There is no need to go into details. The next startling announcement was that Archie La Planta had been arrested.
At once the newspapers focused the attention of the public on the unhappy young man, and then for the first time the searchlight of notoriety illuminated as much of his past life as the press was able to rake up. Indeed, it came as rather a shock to some of his friends to find that apparently nothing was known about him prior to his arrival in London some years previously.
Questioned on this point during his cross-examination, La Planta admitted having spent some years of his life in the East, also that he had known Stapleton in China. The question put as a trap: “Did you ever borrow money from deceased?” he emphatically negatived.
“Now can you,” asked the cross-examiner a little later, “account for the fact that some drops of a very rare perfume, the name and nature of which I need not for the moment specify, were found on the left sleeve of the fancy tunic you wore at the Albert Hall ball, and that some of the same perfume was discovered on the fancy dress suit worn by deceased that night?”
“Certainly,” La Planta answered without an instant’s hesitation. “I had a little phial of the perfume with me at the ball, and as Mr. Schomberg told me he liked the scent very much I gave him a little. In fact I sprayed it on his clothes myself.”
“And where did you obtain the perfume? I understand it is not to be had in London.”
“Quite true. I have to get it from abroad.”
“‘Abroad,’ is a big place, Mr. La Planta,” the examining counsel observed dryly. “May I ask you to be more definite in your statement? Perhaps you will tell me from what town or place ‘abroad’ it is, or was, sent to you?”
“Shanghai.”
“Shanghai! Indeed! This is most interesting. And who sends it to you from Shanghai? May I have his—or her—name and address?”