ng. Nothing could save the twins but the
discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal account--an
undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible. Still, the
person who made the fingerprints must be sought. The twins might have no
case WITH them, but they certainly would have none without him.

So Wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing, guessing, day and
night, and arriving nowhere. Whenever he ran across a girl or a woman he
was not acquainted with, he got her fingerprints, on one pretext or
another; and they always cost him a sigh when he got home, for they never
tallied with the finger marks on the knife handle.

As to the mysterious girl, Tom swore he knew no such girl, and did not
remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one described by
Wilson. He admitted that he did not always lock his room, and that
sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors; still, in his
opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she would have been
discovered. When Wilson tried to connect her with the stealing raid, and
thought she might have been the old woman's confederate, if not the very
thief disguised as an old woman, Tom seemed stuck, and also much
interested, and said he would keep a sharp eye out for this person or
persons, although he was afraid that she or they would be too smart to
venture again into a town where everybody would now be on the watch for a
good while to come.

Everybody was pitying Tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful, and seemed
to feel his great loss so deeply. He was playing a part, but it was not
all a part. The picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him,
was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was away, and
called again in his dreams, when he was asleep. He wouldn't go into the
room where the tragedy had happened. This charmed the doting Mrs. Pratt,
who realized now, "as she had never done before," she said, what a
sensitive and delicate nature her darling had, and how he adored his poor
uncle.

CHAPTER 20

The Murderer Chuckles

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to
be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great
caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you
have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take
simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth.

--Pudd'nhead Wils