“Come here, please: the standard first: take off your boots.”
Charles Rambert obeyed and stood under the standard of measurement, and then, as the assistant ordered him, he submitted to having his fingers smeared with ink so that his finger prints might be taken, to being photographed, full face and in profile, and finally to having the width of his head, from ear to ear, measured with a special pair of caliper compasses.
Hector was surprised by his docility.
“I must say your friend is not very talkative, M. Juve. What has he been up to?” and as the detective merely shrugged his shoulders and did not reply, he went on: “That’s done, sir. We will develop the negatives and take the prints, and recopy the measurements, and the record shall be classified in the register in a couple of hours.”
Charles Rambert grew momentarily more scared. He felt that he was definitely arrested now. But Juve left the armchair in which he had been resting, and coming up to him laid his hand upon his shoulder, speaking the while with a certain gentleness.
“Come: there are some other points as to which I wish to examine you.” He led him from the anthropometric room along a dark corridor, and presently taking a key from his pocket, opened a door and pushed the lad in before him. “Go in there,” he said. “This is where we make the dynamometer tests.”
A layman looking round the room might almost have supposed that it was merely some carpenter’s shop. Pieces of wood, of various shapes and sizes and sorts, were arranged along the wall or laid upon the floor; in glass cases were whole heaps of strips of metal, five or six inches long, and of varying thickness.
Juve closed the door carefully behind him.
“For pity’s sake, M. Juve, tell me what you are going to do with me,” Charles Rambert implored.
The detective smiled.
“Well, there you ask a question which I can’t answer offhand. What am I going to do with you, eh? That still depends upon a good many things.”
As he spoke Juve tossed his hat aside and, looking at a rather high kind of little table, proceeded to remove from it a grey cloth which protected it from dust, and drew it into the middle of the room. This article was composed of a metal body screwed on to a strong tripod, with a lower tray that moved backwards and forwards, and two lateral buttresses with a steel crosspiece firmly bolted on to them above. Upon this framework were two dynamometers worked by an ingenious piece of mechanism. Juve looked at Charles Rambert and explained.
“This is Dr. Bertillon’s effraction dynamometer. I am going to make use of it to find out at once whether you are or are not deserving of some little interest. I don’t want to tell you more just at present.” Juve slipped into a specially prepared notch a thin strip of wood, which he had selected with particular care from one of the heaps of material arranged along the wall. From a chest he took a tool which Charles Rambert, who had had some intimate experience of late with the light-fingered community, immediately recognised as a jemmy. “Take hold of that,” said Juve, and as Charles took it in his hand he added: “Now put the jemmy into this groove, and press with all your force. If you can move that needle to a point which I know, and which it is difficult but not impossible to reach, you may congratulate yourself on being in luck.”
Stimulated by this encouragement from the detective, Charles Rambert exerted all his force upon the lever, only afraid that he might not be strong enough. Juve stopped him very soon.
“That’s all right,” he said, and substituting a strip of sheet-iron for the strip of wood, he handed another tool to the lad. “Now try again.”
A few seconds later Juve took a magnifying lens, and closely examined both the strip of metal and the strip of wood. He gave a little satisfied click with his tongue, and seemed to be very pleased.
“Charles Rambert,” he remarked, “I think we are going to do a very good morning’s work. Dr. Bertillon’s new apparatus is an uncommonly useful invention.”
The detective might have gone on with his congratulatory monologue had not an attendant come into the room at that moment.
“Ah, there you are, M. Juve: I have been looking for you everywhere. There is someone asking for you who says he knows you will receive him. I told him this was not the proper time, but he was so insistent that I promised to bring you his card. Besides, he says you have given him an appointment.”
Juve took the card and glanced at it.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Take the gentleman into the parlour and tell him I will be with him in a minute.” The attendant went out and Juve looked at Charles Rambert with a smile. “You are played out,” he said; “before we do anything else common humanity requires that you should get some rest. Come, follow me; I will take you to a room where you can throw yourself on a sofa and get a sleep for a good hour at least while I go and see this visitor.” He led the lad into a small waiting-room, and as Charles Rambert obediently stretched himself upon the sofa, Juve looked at the pale and nervous and completely silent boy, and said with even greater gentleness: “There, go to sleep; sleep quietly, and presently—”
Juve left the room, and called a man to whom he gave an order in a low tone.
“Stay with that gentleman,
