: I am the
unfortunate possessor of a safe here, in which, a few months ago, I
deposited--among less important matter--sixty bearer bonds of the
Japanese Imperial Loan--the bulk of my small fortune--and the
manuscript of an important projected work on 'Polyphyletic Bridal
Customs among the mid-Pleistocene Cave Men.' Today I came to detach
the coupons which fall due on the fifteenth; to pay them into my bank
a week in advance, in accordance with my custom. What do I find? I
find the safe locked and apparently intact, as when I last saw it a
month ago. But it is far from being intact, sir! It has been opened,
ransacked, cleared out! Not a single bond, not a scrap of paper
remains."

It was obvious that the manager's temperature had been rising during
the latter part of this speech and now he boiled over.

"Pardon my flatly contradicting you, Professor Bulge. You have again
referred to your visit here a month ago as your last. You will bear
witness of that, gentlemen. When I inform you that the professor had
access to his safe as recently as on Monday last you will recognize
the importance that the statement may assume."

The professor glared across the room like an infuriated animal, a
comparison heightened by his notoriously hircine appearance.

"How dare you contradict me, sir!" he cried, slapping the table
sharply with his open hand. "I was not here on Monday."

The manager shrugged his shoulders coldly.

"You forget that the attendants also saw you," he remarked. "Cannot we
trust our own eyes?"

"A common assumption, yet not always a strictly reliable one,"
insinuated Carrados softly.

"I cannot be mistaken."

"Then can you tell me, without looking, what colour Professor Bulge's
eyes are?"

There was a curious and expectant silence for a minute. The professor
turned his back on the manager and the manager passed from
thoughtfulness to embarrassment.

"I really do not know, Mr. Carrados," he declared loftily at last. "I
do not refer to mere trifles like that."

"Then you can be mistaken," replied Carrados mildly yet with decision.

"But the ample hair, the venerable flowing beard, the prominent nose
and heavy eyebrows--"

"These are just the striking points that are most easily
counterfeited. They 'take the eye.' If you would ensure yourself
against deception, learn rather to observe the eye itself, and
particularly the spots on it, the shape of the finger-nails, the set
of the ears. These things ca