"You've got no traces yet of Mavis Rawnsley and the Jefferson boy?" I asked.
"So far the police are completely baffled. They're clever, these women, very clever."
"Nothing you could take into court. We're not even sure where to look for the perpetrators."
"You've no suspicions?" I ventured to ask.
"Oh, suspicions, certainly." He looked at me shrewdly and with a spice of disfavour. "Candidly, I suspect your friend Miss Davenant."
"Why her in particular?" I asked carelessly.
"By a process of exclusion. The old constitutional agitators, the Blacks and the Campions and that lot, are out of the question; they've publicly denounced the slightest breach of the law. I acquit the Old Militants, too--the Gregorys and Haseldines and Ganons. They're too stupid, for one thing; they go on burning houses and breaking windows in their old fatuous way. And for another thing they haven't the nerve...."
"There are a good many Hunger-Strikers among them," I interposed, probably with the dishonest intention of spreading his suspicions over the widest possible area.
"Less than before," he answered. "And their arch-Hunger-Striker, the Haseldine woman, carried meat lozenges with her the last time she visited Holloway. No, they're cowards. If you want brain and courage you must look to a little group of women who detached themselves from the Old Militant party. Mrs. Millington was one and Miss Davenant was another."
"The eminently moderate staff of the ultra-constitutional _New Militant_," I said as I prepared to leave.
"If you've any influence with either of those women and want to save them a long stretch of penal servitude, now's your time to warn them."
"Good Heavens! you don't suppose I'm admitted to their counsels!"
"When you tell me there's not enough suspicion to carry into court? I fear they wouldn't listen."
"They might prefer to stop play before their luck turns," he answered as he accompanied me to the door. "Their quiescent state is the most significant, most suspicious, most damning thing about them. If a house-breaker opened a religious bookshop, you might think he had reformed. Or you might think he was preparing an extra large coup. Or you might think he sold sermons by day and cracked cribs by night."