ints, and
carefully compared them. Finally he straightened up and looked at us,
his face working.

"Do you know what this does, gentlemen?" he asked, in a voice husky
with emotion. "It strikes at the foundation of the whole system of
finger-print identification! It renders forever uncertain a method we
thought absolutely safe! It's the worst blow that has ever been
struck at the police!"

"You mean the prints agree with the photographs?" asked Godfrey, going
to his side.

"Absolutely!" said Sylvester, and mopped his face with a shaking hand.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE END OF THE CASE

To Sylvester, head of the Identification Bureau, it seemed that the
world was tottering to its fall; but the rest of us, who had not
really at the bottom of our hearts, perhaps, believed in the
infallibility of the finger-print system, took it more calmly. And
presently we went upstairs to take a look at the contents of Silva's
secret cupboard. When he had first come to the house, Miss Vaughan
explained, he had been given carte-blanche in this suite of rooms. He
had them remodelled, installed the circular divan and crystal sphere,
selected the hangings, and had at the same time, no doubt, caused the
secret cupboard to be built.

Its contents were most interesting. There was a box of aerial bombs,
which Godfrey turned over to Simmonds with the injunction to go and
amuse himself. For Sylvester's contemplation and further confusion
were the gloves with which Silva had managed his parlour mystification
scheme, six pairs of them; and there was also the very simple
apparatus with which the finger-print reproductions had been made--an
apparatus, as Godfrey had suggested, similar in every way to that
used for making rubber stamps. There, too, were the plates of zinc
upon which the impressions of the prints had been etched with acid.
And, finally, there were various odds and ends of a juggler's outfit,
as well as various bottles of perfumes, essences, and liquids whose
properties we could not guess.

Godfrey looked at the gloves carefully, as though in search of
something, and at last selected one of them with a little exclamation
of satisfaction.

"I thought so!" he said, and held it up. "Look at this glove,
Sylvester. You see it has never been used--there is no ink on it. Do
you know what it is? It's the print of Swain's left hand."

Sylvester took it and looked at it.

"It's a left hand all right," he said. "But what makes you t