During the brief time Reilly spent in Paris he renewed his close acquaintance with William Melville whom Reilly had last seen just prior to his 1899 departure from London. While Reilly had been abroad in the Far East, Melville had resigned in November 1903 as Superintendent of Scotland Yard's Special Branch and had become chief of a new intelligence section in the War Office. Working under commercial cover from an unassuming flat in London, Melville now ran both counter-intelligence and foreign intelligence operations using his foreign contacts which he had accumulated during his years running Special Branch. Reilly's meeting with Melville in Paris is most significant, for within a matter of weeks Melville was to use Reilly's expertise in what would later become known as the D'Arcy Affair.