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

      “That’s good news,” said Dillingham. “We can certainly use a little help. This town’s in crying need of such an insti­tution.”

      “So I understand. Too bad the city wouldn’t meet the board’s proposition as stated some time ago in the papers.”

      “You mean our offer to put up one hundred thousand dollars, if the city would contribute fifty thousand dollars, and make it a semi-public institution?”

      “Exactly. But what else can anybody expect,” asked T. Ashley, “with men like Hanrahan and Levitsky pulling the puppet strings and working for their own pockets instead of the public wel­fare?”

      “What else, indeed?”

      “Men like that can always be counted on to block any forward-looking move. They’re not merely content with throw­ing sticks in the wheel of progress, but they rob the taxpayers right and left.”

      “Correct,” agreed the doctor.

      “By the way,” said T. Ashley, chang­ing the subject, “what do you think of this?”

      He drew from his inside coat pocket a sheet of paper and spread it on the doctor’s desk. Dillingham put on his glasses, looked at it a moment, and then, with the slightest suggestion of a frown, replied: “I don’t quite understand you. Are you asking for my opinion of this rather highly magnified fingerprint?”

      T. Ashley bent forward, pointing with the tip of a pencil. “What do you make of that?” asked he.

      “Of what?”

      “This mark, here, a little to the left of the middle of the print.”

      “It—well, it looks like a scar, to me.”

      “Yes, so it does—superficially. Have you no other opinion, doctor?”

      “I don’t understand you,” said Dill­ingham. “Are you here to talk hospi­tal or fingerprints?”

      “A little of both, maybe.”

      “I mean, is this a professional or a nonprofessional call?”

      “Oh, highly professional on both sides, I assure you!”

      “You’re talking in riddles, I must say,” said the doctor. “Well, I’m used to riddles. I get lots of them in my practice. Every doctor does.”

      “But few,” declared T. Ashley, “solve their riddles with the proverbial ‘neat­ness and dispatch’ that characterize you. Let us now return to the matter of this fingerprint. Would you say, doctor, that this mark—here, on the print—was made by a scar?”

      “Looks like it,” said the doctor. His fingers began to drum a bit nervously on his chair arm, but quickly stopped.

      “Ah, but look closer.”

      “Well, then?”

      “Study the print with a magnifying glass, if you have one handy.”

      The doctor, seeming altogether mys­tified, opened a drawer of his desk, took out a glass, and examined the print.

      “That mark certainly looks like a scar to me,” he declared.

      “In a scar, however,” objected T. Ashley, “the edges would be smoothly healed. Here, you see, they are rough. And, moreover, there are several marks—in the scar itself—that look like tiny, wandering chains. Concatenated mark­ings, to be technical.”

      “Well, what of it?” demanded Dillingham. He seemed a bit impatient.

      “As a physician, you know that scar tissue presents no such markings.”

      “True enough. But what in the world are you driving at, Mr. Ashley? This is all very puzzling, I must say.” The doctor frowned. “First you talk hos­pital, and speak of a donation. Then you catechize me about fingerprints, and now—well, what are you coming at, anyhow?”

      “At the obvious conclusion that this mark, here on this fingerprint, was not produced by a scar at all, but by another kind of skin altogether from human skin.”

      “I don’t seem to follow you,” said the doctor, laying down his magnifying glass.

      “To state it still more plainly,” ex­pounded T. Ashley, “when the original fingerprint was made, from which this microphotograph was taken, there was another piece of skin—a nonhuman skin—under the skin that made the print.”

      “Oh, a graft, perhaps?” said Dillingham, as if an idea had occurred to him.

      “No—though this whole matter is connected with one, to pardon a collo­quialism. There are no signs of growths, adhesions, or anything of that kind. In fact, both skins from which this print was made were dead skins.”

      “Dead?”

      “Quite so. And, as I have said be­fore, the smaller piece of skin was not human at all.”

      “But I don’t understand. If not hu­man, what then?”

      “The skin of an animal. To be more accurate, a dog.”

      VII.

      Doctor Dillingham’s eyes fell. A slight moisture covered his forehead; but then, the day was very warm.

      “This is all quite beyond my compre­hension,” said he. “And, moreover, why are you telling me these details? What do you want of me?”

      “Ah, that,” said T. Ashley, “will de­velop later. For the moment, let me tell you a little story. A simple, unvarnished tale. Do you mind if I smoke?”

      “Not at all. I’ll join you.”

      T. Ashley lighted a cigar; the doctor, a pipe. T. Ashley by no means failed to note the tremor of Doctor Dilling­ham’s hand as the match hung above the pipe bowl, but the doctor smiled and said: “A good story is always accept­able, though I must confess you’ve got me mystified. This is certainly an odd consultation.”

      “It’s an odd case,” declared T. Ash­ley. “The story is even more so—but a capital one. It begins with the elec­trocution of a notorious stickup man and murderer, Peter W. Blau, alias Dutch Pete, and so forth, last February, at Prestonville.”

      “Well?” asked the doctor, trying to look at T. Ashley.

      “Well, Dutch Pete’s body remained unclaimed, and was handed over for dissection to a certain medical school, which I won’t name. So much I know. From this point on I shall fill in, with deduc­tions, certain gaps which occur between the established facts. You see, I am quite frank with you. I’m showing you my whole box of tricks.”

      “This is certainly mystifying!” mur­mured the doctor.

      “Is it not? But vastly instructive. Let us, however, not go into side issues. Let us stick to the fate and fortunes of Dutch Pete, who in death has been des­tined to carry on his chosen profession in a most extraordinary manner, though perhaps to quite a different end than any he himself would have chosen.”

      “I’m sure,” said Dillingham, “this is all most incomprehensible.”

      “You’ll soon understand. A certain physician and surgeon connected with the above-unmentioned medical school got possession of Dutch Pete’s hands—possibly in connection with some re­search work regarding the character­istics of criminal types.”

      “Interesting!” commented the doctor, blowing much smoke.

      “Is it not?”

      “And what part of the story are you telling me now?” asked Dillingham. “Fact or inference?”

      “Inference. Deduction, I should say. You’ll soon see where the deduction hitches on to solid fact again. Now, it so happened that this same physician was a leading spirit in a proposed public improvement, the carrying out of which was blocked by a couple of