Johnson smiled.
“As that is so, Mrs. Hartsilver, perhaps you will admit me to your little group which suspects ‘Mrs. Jessica’ and her two satellites of not being all that they seem to be. Tell me, wasn’t Captain Preston in Shanghai at one time?”
“Yes, I have heard him say so.”
“Well, from the middle of 1910 to the end of 1912 I practiced in Hong Kong. Englishmen, as I dare say you know, become very clannish when exiled in places of that sort. I used to visit Shanghai rather frequently, where I had a locum tenens, and if Mrs. Jessica and a notorious young woman named Angela Robertson are not the same—oh, but they are the same, I am perfectly positive they are. Stapleton, too, lived in Shanghai for a while—that must have been in 1911. He made the Astor Hotel his home, remember, and though I only saw him once or twice, and never met him to speak to, my locum tenens had all sorts of extraordinary stories about him, and my locum was not a man to heed idle gossip.”
“Stapleton and Fobart Robertson—the adventurer whom Mrs. Jessica married—were hand in glove at that time. Then one day Fobart Robertson found Shanghai too hot to hold him—and if you had ever been in Shanghai, Mrs. Hartsilver, you would know how hot that must have been—and left hurriedly, whereupon Stapleton calmly stepped into his shoes and became to all intents Mr. Robertson—at the club they nicknamed him ‘Fobart’s understudy.’ It created something of a scandal amongst the British population, but in the East the morals of most Europeans are on a lower plane than over here, and after a while the liaison came to be winked at, so that Angela Robertson was once more received as she had been when living with her husband, and Stapleton, being well-to-do and extremely hospitable, and consequently popular, was no longer cold-shouldered. Other friends of Angela Robertson’s in Shanghai were, I remember, Mrs. Stringborg—yes, the woman whose necklace was removed—and a queer fellow called Timothy Macmahon. It was Macmahon’s widow to whom Lord Froissart left all his property, if you remember. Does all this interest you, Mrs. Hartsilver, or am I boring you?”
“Boring me!” Cora exclaimed. “I am thrilled! Captain Preston knows nothing of all this, I suppose?”
“Not so far as I am aware. Of course it would not do for me to say outside what I have just told you in confidence. Having no evidence in support of my statements I might get myself into serious trouble, to say nothing of ruining my practice.”
“Oh, but you will tell Captain Preston?”
“I would sooner you told him, Mrs. Hartsilver.”
Cora smiled.