"Murray Leinster - The Gadget Had a Ghost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

are quite impossible! And that is so small, so trivial an impossibility
compared to the rest! You see, Mr. Coghian, those fingerprints are
yours!”
While Goghian sat, staring rather intently at nothing at all, the
Turkish lieutenant of police brought out a small fingerprint pad, the
kind used in up-to-date police departments. No need for ink. One
presses one’s fingers on the pad and the prints develop of
themselves.
“If I may show you—”
Coghlan let him roll the tips of his fingers on the glossy top sheet
of the pad. It was a familiar enough process. Goghlan had had his
fingerprints taken when he got his passport for Turkey, and again
when he registered as a resident-alien with the Istanbul Police
Department. The Turk offered the magnifying glass again. Coghlan
studied the thumbprint he had just made. After a moment’s
hesitation, he compared it with the thumbprint on the sheepskin. He
jumped visibly. He checked the other prints, one by one, with
increasing care and incredulity.
Presently he said in the tone of one who does not believe his own
words: “They—they do seem to be alike! Except for—”
“Yes,” said Lieutenant Ghalil. “The thumbprint on the sheepskin
shows a scar that your thumb does not now have. But still it is your
fingerprint—that and all the others. It is both philosophically and
mathematically impossible for two sets of fingerprints to match
unless they come from the same hand!”
“These do,” observed Goghlan.
Duval muttered unhappily to himself. He put down the Kurdish
knife and paced again. Ghalil shrugged.
“M. Duval observed the prints,” he explained, “quite three
months ago—the prints and the writing. It took him some time to be
convinced that the matter was not a hoax. He wrote to the Istanbul
Police to ask if their records showed a Thomas Coghian residing at
750 Fatima. Two months ago!”
Coghlan jumped again. “Where’d he get that address?”
“You will see,” said the Turk. “I repeat that this was two months
ago! I replied that you were registered, but not at that
address. He wrote again, forwarding a photograph of part of that
sheepskin page and asking agitatedly if those were your fingerprints.
I replied that they were, save for the scar on the thumb. And I added,
with lively curiosity, that two days previously you had removed to
750 Fatima—the address M. Duval mentioned a month previously.”
“Unfortunately,” said Coghian, “that just couldn’t happen. I
didn’t know the address myself, until a week before I moved.”
“I am aware that it could not happen,” said Chalil painedly. “My
point is that it did.”
“You’re saying,” objected Goghian, “that somebody had infor-
mation three weeks before it existed!”
Ghalil made a wry face. “That is a masterpiece of understate-
ment—”
“It is madness!” said Duval hoarsely. “It is lunacy! Ce n’est pas