CHAPTER XXXVIII.
NICK DISCOVERS HIS LOSS.
“By George!” ejaculated Lane Griswold.
He was beginning to see light.
“Is this Gordon of the same height and build as yourself?” he asked eagerly a moment later.
“Quite near enough for the purpose, as I recall,” Nick replied. “More than that, he’s a master of make-up, and would have had very little trouble in copying my features. His eyes are light, nondescript, to be sure, but——”
“Then I don’t see how it would have been possible for him to have fooled everybody in that fashion,” the millionaire objected.
“The human eye is far from perfect, Mr. Griswold,” Nick reminded him. “Besides, we have to allow always for the action of the mind behind it—that mind which interprets everything it sees. In short, we generally see what we expect to see. Such a successful masquerade appears little short of miraculous to one who isn’t a special student of such things, but it’s far from an impossibility. My butler and housekeeper, and Cray himself, had no reason to suppose that it was not I they were seeing; therefore, as I had been a familiar sight to them for years, they would never have thought of examining the masquerader. They merely gave him fleeting glances, and as those glances did not detect any glaring defect, that was all there was to it.”
Nick paused and smiled.