CHAPTER V BERTILLON METHODS AND SOME OTHERS

The first thing to do, I saw clearly, was to go back to Barker's office and verify my recollections of the place, particularly of the apple peelings. Fortune favored me. The rooms had been locked up the night before by the police, and were therefore undisturbed, and the chief did not hesitate, under the present conditions, to give me the keys.

"Our work is done," he said complacently. "The murderer is found."

I didn't remind him that the force had had precious little to do with putting Eugene Benbow behind bars. I took the keys and went to the place of the tragedy.

I let myself into the office, and locked the door after me, so that I might be undisturbed during my examination. It looked quite as bare and unattractive as I remembered it. Here was the chair and table where I had sat examining my mother's locket when I had received that curious impression of being watched. I examined the glass door between the two rooms and sat down in the chair which had been drawn up near it, in the inner office. It commanded a full view of the outer office; and the curtain which fell over the glass made the fact that one pane was broken unnoticeable. Here the assassin sat and watched me, and here he had sat when Barker entered. I paused a moment to be thankful that the light in the outer office had been good!

Beside the chair, in a waste-basket, was the heap of apple parings I had noticed. It needed only a glance to show me that they had curled and withered and turned dark since I saw them. Then they were freshly cut,--no question about that. The man who had sat there waiting and watching had been munching apples. And Eugene Benbow did not like apples!

I carefully gathered up the parings and spread them out on the table. They showed two colors. Plainly he had sampled different varieties. Then I glanced at the basket of apples which still stood on the table. It was like the three in the other room. I picked up one of the apples--and whistled. Cut sharply into the tough skin was the imprint of teeth! The murderer would seem to have tested this apple by the primitive method of biting it; and he had not liked the flavor. I picked up another. The mark of teeth was on this also, and even plainer. It struck me that the mark showed irregularities that ought to help in identifying the owner. They were evidently crowded teeth, with no space between them, and on both sides the crowding had forced two of the teeth outward in a wedge. If a man could be identified by his finger print, why not by the print of his teeth? Especially when he had teeth so peculiar. I hastily locked the office, postponing further examination of the rooms until I should have had taken measures to preserve the records of the two bitten apples. I had an idea that my dentist could help me there. As I came out into the hall, I saw a man with gray hair and beard--a countryman, I gathered at first glance,--who stood looking at the door of the Western Improvement Company in a dazed kind of way. I passed him, and then hesitated, wondering if I should, in common humanity, speak to him. He looked bewildered or ill. But he paid no attention to me or my halt, and I walked on, thinking that he was probably merely one of the morbidly curious who are attracted to the scene of any crime. It seemed strange, afterwards, when I realized that I had had the chance offered me of getting into touch with the man who was going to be so important a link in my chain of evidence, and that I had almost lost the chance. But as it turned out, it was as well. But I must tell things in order.

I found Dr. Kenton more than ready to be interested. He was an enthusiast in his profession, and though his dissertations on acclusial contacts and marsupial elevations (I know that's wrong, but it sounds like that)--though these things bored me when I wanted to make a sitting short, I was now glad to draw upon his professional interest.

"I want you to look at the marks of teeth in these apples," I said. "Distinct, aren't they?"

"Beautiful! Beautiful!" he murmured.

"Can you make a wax model like that, so as to hold that record permanently?"

"Certainly. Nothing easier."

"Then I wish you would. Could you, perhaps, make a set of teeth that would fit those marks?"

He examined the apples carefully, and nodded his head. "I can."

"Then I commission you to do that also. Should you say there was anything peculiar about those teeth? Anything identifying?"

"Yes. Certainly. The jaw is uncommonly narrow for an adult--"

"But you are sure it is an adult?" I asked anxiously. The possibility that a child might have been sampling Barker's apples struck me for the first time. But Dr. Kenton reassured me.

"It is an adult, is it not?"

"I don't know who it is. What I want to do is to use this record to identify the man who bit these apples,--let's call him Adam for the present. I am hoping that his inherited taste for the fatal fruit may in time lead to his fall. In other words, Dr. Kenton, I am trying to identify a criminal of whom I have, at present, no information except that I believe him to be the man who put his teeth into these apples. If I find my suspicions focusing upon anyone in particular, I shall call upon you to examine his teeth. You understand, of course, that all this is in professional confidence and in the cause of justice."

Dr. Kenton's eyes lighted up with a glow of triumph. He put out his hand.

"Let me shake hands with you. That is an idea which I have been urging through the dental journals for years. The insurance companies should require dental identification in any case of uncertainty. There is no means of identification so absolutely certain."

"I am glad to have you confirm my impression, Doctor. Now, you will have to take this impression before the fruit withers, and then I want you to come with me to the morgue and get an impression of the teeth of Alfred Barker, the man who was killed last night in the Ph?nix Building."

