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 browbeating--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.
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