Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

Bertillon’s Odds by Talmage Powell

By some diabolical scheme of higher mathematical calculation, the odds against a certain variation are said to be two billion against one! Don’t wager on it, is my advice.

Dear Marshall:

Enjoyed the visit. Glad your trip coincided with my vacation. But you should have stayed over another day. Pete Gonzales pulled a 146-pound tarpon out of the Gulf where we spent that last day fishing. Anyway, your faith in the location, barely out of sight of the Coast Guard light on Panama Key, was justified.

The Langborn murder broke the day after I reported back to work. Knowing that your interest in police work has been more than academic since your days as a crime reporter (and as comfort when you think of that 146-pounder) I’m going to tell you about the Langborn case. Because one detail in it is unique, and I don’t use the word lightly. Nothing like it has ever turned up in the history of police work and I doubt that it will ever happen again.

The Langborn of whom I speak was the crotchety old cuss, Carson Langborn. Just in case the name isn’t familiar to you, he was a West Virginia coal mine operator who retired and came here about six years ago. A cantankerous citizen, he was forever pestering the city manager. Too many street lights were wasting electricity, or there was too much horn-blowing on our downtown streets. Nothing was done in City Hall without his vociferous opposition. His disposition was as gloomy as the damp burrows he caused to be made in the earth.

He was married six times, and even the best of his wives was unable to stay with him. The sixth, a Mary Scorbin, died of a sudden illness, making a dramatic escape from his tyranny.

All of his marriages were childless, although Mary Scorbin Langborn had a son by a previous marriage. His name was Gary. He was a good-looking youth, dark, slender, rangy, with a suggestion of whip-like strength in his sinews.

Conditioned by twenty years of police work, my instincts didn’t react favorably to Gary. There was a brooding in his face, a coldness in his eyes. He struck me as having more sneering contempt than conscience for the unimportant non-enities comprising the remainder of the human race.

I recognized the material groundlessness of my aversion to the twenty-year-old Gary, and I determined not to let it color my actions. As a police officer, it was my job to remain objective and impartial.

The old man and Gary were living alone on the Langborn estate prior to the murder. Gary discovered the body, called us, and was waiting quietly and unemotionally when we arrived.

A squad car, radioed out, was the first to reach the Langborn home. Following the two uniformed cruiser men were Marty Sims and myself in a black sedan assigned to the detective division. Close on our exhaust fumes were Rynold from the lab and Doc Jenkins, elected coroner just this year.

The house was an ugly, sterile, two-story wooden structure reminiscent of a large Georgia or South Carolina farm. The dormer windows stared bleakly at us. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Langborn had added lightning rods at the ends of the gable.

On the long front porch, leaning idly against a wooden post, stood Gary Scorbin. He took his cigarette from his lips and flicked it in the yard.

“The old man’s in there.”

Gary followed as Marty and I went inside. Langborn had seemingly transported his parlor from a much earlier West Virginia home. The furnishings were heavy and dark, out of keeping with our sunny clime.

“This way,” Gary said in the manner of an impersonal guide.

Langborn had met his end in a room off the parlor. I suppose it was his study. There was a desk, leather couch and chairs, bookcase, a low chest — and a wall safe. I saw the safe before I saw Langborn. The safe had been ripped open.

“He kept three or four thousand in there,” Gary said. “I warned him.”

As I moved deeper in the room, I saw Langborn. The desk had obscured him. An old, dried-up hank of bones in his clothes, he lay as if he had pitched face forward. The side of his cheek touched the carpet. All the gray, brown-blotched skin of his face had collapsed against his skull. A single bullet had entered the back of his head. It remained in his brain.

The room remained very quiet as Rynold and Doc Jenkins came in. The two uniformed officers remained on guard, one at the door of the room, one on the porch.

Rynold marked the position of the cadaver (a very apt word, in its connotations, for this particular corpse) and started taking pictures. Doc chewed on his cigar and went to one knee beside the corpse.

As you know, there are few outward dramatics at such a scene. On the surface, it’s a cut-and-dried job. Details are recorded, in brains and on paper. Each man knows his job and wastes few motions. The inner meaning of the scene depends on a man’s individual reaction to death. There is no better reminder that you are mortal, and there is violence in the world.

“Been dead three, four hours is my preliminary estimate,” Doc said. “No doubt the bullet killed him.”

Marty had searched for the gun. “No murder weapon in here.”

Rynold went over the empty safe for fingerprints. I motioned Gary Scorbin to the parlor. He obeyed quickly enough, but he was able to impart in his action a suggestion of insolence.

“Is everything in there just as you found it?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“You touch anything?”

He shrugged. “The old man. I half turned him, saw he was dead, let him fall back. Started to look in the safe, but didn’t touch it. Thought you’d want to look for fingerprints.”

“Any servants here?”

“Nope, just the old skinflint. Woman comes in three times a week to clean. Today wasn’t one of her days.”

“Better fill me in on your movements today.”

Again he shrugged. I was to learn that he used the gesture habitually. He managed to make it irritating. “I got up. The old man hit the deck couple hours before, about eight. We squabbled, as usual. I told, him to go to hell and went down the beach.”

