The manager shrugged his shoulders coldly.
"You forget that the attendants also saw you," he remarked. "Cannot we trust our own eyes?"
"A common assumption, yet not always a strictly reliable one," insinuated Carrados softly.
"I cannot be mistaken."
"Then can you tell me, without looking, what colour Professor Bulge's eyes are?"
There was a curious and expectant silence for a minute. The professor turned his back on the manager and the manager passed from thoughtfulness to embarrassment.
"I really do not know, Mr. Carrados," he declared loftily at last. "I do not refer to mere trifles like that."
"Then you can be mistaken," replied Carrados mildly yet with decision.
"But the ample hair, the venerable flowing beard, the prominent nose and heavy eyebrows—"
"These are just the striking points that are most easily counterfeited. They 'take the eye.' If you would ensure yourself against deception, learn rather to observe the eye itself, and particularly the spots on it, the shape of the finger-nails, the set of the ears. These things cannot be simulated."