s the assistant ordered him, he submitted to having his fingers
smeared with ink so that his finger prints might be taken, to being
photographed, full face and in profile, and finally to having the width
of his head, from ear to ear, measured with a special pair of caliper
compasses.

Hector was surprised by his docility.

"I must say your friend is not very talkative, M. Juve. What has he been
up to?" and as the detective merely shrugged his shoulders and did not
reply, he went on: "That's done, sir. We will develop the negatives and
take the prints, and recopy the measurements, and the record shall be
classified in the register in a couple of hours."

Charles Rambert grew momentarily more scared. He felt that he was
definitely arrested now. But Juve left the arm-chair in which he had
been resting, and coming up to him laid his hand upon his shoulder,
speaking the while with a certain gentleness.

"Come: there are some other points as to which I wish to examine you."
He led him from the anthropometric room along a dark corridor, and
presently taking a key from his pocket, opened a door and pushed the lad
in before him. "Go in there," he said. "This is where we make the
dynamometer tests."

A layman looking round the room might almost have supposed that it was
merely some carpenter's shop. Pieces of wood, of various shapes and
sizes and sorts, were arranged along the wall or laid upon the floor; in
glass cases were whole heaps of strips of metal, five or six inches
long, and of varying thickness.

Juve closed the door carefully behind him.

"For pity's sake, M. Juve, tell me what you are going to do with me,"
Charles Rambert implored.

The detective smiled.

"Well, there you ask a question which I can't answer off-hand. What am I
going to do with you, eh? That still depends upon a good many things."

As he spoke Juve tossed his hat aside and, looking at a rather high kind
of little table, proceeded to remove from it a grey cloth which
protected it from dust, and drew it into the middle of the room. This
article was composed of a metal body screwed on to a strong tripod, with
a lower tray that moved backwards and forwards, and two lateral
buttresses with a steel cross-piece firmly bolted on to them above. Upon
this framework were two dynamometers worked by an ingenious piece of
mechanism. Juve looked at Charles Rambert and explained.

"This is Dr. Bertillon's effraction dynamometer. I am going to make use
o