"Did he bite that?" Dr. Kenton asked, with a tone of awe.

"I am sure he did not. I want to be able to prove he did not, if that claim should be made." And I explained to him enough of the situation to secure his sympathetic understanding.

"I see. I see. Well, nothing will be easier to establish than whether he did or didn't. Whoever it was that left this record of an important part of his anatomy can be identified."

"If we can first catch him," I said.

"Surely. But it is an uncommon jaw,--narrow and prominent."

"Then I shall want to have you see my client Eugene Benbow. It will not be necessary for you to do anything more than to look at him, will it?"

"That will be enough. I can tell at a glance whether his jaw has this conformation. Or, find out who his dentist is, and I will get the information from him without his knowing it."

"Good. Now when can you go with me to the morgue? The sooner the better."

He made an appointment for later in the day, and I left him.

I hurried back to my office, for there were a number of things I had to see to before going to keep my appointment with Dr. Kenton. While I was yet a block away, I saw a young girl running down the street toward me. It did not occur to me that she was coming for me until she came near enough for me to recognize Jean Benbow. Then I hastened to meet her.

"What is it?" I asked anxiously.

"Come quick," she exclaimed--and even then I noticed that her swift run had not taken her breath away. "There's another one here to look after."

I didn't understand what she meant, but I saw that I was needed somewhere and I broke into a run myself. She guided me to Barney's stand. Behind it, on the ground, lay a man, with a beautiful woman--Katherine Thurston it was--dabbling his head with a wet handkerchief while Barney poured something out of a bottle into a tin dipper. (Barney could be guaranteed to keep some of the joy of life with him under the most desolating of conditions.)

"If you'll give him a sup of this, Mr. Hilton," he said confidentially, as I came up, "'tis all the poor cratur will need. A wooden leg is the divil for kneeling down, and I couldn't be asking a lady like that to handle the shtuff, ye understand."

I took the dipper and knelt down beside the fallen man,--and at once I recognized him as the rustic whom I had seen, looking dazed and bewildered, outside of Barker's office a few hours before. He opened his eyes, looked about vacantly, and made a feeble effort to rise.

"Drink this, and you will feel better," I said. (A sniff had convinced me that Barney's prescription wasn't half bad.) He drank it and coughed.

"He's coming around all right," I said. "What happened? Faint?"

Barney rubbed his chin dubiously. "I'm thinking he had his wits about him all right when he made out to faint jist at the time the ladies was coming by. If it wa'n't for the sinse he showed in that, I'd say he was a bit looney."

"Why?"

"He came down the street like a drunk man, but he wasn't drunk, begging the ladies' pardon, I could see that with me eyes shut. When he came by my bit of a stand he took hould of it with both hands and leaned across to look at me like I was his ould brother. 'He's dead,' he says. 'Who's dead,' says I. 'He's dead,' says he again. 'He's escaped.' And with that he fell to the ground, and if the ladies hadn't come out that minute from yon door, and yourself came running, it's meself that would have had to go down on me wooden knee that don't bend, to lift his head off the stones."

I spoke to the man, trying to learn his name and address. He was not unconscious but he seemed dazed or distrustful, and I could get nothing from him. By this time quite a group of people had gathered about us,--indeed, I wondered that they had not come before, but as a matter of fact the man had fallen only a few seconds before I came upon the scene. (Miss Thurston and Jean had been up to my office, it appeared, and had been coming away at that moment.)

The few words that Barney repeated from the man's dazed remarks before he fell, and the fact that I had seen him in the Ph?nix Building of course made me feel that I wanted to keep him under my own surveillance until I could find out what, if anything, he knew of Barker. I therefore hurried a boy off to call a carriage, and when it came I helped the old man in and drove to the St. James Hospital.

"What's the matter with him?" I asked the attending physician--after I had got him installed.

"Hard to tell yet. He fainted on the street, you say? He is obviously exhausted, but what the cause or the outcome may be, I can't tell you yet."

"I want you to let me know the minute he is sufficiently restored to talk. And don't let anyone talk to him until I have seen him."

The doctor raised his eyebrows. I handed him my card.

"There is a possibility that he may know something about the Barker murder," I said.

The doctor looked surprised. "Why, I thought the murderer had confessed. Is there anything further to investigate?"

"We haven't all of the facts yet," I answered. "This man may know something, and again he may not. But don't let him talk to anyone until I have quizzed him. Will you see to that?"

"Oh, all right," he said easily. "The old fellow isn't likely to be quite himself until he has slept the clock around, I judge. I'll telephone you when he is able to see visitors. What makes you think he knows anything about it?"

"Oh, just a guess," I said.

Really, come to look at it, I had very slight foundation for the feeling I had that something was going to come out of the old man's revelations; but that isn't the first or the last time that an unreasoning impulse has been of more value to me than all the learning of the schools.