Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination - Edogawa Rampo [48]
While I gazed at the paper, almost hypnotized with terror, he approached me quickly and handcuffed me. The next moment I noticed that a burly policeman had been waiting outside the door.
Shortly after, I was behind iron bars. However, I was naive enough to believe that I still had a chance. I was confident that they could never prove that I had committed the murder. But what a surprise awaited me! When I appeared before the procurator and heard his summation of the charges against me, I was pinned to the floor in open-mouthed amazement. I, who had always been so clever, had made such an absurd mistake that I was almost tempted to laugh out in self-mockery. Surely, this must have been my brother's curse!
How had I erred? Really, it was too foolish for words. The thumbprint which I had believed to have been my brother's was actually mine! The mark I had found in the diary was not a direct fingerprint but had been pressed there after I had once wiped my ink-stained fingers off. So it was the ink which remained in the shallow grooves between the ridges rather than the ridges themselves which had made the mark, producing a print like the negative of a photograph.
It had been such a careless mistake that I could hardly believe it was true. The procurator voluntarily told me of a case that had happened in 1913. He said that the wife of a merchant in Fukuoka was wantonly killed one day and that the police arrested a suspect. The fingerprint left on the scene of the crime and that of the suspect didn't seem to tally, although they looked very much alike. After being put off the scent completely, the police asked a specialist to study che prints scientifically, and at length, they were proved to be identical. The case had been the same as mine. The fingerprint on the spot had been the negative. But the expert, after close investigation, had reversed one of the photographs of the two fingerprints, changing the black to white—and the photographs then matched perfectly, thus proving the case.
Now I have told you everything. I beg you, Father, to make the facts known, especially to my "wife," for only then will I be able to climb the thirteen steps to the scaffold on steady feet.
RED
CHAMBER
T HE SEVEN GRAVE MEN, INCLUding myself, had gathered as usual to exchange bloodcurdling horror stories. We sank into the deep armchairs, covered with scarlet velvet, in the room which had been dubbed the "Red Chamber" and waited eagerly for the narrator of the evening to begin his tale.
In the center of the group was a large, round table, also covered with scarlet velvet, and on it was a carved bronze candelabrum in which three large candles burned with flickering flames. On all sides of the room—even over the doors and windows—heavy red-silk curtains hung in graceful folds from ceiling to floor. The flames of the candles cast monstrously enlarged shadows of the secret society of seven on the curtains in hues dark like that of blood. Rising and falling, expanding and contracting, the seven silhouettes crept among the curves of the crimson drapery like horrible insects.
In this chamber I always felt as though I were sitting in the belly of some enormous, prehistoric beast, and thought I could even feel its heart beat in a slow tempo appropriate to its hugeness.
For a while all of us remained silent. As I sat with the rest like one bewitched, I unconsciously stared at the dark-red shadowy faces around the table and shuddered. Although I was perfectly familiar with the features of the others, I always felt chills creep down my spine whenever I studied them at close hand, for they all seemed perpetually unexpressive and motionless, like Japanese Noh masks.
At last, Tanaka, who had only recently been initiated into the society, cleared his throat to speak. He sat poised on the edge of his chair, gazing at the candle flames. I happened to glance at his chin, but