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Rh "Later, then," he smiled, "in some terrible contingency, Farren may be called in—as he might have been called in last night if I had wished to return before the search of my rooms was accomplished?"

She disregarded him. For some moments she sat with her gloved hands crossed on her lap, not as though she did not know how to begin, but as though taking care that what she said should be presented in the way to give it its greatest effect.

"The police have not locked you up," she went on at last, "because they consider it—or at least so they have told me—a superfluous proceeding to arrest prematurely anyone in a position like yours. Their theory is that a man of large affairs is always under bond. They can get you when they want you; meanwhile they prefer, before