the door of the countess' chamber was fastened by a rod laid transversely across the door on the side opposite to the direction in which the door opened, and lashed firmly to the knob. The second clew included three imprints of a bare foot in blood. And the third was a little drawing of a human face, wearing a

peaked hat, above five lines branching out below it. (See Figure 14.)

The prefect of police sent for an expert. It seemed evident to him that the crime was the work of some of the Italian criminal orders, and that the mark on the wall was the graphic sign of the individual.

The expert came and went carefully over these three distinguishing clews in the villa.

Finally he declared that not one of the clews was indicatory of the assassin, and that all of them had been deliberately made for the purpose of misleading the police.

The expert pointed out that the drawing on the wall was, as the prefect of police concluded, a sign of the Italian Camorrists. But, instead of this figure's being a sign of an individual criminal, it was, in fact, the conventional sign used to indicate the prefect of police. It had been placed there by the criminal, he thought, either in ignorance of its precise meaning or in derision.

It was certain that the crime had been committed by some skillful criminal, for each of the three distinguishing clews had been manufactured for the purpose of misleading the police.

The manner in which the door was tied up indicated that the crime had been committed by a Transylvanian gypsy; the figure on the wall indicated a Neapolitan Camorrist; while the broad flat footprints indicated an Algerian of marked Negroid structure. But, he added, in going to the trouble of making these false evidences of the assassin the criminal had left excellent finger prints, by which his identity could be established.

The prefect of police asked him where the finger prints were.

He pointed out that the prints on the floor were not

footprints, but had been made with the hand-the palm being used for the heel and the planta of the foot, and the fingers for the toes. This gave a broad, flat print, Negroid in aspect and apt to mislead the casual observer. (See Figure 15.) But they could not mislead anybody who understood the difference between the structure of the whorls and the papillary network of the hand and fingers as distinguished from those of the foot and toes.

However, here were excellent finger prints. These were taken off in the usual manner and sent out to be compared with the finger prints in the police archives of neighboring cities. It was presently established that the assassin was a well-known leader of one of the gangs of Marseilles Nervi.

A predominating percentage of our criminal class is from Southeastern Europe. It is therefore evident that, to deal with it intelligently, we must find out the methods used by the leading European criminologists.

The most distinguishing clew to these foreign criminals is the footprint. It is an old and persistent trick of Southeastern Europe to go barefoot behind a man to kill him. This habit of the foreign criminal is apt to leave the police with a distinguishing clew in almost every crime committed with violence or entry.

I'

CHAPTER XVI

THE STUDY OF FOOTPRINTS: THE SHOD FOOT

T used to be said by Matthew Arnold that hardly

anybody would think of taking an English

book of reference if he could get a French or German one. At any rate no one ever seemed to realize precisely how a man walks until the Teutonic scientists began to study the subject.

It was commonly explained that the physical method of walking was to throw the body forward, out of equilibrium, and catch it with the foot. Gross pointed out that this theory was ridiculous. We, in fact, walk by advancing a leg and then leaning the center of gravity upon it in order to continue in the same manner with the other leg.

With this theory for a base, the crimiologists in the great universities were presently able to equip the police inspector with a number of rules of primary importance.

The police of a great Germanic city found themselves confronted one day by a puzzle they were wholly unable to work out. The owner of a warehouse situated in a suburb of the city maintained that a bale of valuable rugs had been carried out of the