Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination - Edogawa Rampo [46]
Late that night I even ventured into her bedroom, but once there, I felt a little shaky, for I hadn't the faintest notion about his habits in this private chamber. However, still bubbling over with self-confidence—it was my firm belief that even if she did find out the truth, she would not spurn me, her old sweetheart—I opened the sliding door of her boudoir composedly and soon switched off the lights.
Once I had gone so far as to commit adultery as well as murder, my mind was now at rest, and I continued to live happily for a year. With plenty of money to spend, and with the woman I had once loved at my beck and call, my life seemed one of perpetual bliss—but there was one hitch—my conscience. Night after night it tormented me, while his apparition haunted my dreams. In fact, this period of a year was the longest I had ever experienced. Gradually, like the complete rogue that I was, I began to grow weary of my humdrum life.
Again, I fell into my old bad habits. My brother's large fortune soon began to dwindle, as I spent money like water, and I discovered one day that instead of being a rich man I was up to my neck in debt. Furthermore, I no longer had anyone to turn to. What a curse! This was what spurred me on to commit the second crime.
If you reflect carefully, you'll see that this was but a natural sequence to my first murder. When I first decided to kill my brother I already had this second plot in the making. I had decided that if I could manage to become my elder brother in every minute detail, nothing would stand in the way of my committing other crimes. You see, even if the younger brother, about whom nothing whatever had been heard after his departure for Korea, committed a murder or burglary or any other crime, the elder brother would always be free from blame or suspicion.
Also, there was another peculiar circumstance in this singular chain of events. After my first crime I chanced upon a surprising discovery, one which showed me how easy it would be to commit my next crime without any danger of detection.
One day I was making an entry for the day in his diary, copying his handwriting carefully. This was really a nuisance, but it had to be done, for it had been another of his daily habits. After writing a few lines, I compared the part written by me with a part written by him, and I was startled to find a fingerprint on one corner of the page; evidently it was my brothers.
For a moment the shock of the discovery stunned me, for I had overlooked this most important detail. Carelessly I had thought all along that the mole on my thigh was the only difference between my brother and me, and now I was stumped. What a fool I had been! Why, even a grade-school student knows that every person in the world has his own type of fingerprints, and I, of all people, should have known that even twins never have identical fingerprints! Now, at the sight of his fingerprint in the diary I was overcome by the fear that it might betray me.
Secretly I bought a magnifying glass and studied the smudge, which turned out to be a thumbprint. I stamped my own thumbprint on a piece of paper and compared the two. Upon casual observation, the two prints seemed very similar. But then I examined them closely, line by line, coil by coil, and detected many differences. I next secretly took the fingerprints of my "wife" and the maids for caution's sake, but they were so different that I didn't even need to compare them with the one in the diary. Assuredly, the one in the book was my brother's thumbprint. Since we were twins, it was natural that it resembled my own.
Thinking it would be a serious matter if any other fingerprints of this sort existed, I made an exhaustive search for more. I examined all the books, page by page, looked in the dust in every corner of the shelves, in the closets, the wardrobe, in fact in every conceivable place where his fingerprints might have been left. But I could find no others. This relieved me somewhat, but I was taking no chances. Quickly I tore the page out of the diary and was about