The Great Game (50 page)

             
Holmes picked up the knife by the blade guard and examined it, with Moriarty peering at it by his side. The blade and the leather grip were both coated with blood, except for a blotchy area on the grip where it had been held by the murderer. "It was kept in a sheath," Holmes declared.

             
"A leather sheath with a metal mouth," Moriarty agreed.

             
"Such a sheath comes with the knife when it is purchased," Dr. Gross agreed. "How did you know?"

             
"It's too large and sharp to be carried about in one's pocket, or stuck in the belt without a sheath," Holmes said. "And the small striations on the blade here show where it was slightly scraped by the metal when it was inserted and withdrawn from the sheath."

             
"Was such a sheath searched for?" Moriarty asked. "Did your officers make a search of all the dustbins in the area, of all the grat
ing
s and hedges and such places where something might have been discarded? It's probable that the killer, realizing that an empty sheath would be as incriminating as a bloody knife, if it was found on his person, would have thrown it aside as soon as possible."

             
"I don't believe such a search was made," Dr. Gross said thoughtfully. "I can see that our assumption that Herr Donzhof was the killer has unduly colored our investigation. It is a great lesson, and I will make note of it. I was not involved with the investigation at that time."

             
"The killer panicked," Moriarty commented. "He came up here to plant evidence against Donzhof, and the girl was an unexpected complication. If he had planned to kill her, he would have thought to put the sheath in the top drawer of Paul Donzhof's bureau to implicate him in this crime as well as in the assassination." He turned to Dr. Gross. "I assume you did find evidence directly implicating Paul Donzhof in the assassination?"

             
Dr. Gross nodded and again went to his briefcase. This time he took out an oilcloth-wrapped revolver and carefully
unwrapped
it. "Aside from the green overcoat which the young man was wearing when we apprehended him," he said, "there is this revolver, found on top of that wardrobe in the corner. It is a Shugard Seuss model sixteen. Several of the onlookers identified the weapon fired by the assassin as a Shugard Seuss, which, as you can see, with its bulbous grip and exaggerated trigger guard, has a very distinctive appearance. It was designed for army officers to carry, the idea being that if one ran out of bullets, one could club the enemy with the grip. It hasn't been issued for the past twenty years, but any old military man, at least in the Austrian Army, can recognize the Shugard Seuss at a glance."

             
Moriarty nodded. "
Which might be exactly why it was chosen.
A man possessing a green overcoat and a Shugard Seuss revolver assassinated the duke, so arrest a man possessing a green overcoat and a Shugard Seuss revolver. Where was it found?"

             
"On the top shelf of that wardrobe," Dr. Gross said, pointing to the massive Renaissance Revival-style rosewood clothes cabinet which loomed over the room from its place facing the foot of the bed. "It was right at the front, not even out of sight."

             
While Moriarty examined the revolver, Holmes whipped out his glass and began going over the wardrobe slowly and carefully, from bottom to top. Several times he paused to pick up something with a pair of tweezers and put it in one of the small envelopes he carried with him. After a while he rose and went to the bedroom wall, where he used his glass to examine the bloody markings made by the killer's hand.

             
For several minutes while Holmes peered closely at the bloody markings on the wall, Moriarty and Dr. Gross stood mute, watching him. The only sound was the patter of rain hitting the window, and the occasional snapping of the hammer of the Shugard Seuss revolver as Moriarty examined it. There was a barely audible sigh of relief from Dr. Gross when Holmes turned and put his lens away. "My preliminary examination is over," Holmes said. "Of course I would like the time to go over this room, and the whole apartment, in greater detail. But for now I have reached a few elementary conclusions based on certain facts I have observed. Further investigation should enhance my findings, but this gives us a direction in which to go."

             
Dr. Gross moved his eyes from the bloody splotches on the wall to the totally innocuous-looking wardrobe and then to Sherlock Holmes. "Yes?" he asked, "and what are your findings?"

             
"Your murderer is a short man, no taller than five foot three," Holmes told him, "and an anarchist. He has almost certainly been in trouble with the law before, possibly for burglary or housebreaking, and is a confirmed scoundrel. He has been in this apartment at least once before the murder, probably when Donzhof was away. I believe I can name him now, but that would be speculation, which should not be indulged in during the course of a criminal investigation. At any rate, it is unnecessary, since I can tell you just where to look for him, and we can undoubtedly identify the murderer when he is apprehended."

             
"A short man who has been in trouble with the law?"

             
"Certainly short," Holmes said. "I cannot be sure about the trouble with the law, but it's probable."

             
Gross stared at him. "Then it was not Herr Donzhof who committed this crime?"

             
"Oh, no," Holmes said. "Paul Donzhof is innocent of the murder of this poor girl."

