Next moment a pair of glittering scissors were playing round Lionel’s mouth and chin, and in two minutes the entire mass of yellow beard and moustache was swept clean away. This, of itself, was almost enough to disguise Lionel beyond ordinary recognition. The chin and upper lip were left stubbly on purpose. Creede’s face was nearly always stubbly—he rarely shaved more than once a week—and Lionel was now going to personate Creede. But Creede was very dark complexioned, while Lionel was just the opposite; so Tom’s next operation was to produce from his wonderful bag a small bottle of some kind of liquid, with which he proceeded to stain the hands, face, and neck of his friend. Next came a wig, which he had had specially made in London, and which was a very clever copy of the head of hair it was intended to simulate. It proved to be an excellent fit. With the fixing, by means of gum, of a scrap of ragged black hair under Lionel’s chin—which was Creede’s notion of a beard—the first part of Lionel’s disguise was completed. “Take off your coat, waistcoat, and cravat, and induct yourself into Mr. Creede’s duplicates of those articles. You shudder at the thought. I do not wonder at it; but, for the time being, you must put all your finer feelings into your pocket. But first,” added Tom, diving again into his bag, “pull on this pair of old black trousers over your own, after which you can go on with the remainder of your dressing while I finish with Silenus here.” Once more the bag came into requisition, and from it Tom brought forth a light-coloured wig, with which was combined a beard and moustache precisely the same in colour and appearance as those of which Lionel had been so recently despoiled. With these he proceeded to decorate the head and face of the unconscious Creede. It was necessary to do this, because the bed was exactly opposite the cell door, and once or twice in the course of the night the warder on duty was instructed to open the little wicket, and see that everything was right with his prisoner. As Lionel lay in bed he was in full view of the warder, and it thus became requisite to “make up” Creede into some semblance of the real prisoner, it not being at all unlikely that the warder might come round and take his usual look within a few minutes of the departure of Tom and Lionel. When the wig, beard, and moustache had been duly arranged, and the bedclothes pulled close up round Creede’s neck, Tom stepped back as far as the door in order to study the general effect. It was highly satisfactory. When the gas was turned down to the minimum point at which it was allowed to burn during the night, no one, without close examination, could have told that the man lying on the bed was other than Lionel Dering.