Under such circumstances, it did not need a very long period of time for Tom Leslie, with the occasional assistance of Harding, whose memory was much more accurate if not more retentive--to convey to the Superintendent the main facts of their midnight adventure, with the impression that adventure had made, of some disloyal movements going on in the City, and probably with extended ramifications elsewhere. Except to say that one of the women seen on that evening had before fallen under his notice in Europe. Leslie did not allude to the episode of the "red woman," nor did he enter into the particulars of his previous meetings with Dexter Ralston, though he asserted his knowledge of him as a Virginian of peculiar influence and a very ambiguous position. The Superintendent showed few signs of interest in the narration, though his sharp eye occasionally glanced at the face of the principal narrator, and though he two or three times made motions with the pencil lying before him, which might have been merely listless occupation of his fingers and might have been something very different. "Well, gentlemen," said the Superintendent, when they had concluded. "It is certainly a strange story you have been telling, and of course I do not question the entire veracity of your narration of what you saw or _thought_ you saw. But there is nothing proved, so far, that could justify any arrest, even if we could find the persons to arrest. I do not see that there is anything _I_ could do in the matter." "I told you so!" said Leslie in a low voice to his friend. He had opposed coming to the Superintendent at all, be it remembered. "Nothing?--not even to set a watch upon the two houses we have named?" asked Harding, a good deal surprised and not a little out of temper. "Humph!" answered the Superintendent. "This is not France under the Empire, and I am not Fouche." "The latter part of that sentence may probably be true: I have my doubts about the other!" thought Tom Leslie, though he waited a more prudent occasion for communicating the thought to Harding. "And so, Mr. Superintendent, you consider all this of no consequence?" said Harding, going back to first principles, and not by any means improving in the matter of temper. "I did not say anything of the kind!" answered the Superintendent, his face sterner but his voice even as before. "I said there was nothing upon which I could act, and the police force of the district is scarcely sufficient to set a watch around all the houses that may happen to have traitors in them. I would advise you to say nothing of this affair to any other persons, if you have not yet done so; and if you see or hear of anything more that _will_ seem to justify an arrest, communicate with this office again."