TEST TUBE SLEUTHS

Evening Star, Issue 19658, 10 September 1927, Page 18

TEST TUBE SLEUTHS

TRACKED BY CAT'S WHISKER Tho newest kind of sleuth is the solves mysterious crimes by using test tubes, ultra-violet rays, micro-photo-graphy, electro-chemical baths, and a host of other new scientific processes. “The criminal always leaves behind his signature.” This is the watchword of these modern Sherlock Holmeses. “It may be only a flea,,a microbe, a wisp of hair, a powder stain, a bit of mud, a scrap of burned paper, a tooth mark, a foot track, or fragment of finger print, but the signature is there for the man who has learned to read it.”The minute a baffling crime is reported, the now typo of sleuth—Dr Edmond Locard of Lyons is the most famous of this school—rushes to the scene with several assistants, including chemists and photographers. HEMSTITCH CLUE. After making a minute examination of the scene of the crime, gathering up all possible clues and photographing the visible and latent finger prints, Dr Locard and his assistantsliurry back to the big laboratory in the Lyons police headquarters and apply all the paraphernalia of modern science to help read the “signature” of the criminal.. There are hundreds of examples of how the most mysterious crimes have been solved in the French police' laboratories. Only the other day a bank collector named Dupres mysteriously disappeared in the Parisian suburb of Nogont-sur-Marne. When the body, tied up in a sack, was washed up by the river later'there was a handkerchief stuffed in the mouth. _ A similar handkerchief was found in the homos of two workmen arrested on suspicion. Then Professor Baylo, of the Paris police laboratory, who examined the two handkerchiefs, made a sworn declaration that they were identical, had been made by the same machine, and undoubtedly sold at the same shop. The hemstitching machine was faulty, and both handkerchiefs showed the same fault 1 THE CAT’S WHISKER.

A business office at Lyons Avas entered by burglars tAvo years ago. The ordinary detectives could not find any promising traces, but Dr Locard discovered a reddish broAvn hair tAvisted around a typewriter key. He casually asked if tho typist was red-headed, and Avhen it deyeloped that she was a peroxide “ blonde,” he made other investigations and determined that tho hair was a cat’s whisker! He then inquired if there Avere any cats around tho office, and learning there were none, he set the Lyons detectives looking for a rcddish-broAvn cat among the local Apaches. The sleuths found the cat, and the Apache couple to Avhom it belonged were so astounded by this amazing bit of Avork that they confessed. Tho cat had folloAved them that night and played Avith the typewriter keys while they ransacked the office. CONDEMNED BY INSECTS. A woman known as Coco-la-Cherie Avas assassinated at Lyons several years ago. Dr Locard found her body,, and also her room, SAvarming with a certain species of fleas and made a note of it, having the idea that the murderer might InTve picked up some,of them. .. An old alcoholic was arrested as a suspect, and made out a very bad case for himself. Tho police were convinced that he avus the murderer, as he had blood cm his clothes and his body liras covered with fleas, but Dr .Locard saved him by reporting that his fleas were exclusively of the pediculus vestimenti tribe. Ho Avas released because the first variety of these parasites are very tenacious, and if ho had really been on the scene he Avould probably have picked up some. The real murderer, named Mayor, was found to be covered with pediculus capitis Avhon picked up several days later. Ho confessed and was sent to Devil’s Island for life.