he couldn't deny himself a small parting gibe:
"Don't take it so hard; a body can't win every time; you'll hang somebody
yet."

Wilson muttered to himself, "It is no lie to say I am sorry I have to
begin with you, miserable dog though you are!"

He braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to work again.
He did not compare the new finger marks unintentionally left by Tom a few
minutes before on Roxy's glass with the tracings of the marks left on the
knife handle, there being no need for that (for his trained eye), but
busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, "Idiot
that I was!--Nothing but a GIRL would do me--a man in girl's clothes
never occurred to me." First, he hunted out the plate containing the
fingerprints made by Tom when he was twelve years old, and laid it by
itself; then he brought forth the marks made by Tom's baby fingers when
he was a suckling of seven months, and placed these two plates with the
one containing this subject's newly (and unconsciously) made record.

"Now the series is complete," he said with satisfaction, and sat down to
inspect these things and enjoy them.

But his enjoyment was brief. He stared a considerable time at the three
strips, and seemed stupefied with astonishment. At last he put them down
and said, "I can't make it out at all--hang it, the baby's don't tally
with the others!"

He walked the floor for half an hour puzzling over his enigma, then he
hunted out the other glass plates.

He sat down and puzzled over these things a good while, but kept
muttering, "It's no use; I can't understand it. They don't tally right,
and yet I'll swear the names and dates are right, and so of course they
OUGHT to tally. I never labeled one of these thing carelessly in my
life. There is a most extraordinary mystery here."

He was tired out now, and his brains were beginning to clog. He said he
would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this
riddle. He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then
unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a
sitting posture. "Now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall
it. "What was that dream? It seemed to unravel that puz--"

He landed in the middle of the floor at a bound, without finishing the
sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized his "records." He
took a single swift glance at them and cried out:

"It's so! Heavens, what a revelat