"I believe so."
"Work that requires sharp wit?"
"Supposedly."
"Well, sharp wits never assume anything without some information to back them up. Your ideas of skin grafting are a good deal like a child's. In the first place we shan't need anybody to supply any skin. Sorry to disappoint the young patriot with really commendable spirit of loyalty."
Irving looked his surprise.
"You'll supply all the skin we need," the surgeon continued.
"But it is important that there be no scars," Irving insisted.
"There won't be any, or so slight that they'll be hardly noticeable," was the surgeon's reassuring reply. "Let me explain the process to an unscientific keen wit of the government's intelligence department."
The surgeon lifted the spy's bared arm with his left hand and began his explanation, indicating with one finger now and then the various moves necessary as he described the process.
"With a razor," he said, "we will cut an outline around this hideous art of yours. Then we'll peel off the atrocity and cremate it over an alcohol flame. Next we'll peel a strip of the same length and three-fourths of an inch wide just below here, leaving the upper end of the strip attached and twisting it around so that it will lie midway between the edges of the raw space where the tattooing was. Then we'll cut under the skin along both sides to loosen it an inch or more back and draw the loosened skin to the piece in the center and make a hair suture. The reason we must run a strip of skin over the middle of the raw area is because this area will be too wide for stretching the skin at the sides over it. Skin that is stretched too tight will die. The narrow raw place produced by the peeling of the strip down over the wrist can be covered by pulling together the edges of the skin on both sides after running the razor back under it a short distance. Quite different from the process you imagined, isn't it?"