THREE INCHES TALLER
SIX INCHES TALLER
CARLTON AS A “HUMAN TELESCOPE”
“Oh, that’s nonsense!” he replied hotly. “Thousands of criminals have been measured by it, some of them several times over and on different occasions, but the measurements never vary by more than the minutest fraction of an inch. I’ll bet you anything you like you’re wrong.”
Of course, I wasn’t going to bet on a certainty, so I simply said that I thought he was mistaken, and, placing myself on the platform of the machine, I invited him to readjust the measuring-arm. This time it stood at six feet four inches.
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” he ejaculated, in blank amazement. “This beats everything. I can’t understand it.” “Nor can I,” I replied gravely, “because by rights I should measure six feet six inches. Will you please try again?”
Too astonished to reply, he proceeded to do as I had asked. The measuring-arm registered six feet six and a half inches. “Half an inch too much,” I said. “Your machine’s no good.”
By this time my detective friend hardly knew whether he was standing on his head or his heels. He was dumbfounded—flabbergasted. So, taking pity on him, I explained to him how it was done.
“Well,” he remarked thoughtfully, after he had recovered somewhat from his astonishment, “I hope the knowledge of how to accomplish the feat won’t spread among the criminal fraternity, for if it does the Anthropometrical Department at Scotland Yard may as well close down.”
As I have previously intimated, I don’t perform the above feat in public for fear of straining myself. There are plenty of ordinary ways in which a man can hurt himself in my business, without looking about for extraordinary ways. For instance, I once came an awful cropper on the stage through no fault of my own.