. Then a sort of relief seemed to come to him and he gulped.

"Nothing but a damned piece of blank paper!" he mumbled.

Jimmie Dale reached over and took back the sheet.

"You're wrong again, Clayton," he said calmly. "It WAS quite blank
before I handed it to you--but not now. I noticed yesterday that your
hands were generally moist. I am sure they are more so now--excitement,
you know. Carruthers, see that he doesn't interrupt."

From a drawer, Jimmie Dale took out a little black bottle, the notebook
he had used the day before, and the photograph Carruthers had sent him.
On the sheet of paper Clayton had just handled, Jimmie Dale sprinkled a
little powder from the bottle.

"Lampblack," explained Jimmie Dale. He shook the paper carefully,
allowing the loose powder to fall on the desk blotter--and held out the
sheet toward Clayton. "Rather neat, isn't it? A very good impression,
too. Your thumb print, Clayton. Now don't move. You may look--not
touch." He laid the paper down on the desk in front of Clayton. Beside
it he placed the notebook, open at the sketch--a black thumb print now
upon it. "You recall handling this yesterday, I'm sure, Clayton. I tried
the same experiment with the lampblack on it this morning, you see. And
this"--beside the notebook he placed the police photograph; that,
too, in its enlargement, showed, sharply defined, a thumb print on
a diamond-shaped background. "You will no doubt recognise it as an
official photograph, enlarged, taken of the gray seal on Metzer's
forehead--AND THE THUMB PRINT OF METZER'S MURDERER. You have only to
glance at the little scar at the edge of the centre loop to satisfy
yourself that the three are identical. Of course, there are a dozen
other points of similarity equally indisputable, but--"

Jimmie Dale stopped. Clayton was on his feet--rocking on his feet. His
face was deathlike in its pallor. Moisture was oozing from his forehead.

"I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" he cried out wildly. "My God, I tell
you, I DIDN'T do it--and--and--that would send me to the chair."

"Yes," said Jimmie Dale coldly, "and that's precisely where you're
going--to the chair."

The man was beside himself now--racked to the soul by a paroxysm of
fear.

"I'm innocent--innocent!" he screamed out. "Oh, for God's sake, don't
send an innocent man to his death. It WAS Stace Morse. Listen! Listen!
I'll tell the truth." He was clawing with his hands, piteously, over the
desk at Jimmie Dale