Part 21 (2/2)

Eben Sharrow took the drawing that was handed to him and held it in his very dirty fingers. He shook his head.

”I don't just know,” he answered. ”Seems ter me as it's all of it wrong--wrong from start to finish. Thar' ain't anythin' right about it.

I've seen kids in school doin' better pictures than that on their slates.”

”Ah!” Sergeant Silk took the paper back. ”I guessed you'd say something like that. I was always a lame hand at fancy work. Every man to his trade, eh? We can none of us do everything.”

He folded the paper very slowly and precisely, as if it were of value.

His boy companion noticed that as he did so he was paying curious regard to the greasy black finger marks which Eben Sharrow had left upon the clean, white surface.

Sharrow presently took up his lamp and strode away in the direction of one of the camp fires, around which a group of lumber-men stood or sat drying their wet clothes.

Percy Rapson watched the man walking awkwardly up the slope in his spiked boots.

”Sergeant?” he said.

”Well?”

”Why did you show your sketch to that lumber-jack? I'm sure you don't care a bra.s.s farthing for his opinion. And why are you so precious careful of the drawing, folding it so neatly and stowing it away in your pocket-book, as if it were a bank-note? It isn't worth preservin'.”

Sergeant Silk slipped down from his perch on the log.

”That's so,” he said. ”It isn't worth preserving. But you may have noticed that I never throw bits of paper away. They make any place look so untidy.”

Percy was thoughtfully silent for a while, but at length, when Silk turned to stroll up towards the camp, he said abruptly--

”I think I can guess what you did it for. It was a jolly 'cute trick of yours.”

”A trick?”

”Yes,” pursued Percy. ”You made that drawing and invited Sharrow's criticism of it simply and solely to get him to take hold of a piece of white paper and leave his dirty finger marks on it. I believe you want to identify him with some chap who left finger-prints somewhere else.

I've heard of that method of identification. It's said to be a dead sure way of telling one man from another.”

”Yet I should say it is rather an uncertain method for any but experts to follow,” the sergeant observed. ”I shouldn't care to trust to it myself. Certainly I shouldn't venture to accuse any man of a serious crime on such flimsy evidence as a finger mark.”

Rapson glanced at him curiously.

”That chap Ebenezer Sharrow doesn't look as if he could be guilty of committin' a serious crime,” he ventured. ”And yet I suppose you are here on his track.”

”I did not say so,” Silk returned sharply, reprovingly. ”You appear to think that because I'm a policeman I must always be on some poor fellow's trail, hunting him down. Sharrow was personally a stranger to me until last night, when I met him for the first time in the bunkhouse.”

”Then why did you go out of your way to get hold of his finger-print?”

Percy insisted. ”You never do anything without a reason.”

Sergeant Silk did not answer him. Perhaps they were too near to the men about the drying fire for him to enter into explanations without risk of being overheard. Perhaps he had reasons for not wis.h.i.+ng to explain.

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