ordeal for a young fellow who has lost his benefactor by so cruel
a stroke–and they are right.” He resumed his speech:
“For more than twenty years I have amused my compulsory
leisure with collecting these curious physical signatures in this town.
At my house I have hundreds upon hundreds of them.
Each and every one is labeled with name and date; not labeled the
next day or even the next hour, but in the very minute that the
impression was taken. When I go upon the witness stand I will
repeat under oath the things which I am now saying. I have the
fingerprints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury.
There is hardly a person in this room, white or black,
whose natal signature I cannot produce, and not one of them can
so disguise himself that I cannot pick him out from a multitude
of his fellow creatures and unerringly identify him by his hands.
And if he and I should live to be a hundred I could still do it.
[The interest of the audience was steadily deepening now.]
“I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know
them as well as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his
oldest customer. While I turn my back now, I beg that several
persons will be so good as to pass their fingers through their hair,
and then press them upon one of the panes of the window
near the jury, and that among them the accused may set THEIR
finger marks. Also, I beg that these experimenters, or others,
will set their fingers upon another pane, and add again the marks
of the accused, but not placing them in the same order or
relation to the other signatures as before–for, by one chance in
a million, a person might happen upon the right marks by pure guesswork,
ONCE, therefore I wish to be tested twice.”
He turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered
with delicately lined oval spots, but visible only to such
persons as could get a dark background for them–the foliage of a tree,
outside, for instance. Then upon call, Wilson went to the
window, made his examination, and said:
“This is Count Luigi’s right hand; this one, three
signatures below, is his left. Here is Count Angelo’s right;
down here is his left. How for the other pane: here and here
are Count Luigi’s, here and here are his brother’s.” He faced about.
“Am I right?”
A deafening explosion of applause was the answer.
The bench said:
“This certainly approaches the miraculous!”
Wilson turned to the window again and remarked,
pointing with his finger:
“This is the signature of Mr. Justice Robinson. [Applause.]
This, of Constable Blake. [Applause.] This of John Mason, juryman.
[Applause.] This, of the sheriff. [Applause.]
I cannot name the others, but I have them all at home, named and dated,
and could identify them all by my fingerprint records.”
He moved to his place through a storm of applause–which the
sheriff stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were
all standing and struggling to see, of course. Court, jury,
sheriff, and everybody had been too absorbed in observing
Wilson’s performance to attend to the audience earlier.
“Now then,” said Wilson, “I have here the natal autographs
of the two children–thrown up to ten times the natural size by
the pantograph, so that anyone who can see at all can tell the
markings apart at a glance. We will call the children A and B.
Here are A’s finger marks, taken at the age of five months.
Here they are again taken at seven months. [Tom started.]
They are alike, you see. Here are B’s at five months, and also at
seven months. They, too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns
are quite different from A’s, you observe. I shall refer to these
again presently, but we will turn them face down now.
“Here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the
two persons who are here before you accused of murdering Judge Driscoll.
I made these pantograph copies last night, and will so
swear when I go upon the witness stand. I ask the jury to