ountant, had arrived, she
could get no entrance, so she waited till one of her male colleagues
arrived. Then they called a constable, and after half an hour the
sensational fact of the unconscious watchman and the rifled
strong-room became revealed.

The newspaper report concluded with the following sentences:

"It is evident that one of the thieves cut his hand badly, for we
understand that the detectives of the City police have found
blood-stained finger-prints of four distinct fingers upon the door and
in other parts of the strong-room. These, of course, have already been
photographed, and in due course will be investigated by that
department of Scotland Yard which deals with the finger-prints of
known criminals."

With the knowledge of the injury to Duperre's hand I felt confident
that the great _coup_ was due to him. And I was not mistaken.

The bank thieves had got clear away, it was true, but they had left
those tell-tale finger-prints behind! As everyone knows, the ridges
and whorls upon the hands of no two men are alike, therefore it seemed
clear that Scotland Yard, now aroused, would very quickly--owing to
its marvelous classification of the finger-prints of every criminal
who has passed through the hands of the police during the past quarter
of a century--fix upon the person who had laid his hands upon the
steel safe door.

An hour after I had read the report in the paper, Duperre rang me up.

"I'm going to Overstow by the nine-thirty from King's Cross to-night,"
he said. "If you can join me, do. The air is better in Yorkshire than
in London, don't you think so, old chap?"

"Right-oh!" I replied. "I'll travel up with you."

We met, and early next morning we were back at Overstow. Yet I managed
to suppress any untoward curiosity.

It was only when about a week later I read in the paper of the result
of the discovery of Scotland Yard finger-print department and of a
consequent arrest that I sat aghast.

A notorious jewel-thief named Hersleton, alias Hugh Martyn, an
American, had been arrested at a hotel at Brighton, and had been
charged at Bow Street with the murderous attack upon the night
watchman at the Chartered Bank of Liberia, his finger-prints, taken
some years before, coinciding exactly with those left at the bank. He
had violently protested his innocence, but had been committed for
trial.

At the Old Bailey six weeks later, the night watchman having
fortunately recovered from his injurie