Yootha’s recovery was rapid, and in the following week Preston decided to take her to Paris, which she was anxious to visit, never having been there.
“You had better telegraph to your aunt and ask if she can meet us there, as you say she is well again,” he said. “It wouldn’t do for us to stay there alone, as long as conventions have to be considered,” and he smiled cynically. “Which reminds me that Harry Hopford is in Paris—I had a letter from him yesterday. I am sure he will be glad to see you.”
And so, some days later, they arrived at the Hôtel Bristol, where they found Yootha’s aunt awaiting them. She was a pleasant, middle-aged woman with intelligent eyes and a sense of humor, and she greeted them effusively.
“You don’t hesitate to make use of me when I am in health,” she said laughingly to her niece. “I had not the least wish to come to Paris, but now I am very glad I have come. Yes, I am well again, but I don’t think you look as if Monte Carlo and its excitement had agreed with you. By the way, a delightful young man called here yesterday to ask if you had arrived. He was so pleasant to talk to that I persuaded him to stay to lunch. He seemed to think a lot of you. His name is Hopford.”
“Harry Hopford! A capital lad. I am glad you met him. He served under me in France and was quite a good soldier.”
“He told me he had served under you. He wants you to meet him at an address in Clichy at nine to-morrow night. I have the address somewhere.”
“A bit of luck for me, your coming to Paris,” Hopford said when they met on the following night. “I particularly wanted to see you, Preston. My inquiries and those of these friends of mine,” he had just introduced to Preston the two Paris detectives, his friend on Le Matin, and Johnson’s friend Idris Llanvar, “have succeeded in making some astonishing discoveries concerning Jessica and her friends, and now I am on the way to tracking Alix Stothert to his lair.”
“Alix Stothert!” Preston exclaimed. “What has he to do with it?”
“A good deal, apparently. To begin with, he appears to be a friend of Stapleton’s, for a friend of mine in London has, at my request, been watching Stapleton’s house near Uckfield, called The Nest. Stothert goes there frequently, it seems; my friend believes he calls there for letters. And the other day some fellow arrived there, knocked and rang, and then, getting no answer, went and hid in the undergrowth in the wood close by, and remained watching the house. While he was watching, Stothert arrived and was met by a girl who, my friend says, is employed by Stothert secretly, and the two went into the house. When the fellow who had lain concealed in the wood—and been himself watched by my friend—went back to Uckfield, my friend followed him on a bicycle, and finally shadowed him back to London and to an hotel—Cox’s in Jermyn Street. But, though afterwards he made inquiries at the hotel, he was unable to find out who the fellow was.”
“George Blenkiron, when in town, generally stays at Cox’s,” Preston said reflectively.