arcely any preliminary began.

CHAPTER XXI

THE NARRATIVE OF JOHN LEXMAN

"I am, as you may all know, a writer of stories which depend for their
success upon the creation and unravelment of criminological mysteries.
The Chief Commissioner has been good enough to tell you that my stories
were something more than a mere seeking after sensation, and that I
endeavoured in the course of those narratives to propound obscure but
possible situations, and, with the ingenuity that I could command, to
offer to those problems a solution acceptable, not only to the general
reader, but to the police expert.

"Although I did not regard my earlier work with any great seriousness
and indeed only sought after exciting situations and incidents, I can
see now, looking back, that underneath the work which seemed at the time
purposeless, there was something very much like a scheme of studies.

"You must forgive this egotism in me because it is necessary that
I should make this explanation and you, who are in the main police
officers of considerable experience and discernment, should appreciate
the fact that as I was able to get inside the minds of the fictitious
criminals I portrayed, so am I now able to follow the mind of the man
who committed this murder, or if not to follow his mind, to recreate the
psychology of the slayer of Remington Kara.

"In the possession of most of you are the vital facts concerning this
man. You know the type of man he was, you have instances of his terrible
ruthlessness, you know that he was a blot upon God's earth, a vicious
wicked ego, seeking the gratification of that strange blood-lust and
pain-lust, which is to be found in so few criminals."

John Lexman went on to describe the killing of Vassalaro.

"I know now how that occurred," he said. "I had received on the previous
Christmas eve amongst other presents, a pistol from an unknown admirer.
That unknown admirer was Kara, who had planned this murder some three
months ahead. He it was, who sent me the Browning, knowing as he did
that I had never used such a weapon and that therefore I would be chary
about using it. I might have put the pistol away in a cupboard out
of reach and the whole of his carefully thought out plan would have
miscarried.

"But Kara was systematic in all things. Three weeks after I received the
weapon, a clumsy attempt was made to break into my house in the middle
of the night. It struck me at the time it was clumsy,