“Spend the whole day there?”

“The afternoon,” he said.

“See anyone you know?”

That shrug. “Why should I? I didn’t know he was going to get bumped off. I got no alibi, if that’s what you mean. I guess people saw me here and there.”

“I suggest you turn a couple of them up.”

He looked at me levelly. He had heavy brows and thick, dark lashes a woman would have envied. “You want ’em, you turn ’em up. I don’t have to prove anything, now do I?”

I endured the urge to give him the back of my hand across the petulant lips.

“What did you do all afternoon?”

“Drank beer. Watched some guys fish off the causeway. Swam at the public beach. Came home. Found the old twister and hollered for the law.” His tone was flat, telling me I could like it or lump it. In either event I was going to have to swallow it.

“You and Mr. Langborn argue often?”

His shoulders rose and fell. “All the time.”

“What about?”

“Money. Me getting a job.”

“You don’t work?”

“Why should I? He’s got... He had plenty.”

“You know,” I said. “It’s a wonder he didn’t throw you out.”

His laugh revealed complete lack of fear of me and total disregard for my opinion. “When you got right down to it, he was scared. I could see right through him. I was the only one who ever stood up to him. He’d disposed of everybody he’d ever had. I was all he had left.”

Gary stretched and yawned, the back of his hand against his mouth. “You all finished?”

“For now, maybe. You see any strangers around, any suspicious characters?”

“Nope.”

“No one leaving the house as you approached?”

“Nope.”

“Any idea who might have done this?”

“Nope.”

“Who knew about the safe, beside you and Mr. Langborn?”

“How should I know? People up and down the beach, I guess. You know word of a miser gets around.”

“A miser doesn’t usually broadcast the location of his strongbox,” I said.

My meaning was clear, and he got it. “Look, pal, the secret wasn’t so sacred with me.”

In satisfied repose, his face was clean-cut, boyish. Those lashes gave it innocence. I’ll admit I was frightened, in a strange, chilling way. More frightened by this boy than by a professional criminal.

Up and down the beach he’d gone, telling of the safe and its contents, hoping the fact would eventually fall on sufficiently greedy and unprincipled ears...

I’m not easily shocked, but this shocked me, this invitation for some hoodlum or narcotics addict to rob and kill a hated and rich stepfather. It was as clever as it was cowardly and mean, and the boy was legally in the clear.

“You want me,” he said, “I’ll be at the Pelican Motel on the beach.”

Rynold reported there were no fingerprints on the safe. It had been wiped clean. But we found the murder weapon a short while later, in a storm drain two dozen yards from the house where the murderer had tossed it.

It was a .32 caliber revolver, one shot fired, loaded with jacketed slugs. Our later checkup showed the gun was unregistered, bought in a pawn shop or back booth of a dingy bar somewhere. Which made it untraceable.

Sims and I stayed close to Rynold as he went over the gun for fingerprints. As on the Langborn safe — none. Wiped clean.

Then Rynold, rating A-plus, carefully ejected the unfired bullets. On one of them we found a single print, put there when the gun had been loaded, perhaps days before the opportunity came to use it.

Rynold methodically ran a ballistics, and clinched it. The gun had killed Carson Langborn.

While I attempted a fingerprint identification, Sims and a small crew of men fine-combed the Langborn neighborhood.

Our first findings were negative. I was unable to match the print with any on file here, in Tampa, Miami, or Tallahassee.

Sims was unable to find any evidence of strangers or suspicious characters in the neighborhood the day of the murder. His search extended to the bars and joints on the beach, to the questioning of every known hoodlum he laid hands on. He got nowhere. No thug was spending beyond his means. No hoodlum had boasted drunkenly in his cups. Stool pigeons were all as helpful as blank paper.

Meanwhile, the youth drank beer and swam at the Pelican’s private strip of Gulf beach.

And I, as officer in charge of the investigation, was faced by the absolute paradox. For when I sent that print to Washington, it was readily identified.

It belonged to a man named Clement J. Smith.

He lived in Napa, Idaho.

During World War. II he had worked at White Sands, New Mexico where the FBI had fingerprinted him and given him top clearance.

He was a leading citizen in his community.

He had never heard of Carson Langborn. He had never been in West Virginia or in Florida.

He was beyond suspicion. Everything about him was known and could be proven. He’d been busy conducting his own affairs at the moment Langborn, a stranger among millions, was murdered.

In short, a fingerprint (which doesn’t lie) had turned up in an utterly impossible time and place.

Surely, someone had made a mistake. I accused Rynold, and in our frustration, we almost argued. Then I double-checked with Washington.

The possibility of mistake was eliminated. The final conference between Rynold, Sims, and myself lasted nearly two hours in my office. We dredged up every explanation our minds could devise.

Finally, Sims said haggardly, “We’re losing sight on the case. I think we better back out of this hole and take a fresh start on solving Langborn’s murder.”

“How about the fingerprint?” Rynold persisted.

