’ll go on any stand in this country an’ swear I give you the very identical pieces I started with.”

      “But in that case—”

      “Well, what?”

      “Hang it, Scanlon, we’re confronted by an insoluble mystery! A set of circumstances contrary to reason—a star­ing impossibility!”

      “Impossibilities has always been your specialty,” uttered Scan­lon, not without malice. “At least, anybody’d think so, the way you count yourself in on the Get There Club. D’you mean to say you’re ready to quit?”

      “Quit?” demanded T. Ashley. “I haven’t begun yet!”

      IV.

      T. ASHLEY HAD NO success whatever with his investigation. No train of rea­soning could lead him beyond what seemed a blank wall barring the path of deduction. Putting aside the super­natural as a factor in which he had no faith, he found himself confronted by a sphinx to whose question there was no Oedipus to bring an answer.

      A visit to Hanrahan’s house and an examination of the safe itself yielded nothing but more prints, all made by the man who six months before had paid the extreme penalty of the law in Prestonville penitentiary.

      “Well, I’m hanged!” exclaimed T. Ashley to himself, and when he, always loath to give up, had been forced to such a statement, matters had reached a desperate pitch.

      They became more desperate still, however, when, ten days later, Scanlon returned to the laboratory office with this petrifying news: “Sam Levitsky’s apartment, out in Maplewold, has been touched to the tune of thirty-three thou­sand!”

      “So?” demanded T. Ashley. “Well now, this is getting interesting, I must say!”

      “Too interesting!” said Scanlon. “It’s another crack at the boss, you see.”

      “Yes, yes, I suppose so. It’s practi­cally the same as a direct attack on Hanrahan—for what belongs to the boss is the boss’s, and what belongs to Levitsky is the boss’s, too. At least, so runs popu­lar rumor.”

      “Cor-rect,” Scanlon agreed. “Though that’s just between you an’ I. All part of the same job, what? Prob’ly same guy?”

      “I’ll have to look the ground over, before expressing any opin­ion as to that. But I should say it was all part of the original campaign. I’ll be lib­eral with you, for the sake of science, and consider this as part of the same case, at the same fee. The fact is,” added T. Ashley, “my professional in­terest is aroused. I’d like to know who has public spirit enough to direct an at­tack against Hanrahan & Co.”

      “I judge you ain’t strong for the boss, yourself.”

      “Not perceptibly—especially since he killed that appropriation for the ortho­pedic hospital, and—”

      “Now look here,” interrupted Scan­lon, “he had to do that. If he hadn’t, that silk-stockin’ gang of goo-goos would of—”

      “I’m not arguing municipal politics with you,” disclaimed T. Ashley, raising his hand. “All I’m doing is expressing an opinion. That opinion won’t inter­fere with my professional duties. I propose that we take a run out to Maplewold and look over the ground. Were there any traces left—that is, traces vis­ible to you?”

      “No. Nothin’ broken this time. A slicker job than the other.”

      “Practice makes perfect,” said T. Ashley, “even for a dead man.” He took his hat. “Well, let’s get along.”

      “The quicker—an’ the quieter—the better!” Scanlon declared.

      *****

      At the scene of the second robbery, T. Ashley carefully examined the prem­ises, while Levitsky poured out invec­tive and Scanlon adjured him to hold his peace. Levitsky’s third-floor apart­ment was in “The Rosalind,” facing Grosvenor Park. Entrance had been ef­fected through the dining-room window that gave upon a fire escape overlook­ing the alley. Nothing