“An order entitling the bearer to search Julian Orden’s apartments!” she exclaimed. “We don’t want to search them, do we? Besides, what authority have we?” “The best,” he answered, tapping with his discoloured forefinger the signature at the foot of the strip of paper. She examined it with a doubtful frown. “But how did this come into your possession?” she asked. He smiled at her in superior fashion. “By asking for it,” he replied bluntly. “And between you and me, Miss Abbeway, there isn’t much we might ask for that they’d care to refuse us just now.” “But the police have already searched Mr. Orden’s rooms,” she reminded him. “The police have been known to overlook things. Of course, what I am hoping is that amongst Mr. Orden’s papers there may be some indication as to where he has deposited our property.” “But this has nothing to do with me,” she protested. “I do not like to be concerned in such affairs.” “But I particularly wish you to accompany me,” he urged. “You are the only one who has seen the packet. It would be better, therefore, if we conducted the search in company.” Catherine made a little grimace, but she objected no further. She objected very strongly, however, when Fenn tried to take her arm on leaving the place, and she withdrew into her own corner of the taxi immediately they had taken their seats. “You must forgive my prejudices, Mr. Fenn,” she said--“my foreign bringing up, perhaps--but I hate being touched.” “Oh, come!” he remonstrated. “No need to be so stand-offish.” He tried to hold her hand, an attempt which she skilfully frustrated. “Really,” she insisted earnestly, “this sort of thing does not amuse me. I avoid it even amongst my own friends.” “Am I not a friend?” he demanded. “So far as regards our work, you certainly are,” she admitted. “Outside it, I do not think that we could ever have much to say to one another.” “Why not?” he objected, a little sharply. “We’re as close together in our work and aims as any two people could be. Perhaps,” he went on, after a moment’s hesitation and a careful glance around, “I ought to take you into my confidence as regards my personal position.” “I am not inviting anything of the sort,” she observed, with faint but wasted sarcasm. “You know me, of course,” he went on, “only as the late manager of a firm of timber merchants and the present elected representative of the allied Timber and Shipbuilding Trades Unions. What you do not know”--a queer note of triumph stealing into his tone “is that I am a wealthy man.” She raised her eyebrows. “I imagined,” she remarked, “that all Labour leaders were like the Apostles--took no thought for such things.” “One must always keep one’s eye on the main chance; Miss Abbeway,” he protested, “or how would things be when one came to think of marriage, for instance?” “Where did your money come from?” she asked bluntly.