Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

“I hope,” I said, “we can make it work for us.”

The boy was rolling with a grace of a porpoise a quarter-mile offshore when Marty and I reached the water’s edge.

I cupped my hands and yelled Gary’s name. He swam in and stood up in shallow water, his hide sleek and burnished.

He came out and walked to the spot where he’d spread a large beach towel on the sand. He picked up a smaller towel, dried his hands, and stooped to get cigarettes and matches.

“Have you made any arrangements about your stepfather, Gary?” I asked.

“Going to plant him tomorrow, if you release the body. I called the undertaker and told him to attend to it.”

“Aren’t you going to ask why we’re here, if we’ve arrested someone?”

“If you’re trying to scare me, forget it.”

“I really don’t care, flatfoot. Your arrests don’t interest me.”

“This one will.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to arrest you, Gary, and take you to headquarters and have a look at your fingerprints.”

“I’d know better than to try and scare you, Gary. Anyway, you wiped the fingerprints off the gun.”

“What’s fingerprints got to do with it?”

“Well, somebody loaded the gun and then some time passed. And then he used the gun. He remembered to wipe it clean — but in the stress of the moment, he forgot that there might have been a print on one of the bullets.”

Marty and I moved on him from different angles. He backed a step. He dropped his cigarette. “What kind of bluff...”

“No bluff, Gary,” I said. “Just a single fingerprint on a bullet. If you’re innocent...”

He kicked sand in my face, ducked past Marty, and ran down the beach. The bright sun shone on his fleeing figure, the pastel pink of the Pelican, and the pastel aqua of a convertible on the edge of the motel’s parking lot. He was angling toward the convertible, a track man neither Marty nor I could come anywhere matching.

Marty dropped to one knee, pulled his revolver and fired over the boy’s head.

The bullet gave Gary fresh speed.

Marty took careful aim. His second shot tore a piece of flesh from Gary’s thigh. The boy pitched forward and went rolling.

Later, in a cell, Gary decided to trade a signed confession for a chance of escaping the chair. We still use the electric chair in our state, and the thought of it filled him with a particular horror. His story pretty well coincided with our conclusions.

I’m not at all sure we needed the confession. The fingerprint nailed it down for us. That’s right. His print was a perfect match for the one Rynold discovered on the bullet.

And what of Clement J. Smith, a stranger nearly a continent away, an unknown among millions?

The explanation is simple. His print matched also.

You may recall that Bertillon himself, the great French anthropologist who laid the groundwork for the system, recognized the mathematical possibility of duplicate fingerprints. The odds against it are about two billion to one.

But the laws of chance are undeniable, and in a way, I suppose, what happened here was inevitable, somewhere, sometime.

So perhaps it isn’t as unique as I’d like to think. I’ve no way of knowing how many millions upon millions of fingerprints have been taken throughout the world in all the long decades during which the science has been in use.

I only know that Clement Smith and Gary Scorbin possessed the first known two-billionth digits in common.

I’ll give Pete Gonzales your compliments on the 146-pounder.

                Your friend,

                R. D. Singer — Captain Detective Division

P. S. Maybe the Langborn case will suggest a story to you. Not being a writer, I wouldn’t know how to work it up. I imagine you’ll think of the Clement J. Smith angle. He was lucky. But what if, tomorrow or two hundred years from now, another two-billionth print led to an accusation against a guy who wasn’t so clearly innocent as Smith? Now wouldn’t he be in a mess?

Diet and Die by Wenzell Brown

In these days of weight-control by wafer or flavored beverage, some of you will no doubt find this story far-fetched. But those among you who, life myself, are gourmets, will be completely in sympathy with the narrator.

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