The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes - Jamyang Norbu [33]
'Well, Mr Holmes, I would consider it a signal of honour if you were to permit me to apply your system of fingerprinting in this country.3 The Imperial Indian Police, in spite of many shortcomings, is still young enough to be occasionally pioneering.'
'The honour would be mine, Strickland. There are no patents on my methods. I only ask you to keep my name out of it, especially if the results of your endeavour should be fruitful enough to warrant the attention of the press. At present it suits my purpose to let the world think I am dead. I am sorry I do not have a copy of my monograph here with me, but you can get it from Huber in London, if you wish. They also have some other small works of mine that may interest you. The one entitled Upon the Distinction Between the Ashes of Various Tobaccos may prove useful to you. If you can recognise the black ash of a Trichinopoly at the scene of a murder, why, you could then count Colonel Sebastian Moran as one of your suspects — for I know he smokes them.'
'Well, Mr Holmes,' said Strickland with a little laugh, 'Trichinopoly or Lunkah, you can rely on us to have the Colonel behind bars before long. Once that desk-clerk has had time to reflect in the solitude of his cell, he will consider a full confession and transportation to the Andaman Islands preferable to stretching on the gallows.'
Just then there was an urgent knock on the door. Strickland went over and opened it. Outside in the corridor was a nervous-looking native policeman.
'Havildar, kya hai?' demanded Strickland.
The policeman mumbled something inaudible. Strickland turned a very worried face to us.
'The clerk's just been shot in front of the police station.'
1. Could this have any connection with 'the repulsive story of the red leech' that Dr Watson mentions in his introduction to the adventure of The Golden Pince-nez7.
2. Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), the great French detective, was the father of the revolutionary system of classifying and trapping criminals by measuring and recording certain unchangeable parts of the human body. He called his invention 'anthropometry’ or body measurement.
3. In 1896, in the district of Hooghly in Bengal, the Inspector General of Police introduced, for the first time anywhere in the world, the system of fingerprinting for identifying criminals. Only in 1901 did Scotland Yard adopt the Henry system of classifying prints by patterns and shapes.
6
A Shot in the Dark
Without a word Sherlock Holmes rushed out of the room. Strickland and I followed him out of the hotel to the rank of carriages that stood outside the hotel gates. As our carriage rattled down Frere Street towards Horniman Circle, Mr Holmes lit a cigarette and puffed at it in an abrupt and vexed manner.
'It was criminally careless of me not to have anticipated Moran's move,' said he. 'Now I fear that the one frail thread we had to tie up this case has just snapped.'
'But we still have the evidence of the thumbprint, Mr Holmes,' I suggested. 'Would it not suffice, in the ad interim, to secure the detention of Colonel Moran, till a more formidable case has been formulated?'
'My dear Huree, the evidence of the thumbprint would be too outre for any magistrate to think of issuing a warrant against a person of Moran's standing. We must not also forget that our old shikari is a man of diverse resources; he would flick away any such obstacles as we could, at the moment, put in his way.'
'I fear you are right, Mr Holmes,' said Strickland dejectedly. 'We needed that blasted desk-clerk's confession, and now he's dead. I should have warned MacLeod....'
'The fault is entirely mine, Strickland,' said Sherlock Holmes gravely. 'You could not have foreseen such an eventuality. But