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The man who personated the inspector (he was no stranger
to the part) was speaking harshly, and giving bogus orders to his
bogus subordinates for the removal of his prisoners. Evidently nothing
enlightening had happened so far. Horne, saturnine and swarthy, waited
with folded arms, and his patient, moody expectation had an air of
stoicism well in keeping with the situation. I detected in the shadows
one of the Hermione Street group surreptitiously chewing up and
swallowing a small piece of paper. Some compromising scrap, I suppose;
perhaps just a note of a few names and addresses. He was a true and
faithful 'companion.' But the fund of secret malice which lurks at the
bottom of our sympathies caused me to feel amused at that perfectly
uncalled-for performance.
"In every other respect the risky experiment, the theatrical coup, if you
like to call it so, seemed to have failed. The deception could not
be kept up much longer; the explanation would bring about a very
embarrassing and even grave situation. The man who had eaten the paper
would be furious.


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