It is an axiom at Scotland Yard, “Beware of an audience.” Enemies of our police system advance many and curious reasons for this bashfulness. In particular they place a sinister interpretation upon the desire of the police to carry out their work without fuss and without ostentation, for the police have an embarrassing system of midnight arrests. Unless you advertise the fact, or unless your case is of sufficient importance to merit notice in the evening newspapers, there is no reason why your disappearance from society should excite comment, or why the excuse, put forward for your absence from your accustomed haunts, that you have gone abroad should not be accepted without question. Interviewing his wise chief, Angel received some excellent advice. “If you’ve got to arrest him, do it quietly. If, as you suggest, he barricades himself in his house, or takes refuge in his patent vault, leave him alone. We want no fuss, and we want no newspaper sensations. If you can square up the Reale business without arresting him, by all means do so. We shall probably get him in--er--what do you call it, Angel?--oh, yes, ‘the ordinary way of business.’” “Very good, sir,” said Angel, nothing loth to carry out the plan. “From what I know of this class of man,” the Assistant-Commissioner went on, fingering his grizzled mustache, “he will do nothing. He will go about his daily life as though nothing had happened; you will find him in his office this morning, and if you went to arrest him you’d be shot dead. No, if you take my advice you’ll leave him severely alone for the present. He won’t run away.” So Angel thanked his chief and departed. Throughout the morning he was obsessed by a desire to see the lawyer. By midday this had become so overmastering that he put on his hat and sauntered down to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “Yes, Mr. Spedding was in,” said a sober clerk, and--after consulting his employer--“Mr. Spedding would see him.” The lawyer was sitting behind a big desk covered with be-ribboned bundles of papers. He greeted Angel with a smile, and pointed to a chair on the other side of the desk. “I’ve been in court most of the morning,” he said blandly, “but I’m at liberty for half an hour. What can I do for you?” Angel looked at him in undisguised admiration. “You’re a wonderful chap,” he said with a shake of his head. “You’re admiring me,” said the lawyer, fingering a paper-knife, “in very much the same way as an enthusiastic naturalist admires the markings of a horned viper.” “That is very nicely put,” said Angel truthfully. The lawyer had dropped his eyes on to the desk before him; then he looked up. “What is it to be?” he asked. “A truce,” said Angel. “I thought you would say that,” replied Spedding comfortably, “because I suppose you know----” “Oh, yes,” said Angel with nonchalant ease, “I know that the right hand which is so carelessly reposing on your knee holds a weapon of remarkable precision.”