I sat on the hunk and tapped my feet. I hummed and jittered. It seemed forever before he returned. When he did be had a look on his face that made me laugh. I couldn’t help it.
“How is that done?” he demanded.
I told him. He sat in silence for a long time. Then he said, “Will you help me on something?” I agreed. Anyway, I rather liked the guy...
I knocked on the door of Sonia’s apartment. It opened quickly. She was wearing a pale grey house coat. So few women can wear grey. When she saw me her eyes widened and I thought she grew more pale.
“Why, Billy,” she gasped. “How... what?”
“They sprung me, honey. They went over that print on the gun again and found out that it wasn’t really mine after all.”
She looked puzzled arid said, “But it was yours...” Then she gasped and stuck the back of her hand in her open mouth. Her eyes were wide.
“And how would you be so certain of that, little chum?” I asked.
Her blood-red nails slashed toward me and I ducked back. She turned and saw Mercer and another man standing a few feet down the hall, well within earshot. She turned and with a muffled cry, the cry of a predatory animal that has been trapped, she scuttled back into the apartment.
I stepped aside to let Mercer follow her. He had a sad and amused look on his long face.
I walked in after him just in time to see him take two running steps and then stop. The small room was filled with the noise of breaking glass. There was a shriek that fluttered away and died abruptly. Mercer stopped and looked at the window. The curtains blew back into the room with the force of the breeze that came through the large jagged hole in the middle of the pane, I walked into the tiny bathroom. I was completely and thoroughly ill...
After we returned to the central station it was necessary for me to demonstrate the technique only once more. With six eager witnesses. I planted my own thumb print on the middle of the cigarette case. I peeled the shell off the egg, heated the print on the case quickly with a match, and then rolled the end of the soft egg gently and firmly over the print. Then I flipped the case open, lit another match and heated the print on the egg quickly and rolled the egg on the clean inside of the case. Then I stepped back. A couple of the fingerprint boys dusted the two prints and then compared the two. One of them said to Mercer in a tone of awe. “It works! That damn egg picked up a lot of the grease from the original print and rolled it off on the clean surface! From now on this business is complicated. How do you tell a real print front an egg copy?”
Then Mercer turned to me and asked, “How did you figure out the method?”
“Must have been my subconscious working on that egg found in the apartment garbage. After a while I related Miss Zathrem’s training to her war job. She was an expert in forging documents. Then I remembered that one of the quick ways of transfering a seal or ink stamp from one document to another is to put a little solvent on the ink and use the dried soft surface of an egg as a sort of gelatinous transfer substance. I knew I hadn’t touched that gun. I just had to figure a way that my print got onto it. She probably got my print off a glass in her apartment and put it on the gun right after I left.”
There were a lot of abort harsh words expressing surprise from the group who were still staring at the prints. They let me go. I walked alone back through the familiar streets, feeling like the man from Mars. I found myself wondering what the future would have been like if only Sonia hadn’t been planning to use me as the fall guy for her premeditated murder. As I walked I realized that I would never be able to completely brush away her ghost — a ghost of a dead dream.