next she was flying out of the front door, rousing the street with her
screams.

"The advent of the cook roused me. I knew that the police would arrive
soon and I instinctively looked about me to see how this unspeakable
thing had happened. I had already noticed that one of my wife's
hands--the one that I had not been holding--was clenched, and I now
observed that it grasped a little tuft of hair. I drew out a portion of
the tuft and looked at it. It was coarse hair, about three inches long
and a dull gray in color. I laid it on the clean note-paper in the
drawer of the bureau bookcase to examine later, and then glanced around
the room. The origin of the tragedy was obvious. The household plate had
been taken out of the plate chest in the pantry and laid out on the end
of the dining table. There the things stood, their polished surfaces
sullied by the greasy finger-marks of the wretch who had murdered my
wife. At those tell-tale marks I looked with new and growing interest.
Finger-prints, in those days, had not yet been recognized by the public
or the police as effective means of identification. But they were well
known to scientific men and I had given the subject some attention
myself. And the sight of those signs-manual of iniquity had an immediate
effect on me; they converted the unknown perpetrator of this horror from
a mere abstraction of disaster into a real, living person. With a sudden
flush of hate and loathing, I realized that this wretch was even now
walking the streets or lurking in his accursed den; and I realized, too,
that these marks were, perhaps, the only links that connected him with
the foul deed that he had done.

"I looked over the plate quickly and selected a salver and a large,
globular teapot, on both of which the prints were very distinct. These I
placed in a drawer of the bureau, and, turning the key, dropped it into