Hopford mentioned the date. He had all data at his fingers’ ends.
“I knew Leonora Vandervelt,” she said. “For months we shared an appartement close to the Madeleine. By that means I became intimate with her; and eventually I discovered something I wanted to know about her—at that time she masqueraded under an assumed name. Finally I brought about her arrest, and she was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, though she deserved three years. Upon her release she left France, and I lost sight of her. This is the first time since then that I have heard of her. I did not know she was dead. At one time she and Angela Robertson of Shanghai were close friends. Then they quarreled, parted in anger, and Angela Robertson, whom you call Jessica Mervyn-Robertson, declared in my hearing she would be revenged—revenged for what I did not know. That, of course, was before Vandervelt went to prison.
“When Vandervelt became suspected of larceny, I went at once to Angela Robertson, who then lived in Paris, and placed all the facts before her. As I expected, she jumped at the chance of getting her revenge, and largely through the information she gave me I was able to bring Leonora Vandervelt to book. And now you tell me Vandervelt committed suicide. Of course I know who made her do it. It was Angela Robertson again.”
“How do you know that?” Hopford inquired. He had listened attentively to every word.
“No matter. You will gather that later. Do you know how Mrs. Robertson comes to be so rich?”
“Through levying blackmail I should imagine,” Hopford answered quickly.
“As you say, through levying blackmail. She and her companions you have told me about, Archie La Planta and Aloysius Stapleton, are three of the most cunning and persistent blackmailers in your country. They have practiced the ‘art’ in Continental capitals, and now reside in London because your countryfolk are the most easy to blackmail, also because they have much money and are easily induced to part with it. You say she pretends to be Australian. She is not Australian, nor has she been in Australia, though she had a married sister living in Monkarra, in Queensland, years ago, governess to the children of a rich sheep farmer there. When Mrs. Robertson and Stapleton left Shanghai for good they went first to Amsterdam, where they became acquainted with Archie La Planta, a rogue in every way, though a charming man to talk to. At that time he was representing a British insurance company in Amsterdam.”
“Controlled by Lord Froissart,” Hopford put in.
“Yes. Controlled by the late Lord Froissart. While there,” she went on, “La Planta was introduced to Angela Robertson and to Stapleton by a man named Alphonse Michaud, of whose occupation the less said the better. Finally the four lived together at an hotel in the Kalverstraat, the name of which has for the moment escaped me.”
“That is curious,” Hopford exclaimed, “because when Mrs. Robertson and Michaud came face to face in Dieppe the other day, they apparently did not know each other. A friend of mine, Captain Preston, said so in a letter to Doctor Johnson.”