The Kind Young Hearts rented a small office-flat at the top of a block of rather out-of-date buildings in the neighbourhood of Dean Street. The flat was uninhabited, and contained not a particle of furniture of any description except a capacious letter-box; but these deficiencies, which might have roused unworthy suspicions in the breasts of some of the more worldly of Uncle Joseph's supporters, were covered by the fact that the door was double-locked, and no subscriber had ever entered the premises. On the door itself the name of the Society was painted in neat black letters. Underneath was pinned a typewritten notice,--of an apparently temporary character, but in reality as enduring as Uncle Joseph's tenancy,--to the effect that the Secretary had been called away to the country on an urgent case, but hoped to return shortly. It was Uncle Joseph's custom to make a periodical inspection of this establishment, though he left to James Nimmo the task of making the weekly collection of letters. On this occasion all seemed in order. No restive subscriber waited on the landing; no emissary of the law, masquerading as a stargazer, lounged in the street outside. No one had tampered with the Chubb lock on the door. No one had scribbled opprobrious comments across the Secretary's notice. All was peace. Uncle Joseph entered the flat. The box contained half a dozen letters, which he opened and read in the dusty sunlight of the office. Meanwhile Mr. Charles Turner, junior member of the editorial staff of the "Searchlight," was mounting the staircase with all the headlong eagerness of a young and inexperienced fox-terrier in pursuit of his first rat. He took himself seriously, did Turner, which was a pity; for a touch of humour is indispensable to a man whose profession it is to expose humbugs. Dill, his chief, possessed this quality in perfection, with a strong dash of cynicism thrown in. He knew that righteous wrath was wasted upon the tribe of quacks and sharpers. He never invoked the assistance of the law against such gentry. He preferred the infinitely more amusing plan of exposing their methods in cold print and leaving it to them to invoke the assistance of the law against _him_. Consequently his name was a hissing and an abomination among all the fraternity, while the British Public, though strongly suspicious of Dill's sense of humour, took in, read, and profited by the "Searchlight" in general and its Rogues' Catalogue in particular.