“It was highly ingenious.  The question was whether heads so preserved would be of any use for the study of facial characters.  I had intended to get a dead monkey from Jamrach’s and experiment in the process.  But now it seemed that the monkey would be unnecessary if only the preparation could be produced without injuring the skull; and I had no doubt that, with due care and skill, it could.

“At daybreak I went down to the dining-room.  The policeman was dozing in his chair; there was a good deal of cigar-ash about, and the whiskey-decanter was less full than it had been, though not unreasonably so.  I roused up the officer and dismissed him with a final cigar and what he called an ’eye-opener’—­about two fluid-ounces.  When he had gone I let myself into the museum lobby.  The burglar was quite dead and beginning to stiffen.  That was satisfactory; but was he the right man?  I snipped off a little tuft of hair and carried it to the laboratory where the microscope stood on the bench under its bell-glass.  I laid one or two hairs on a slide with a drop of glycerine and placed the slide on the stage of the microscope.  Now was the critical moment.  I applied my eye to the instrument and brought the objective into focus.

“Alas!  The hairs were uniformly colored with brown pigment!  He was the wrong man.

“It was very disappointing.  I really need not have killed him, though under the circumstances there was nothing to regret on that score.  He would not have died in vain.  Alive he was merely a nuisance and a danger to the community, whereas in the form of museum preparations he might be of considerable public utility.

“Under the main bench in the laboratory was a long cupboard containing a large zinc-lined box or tank in which I had been accustomed to keep the specimens which were in process of preparation.  I brought the burglar into the laboratory and deposited him in the tank, shutting the air-tight lid and securing it with a padlock.  For further security I locked the cupboard, and, when I had washed the floor of the lobby and dried it with methylated spirit, all traces of the previous night’s activities were obliterated.  If the police wanted to look over the museum and laboratory, they were now quite at liberty to do so.

“I have mentioned that, during the actual capture of this burglar, I seemed to develop an entirely alien personality.  But the change was only temporary, and I had now fully recovered my normal temperament, which is that of a careful, methodical and eminently cautious man.  Hence, as I took my breakfast and planned out my procedure, an important fact made itself evident.  I should presently have in my museum a human skeleton which I should have acquired in a manner not recognized by social conventions or even by law.  Now, if I could place myself in a position to account for that skeleton in a simple and ordinary way, it might, in the future, save inconvenient explanations.