“Well, what d’you say to the day after tomorrow, Mr. Bunting? I’d call for you here about—shall we say half-past two?—and just take you and Miss Daisy down to the Yard. ’Twouldn’t take very long; we could go all the way by bus, right down to Westminster Bridge.” He looked round at his hostess: “Wouldn’t you join us, Mrs. Bunting? ’Tis truly a wonderful interesting place.”
But his hostess shook her head decidedly. “ ’Twould turn me sick,” she exclaimed, “to see the bottle of poison what had done away with the life of some poor creature!
“And as for knives—!” a look of real horror, of startled fear, crept over her pale face.
“There, there!” said Bunting hastily. “Live and let live—that’s what I always say. Ellen ain’t on in this turn. She can just stay at home and mind the cat—I beg his pardon, I mean the lodger!”
“I won’t have Mr. Sleuth laughed at,” said Mrs. Bunting darkly. “But there! I’m sure it’s very kind of you, Joe, to think of giving Bunting and Daisy such a rare treat”—she spoke sarcastically, but none of the three who heard her understood that.
IX
The moment she passed though the great arched door which admits the stranger to that portion of New Scotland Yard where throbs the heart of that great organism which fights the forces of civilised crime, Daisy Bunting felt that she had indeed become free of the Kingdom of Romance. Even the lift in which the three of them were whirled up to one of the upper floors of the huge building was to the girl a new and delightful experience. Daisy had always lived a simple, quiet life in the little country town where dwelt Old Aunt and this was the first time a lift had come her way.
With a touch of personal pride in the vast building, Joe Chandler marched his friends down a wide, airy corridor.
Daisy clung to her father’s arm, a little bewildered, a little oppressed by her good fortune. Her happy young voice was stilled by the awe she felt at the wonderful place where she found herself, and by the glimpses she caught of great rooms full of busy, silent men engaged in unravelling—or so she supposed—the mysteries of crime.
They were passing a half-open door when Chandler suddenly stopped short. “Look in there,” he said, in a low voice, addressing the father rather than the daughter, “that’s the Fingerprint Room. We’ve records here of over two hundred thousand men’s and women’s fingertips! I expect you know, Mr. Bunting, as how, once we’ve got the print of a man’s five fingertips, well, he’s done for—if he ever does anything else, that is. Once we’ve got that bit of him registered he can’t never escape us—no, not if he tries ever so. But though there’s nigh on a quarter of a million records in there, yet it don’t take—well, not half an hour, for them to tell whether any particular man has ever been convicted before! Wonderful thought, ain’t it?”
“Wonderful!” said Bunting, drawing a deep breath. And then a troubled look came over his stolid face. “Wonderful, but also a very fearful thought for the poor wretches as has got their fingerprints in, Joe.”
Joe laughed. “Agreed!” he said. “And the cleverer ones knows that only too well. Why, not long ago, one man who knew his record was here safe, managed to slash about his fingers something awful, just so as to make a blurred impression—you takes my meaning? But there, at the end of six weeks the skin grew all right again, and in exactly the same little creases as before!”
“Poor devil!” said Bunting under his breath, and a cloud even came over Daisy’s bright eager face.
They were now going along a narrower passage, and then again they came to a half-open door, leading into a room far smaller than that of the Fingerprint Identification Room.
“If you’ll glance in there,” said Joe briefly, “you’ll see how we finds out all about any man whose fingertips has given him away, so to speak. It’s here we keeps an account of what he’s done, his previous convictions, and so on. His fingertips are where I told you, and his record in there—just connected by a number.”
“Wonderful!” said Bunting, drawing in his breath. But Daisy was longing to get on—to get to the Black Museum. All this that Joe and her father were saying was quite unreal to her, and, for the matter of that not worth taking the trouble to understand. However, she had not long to wait.
A broad-shouldered, pleasant-looking young fellow, who seemed on very friendly terms with Joe Chandler, came forward suddenly, and, unlocking a commonplace-looking door, ushered the little party of three through into the Black Museum.
For a moment there came across Daisy a feeling of keen disappointment and surprise. This big, light room simply reminded her of what they called the Science Room in the public library of the town where she lived with Old Aunt. Here, as there, the centre was taken up with plain glass cases fixed at a height from the floor which enabled their contents to be looked at closely.
She walked forward and peered into the case nearest the door. The exhibits shown there were mostly small, shabby-looking little things, the sort of things one might turn out of an old rubbish cupboard in an untidy house—old medicine bottles, a soiled neckerchief, what looked like a child’s broken lantern, even a box of pills …
As for the walls, they were covered with the queerest-looking objects; bits of old iron, odd-looking things made of wood and leather, and so on.
It was really rather disappointing.
Then Daisy Bunting gradually became aware that standing on a shelf just below the first of the broad, spacious windows which made the great room look so light and shadowless, was a row of life-size white plaster heads, each head slightly inclined to the right. There were about a dozen
