Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

THE UNSEEN chemistry of Meig’s University scurried home. He came, as usual, late to dinner. Years before Mrs. Goldie had given up any at- tempt to impress his professional mind with the importance of being on time for meals. She did not scold him therefore, but she noted with a kindling eye that he brought home something flat in a paper, knew intui- tively that it had to do with what he had derived from the dried-up cigar butt, and waited with little enough patience for part of the meal to pass. Then she burst out. “ Harry Darwin Goldie, I’ll thank you for some information on this nasty cigar butt you have been working over all afternoon— or should have been!” He looked nervously at the determined woman. ‘It’s still only hypothesis and conjec- ture, my dear. But it is fairly probable that the murdered man is an engraver. The marks in ink on my fingers and palm, cor- responding to the calloused or hardened places on the dead man’s palm and fingers, were shown by Pete Haskins to be—”’ ‘“ Why, how clever of you!’ Mrs. Goldie exclaimed. ‘And what have you got in that flat packet?” He went out and returned with several sketches in his hand. ‘It is just barely possible that these drawings and water color sketches may cor- respond to reality,” he said cautiously. Mrs. Goldie knew that where her hus- band said “ barely possible ” another man would have said ‘‘ absolutely sure!”’ She looked at the portraits—there were three or four of the same man. He was round-headed, dark-complex- loned, had broad cheek bones, a Jow fore- head, a very prominent mouth, a mole or two on the face and throat and some kind of erupted rash on his face. One portrait showed a short, thick beard of coarse hair, the other smooth-shaven, but with the dark- ness of the missing beard indicated. All portraits showed him with the collar of his shirt open and a hairy chest indicated. ‘“ Why, who is this?”’ she exclaimed. “Tt is an approximation of the man who killed the poor fellow in Drake’s Alley,” he replied timidly. FACE. 957 She put these sketches down without an- other look at them. ‘Harry Darwin Goldie, you’ve been go- Ing to the movies!” she exclaimed. ‘ This is just such a face as you would see play- ing a murderer. Because I don’t see on what other basis you could have conjectured such a complete portrait!” Her husband looked wilted. “ You may be right, Grace! My deduc- tions, assisted though they were by several of my colleagues, may be entirely worthless, based as they are on so little actual data. I think I had better not bother with this case—”’ His wife saw her mistake. Her job in life was to instill confidence into her hus- band, not to destroy it. “Well, I want to hear your grounds, Harry, ’she said. ‘It seems to me perfectly marvelous that any one could deduce from an old cigar remnant the portrait of the man who had smoked it.” She showed herself so eager to listen that he chirked up a little. ‘You may observe, Grace, that in the im- press of the teeth on the cigar end—here is a cast I made of them—the upper teeth meet the lower at the biting point in a sort of jutting-out angle. That would make the mouth very prominent, as we have in- dicated in the portrait. Now such a tooth occlusion is found chiefly in mammals and men whose type is characteristic of the trop- ics and subtropics, where they are called upon to chew no harded food than fruit or vegetables. ‘“In climates where meat and tougher foods are eaten such an arrangement of teeth is inadequate, because for effective cutting and grinding teeth should come to- gether straight, one grinding. surface full on the other. The result is that people who have the inadequate tooth occlusion as in- dicated by this cigar butt chew the tough foods of colder climates insufficiently, arfd put an extra and often excessive strain on their digestive apparatus. ‘‘This results in turn in digestive dis- turbances, a certain temper and perhaps such rashes and outbreaks on the face as I have had Professor Enghart indicate in this portrait. To confirm my analysis in Conn lDOOlK