CHAPTER XXI.
THE NARRATIVE OF JOHN LEXMAN "I am, as you may all know, a writer of stories which depend for their success upon the creation and unravelment of criminological mysteries.
The Chief Commissioner has been good enough to tell you that my stories were something more than a mere seeking after sensation, and that I endeavoured in the course of those narratives to propound obscure but possible situations, and, with the ingenuity that I could command, to offer to those problems a solution acceptable, not only to the general reader, but to the police expert.
"Although I did not regard my earlier work with any great seriousness and indeed only sought after exciting situations and incidents, I can see now, looking back, that underneath the work which seemed at the time purposeless, there was something very much like a scheme of studies.
"You must forgive this egotism in me because it is necessary that I should make this explanation and you, who are in the main police officers of considerable experience and discernment, should appreciate the fact that as I was able to get inside the minds of the fictitious criminals I portrayed, so am I now able to follow the mind of the man who committed this murder, or if not to follow his mind, to recreate the psychology of the slayer of Remington Kara.
"In the possession of most of you are the vital facts concerning this man.

You know the type of man he was, you have instances of his terrible ruthlessness, you know that he was a blot upon God's earth, a vicious wicked ego, seeking the gratification of that strange blood-lust and pain-lust, which is to be found in so few criminals." John Lexman went on to describe the killing of Vassalaro.
"I know now how that occurred," he said.

"I had received on the previous Christmas eve amongst other presents, a pistol from an unknown admirer.
That unknown admirer was Kara, who had planned this murder some three months ahead.

He it was, who sent me the Browning, knowing as he did that I had never used such a weapon and that therefore I would be chary about using it.

I might have put the pistol away in a cupboard out of reach and the whole of his carefully thought out plan would have miscarried.
"But Kara was systematic in all things.