CHAPTER IV

DICK LOOKED at the thumbprint, hardly believing the evidence of his senses. The Slough murder was one of the classic cases where an unknown man commits a murder in broad daylight, escapes leaving a fingerprint, is not arrested, and disappears as though the earth has opened for him. How many hundreds, how many thousands of new criminals who had fallen into the hands of the police had had their thumbprints taken and compared with the mark on the pistol? He himself had examined the impressions, every whorl, every isla…