             
"You are certain?"

             
"Yes.
Which would seem to indicate that he is also innocent of the assassination of the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz and the wounding of the duchess, since the real murderer went to so much trouble to make us think Donzhof was guilty.
"

             
"That is but an assumption," Dr. Gross said. "Whatever the case with the murder of the girl—and I want you to explain your reasoning on that—Donzhof might still have been the assassin of the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz."

             
"Not if this is the weapon you found in the wardrobe," Moriarty interrupted.

             
Dr. Gross turned. "Excuse me? What's that you say?"

             
"This cannot be the gun which was used to shoot the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz," Moriarty said, holding it in his two hands before Dr. Gross like an offering.

             
"And why not?"

             
"Because in its present state, it is incapable of firing."

             
"What?" Dr. Gross grabbed the gun from Moriarty and looked it over suspiciously. "There are four fired cartridge cases in the cylinder," he said.

             
"Indeed," Moriarty agreed. "Put there to make you think the gun had been fired four times. But look—" he opened the cylinder. "The weapon fires when the hammer strikes a firing pin in the breech, which then strikes the back of the cartridge, setting off the primer."

             
"Yes," Dr. Gross agreed.
"And?"

             
"Each of the four expended cartridges has a strike mark—an indentation on the back where the
firing pin
struck it. Do you see?"

             
"Yes, yes, of course. I'm quite familiar with strike marks. We are experimenting with a high-powered microscope to see whether the strike marks from different weapons differ enough to use for identification. This will be more useful with automatic pistols, of course, since they eject their spent cartridges, which are often found at the scene of the crime."

             
"Well, let us rotate the cartridges in their holes so the firing pin will strike in a new place." He twisted each of the four cartridges just a bit and closed the revolver.

             
"You want to compare the new markings with the old?" Dr. Gross asked. "We'd need a microscope to see the differences— if any."

             
Moriarty handed him the gun. "Fire the weapon two or three times," he said, "and let's
take
a look."

             
Dr. Gross took the gun and glared back and forth between Moriarty and Holmes for a moment. He had thought to learn some little investigative tricks from Sherlock Holmes, but had not expected to have the whole case solved while he watched.
Particularly not by Holmes merely going over rooms that his investigators had already examined.
And now it seemed that this Dr. Sandarel was going to embarrass him further. Then the momentary flash of anger left him and he shrugged. He was here to learn, and it seemed that he was about to learn more than he expected. So be it. He pointed the gun at the ceiling, and clicked the hammer four times. "There," he said, breaking the gun open. "Now let's see if there's any—well I'll be damned!"

             
Holmes, who had been an interested if silent observer to the proceedings, peered over Gross's shoulder. "Curious," he said.

             
"You see?" Moriarty said. "There are no new marks at all. The hammer strikes, but the firing pin is broken. This weapon, as I said, is incapable of firing."

             
Dr. Gross sighed and took the gun back. He wrapped it again and returned it to his briefcase. "I didn't truly expect for our whole case to be turned on its head in the space of a few minutes," he said, "but I suppose I should be grateful. Are we done here?"

             
"For right now," Holmes replied, "but I would like the chance to go through these rooms more thoroughly."

             
"Tomorrow," Gross said. "I'll send a criminal police investigator up with you. Perhaps he will learn something. Right now I need a beer. Let us retire to a local establishment, and you can explain to me how you saw all these things that I and my trained investigators missed. Is there anything else?"

             
"One small thing that perhaps you should arrange as soon as possible," Holmes said. "There will be a meeting of an anarchist society at ten tonight in the box cellar of the Werfel Chocolate Company in the Mariahilf District. Have your men surround the place and arrest everyone inside. One of them is assuredly the murderer of that poor girl, and perhaps one of them is the assassin. I can show you how to identify the murderer, and I believe I know who it will turn out to be. Identifying the assassin will take a bit longer."

             
"How are we to identify the murderer?"

             
"You have his bloody hand-print on the wall of the bedroom," Holmes told him. "Compare the print on the wall with the prints of the right hands of all those you
pick
up, and one of them will match."

             
"A hand-print?
Is this a sure identification?"

             
Holmes nodded. "Sir Francis Galton the noted expert on
heredity,
is preparing a book to be called
Finger Prints,
which should be published early next year. In it he estimates the chances of any two sets of finger prints matching to be one in sixty-four million. I was of some small help to him in developing the system of classification that he suggests using."

             
"Within the next few decades the study of fingerprints is going to be of as much assistance in catching criminals as the police whistle," Moriarty said. "The prints of at least four fingers of the right hand are clear on one of the bloody hand-prints on the wall."

             
"Has this system been used with success anywhere in the world?" Dr. Gross asked.

             
"The United States," Holmes told him.