Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/104

Rh over two hundred thousand men’s and women’s finger-tips! I expect you know, Mr. Bunting, as how, once we’ve got the print of a man’s five finger-tips, well, he’s done for—if he ever does anything else, that is. Once we’ve got that bit of him registered he can’t never escape us—no, not if he tries ever so. But though there’s nigh on a quarter of a million records in there, yet it don’t take—well, not half an hour, for them to tell whether any particular man has ever been convicted before! Wonderful thought, ain’t it?"

"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing a deep breath. And then a troubled look came over his stolid face. "Wonderful, but also a very fearful thought for the poor wretches as has got their finger-prints in, Joe."

Joe laughed. "Agreed!" he said. "And the cleverer ones knows that only too well. Why, not long ago, one man who knew his record was here safe, managed to slash about his fingers something awful, just so as to make a blurred impression—you takes my meaning? But there, at the end of six weeks the skin grew all right again, and in exactly the same little creases as before!"

"Poor devil!" said Bunting under his breath, and a cloud even came over Daisy’s bright, eager face.

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