“Of a certain course!” he exclaimed. “What you come about was this—this”—he looked at the letter in his hand—“this Bald Impostor, wasn’t it?”
Philo Gubb’s visitor, who had begun to breathe normally again, gasped like a fish once more. He saw Philo Gubb finish reading the description of the Bald Impostor, and then Philo Gubb looked up and looked the Bald Impostor full in the face. He looked the Bald Impostor over, from bald spot to shoes, and looked back again at the description. Item by item he compared the description in the letter with the appearance of the man before him, while the Impostor continued to wipe the palms of his hands with the balled handkerchief. At last Philo Gubb nodded his head.
“Exactly similar to the most nominal respects,” he said. “Quite identical in every shape and manner.”
“Oh, I admit it! I admit it!” said the Bald Impostor hopelessly.
“Yes, sir!” said Philo Gubb. “And I admit it the whilst I admire it. It is the most perfect disguise of an imitation I ever looked at.”
“What?” asked the Bald Impostor.
“The disguise you’ve got onto yourself,” said Philo Gubb. “It is most marvelously similar in likeness to the description in the letter. If you will take the complimentary flattery of a student, Mr. Burns, I will say I never seen no better disguise got up in the world. You are a real deteckative artist.”
The Bald Impostor could not speak. He could only gasp.
“If I didn’t know who you were of your own self,” said Philo Gubb in the most complimentary tones, “I’d have thought you were this here descriptioned Bald Impostor himself.”
His visitor moistened his lips to speak, but Mr. Gubb did not give him an opportunity.