Steadman shrugged his shoulders as he took a plate from his mouth and dropped it into the finger-bowl held out to him.
“Ah, all the top! That is goot—very goot!” Something soft and warm was pressed into his mouth, pushed up and down until at last it felt secure. Then, with a satisfied sigh, the yellow fingers raised the head-rest; the little man stood back, the marmoset face wrinkled itself into a satisfied smile. “I hope that Monsieur is pleased.”
Steadman, as he faced his reflection, thought that it was not a question of his best friend but that he himself would not have recognized the image he saw therein. The shape of the eyebrows had been entirely altered. They now slanted upwards, while a clever disposition of lines and hairs made the eyelids themselves appear to narrow and lengthen. His hair, thin in front and near the temples for many a long day now, had actually disappeared, and the enormously broad, high expanse of forehead was furrowed with skilfully drawn lines, and like the rest of his face of a greenish, greyish colour. The nose had become thinner in a mysterious fashion, the bridge had grown higher, the nostrils had widened. But the greatest change was in the mouth—the lips were thicker, more sensual looking. Then, in place of Steadman's perfectly fitting artificial teeth were several projecting yellow fangs with hideous gaps between.
Altogether the effect of a particularly unprepossessing, partially Anglicized Oriental.
“As the English talk, she, your own mother would not know you, eh?” the silky voice questioned anxiously.
And John Steadman, smiling in the curiously stiff fashion which was all the alterations would allow, said that he was sure she would not.
Both he and Furnival donned queerly designed overcoats that looked more like dressing-gowns than anything else, and soft hats. As they made their way through the streets with their hands folded in front and hidden by their wide sleeves, their eyes masked in blue spectacles, their heads turned neither to the right nor left, no one would have suspected their disguise—no one would have taken them for Englishmen. They got into a taxi and the inspector gave an address not far from Stepney Causeway. Once safely inside, he handed Steadman an automatic pistol and a police whistle.
“For emergencies,” he said shortly. “I don't fancy we shall have to use them; but the police are all round the house. At the sound of the whistle they will rush the place.”
“Yes, you may depend upon me, inspector,” Steadman said quietly.
“Here we are!” said the inspector, drawing a couple of parcels from his capacious pockets. One of them he handed to John Steadman, the other he unfastened himself. He shook out a voluminous, flimsy garment of bright yellow and unwrapped from its tissue paper a small yellow mask. “These dominoes we had better put on here beneath our overcoats, Mr. Steadman, and our masks we shall have to slip on as soon as we get inside.”