“Wait, please,” said Stephen Bellamy very clearly and distinctly. “You’re quite right about the fact that I’m confused. I can see perfectly that I’m making an absolute mess of this. It’s principally because I haven’t had any sleep since God knows when, and when you don’t sleep, you—”
“Mr. Bellamy, I’m sorry that I can’t let you go into that. Will you answer my question?”
“I can’t answer your question. But I can tell you this, Mr. Farr—I can tell you that as God is my witness, Susan Ives and I had nothing more to do with this murder than you had. I—”
“Your Honour! Your Honour!”
“Be silent, sir!” Judge Carver’s voice was more imperious than his gavel. “You are completely forgetting yourself. Let that entire remark be stricken from the record. Mr. Lambert, be good enough to keep your witness in hand. I regard this entire performance as highly improper.”
Mr. Lambert, a pale ghost of his rubicund self, advanced haltingly from where he had sat transfixed during the last interminable minutes. “I ask the Court’s indulgence for the witness, Your Honour. He took the stand today against the express advice of his physicians, who informed him that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As it is now almost four, I ask that the court adjourn until tomorrow, when Mr. Bellamy will again take the stand if the prosecutor wishes to continue the cross-examination.”
Judge Carver leaned forward, frowning.
“If it please Your Honour,” said the prosecutor, briskly magnanimous, “that won’t be necessary. I’ve finished with Mr. Bellamy, and unless my friend wishes to ask him anything on redirect—”
“Nothing on redirect,” said Mr. Lambert hollowly, his eyes on the exhausted despair of the face before him. “That will be all, Mr. Bellamy.”
Slowly, stiffly, as though his very limbs had been wrenched by torture, Stephen Bellamy moved down the steps from the box, where there still rested Mimi Bellamy’s lace dress and silver slippers. When he stood a foot or so from his chair, he stopped for a moment, stared about him wildly, turning on the girl seated a little space away a look of dreadful inquiry. There she sat, slim and straight, with colour warm on her cheeks and bright in her lips, smiling that gay, friendly smile that was always waiting just behind the serene indifference of her eyes. And painfully, carefully, Stephen Bellamy twisted his stiffened lips to greet it, turned his face away and sat down. Even those across the courtroom could watch the ripple in his cheeks as his teeth clenched, unclenched, clenched.
“If Your Honour has no objection,” the prosecutor was saying in that smooth new voice, “the witness that I spoke of yesterday is now in the court. He is still under his doctor’s orders, but he had an unusually good night, and is quite able to take the stand; he is anxious to do so, in fact, as he is supposed to get off for a rest as soon as possible. His testimony won’t take more than a few moments.”
“Very well, let him take the stand.”
“Call Dr. Barretti.”
“Dr. Gabriel Barretti.”
Dr. Barretti, looking much more like a distinguished diplomat than most distinguished diplomats ever look, mounted the stand with the caution of one newly risen from a hospital cot and settled himself comfortably in the uncomfortable chair. A small, close-clipped gray moustache, a fine sleek head of graying hair, a not displeasing touch of hospital pallor, brilliant eyes behind pince-nez on the most inobstrusive of black cords, and the tiny flame of the Legion of Honour ribbon lurking discreetly in his buttonhole—Dr. Barretti was far from suggesting the family physician. He turned toward the prosecutor with an air of gravely courteous interest.
“Dr. Barretti, what is your profession?”
“I believe that I might describe myself, without too much presumption, as a fingerprint expert.”
There was no trace of accent in Dr. Barretti’s finely modulated voice, and only the neatest touch of humourous deprecation.
“The greatest authority in the world today, aren’t you, Doctor?”
“It would ill become me to say so, sir, and I might find an unflattering number to disagree with me.”
“Still, it’s an undisputed fact. How long has fingerprinting been your occupation?”
“It has been both my occupation and my hobby for about thirty-two years.”
“You started to make a study of it then?”
“A little before that. I studied at the time, however, with Sir Francis Galton in England and Bertillon in France. I also did considerable experimental work in Germany.”
“Sir Francis Galton and Bertillon were the pioneers in the use of fingerprints for identification, were they not?”
“Hardly that. Fingerprints for the purpose of identification were used in the Far East before history was invented to record it.”
Mr. Farr frowned impatiently. “They were its foremost modern exponents as a means of criminal identification?”
“Perfectly true. They were pioneers and very distinguished authorities.”
“Shortly before his death in , did Sir Francis Galton write a monograph on some recent developments in fingerprint classification?”
“He did.”
“Did the dedication read ‘To Gabriel Barretti, My Pupil and My Master’?”
“Yes. Sir Francis was more than generous.”
“Are you officially associated with any organization at present?”
“Oh, yes. I am very closely associated with the work of the Central Bureau of Identification in New York, and with the work of the Army and Navy Bureau in Washington.”
“You are the court of final appeal in both places, are you not?”
“I believe so. I am also an official consultant of both Scotland Yard and the Paris Sûreté.”
“Exactly. Is there any opportunity of error in identification by means of fingerprints?”
“Granted a moderately clear impression and an able and honest expert to read it, there is not the remotest
