Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 166: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

956 cf the skin at these points, due to the daily use of tools. Now what tool, if any, would press against the hand at these spots?” Pete carefully examined the evidence. It was a new problem to him and he felt cor- responding responsibility. He adjusted the professor’s hand this way and that. “It seems to me—” he ventured after five minutes of experiment. Then with pro- fessorial distrust of premature conclusions he withdrew his attempt at verdict and went over to a cabinet and selected a large variety of tools. One after another he placed these in Professor Goldie’s hand and showed him how to hold each, carefully noting where the handles touched the hand. Suddenly both exclaimed in triumph. The ink spots fitted perfectly to the places where the handle of an engraver’s carving tool would press on palm and fingers. ‘‘ Then he was an engraver,’ Pete de- clared with solemn finality. ‘‘ Yes, and that accounts for the fineness of the man’s skin texture and hair!” Pro- fessor Goldie exclaimed. ‘ He is an artizan and not a Jaborer. Thank you, Pete, very much!” “Tf it’s thanks that’s under discussion it isn’t for vou to hand them out, professor!” Pete declared combatively. ‘If it wasn’t for you doing that wonderful bit of detect- ing with the Chase murder poor little Meig’s University would have been bought by that window sash company for a factory, and I would have had to go back to making sar- dine cans.” Professor Goldie blushed, and they ex- changed further amenities quite unlike any that ever before passed between two men engaged in trailing an unknown murderer. Back in his porch laboratory Professor Goldie furtively took out from a cupboard one of his wife’s demi-tasse cups, which he had stolen for every kind of weird use but coffee. Mixing in it a semifluid paste of finely ground plaster, he smeared the bitten end of his cigar end with a bit of butter and carefully set it into the still soft mix- ture. While waiting for it to harden he took a look at his beloved myrmica rubra. ** Any progress, Harry?” Vaguely his wife’s question penetrated to the far-off husband. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “Why—why, with certain modifications my theory as to the function of the eciton erratica—”’ he was murmuring. But his wife raised her voice. ‘I’m referring to the cigar!” He was so bewildered in the fog of his two unrelated concerns and looked so guilty at being caught at his beloved study that his wife cast up her eyes hopelessly and went back to her paper on ‘“ Bobbed Hair Throughout the Ages,” which she was to read at the next meeting of the Faculty Women’s Club. But she had spoiled his myrmica-rubra mood, and Professor Goldie turned again to the cigar in its now hard cement bed. Tak- ing out the butt with a pin he found a per- fect mold of its bitten end. Into the mold he poured—after smear- ing the inside of it with more melted but- ter—a fresh mixture of cement and water. When this, too, had hardened he tapped the mold carefully with a little hammer, broke it and ther. fell into his palm an excellent life-size cast of the teeth which had bitten the end of the cigar butt just before it was thrown away. Then, snipping off with scissors the bit- ten end of the cigar butt itself, he dropped some liquid on it and jabbed it with a glass rod. With a dropper he smeared a bit of the resulting liquid on the slide of his mi- croscope and studied it long, making notes as he did so. Later, with the remainder of the little liquid mess carefully tipped into a test tube, he sallied forth once more. {In one pocket was the plaster cast of the teeth that had bitten the cigar. In the other was the corked test tube with a dilute solution of the bitten end of the butt. In his notebook were some findings of his on both of these. In the cottage of his friend, Professor Lambie, of the Department of Anatomy and Physiology, our academic sleuth engaged in a long and highly abstruse series of chemical analyses and discussions. Then he crossed the campus once more and found Professor Enghart, of the art de- partment. For an hour Professor Enghart, with pencil, brush, and water color, was kept busy by Professor Goldie. Finally the head of the department of biology and bio- Conn lDOOlK