“‘I would then rub that face of marble with a very fine powder, and I would apply a coating of the finest caoutchouc, over that a layer of stiffening varnish. “‘I would remove the whole, and paint the interior of the caoutchouc with the flesh tints, thus giving the true appearance of life, _for the human face is painted_ from the inside. “‘I would then back the thing with a thicker layer of rubber and remove the stiffening varnish from the outside. “‘If my art did not fail me, I would now have a facsimile of my friend or my enemy’s face. Could I wear it and masquerade as him? Only on two conditions (1) that I could make the inside of the mask a perfect mould of my own face (2) that he was a man, a man of my own height and a man who wore glasses and a beard, for the joining at the eyes and at the neck would present an insuperable difficulty were I to imitate a clean-shaven man who did not wear glasses.’ “He brooded over the thing. “One day he fell in with M. Lefarge, a rich jeweller, who was at times a frequenter of the Latin Quarter, and the whole diabolical plan of the Lefarge case was conceived in a flash. “The plan of robbing and murdering a rich man in such a manner that the world would fancy that the rich man was the assassin, not the victim. “He made a bust of Lefarge, from the bust he made Lefarge’s face. Lefarge wore a beard and glasses. The making of the exterior of the mask was a bagatelle; the real difficulty was the interior, which had to be a perfect adaptation to his own features, but he did it. “Whilst this was going on, he made a most profound study of Lefarge himself: his walk, his manner, his voice, his handwriting. “He was, in fact, preparing to be Lefarge’s understudy for an hour or two upon the stage of life. “For three hours every day, during a space of four months, he wore the mask, conversing with himself, laughing and talking before a looking-glass, so that the thing might gain the lines and wrinkles of life. “One day he asked Lefarge to call upon him. “Lefarge called. Muller murdered him, and stripped him of his clothes and decapitated him. “Then he dressed the body in his own clothes, put on the clothes of his victim, put on his face, put on his hat, his manner, his walk and his voice. “Then, with his victim’s head in a black bag, he ran down the stairs, got into his victim’s carriage, drove home, collected a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of jewels, drove to the corner of the Rue d’Amsterdam and disappeared. “But Nemesis followed him. The murder of Lefarge had wakened up the lust for killing that lay like a spectre in the darkness of his soul. He killed three people to satiate this madness, as we have seen. Then he was at peace. “Six years passed. Then, in Vienna, he met Sir Anthony Gyde.