He paused and drew his fingers across his bony protruding chin.

"I'll say this for Mulehaus: He's the hardest man to identify in
the whole kingdom of crooks. Scotland Yard, the Service de la
Surete, everybody, says that. I don't mean dime-novel disguises
- false whiskers and a limp. I mean the ability to be the
character he pretends - the thing that used to make Joe
Jefferson, Rip Van Winkle - and not an actor made up to look like
him. That's the reason nobody could keep track of Mulehaus,
especially in South American cities. He was a French banker in
the Egypt business and a Swiss banker in the Argentine."

He turned back from the digression:

"And it was a clean job. They had got away with the plates. We
didn't have a clew. We thought, naturally, that they'd make for
Mexico or some South American country to start their printing
press. And we had the ports and border netted up. Nothing could
have gone out across the border or, through any port. All the
customs officers were, working with us, and every agent of the
Department of Justice."

He looked at me steadily across the table.

"You see the Government had to get those plates back before the
crook started to print, or else take up every bond of that issue
over the whole country. It was a hell of a thing!

"Of course we had gone right after the record of all the big