dity, tearing from the machine and passing
to Braceway each half-page as he finished it. He wrote triple-space,
breaking the story into many paragraphs, never hesitating for a choice of
words.

"My name is Thomas F. Splain.

"I am forty years old.

"I am 'wanted' in New York for embezzlement.

"Fear is an unknown quantity to me. I have always had ample
self-confidence. The world belongs to the impudent.

"I learned long ago that no man is at heart either grateful, or honest,
or unselfish."

With a turn of the roller, he flicked that off the machine and, without
raising his head, passed it to Braceway. The detective glanced at it long
enough to get its meaning and handed it to Fulton. When it was offered to
Greenleaf, he shook his head.

The chiefs rage had reached its high point. To his realization of how
perfectly he had been duped, there was added the humiliation of having
two members of his force as witnesses of its revelation.

"If he makes a move," he thought savagely, fingering the revolver in the
side pocket of his coat, "I'll kill him certain."

The man at the machine wrote on:

"After leaving New York, I was caught in a street accident in Chicago,
suffering a broken nose. Thanks to my physicians--an incompetent lot,
these doctors--I emerged with a crooked nose.

"That was a help. I then had all my teeth extracted. Knowing dentistry,
I saw the possibilities of disguise by wearing differently shaped sets
of teeth.

"Note my heavily protruding lower lip--and, at rare intervals, my
hollow cheeks.

"Also, there's your gold-tooth mystery--solved!

"As a disguise, the gold tooth is admirable. I mean a solid, complete
tooth of gold, garish in the front part of the mouth.

"It unfailingly changes the expression; frequently, it degrades and
brutalizes the face. Try it.

"Using my crooked nose as an every-day precaution, I always
straightened it for night work. Forestier taught me that--great man,
Forestier; marvellous with noses.

"He is now piling up a fortune as make-up specialist for motion
pictures in Los Angeles--has a secret preparation with which he
'builds' new noses.

"Changing the colour of my eyes was something beyond the police
imagination.

"I got the trick from a man in Cincinnati--another great character.
Homatropine is the basic element of his preparation.

"Some day women will hear of it and maake him