They were now going along a narrower passage, and then again they
came to a half-open door, leading into a room far smaller than
that of the Finger-Print Identification Room.

"If you'll glance in there," said Joe briefly, "you'll see how we
finds out all about any man whose finger-tips has given him away, so
to speak. It's here we keeps an account of what he's done, his
previous convictions, and so on. His finger-tips are where I told
you, and his record in there--just connected by a number."

"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing in his breath. But Daisy was
longing to get on--to get to the Black Museum. All this that Joe
and her father were saying was quite unreal to her, and, for the
matter of that not worth taking the trouble to understand. However,
she had not long to wait.

A broad-shouldered, pleasant-looking young fellow, who seemed on
very friendly terms with Joe Chandler, came forward suddenly, and,
unlocking a common-place-looking door, ushered the little party of
three through into the Black Museum.

For a moment there came across Daisy a feeling of keen disappointment
and surprise. This big, light room simply reminded her of what they
called the Science Room in the public library of the town where she
lived with Old Aunt. Here, as there, the centre was taken up with
plain glass cases fixed at a height from the floor which enabled
their contents to be looked at closely.

She walked forward and peered into the case nearest the door. The
exhibits shown there were mostly small, shabby-looking little things,
the sort of things one might turn out of an old rubbish cupboard in
an untidy house--old medicine bottles, a soiled neckerchief, what
looked like a child's broken lantern, even a box of pills. . .

As for the walls, they were covered with the queerest-looking
objects; bits of old iron, odd-looking things made of wood and
leather, and so on.

It was really rather disappointing.

Then Daisy Bunting gradually became aware that standing on a shelf
just below the first of the broad, spacious windows which made the
great room look so light and shadowless, was a row of life-size
white plaster heads, each head slightly inclined to the right.
There were about a dozen of these, not more--and they had such odd,
staring, helpless, real-looking faces.

"Whatever's those?" asked Bunting in a low voice.

Daisy clung a thought closer to her father's arm. Even she guessed
that these strange, pathetic, staring face