howed to
Conners:

"Do you recognize this, Sergeant?"

"Why, ain't this the apple with the teeth marks you found in
Schurman's refrigerator? How could it keep like this?"

"No, it is not, Sergeant; it is a replica. Take it into your hand
and you will see it is not an apple. It is a model of the apple
you saw. Alphonse Poller was the brilliant scientist who devised
this method of taking impressions and making models. He called it
'moulage.' The word is used either as a verb or a noun.

"Off hand, I should say that 'Fingy' Smith's teeth will not fit
into the marks made in this apple. When the plaster model comes up
here we will see."

"What of it?" belligerently protested Conners. "We have his
fingerprints; that's good enough for me. Someone else could have
taken the bite in the apple."

"Who, Sergeant, who? Who could have taken that bite? Mr. Schurman
did not do it. His teeth did not fit; I looked. The teeth of the
housekeeper and the maid did not do it; I looked at their teeth.
All of the housekeeper's upper teeth are artificial, she wears a
plate. The maid has all her own teeth.

"This model shows that the person who bit into the apple, has a
two tooth bridge on the upper jaw. The left lateral incisor is
attached to the left canine, the eye tooth."

"But my God, Professor, you are setting up teeth marks against
fingerprints. Teeth marks, well what's the difference between
teeth marks. Some may be different, but--"

"Tooth marks, Sergeant, are as distinctive as fingerprints. No two
single objects in the whole wide world are alike. No two red blood
corpuscles coming from the same blood stream are precisely alike.
True, they may differ only microscopically, but they differ
nevertheless."

"Professor," asked Jimmy, "couldn't two artificial sets of teeth
be alike?"

"Of course not! While the teeth are moulded by machinery, they are
set up on a model of the individual's mouth by hand. And can you
conceive a human pair of hands setting up two sets of teeth
precisely alike? It is unthinkable."

"But, Professor," pursued Conners, "lookit the case we got against
this bird. There's his record. He always works his jobs this way;
he left what we call his 'callin' card.' The large meal, the eggs
the housekeeper says was missin' and last of all there's the nail
file with his fingerprints.

"You heard his alibi, Professor. He spent part of the night with
friends of his, other crooks. He can't account at all for the