Startling as was this revelation, Kennedy paused only an instant
before the next.

"Now I have another demonstration. A certain note figures in this
case. Mr. Parker was reading it, or perhaps re-reading it, at the time
he was shot. I have not been able to obtain that note--at least not in
a form such as I could use in discovering what were its contents. But
in a certain wastebasket I found a mass of wet and pulp-like paper. It
had been cut up, macerated, perhaps chewed; perhaps it had been also
soaked with water. There was a wash-basin with running water in this
room. The ink had run, and of course was illegible. The thing was so
unusual that I at once assumed that this was the remains of the
note in question. Under ordinary circumstances it would be utterly
valueless as a clue to anything. But to-day science is not ready to
let anything pass as valueless.

"I found on microscopic examination that it was an uncommon linen bond
paper, and I have taken a large number of microphotographs of the
fibres in it. They are all similar. I have here also about a hundred
microphotographs of the fibres in other kinds of paper, many of them
bonds. These I have accumulated from time to time in my study of the
subject. None of them, as you see, shows fibres resembling this one in
question, so we may conclude that it is of uncommon quality. Through
an agent of the police I have secured samples of the notepaper of
every one who could be concerned, as far as I could see, with this
case. Here are the photographs of the fibres of these various
notepapers, and among them all is just one that corresponds to the
fibres in the wet mass of paper I discovered in the scrap-basket. Now
lest anyone should question the accuracy of this method I might cite a
case where a man had been arrested in Germany charged with stealing a