“Relegate it to the Fortian heap of facts science can’t explain,” Sims said.

“Science can explain any material fact with sufficient data,” Rynold said. “If an explanation fails, it’s because the data...”

“Trouble with you microscope-lookers,” Sims said, “is that you trot out your good guesses, then cover your ignorance with excuses.”

I cut in: “You’ve given me an idea, Marty, and a good one, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, both of you. You with your talk about getting on with the Langborn case, and Rynold with his talk of data.”

Both of them gave me their attention.

“That boy killed his stepfather,” I said. “Everything so far makes it more glaringly apparent. If it had been simple robbery and murder, we’d have heard some whisper, however faint, as thoroughly as we’ve covered this thing.

“We know what happened. He scattered the tale of the secret hoard in the old man’s safe to give him the subtlest of alibis. He slipped unseen to the house, killed the old man, ripped the safe open — wearing gloves — and slipped back to the beach. Later, he returned, supposedly discovered Langborn, and called us. He probably destroyed the money in the safe. The amount was of no moment, compared to what he would inherit.

“And here we were, helpless. He’s as cunning as any man we’ve ever faced. If he’d tried to set up an alibi for the exact time of the old man’s death, all we’d have to do is crack it and we’d have him cold. As it is, he’s dependent on nothing and no one but himself. No alibi witnesses for us to work on, no secrets about his relations between him and Langborn for us to turn up. He swims and enjoys his beer while we beat ourselves to a frazzle trying to find proof that’ll stand up in court.”

I started toward the door. “Come on, Marty. Let’s see if we can’t crack this young tiger.”

“How about the fingerprint?” Rynold said, unable to get it off his mind.

“I hope,” I said, “we can make it work for us.”

The boy was rolling with a grace of a porpoise a quarter-mile offshore when Marty and I reached the water’s edge.

I cupped my hands and yelled Gary’s name. He swam in and stood up in shallow water, his hide sleek and burnished.

He came out and walked to the spot where he’d spread a large beach towel on the sand. He picked up a smaller towel, dried his hands, and stooped to get cigarettes and matches.

“Have you made any arrangements about your stepfather, Gary?” I asked.

“Going to plant him tomorrow, if you release the body. I called the undertaker and told him to attend to it.”

“Aren’t you going to ask why we’re here, if we’ve arrested someone?”

“If you’re trying to scare me, forget it.”

“I really don’t care, flatfoot. Your arrests don’t interest me.”

“This one will.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to arrest you, Gary, and take you to headquarters and have a look at your fingerprints.”

“I’d know better than to try and scare you, Gary. Anyway, you wiped the fingerprints off the gun.”

“What’s fingerprints got to do with it?”

“Well, somebody loaded the gun and then some time passed. And then he used the gun. He remembered to wipe it clean — but in the stress of the moment, he forgot that there might have been a print on one of the bullets.”

Marty and I moved on him from different angles. He backed a step. He dropped his cigarette. “What kind of bluff...”

“No bluff, Gary,” I said. “Just a single fingerprint on a bullet. If you’re innocent...”

He kicked sand in my face, ducked past Marty, and ran down the beach. The bright sun shone on his fleeing figure, the pastel pink of the Pelican, and the pastel aqua of a convertible on the edge of the motel’s parking lot. He was angling toward the convertible, a track man neither Marty nor I could come anywhere matching.

Marty dropped to one knee, pulled his revolver and fired over the boy’s head.

The bullet gave Gary fresh speed.

Marty took careful aim. His second shot tore a piece of flesh from Gary’s thigh. The boy pitched forward and went rolling.

Later, in a cell, Gary decided to trade a signed confession for a chance of escaping the chair. We still use the electric chair in our state, and the thought of it filled him with a particular horror. His story pretty well coincided with our conclusions.

I’m not at all sure we needed the confession. The fingerprint nailed it down for us. That’s right. His print was a perfect match for the one Rynold discovered on the bullet.

And what of Clement J. Smith, a stranger nearly a continent away, an unknown among millions?

The explanation is simple. His print matched also.

You may recall that Bertillon himself, the great French anthropologist who laid the groundwork for the system, recognized the mathematical possibility of duplicate fingerprints. The odds against it are about two billion to one.

But the laws of chance are undeniable, and in a way, I suppose, what happened here was inevitable, somewhere, sometime.

So perhaps it isn’t as unique as I’d like to think. I’ve no way of knowing how many millions upon millions of fingerprints have been taken throughout the world in all the long decades during which the science has been in use.

I only know that Clement Smith and Gary Scorbin possessed the first known two-billionth digits in common.

I’ll give Pete Gonzales your compliments on the 146-pounder.

                Your friend,

                R. D. Singer — Captain Detective Division

P. S. Maybe the Langborn case will suggest a story to you. Not being a writer, I wouldn’t know how to work it up. I imagine you’ll think of the Clement J. Smith angle. He was lucky. But what if, tomorrow or two hundred years from now, another two-billionth print led to an accusation against a guy who wasn’t so clearly innocent as Smith? Now wouldn’t he be in a mess?