The dead man had been on the threshold of middle age. His temples were-graying and there was gray in his close-cropped beard. The beard, instead of giving him an air of distinction, left him with a hard ruthless face.
His features were regular, except perhaps for his earlobes which were thick, pendulous, and slightly discolored as though they had been forcibly twisted.
Whoever killed Mr. Wallace-Sampson must have really hated him to have done such a savage knife job on him. Why, then, would the victim have admitted a man who was such an obvious and determined enemy? Could the murderer have obtained a key from some third party?
Ritter’s reverie was interrupted by the approach of Sergeant Foley, the scowling fingerprint expert.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “we got something special here. I think we’re stuck with a sixty-four-million-dollar question and with no sponsor to slip us the answer.”
“You mean you can’t make the stiff?”
“Oh, the stiffs a cinch. We haven’t made him yet, but we got a perfect set of prints and he’s old enough so he must be on file somewhere in the world. But the murderer — no soap!”
“Sergeant, you surprise and grieve me,” Ritter said. “With my own little eyes I see five perfect bloody fingermarks on the bathroom door.”
“Finger marks yes,” said Sergeant Foley, “but prints no.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning no prints. No ridges, no pore patterns, no whorls, no radial loops, no ulnar loops — no nothing.”
Ritter frowned. “Gloves?”
“We usually get some sort of pattern with gloves, even surgical gloves sometimes, although they’re hard to identify. But here, nothing — and I mean nothing.”
“The knife?”
“Same thing. It wasn’t wiped. Bloody finger marks, yes — prints, no. The knife, by the way, comes from the kitchenette here.”
Max Ritter scratched his mastoid process. He pursed his lips as though rehearsing for a Police Good Neighbor League baby-kissing bee. Then he asked, “Your boys finished with that phone, Sergeant?”
“Yup. Go ahead and call.”
A moment later Ritter was talking to his private medical examiner, Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee, chief pathologist and director of laboratories at Northbank’s Pasteur Hospital.
“Hi, Doc. Get you out of bed?... Look, I got something kind of funny, if you can call homicide funny... No, the coroner’s a little late, but this one he can’t write off as natural causes. A knife job, but good. Like a surgeon, practically... No, I don’t think there’s anything you can do tonight, Doc. I already emptied the medicine chest for you, like always. But if I can talk the coroner into shipping the deceased to your hospital morgue for a P.M... You will? Thanks, Doc. I think you’re going to like this one. The killer’s got no fingerprints... No, I don’t mean he left none; he’s got none. Call you in the morning, Doc.”
When Dr. Coffee returned to the pathology laboratory after the autopsy next morning, he handed two white enameled pails to his winsome, dark-eyed technician and said, “The usual sections and the usual stains, Doris. Only don’t section the heart until I photograph the damage.”
Doris Hudson lifted the lids from both pails and peered in without any change of expression on her cover-girl features.
“Lieutenant Ritter is waiting in your office, Doctor, talking to Calcutta’s gift to Northbank,” she said. “If you agree that Dr. Mookerji is not paid to entertain the Police Department, I could use him out here to help me cut tissue.”
Doris’s voice apparently had good carrying qualities, for the rotund Hindu resident in pathology immediately appeared in the doorway and waddled into the laboratory.
“Salaam, Doctor Sahib,” said Dr. Mookerji. “Leftenant Ritter is once more involving us in felonious homicide, no?”
Dr. Coffee nodded.
“Hi, Doc,” said Ritter. “What did you find?”
“The gross doesn’t show much except that the deceased died of shock and hemorrhage due to multiple stab wounds in the cardiac region and lower abdomen. As you know, Max, I won’t have the microscopic findings for a day or so.”
“Did you shave off the guy’s whiskers?”
“That’s not routine autopsy procedure, Max. But it’s pretty clear that he grew a beard to hide scars. There’s old scar tissues on one cheek, on the chin, and on the upper lip.”
“He also grows the bush to hide behind.” Max Ritter grinned. “Doc, the guy’s a con man and a small-time blackmailer. I wire the Henry classification to the F.B.I. last night and I get the answer first thing this morning. His name’s Paul Wallace, with half a dozen aliases. He’s got a record: four arrests, two convictions. Two cases dismissed in New York when the plaintiffs, both dames, withdrew their complaints. Last four years are blank, the F.B.I. says, at least as far as Washington knows.”
“What about the murderer with no fingerprints?” the pathologist asked.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about, Doc. Since this Wallace is a crook, maybe the guy that knifed him is another crook he double-crossed. Maybe the butcher boy had a little plastic surgery on his fingers.”
“I don’t know, Max.” Dr. Coffee shook his head, then with one hand brushed an unruly wisp of straw-colored hair back from his forehead. “I’ve never seen a first-class job of surgical fingerprint elimination. Did you ever see the prints they took off Dillinger’s corpse? His plastic job was a complete botch. No trouble at all to make the identification.”
“Then how do you—?”
“Give me another forty-eight hours, Max. Meanwhile, what progress have you made running down blind leads?”
Ritter told the pathologist about Patty Erryl and her visits to the dead man’s apartment with and without “lover boy”; also about the bored and vague desk clerk’s recital, and about his own conclusions.
“This white-haired old geezer with the package under his arm is definitely not delivering gin to Miss Benedict in Seven-oh-two for any liquor store within half a mile,” said Ritter. “I checked ’em all. Could be that his package was the plastic raincoat I found in the bathroom.
“Anyhow, I just come from talking to this Patty Erryl, the opera hopeful.” Ritter brought forth his envelope of clippings and spread them on Dr. Coffee’s desk. “Look, Doc. A real dish. Not more than twenty. Born in Texas, she says — some little town near San Antonio. Grew up in the Philippines where her father was a U.S. Air Force pilot. He was killed in Korea. Her mother is dead too, she says. I ain’t so sure. Maybe Mama just eased out of the picture, leaving little Patty with a maiden aunt in Northbank — Aunt Minnie Erryl. Anyhow, little Patty studies voice here in Northbank with Sandra Farriston until Sandra is bounced off to join Caruso, Melba, and Schumann-Heink. Remember Sandra? Then Patty goes to New Orleans to study with an old friend of Sandra’s for a few years, she says. Then she comes back to Northbank to live with Auntie Min and sing in night clubs, under Auntie Min’s strictly jaundiced eye. Then all of a sudden she wins this Metropolitan Opera audition tryout—”
“What about lover boy?”
“I was just coming to that, Doc. Seems he’s a reporter on the Northbank Tribune. Covers the Federal Building in the daytime and the night-club beat after dark. Name’s Bob Rhodes. He’s the one who pushes her into the opera auditions. Quite a feather in his cap, to read his night-club columns. He thinks he discovers another Lily Pons.”