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Rh matter to go to such an extreme as the arrest and search of a man and his wife and sister-in-law, to say nothing of searching his rooms and draw blank, but blank it was, and that was all there was to be said about it for the present. It was one of the risks that the Department had to take. It had enormous powers, and when it used them without tangible justification it simply had to pay. In this particular case the inspector's afternoon call cost very close on a couple of thousand pounds—which paid the expenses of the two offended ladies to Europe and left a good balance over.

As soon as the unwelcome visitors were safely off the premises, Mrs. Herman called to Mrs. Engstroem to come up, in order to thank her for the timely aid which had saved them from an enforced substitution of some years' penal servitude for the few months in Europe to which they were looking forward.