"Well, Paul," began the hunchback briskly, "I have taken your advice, like a good father, and have disguised myself in the costume you suggested. What do you think of the transformation? Is it a success?" "It will do all right," said the tired-looking youth sullenly. "Only take care how you hold your shoulders. Most people give themselves away by the fashion in which they carry themselves, and you, as a hunchback, worst of all." Zouche, like most deformed persons, was painfully sensitive, but to my surprise he did not seem to resent the youth's bluntness. "Any other advice?" he proceeded, "mind, I want all your tips. I may be gone for a long time." "No," said the youth he called Paul, slowly and critically. "There's not much to find fault with just at present. Don't get excited, though, whatever happens. Train your hands not to reveal your true feelings, and, above all, distort that tell-tale voice of yours. Pal in with some foreigner for a day or two, and pick up his trick of speech and intonation." "I will, I will," replied the hunchback. "And now for those manuscripts. Have you prepared those dummies?" "Yes," answered Paul. "Here they are--the three of them--and I've taken so much pains with the writing which I have faked on them that I would defy anybody to tell, under a day's examination with microscope and acid, that they are not the real, genuine article you bought for one thousand eight hundred pounds at the sale of Father Calasanctius' effects at the auction mart." "Good," cried Zouche, rubbing his hands together in the most approved method of the Jewish pedlar. "Pass them over to me." And the youth produced from a leather case which he had been carrying unperceived by his side three documents so exactly like the real thing I had fought for that I could have sworn myself that they were in real truth the three coveted manuscripts of the sacred lake! The hunchback, however, did not pass them lightly. He took each one over to the window and examined it with great care, and only when he had assured himself that certain marks were present on each one of them, that all alike presented the same appearance of age and use and treatment, did he place them carefully in the steel box from which he had taken his wig and beard. Then he turned the keys in the locks, and, mounting a chair, he thrust open a secret panel in the rafters, pushed inside this hiding-place the box with the forged documents--as it happened, within two feet of the exact spot where we were stretched, full length, listening to his conversation.