“Does he? Then he may know who the man is, and his name. I’ll write to him to-morrow. It is such a small hotel.”
Hopford had also a good deal to say about Mrs. Timothy Macmahon and her intimacy with the late Lord Froissart; about Marietta Stringborg and her husband; about Fobart Robertson, whose whereabouts, he said, he was likely soon to discover; and about Alphonse Michaud, proprietor of the Metropolitan Secret Agency at the house with the bronze face. One important fact he had already established—Michaud was intimately acquainted with Jessica and Stapleton. Yet at the Royal Hotel in Dieppe, Preston had told him, Jessica, Stapleton and La Planta had openly stated that they knew Michaud only by name.
“Which confirms the suspicion I have for some time entertained,” Hopford went on, “that Jessica and her friends are in some way associated with the house with the bronze face.”
“There I can’t agree with you,” Preston said. “In view of all that has happened, such a thing seems to me incredible. Why, we used to consult the Secret Agency concerning Jessica and her past history, don’t you remember? And they found out for us several things about her.”
“Several things, yes, but not one of the things they ‘found out’ was of importance. It is the Agency’s business, to my belief, to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, and they do it successfully. Surely you recollect Mrs. Hartsilver’s telling us how she and Miss Hagerston had been shown by Stothert what he declared to be the actual pearl necklace belonging to Marietta Stringborg, and saying the necklace stolen from her at the Albert Hall ball and afterwards found in Miss Hagerston’s possession, was made of imitation pearls? Well, I can prove that on that occasion, as well as at other times, Stothert intentionally lied.”
“Then what is your theory?”
“That in some way, yet to be discovered, Jessica and her gang—for they are a gang—and the Metropolitan Secret Agency, are playing each other’s game and have played it for a long time. Incidentally I have found out, too, that La Planta once represented an insurance company in Amsterdam, of which Lord Froissart was chairman or director, and that——”
“Forgive my interrupting you, Hopford,” Preston cut in, “but what you say reminds me that I too was told, by a Major Guysburg I met in Dieppe. He is a man you ought to meet; he was leaving for America when we parted, but ought soon to be back, and he promised to look me up in town on his return. And he can tell you a lot about Alphonse Michaud, who, he assured me, at one time ran a most disreputable haunt in Amsterdam.”
Hopford produced his notebook.
“How do you spell the major’s name?” he asked quickly, and Preston told him.