obbery; but nearly eight weeks had passed since the robbery
at Carlisle, and even that was still a mystery. The newspapers had
been loud in their condemnation of the police. It had been asserted
over and over again that in no other civilised country in the world
could so great an amount of property have passed through the hands
of thieves without leaving some clue by which the police would have
made their way to the truth. Major Mackintosh had been declared to be
altogether incompetent, and all the Bunfits and Gagers of the force
had been spoken of as drones and moles and ostriches. They were idle
and blind, and so stupid as to think that, when they saw nothing,
others saw less. The major, who was a broad-shouldered, philosophical
man, bore all this as though it were, of necessity, a part of the
burthen of his profession;--but the Bunfits and Gagers were very
angry, and at their wits' ends. It did not occur to them to feel
animosity against the newspapers which abused them. The thieves who
would not be caught were their great enemies; and there was common
to them a conviction that men so obstinate as these thieves,--men
to whom a large amount of grace and liberty for indulgence had
accrued,--should be treated with uncommon severity when they were
caught. There was this excuse always on their lips,--that had it
been an affair simply of thieves, such as thieves ordinarily are,
everything would have been discovered long since;--but when lords and
ladies with titles come to be mixed up with such an affair,--folk
in whose house a policeman can't have his will at searching and
brow-beating,--how is a detective to detect anything?

Bunfit and Gager had both been driven to recast their theories as to
the great Carlisle affair by the circumstances of the later affair
in Hertford Street. They both thought that Lord George had been
concerned in the robbery;--that, indeed, had now become the general
opinion of the world at large. He was a man of doubtful character,
with large expenses, and with no recognised means of living. He had
formed a great intimacy with Lady Eustace at a period in which she
was known to be carrying these diamonds about with her, had been
staying with her at Portray Castle when the diamonds were there, and
had been her companion on the journey during which the diamonds were
stolen. The only men in London supposed to be capable of dealing
advantageously with such a property were Harter and Benjamin,--as to
wh