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 men at nine o'clock, I suggest that we go from there direct to the bank vaults. They are accessible until midnight, as you doubtless know."

"Very good, Doctor," replied Searle in that oily voice which indicated how completely to his satisfaction affairs were progressing.

"And now," suggested the minister, with a nod toward the street door, "as the hour is late, I will ask you gentlemen to excuse me."

Searle darted a look at Wyatt.

"Very sorry, Doc, but I got to stay with you," volunteered the deputy, "and hand you over to the judge."

Once more the flush of offense mounted to the cheek of Hampstead. Hand him over to the judge! How galling such language was when used of him! Again he recalled with compunction how many arrests he had caused without an emotion beyond the satisfaction of an angler when he hooks a fish. But he—John Hampstead—minister, preacher, pastor of All People's; a shining light in a vast metropolitan community! Surely it was something different and infinitely more degrading for him to be arrested than for a mere plasterer, or mayhap a councilman? He had a greater right than they to be wrathful and resentful. Besides, they were guilty. Judges, juries, or their own confessions, had unfailingly so declared. He was innocent, spotlessly innocent of the charge against him. His defenselessness proceeded from relations of comparative intimacy with the actress, and his priestly knowledge of the guilty person. Yet the thought of this helped humor and good sense to triumph again, over his rising choler.

"Oh, very well," he exclaimed, half-jocularly, half-derisively. "Make yourself at home; all of you make yourselves at home. We are accustomed to an unexpected guest or two at the table. Be prepared to come