Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 307, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1916 — The Grafter [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Grafter

By H. M. EGBERT

(Copyright. 1916. by W. G. Chapman.) The case against Richard Halstcin was damning, and it hung on one fact That fact was the thumb-print. Here it is: Lewis Halstein had adopted his nephew Richard in Infancy. He was a queer old character; he had brought the boy up in idleness, alleging that work was beneath the dignity of a gentleman. That alone shews that Lewis Halstein was decidedly eccentric. At twenty-four, when his nephew left college, he came Home to find his uncle, a millionaire and more eccentric than ever. Remember, Richard had never been, trained to work. He was about as capable of earning a living as a Polynesian set down in the streets of New York. Less so, for the Polynesian could go on exhibition as the Wild Man of Borneo and earn his two dollars a day. Richard Halstein could not. He looked the ordinary type of better-class American, and there was nothing about him that would make any man look at him twice in the street. Richard Halstein came home to fall in love with Mildred James, the daughter of his uncle’s neighbor. When Uncle heard of the engagement he was furious. He turned his nephew out of his home penniless. Richard seems to have had a rather hard time. However, it was the uncle who took the initiative. He asked him back, and the butler testified that he heard the two quarreling all the evening in the old man’s library. He listened, as a servant will do, and heard Lewis Halstein order his nephew out of the house for good. Following this, Richard Halstein stamped out in a rage. At nine the next morning Lew-

Is Halstein was found lying dead in his library, upon the floor. He had evidently fallen from his chair when a shot fired from behind entered his brain. Upon the table were pen and •Ink and paper, and it was surmised that he had intended to alter his will, which was found to be in his nephew’s favor. Upon the polished mahogany back of the chair on which he had been seated was found a thumb-print. It w r as Richard’s. That was the one fact against him. The thumb-print could not have been made earlier in the evening, because the butler testified that after Richard’s departure he had heard the old man drag the chair from the living room; it was a high chair, such as he used when writing at a table instead of at his desk. Richard w T and placed on trial There was no other evidence against him, but a thumb-print is always a thumb-print. Only Miss James believed in his innocence—unless his lawyer, Tom Fellowes, did. Fed owes was a card. He had studied medicine before the law, and had been expelled from the medical school for some prank. He had not the best reputation as a lawyer. He was fond of tackling dubious cases; but he won them. Perhaps he was the best lawyer Richard could have had. At any rate, he struck a stroke in court which (I was one of the jurymen) dumfounded us and everybody. He produced One-Lamp Ike. > One-Lamp Ike was a local character, half-witted, against whom the worst known was robbery, petty thieving which: had landed him repeatedly in jail, and had more often still secured him a thrashing and nothing more. The l counsel for the state had produced evidence to show that the fin-ger-print remains through life. Fellowes was cross-examining his last witness. 1 \ f<You say that only two cases in a hundred million are to he-found of aimllar thumb markings on different men,” he said. “Are there a hundred million finger-prints In the world?” »‘I don’t know," responded the witness testily. “I haven’t counted them. There are a good' many.” ...

“Nnme the two cases in which the thumb or finger-prints were found to be the same.’N “I don’t know of any two. I believe there are none.” “Then what is your ground for the statement that two cases occur in a hundred million?" “I suppose that merely means that it only occurs in an impossibly large number,” retorted the witness uneasily. “You admit, then, that you were speaking ?” “I say that there are no two qien in less than a hundred millions with similar finger or thumb-prints.” “I will call the man known as OneLamp Ike,” said Mr. Fellowes. The court was agog now. Fellowes purpose became evident, and there was a breathless silence as he produced a sheet of paper, a pad coated with lamp-black, or some similar substance, and a magnifying glass. “One-Lamp Ike,” said Mr. Fellowes;' 1 “you have never had your finger-prints taken before?” «, “No, your honor,” answered the Imbecile, grinning. “You didn’t happen to murder Mr. Halstein, I suppose?” Fellowes continued. One-Lamp scratched his head. “I don’t remember of it, sir,” he said. “I was drunk at the time.” “Your memory is not very good, I think?” “No, your honor.” It was all the typical conjuror’s patter. Nobody took much notice of it. We were leaning forward in the jurybox, while Mr. Fellowes, having completed his preparations, took OneLamp’s thumb, stuck it to the pad and pressed it down hard on the paper. “Now,” he said to the court, “I claim to show that the last witness was mistaken, or else that here we have the two men in a hundred millions with similar thumb-prints. I submit this evidence to the court.’j And he handed it up, together with the reproduction of Richard’s thumbprint, and the magnifying glass. The court looked at it for fully five minutes, turning the glass this way and that Then he had it submitted to the jurors. \Ve scanned it. There was no possibility of mistaking that the two prints were identical. “I propose, your honor,” said Fellowes, “that the thumb-print of the prisoner be taken again and superimposed photographically upon this.” The court adjourned in the greatest excitement. Nex day, When it reconvened, the two prints were found to coincide exactly. They had been magnified a dozen times; the great web of tracings upon the paper, looking like S a maze, was perfectly distinct. There was the one and only pattern. And, examined separately, not the smallest divergence could be found .between tiie-thumb-prints of Richard Hal|:teip.v6nd those of One-Lamp Ike. - There was only one thing to do. Here were two men, one of whom must have committed the murder. There was no possibility of collusion. There was no further evidence. We acquitted the prisoner by direction of the court, and he left the courtroom a free man. He married Mildred James the next day, and they went West, where they are reported to be doing well. OneLamp Ike came into a lot of money In some mysterious fashion a little while later, and was found drowned in a horse-trough, into which he had fallen while intoxicated. I was frankly puzzled by the coincidence. That some trick had been played seemed more probable to me than that the two men in a hundred million had really been found in the same town. It was about five years after that, being then a resident in a southern town, I met Fellowes, who was practicing in some other place. We became intimate, and in a burst of confidence he told me the facts. “Richard Halstein did kill his uncle,” he said; “but it was only homicide. Murder is what you would have found in your verdict. The appearances were so much against him that it would not have been safe for Mm to have told the truth. “Lewis Halstein had sent for him, in the hope of inducing him to give up Mildred James. The uncle had become almost insane over the matter; his quarrel with James had been a bitter one, and his mind was probably weakening from old age. He drew a revolver and threatened to kill his nephew. “Richard grasped It, and the men fought in silence for several seconds. Then his uncle, who was a strong old man, got his finger upon the trigger. Richard swung the revolver round just in the nick of time. Lewis Halstein pressed the trigger, but the bullet went into his own brain. “Horrified at" his action, Richard went away hurriedly. He wavered between confession and denial. That was a fatal policy, for it brought the rope within an inch of his neck.” “And the thumb-print?” I asked. He shot a keen look at, me. “Quite simple,” he replied. “I don’t mind telling you now'. One-Lamp Ike wasn’t such a fool as he looked, and he was quite willing to risk his neck for twenty thousand dollars. You know, I - used to study medicine? - Well, all that wasnecessary was to remove the outer eutiep from Richard’s thumb, remove the same thing from Ike’s, and graft the cuticle from Richard’s thumb upon <hat of Ike. Of course, in time the pattern would reassert Itself, but not till the cuticle had become connected with the flesh beneath. Meanwhile, Richard’s had grown again. That’s all—but if ever su£h a trick was Justified, I think it was to save an innocent man.”

“No, Your Honor.”