Who had brought Michaelis there one afternoon the Assistant Commissioner did not remember very well.

He had a notion it must have been a certain Member of Parliament of illustrious parentage and unconventional sympathies, which were the standing joke of the comic papers.

The notabilities and even the simple notorieties of the day brought each other freely to that temple of an old woman's not ignoble curiosity.

You never could guess whom you were likely to come upon being received in semi-privacy within the faded blue silk and gilt frame screen, making a cosy nook for a couch and a few arm-chairs in the great drawing-room, with its hum of voices and the groups of people seated or standing in the light of six tall windows.
Michaelis had been the object of a revulsion of popular sentiment, the same sentiment which years ago had applauded the ferocity of the life sentence passed upon him for complicity in a rather mad attempt to rescue some prisoners from a police van.

The plan of the conspirators had been to shoot down the horses and overpower the escort.