I had, previous to the appointment for this interview being made and kept, two or three very deliberate and somewhat anxious conferences with the solicitor and the secretary of the company. They were for adopting an exceedingly cautious policy. I was still for taking bold steps. I recommended the arrest of Mr. Keeling at once, suggesting, in support of that measure, that in all probability, if I did so, the other members of his gang would fly, and that evidence of guilt sufficient, at all events, to rebut any claim at common law for the insurance money, would be thus obtained. Indeed, I thought, in all probability, it would never be attempted to enforce the claim. This, I argued, would be the ultimate consequence, even should Mr. Keeling slip through the hands of the hangman or the convict-warder; but added, that I thought there was little doubt, if Mr. Cross, Mr. Keeling, and the old man and woman, the tenants of the hovel, were all arrested, I could get evidence enough to convict the lot--if in no other way, partially by the confession of one of the set. I added, for the instruction and enlightenment of my auditors and employers, and as the climax of my reasoning, that I never yet knew a case in which a gang or a lot of confederates in crime were seized, that there was not a perfect race between them in tendering Queen's evidence. I could not lead the convictions of the solicitor and secretary up to the point of my demonstration or argument, but they agreed to allow me a tolerably wide discretion in my personal conversation with Mr. Keeling at the interview. One Monday morning, at eleven o'clock, Mr. Keeling walked into the insurance office. He certainly looked very unlike Mr. Henry Newton. The clean shaven face of the manufacturer near Dunstable was now ornamented by carefully trimmed hirsute appendages. The sober garb of the straw-bonnet manufacturer had given place to the swell costume of the proprietor of the "Temple of the Muses," who dressed, I may remark _en passant_, in good clothes. Some people might say he looked the gentleman, although to my eye he looked just what he was--a consummate, perfect type of arch-villany. He was cool and collected. I was at least as calm as he was on the outside, and I warrant much calmer inside. After some little conversation between the secretary and the criminal, in which the former suggested that the items of the demand he was trying to recover were vague and uncertain, and stated that the company would require to investigate them, and that he thought they would be sure to contest the claim, and in which conversation Mr. Keeling used strong language about the disreputable character of those threats, and indeed said that he should bring his action at once, and that the company might do their best or their worst, and that he would do his best to show them up to the whole world and effect their ruin,--I thought it time to intervene.