PAGE 13
The Confidence King
by
The man had by this time raised himself to a high pitch of apparently righteous wrath. He advanced menacingly toward Kennedy, who stood with his shoulders thrown back, and his hands deep in his pockets, and a half amused look on his face.
“As for you, Mr. Detective,” added the man, “for eleven cents I’d lick you to within an inch of your life. ‘Portrait parle,’ indeed! It’s a fine scientific system that has to deny its own main principles in order to vindicate itself. Bah! Take that, you scoundrel!
Harriet Wollstone threw her arms about him, but he broke away. His fist shot out straight. Kennedy was too quick for him, however. I had seen Craig do it dozens of times with the best boxers in the “gym.” He simply jerked his head to one side, and the blow passed just a fraction of an inch from his jaw, but passed it as cleanly as if it had been a yard away.
The man lost his balance, and as he fell forward and caught himself, Kennedy calmly and deliberately slapped him on the nose.
It was an intensely serious instant, yet I actually laughed. The man’s nose was quite out of joint, even from such a slight blow. It was twisted over on his face in the most ludicrous position imaginable.
“The next time you try that, Forbes,” remarked Kennedy, as he pulled the piece of paraffin from his pocket and laid it on the table with the other exhibits, “don’t forget that a concave nose built out to hook-nose convexity by injections of paraffin, such as the beauty-doctors everywhere advertise, is a poor thing for a White Hope.
Both Burke and O’Connor had seized Forbes, but Kennedy had turned his attention to the larger of Forbes’s grips, which the Wollstone woman vociferously claimed as her own. Quickly he wrenched it open.
As he turned it up on the table my eyes fairly bulged at the sight. Forbes’ suit-case might have been that of a travelling salesman for the Kimberley, the Klondike, and the Bureau of Engraving, all in one. Craig dumped the wealth out on the table – stacks of genuine bills, gold coins of two realms, diamonds, pearls, everything portable and tangible all heaped up and topped off with piles of counterfeits awaiting the magic touch of this Midas to turn them into real gold.
“Forbes, you have failed in your get-away,” said Craig triumphantly. “Gentlemen, you have here a master counterfeiter, surely – a master counterfeiter of features and fingers as well as of currency.”