to me that the authorities had given the case up. They gave me no hope
that the murderer would ever be identified; and, in fact, it was pretty
obvious that they had written the case off as hopeless and ceased to
interest themselves in it.

"Of course I could not accept this view. My wife had been murdered. The
murder was without extenuation. It had been committed lightly to cover a
paltry theft. Now, for murder, no restitution is possible. But there is
an appropriate forfeit to be paid; and if the authorities failed to
exact it, then the duty of its exaction devolved upon me. Moreover, a
person who thus lightly commits murder as an incident in his calling is
unfit to live in a community of human beings. It was clearly my duty as
a good citizen to see that this dangerous person was eliminated.

"This was well enough in theory, but its realization in practice
presented considerable difficulties. The police had (presumably)
searched for this person and failed to find him. How was I, untrained in
methods of detection, to succeed where the experts had been baffled? I
considered my resources. They consisted of a silver teapot and a salver
which had been handled by the murderer and which, together, yielded a
complete set of finger-prints, and the wisp of hair that I had taken
from the hand of my murdered wife. It is true that the police also had
finger-marked plate and the remainder of the hair and had been unable to
achieve anything by their means; but the value of finger-impressions for
the purposes of identification is not yet appreciated outside scientific
circles.[1] I fetched the teapot and salver from the drawer in which I
had secured them and examined them afresh. The teapot had been held in
both hands and bore a full set of prints; and these were supplemented
by the salver. For greater security I photographed the whole set of the
finger-impressions and made platinotype prints which I filed for future