an hour or so, gassing about men we used to know up in the province.
“After awhile I began to get nervous. He was getting a look in his eyes like he used to have when he was young. And then all of a sudden he flared up and tied into me. He had me by the throat and was bending me back across the table when my hand touched that brass knife. It was either me or him—so I let him have it where it would do the most good.
“I beat it then and went back to the hotel. The newspapers were full of it next day, and had a whole lot of stuff about bloody fingerprints. That gave me a jolt! I didn’t know nothing about fingerprints, and here I’d left them all over the dump.
“And then I got to worrying over the whole thing, and it seemed like Henny must have my name written down somewheres among his papers, and maybe had saved some of my letters or telegrams—though they were wrote in careful enough language. Anyway I figured the police would want to be asking me some questions sooner or later; and there I’d be with fingers that fit the bloody prints, and nothing for what Farr calls a alibi.
“That’s when I thought of Farr. I had his address and I knew he had been a fingerprint sharp in the East, so I decided to take a chance on him. I went to him and told him the whole story and between us we figured out what to do.
“He said he’d dope my fingers, and I was to come here and tell the story we’d fixed up, and have my fingerprints taken, and then I’d be safe no matter what leaked out about me and Henny. So he smeared up the fingers and told me to be careful not to shake hands with anybody or touch anything, and I came down here and everything went like three of a kind.