"I admit," commented the Dumpling ironically, "that the fact of Mr. Carleton devoting a portion of his fortune to improving the homes of the poor, points suspiciously to me. How are you to be sure, Mr. Rissler, that I didn't send that paragraph myself to the newspaper, in the expectation of meeting you here, and, by showing it to you, to put you off the scent? And the portrait! Stop a minute--there is a portrait. It's in another part of the paper. Ah! here it is." The portrait, which was inscribed "John Carleton, Esq., the eminent inventor and philanthropist," was that of a flat-foreheaded, clean-shaven man, absolutely bald, and so shrunken and fleshless of face as to seem all skin and bone. The striking resemblance to a skull, caused by his singular fleshlessness, was heightened by the fact that he wore huge glasses of great magnifying power, out of which his hollow eyes loomed cavernously. "It's like me, isn't it?" said the Dumpling. "But then _you_ are not to be deceived by anything of that sort, are you? It may dupe the police, but _you_ will see at a glance that that portrait is only myself, cleverly got up to look like somebody else. And when you read in to-morrow's papers an account of the ceremony at Carlisle--and, by the bye," pulling out his watch, "it's just about taking place now--you will say to yourself, 'What a thing it is to be a detective! Here's all this hullaballoo about the conferring of the freedom of the City of Carlisle upon Mr. John Carleton at noon yesterday; and all the time _I_ could have told them--if they'd only asked me, which for some inexplicable reason they didn't--that the real John Carleton was at 18, Cripps Court, Shadwell.'" Then the bantering tone died out of his voice. "I've chaffed you a bit about the mistake, Mr. Rissler, but it was a very natural mistake to fall into," he said. "My coming to No. 5, Taunton Square, twice in a night, my shadowing it beforehand, my knowing all about it--no, I can't see, as I say, that you are very much to blame, after all. It is curious that you should have thought me to be John Carleton when, if there is _one man_ in all the world with whom I would not, for all the world can offer, change places, that _one_ man is John Carleton. "When I tell you the story of my life, as I hope I shall one day, you will understand and appreciate--but not till then--my reason for speaking as I do. But now to talk of other matters. You have thought over what I said to you the other night?" "I have," I answered. "And you are going to throw in your lot with us?" "No."