Jamyang Norbu - The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

'But Mr Holmes,' I objected, 'the gendeman's career is that of an honourable soldier.'

'It is true,' Holmes answered. 'Up to a certain point he did well. He was always a man of iron nerve, and no doubt you, Strickland, have heard the story of how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger. There are some trees, Huree, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop flaws. You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family.'

'That is surely rather fanciful,' Strickland reproached.

'Well, I don't insist upon it. Whatever the cause, Colonel Moran began to go wrong. Surely, Strickland, that if the Hyderabad card scandal did nothing to sully the good Colonel's reputation, then the mysterious death of his native butler must have at least given the police force some doubt as to his continence.'

'Mr Holmes, we are aware of certain blemishes on Colonel Moran's record, but it takes more than some suspicious occurrences to charge a man with being the leader of a dangerous criminal gang.'

'No doubt you are right,' said Holmes testily. He took a cigar from a box on the table and lit it. He then leaned back on his armchair, and, gazing at the ceiling, began to blow great clouds of smoke into the air. 'Well, it is a very long shot, but I must play it if my poor littie reputation, such as it is, is not to suffer shipwreck. Now Strickland, since you happen to play cards with Moran, you will surely have noticed a peculiarity in his right thumb.'

'He has a long, heavy scar running diagonally across his thumb. The result of some accident with a hunting knife.'

'Actually he received the injury in a struggle with a knife-wielding woman whom he had foully betrayed and ruined. But that does not concern us at present. Now, Huree, if you could kindly spare me a lead pencil from that fine array of writing paraphernalia you have displayed in your breast pocket, I will attempt to provide a demonstration of my claim that Colonel Sebastian Moran was the real perpetrator of this dreadful crime.'

Mr Holmes took a penknife out of his pocket and began to sharpen my pencil. He shaved off the wood and exposed more than a couple of inches of the soft lead, which he then delicately scraped with the knife over a clean sheet of paper. After about ten minutes he had a small pile of very fine black powder. Then going over to the elephant, he began to examine it minutely with the aid of his lens. The elephant glittered as Mr Holmes turned it this way and that, inspecting it under the gas; but I noticed that he was careful not to handle it except with a handkerchief.

'Mr Carvallo. Mr Carvallo,' he muttered to himself,'you should not have fondled this thing so much with your sweaty hands.'

After a good twenty minutes, during which his brow seemed to furrow deeply with mounting frustration and annoyance, he sprang up from his chair with a cry of satisfaction. 'Ha! Ha! Capital. Now if I could trouble you gentlemen to come closer, I may be able to amuse you with this parlour-trick.'

As we gathered around him Sherlock Holmes picked up the sheet of paper and gently blew some of the fine graphite powder onto the surface of the elephant, on its left flank. He then tapped the elephant lightiy with the penknife, till all the excess graphite powder fell off on the table. As if by magic a number of finger and thumb prints appeared on the part of the elephant which had received the powder. The black lines and whorls of the impression stood out clearly against the light yellow of the brass lamp.

'Now,' said Holmes,'most of these belong to the sweaty fingers of our Portuguese friend, but if you will observe here closely…'

Using the tip of the penknife as a pointer he indicated a large clear impression – a rough ridged thumb print with a diagonal line running across it.

'It is not conclusive evidence; said Sherlock Holmes, folding the penknife and putting it back in his pocket, 'but it may serve to demonstrate that Colonel Sebastian Moran did, at sometime, handle this object.'

'This is most wonderful verification, Sir; quod erat demonstrandum, if I may be pardoned the expression,' I exclaimed in admiration.

'I owe you an apology, Mr Holmes,' said Strickland ruefully. 'I should have had more faith in your marvellous faculty.'

'You give me too much credit, Strickland. I must admit to some luck in this instance. On the balance of probability, I could not have hoped for such a perfect sample of the Colonel's thumb print, especially as the clerk had managed to obliterate nearly all previous fingerprints left on it by his injudicious handling of the object. But I took my chance for "a vaincre sans peril, on triomphe sans gloire". Corneille has such a very neat way of putting these things. But for incontrovertible proof you would need a sample of Colonel Moran's thumb print to compare with this one on the elephant. As you may know, no two human fingerprints are ever alike.'

'Yes, Mr Holmes,' answered Strickland, 'I have heard something of the kind; though till this day I was not aware that it could be used to practical advantage, especially in the solution of a crime.'

'A wide range of exact knowledge is essential to the higher development of the art of detection,' Sherlock Holmes explained in a didactic manner. 'The Babylonians pressed fingerprints into clay to identify the author of cuneiform writings, and to protect against forgeries. Fingerprints were also used by the Chinese at an early date for purposes of identification. You may not be aware that I am the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject. In my work entitled Upon the Distinction and Classification of Human Finger and Thumb Prints I enumerate five main groups of characteristic details and other sub-classification by which fingerprints maybe systematically classified and recorded. I devote two whole chapters to the methods by which fingerprints may be detected upon objects such as glass, metal, wood, and even paper. I myself have developed a method, which you have seen crudely demonstrated, by which near invisible fingerprints can be enhanced or developed by the delicate application of fine powders whose colours contrast favourably with the background surface. The powders adhere to the lines of the prints because of the body oils and sweat always present on the surface of the human hand and which is invariably left on any surface we touch. Such developed fingerprints could be photographed to provide, let us say, evidence in court.

'In the monograph I also provide incontestable evidence of the superiority of the fingerprinting system over Monsieur Bertillon's [17] system of "anthropometry" for the identification of criminals. But I weary you with my obsession for minutiae.'

'Not at all,' Strickland said earnestly. 'It is of the greatest interest to me. Surely such a system as you have described would revolutionise police work.'

'Undoubtedly, but it is not in the province of a lone consulting detective to apply such a system to its fullest productivity. It would require the resources of a large official organisation, like that of Scotland Yard, to record the prints of every criminal or suspect they may come across, and register them in such a way that any one of them is always ready to be had for comparison with fingerprints found at the scene of the crime. But the Scotland Yarders are not men who would entertain any sympathy for revolutionary systems.'

'Well, Mr Holmes, I would consider it a signal of honour if you were to permit me to apply your system of fingerprinting in this country. [18] The Imperial Indian Police, in spite of many shortcomings, is still young enough to be occasionally pioneering.'