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the Minister would be simplified. No44 Downing Street they knew. The approaches could be better guarded, and, moreover, the drive--that dangerous drive!--between Portland Place and the Foreign Office would be obviated.
    It took a considerable amount of pressure and pleading to induce Sir Philip to take even this step, and it was only when it was pointed out that the surveillance to which he was being subjected would not be so apparent to himself that he yielded.
    "You don't like to find my men outside your door with your shaving water," said Superintendent Falmouth bluntly. "You objected to one of my men being in your bathroom when you went in the other morning, and you complained about a plain-clothes officer driving on your box--well, Sir Philip, in Downing Street I promise that you shan't even see them."
    This clinched the argument.
    It was just before leaving Portland Place to take up his new quarters that he sat writing to his agent whilst the detective waited outside the door.
    The telephone at Sir Philip's elbow buzzed--he hated bells--and the voice of his private secretary asked with some anxiety how long he would be.
    "We have got sixty men on duty at 44," said the secretary, zealous and young, "and today and tomorrow we shall----" And Sir Philip listened with growing impatience to the recital.
    "I wonder you have not got an iron safe to lock me in," he said petulantly, and closed the conversation.
    There was a knock at the door and Falmouth put his head inside.
    "I don't want to hurry you, sir," he said, "but----"
    So the Foreign Secretary drove off to Downing Street in something remarkably like a temper.
    For he was not used to being hurried, or taken charge of, or ordered hither and thither. It irritated him further to see the now familiar cyclists on either side of the carriage, to recognise at every few yards an obvious policeman in mufti admiring the view from the sidewalk, and when he came to Downing Street and found it barred to all carriages but his own, and an enormous crowd of morbid sightseers gathered to cheer his ingress, he felt as he had never felt before in his life--humiliated.
    He found his secretary waiting in his private office with the rough draft of the speech that was to introduce the second reading of the Extradition Bill.
    "We are pretty sure to meet with a great deal of opposition," informed the secretary, "but Mainland has sent out three-line whips, and expects to get a majority of thirty-six--at the very least."
    Ramon read over the notes and found them refreshing.
    They brought back the old feeling of security and importance. After all, he was a great Minister of State. Of course the threats were too absurd--the police were to blame for making so much fuss; and of course the Press --yes, that was it--a newspaper sensation.
    There was something buoyant, something almost genial in his air, when he turned with a half smile to his secretary.
    "Well, what about my unknown friends--what do the blackguards call themselves?--the Four Just Men?"
    Even as he spoke he was acting a part; he had not forgotten their title, it was with him day and night.
    The secretary hesitated; between his chief and himself the Four Just Men had been a tabooed subject.
    "They--oh, we've heard nothing more than you have read," he said lamely; "we know now who Thery is, but we can't place his three companions."
    The Minister pursed his lips.
    "They give me till tomorrow night to recant," he said.
    "You have heard from them again?"
    "The briefest of notes," said Sir Philip lightly.
    "And otherwise?"
    Sir Philip frowned. "They will keep their promise," he said shortly, for the 'otherwise' of his secretary had sent a coldness into his heart that he could not quite understand.
    In the top room in the workshop at Carnaby Street, Thery, subdued, sullen, fearful, sat facing the three. "I want you to quite understand," said Manfred, "that we bear you no ill-will for what you have done. I think, and Senor Poiccart thinks, that