Assistant Commissioner of Police T. X. Meredith did not occupy
offices in New Scotland Yard. It is the peculiarity of public
offices that they are planned with the idea of supplying the
margin of space above all requirements and that on their
completion they are found wholly inadequate to house the various
departments which mysteriously come into progress coincident with
the building operations.

"T. X.," as he was known by the police forces of the world, had a
big suite of offices in Whitehall. The house was an old one
facing the Board of Trade and the inscription on the ancient door
told passers-by that this was the "Public Prosecutor, Special
Branch."

The duties of T. X. were multifarious. People said of him - and
like most public gossip, this was probably untrue - that he was
the head of the "illegal" department of Scotland Yard. If by
chance you lost the keys of your safe, T. X. could supply you (so
popular rumour ran) with a burglar who would open that safe in
half an hour.

If there dwelt in England a notorious individual against whom the
police could collect no scintilla of evidence to justify a
prosecution, and if it was necessary for the good of the community
that that person should be deported, it was T. X. who arrested the
obnoxious person, hustled him into a cab and did not loose his
hold upon his victim until he had landed him on the indignant
shores of an otherwise friendly power.

It is very certain that when the minister of a tiny power which