They nursed his bandaged hands with infinite care, for a conclusion as to his record had become obvious. And then officers took his prints after all--and discovered that he was none other than Bill Brown, with a criminal history to which an Old Bailey judge listened with unaffected interest. Bill--or John--got his five years after all. I have told this little story because it affords an excellent illustration of the work of the finger-print department at Scotland Yard--a department which serves not only the Metropolitan Police, but every police force in the kingdom. There is a great deal of confusion in the public mind between Bertillonage and the finger-print system. Even responsible London newspapers fell into the error, when M. Bertillon died, of ascribing to him the invention of the system--with which he had nothing to do. To many people has been ascribed the discovery that finger-prints are an infallible method of identification. The knowledge however was of little use till the inventive genius of one man worked out a simple method of classification for police purposes, so that prints could be compared almost instantly with those on record. That man was Sir Edward Henry, long before he came to Scotland Yard, when he was in the Indian police service. The Henry system has almost entirely superseded the Bertillon system throughout the world, and there is little doubt that it will ultimately become universal. Thousands of criminals who would otherwise have escaped a full measure of punishment for their misdeeds curse its author. It is in this department that police science has been brought to its highest pitch of perfection--a perfection begot of organisation. Every prisoner for a month or longer nowadays has his prints taken a little before he is discharged. These prints, if they are not already in the records of Scotland Yard, are added to them, and a number gives the key to the man's record in the Habitual Criminals Registry. In this manner there has accumulated since 1901, when the system was first put in force, a collection of more than two hundred thousand prints. It is all a matter of system, of scientific and literal exactness, and there is no margin of error. A mistake in identification by finger-prints is literally impossible. As everyone knows, the ridges at the tips of the fingers maintain their formation from birth to death, and even after. Nothing can change them. It is a possibility, though I believe it has never been known to happen, that there are two people in the world who have the markings on one finger-tip exactly alike. But even that incredible chance is guarded against, by taking the markings of the whole ten fingers. It will be realised how great a miracle it would be for two persons to have exactly the same lines, broken in exactly the same way, in exactly the same order on their two hands. That fact is the root principle of the finger-print work.