a kind of incandescent charm that was lacking in the simple, sober Walters. Dab walked over to the young detective, put his hands on his shoulders.
“Allan, my boy,” he said. “This is a terrible thing, I know. But you have to pull yourself together. You must help us find Pat.”
Walters sobbed, broke down completely. “Oh, God, Mr. Dab, why did I leave her alone in the car like that?”
“It wasn’t your fault, boy. Nobody blames you.”
Captain Haas spoke. “Mr. Dab,” he said, “if you’ll be good enough, please take a look at those cards that are spread on the floor. Linton must have arranged them while he was dying. He seemed to want to direct your attention to them especially. We have a pretty good idea of what they mean, but we’d like to know what they convey to you.”
Somewhat hesitantly Dab crossed the room. He stood looking down at the cards. It took only a few seconds for their meaning to stab into him like a knife. He knew now what Romano had meant when he had said “It’s in the cards.” But Dab didn’t want to admit that this could be the only meaning. He stalled. He tried desperately to make his devious mind bring forth another answer.
“Well, Mr. Dab,” said Captain Haas. “What do you see?”
“Not much I’m afraid, not right off,” Dab replied. “I know what the cards are, of course. The fingerprint symbols Phil used to illustrate his talks.”
“Just tell us what you see,” the captain prompted.
Dab resorted to a little ad-libbing and wished he might depend upon an off-stage prompter. “Well,” he said, “Phil taught me the rudiments of fingerprinting from time to time. I know the names of these symbols, I think. The first is a simple arch. The second’s rather odd. It’s a loop shape, all right, but it’s not inclined or marked in any way, so it can’t be called either ulnar or radial. It just goes straight up and down, and loops don’t do that on the fingertips. They have to be one thing or the other. Loops are the patterns most frequently encountered in fingerprinting, I believe.”
Dab paused.
“Go on,” urged Haas.
“Well, after the space . . .”
“After the space,” snorted Inspector Sansone. “The space is the only important thing, sir. Keep that space in mind.”
Dab groaned inwardly. There could be no doubt that they had seen it, too.
Dab named the cards that appeared after the space—the whorl, the accidental, the lateral pocket, the tented arch, the exceptional arch. He paused when he came to the eighth card, said, “The next to last is another loop, but this time the way the markings are inclined show plainly it’s a radial type loop, one that points toward the thumb, since it’s the eighth card and would be on the left hand. The final card is very strange indeed. It’s not a symbol for a pattern. It’s a symbol for one of the five characteristics of fingerprints. It’s called a ridge fragment, isn’t it?”
“You pass one hundred per cent,” commented Captain Haas drily. “Now tell us what all this means.”
“I’m afraid I really don’t know,” Dab lied.
“Come on now, Mr. Dab,” growled the inspector. “You’re supposed to be good at puzzles, aren’t you? The meaning’s plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face. Think of the space, man.”
“How many cards do you see on the floor?” asked Haas. Dab pretended to count. “Nine,” he answered.
“How many fingers do most people have?” asked Haas.
“Ten, of course,” said Dab.
“You see a space between the cards?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Between the second and third cards.”
“Assuming that a fingerprint man arranged those cards, he would begin with the right hand. So the card for what finger would be missing?”
“The middle finger of the right hand,” Dab answered miserably.
“Exactly,” said Haas. “In fingerprinting that missing card would be called an amp. Meaning an amputation, of course. What we have are cards that point out a nine-fingered man, a man with the middle finger of his right hand amputated. Do you know such a man, Mr. Dab?”
Dab wiped his brow with a linen handkerchief. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, of course I do.”
“And his name?”
“Abner Ellison,” said Dab. “He lost the middle finger of his right hand in the war.”
“See what I mean about a deathbed statement, honey boy?” asked Romano.
“Convinced, Mr. Dab?” the inspector asked. “We’re lucky in a way. Most of us were Phil Linton’s friends. Had been for years. We’d visited his house, knew his family well. That’s why he was able to leave evidence he was sure we’d understand. That’s why we’ve been able to clear this thing up in a matter of minutes insteads of days or weeks.”
“We’ve still got to find the girl,” Romano reminded him. “Finding the girl’s what counts. We can’t save Linton now, but we can save the girl—maybe.”
“We’ll find her.” The old inspector wagged his big head. “When we find Ellison we’ll find the girl and pray to the Almighty that she’s still alive. Questioning suspects is supposed to be a lot of psychological rot, these days. But me, I’m an old-time cop. Just find Ellison and leave me alone with him in a locked room.” The inspector held out his two enormous, hair-spiked hands. “When I get these meat-hooks of mine on him, he’ll talk.”
Oh, God, thought Dab, they’re talking about my boy. Yes, he was my boy, almost as much as he was Phil’s. I remember when they first brought him here. He was such a little fellow with such big eyes and so much terror in them. We used to walk together then when I came up here, and sometimes when we were coming up the hill he’d put his hand in mine. Phil used to laugh at us. “Dab and Ab,” he’d say. “You remind me of Mike and Ike, They Look Alike.” We’d sit out on the front steps in the summer and I’d make up stories for him about the Mad Hatter’s Castle and the beautiful princess in the tower. Was it his tenth birthday or his eleventh that I gave him the baseball uniform and the Louisville Slugger bat? He always had a front-row seat for the Wednesday matinée when I was in a play, and I’d look down and wink at him. Then there was the first night of the Lonsdale play, he was about sixteen then, and he wore his first tuxedo, the one charged to my account at Brooks Brothers, and Pat was beside him, no more than a child of twelve wearing a frilly dress, and Allan Walters, wearing his first tux, too, and looking scrawny and all Adam’s apple. And then the news from the War Department when Rundstedt struck back in the Ardennes and we didn’t know if he’d lost a leg or an arm or his eyes and how relieved we were when we found it was only a finger.
Only a finger!
A damnable, obscene, amputated finger that points to him and calls him “Murderer!”
Dab
