"To an expert like me that tells even more. It tells what the end of the nose will be like and even the tip. Take this young thing's nose, for instance. It has a tiny but thick end like a little knob."
Mr. Fitch's voice simpered a little; all this time he was working over the skull with hands of great tactile sensitiveness, his manner that of a hierophant intent upon heavenly mysteries.
"Yes," Colt said sceptically. "I see all that. But how will you know how long to make the nose?"
"Ah, Mr. Colt, that is a very special secret—but I don't mind telling you. Speaking as an anatomist, the length of the nose from the bridge to the base is fixed by the size of the roots of the teeth."
I whistled. Here I sat in a house near Brooklyn Bridge, in the midst of more than seven million people huddl
