The blow was all the harder because clients of the so-called Metropolitan Secret Agency knew they had poured into the ears of the benevolent-looking old man who called himself Alix Stothert, secrets about themselves, their relatives, and their friends, which they would not for untold gold have related had they dreamed such secrets might ever be revealed. And now, to their horror, it seemed that at least a dozen well-known Society people, or rather people well-known in Society and believed to be the “soul of honor,” were, and had been all the time, active members of the “Agency Gang,” as it was now termed, prominent among them being Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, Aloysius Stapleton, handsome young Archie La Planta, and the rich retired tradesman and his wife, Julius and Marietta Stringborg, to name only a few.
No wonder the Metropolitan Secret Agency had always known so much about the intimate affairs of everybody in London who “mattered,” and about the secret concerns of rich county folk throughout the country! The knowledge possessed by the notorious Bertha Trost of Clifford Street, who during the war had been quietly pushed out of the country as an “undesirable alien” had been insignificant by comparison, people said. And the Agency’s “methods of procedure” had been extremely simple. One of their plans had consisted in worming out of useful clients as much private information as possible of a compromising nature, not only about themselves, but about their acquaintances and friends, piecing it all together, and then, at a later date, instructing some accomplice to approach or write anonymously to the prospective victims, threatening them with public exposure if they refused to pay heavily for secrecy. And so cleverly was this always done that the Agency invariably safeguarded itself against risk of discovery.
Another method of procedure, equally effective, consisted in selling secretly, at an enormous profit, the strange Chinese drug smuggled into the country by Alphonse Michaud, and accomplices would then threaten with exposure persons having it in their possession.
In addition to this, Michaud and other members of the Agency Gang would administer the drug in a particular way themselves, so that it deadened their victims’ memory from a time prior to the period of unconsciousness which it produced. It was, the newspaper article declared, a most extraordinary compound, and, being colorless and devoid of all smell, could be administered without arousing the least suspicion of its presence. For which reasons, no doubt, some members of the gang had gone so for as to dope other members with it, when they saw that by doing so they could themselves benefit.
That had happened, it seemed, on the occasion when Archie La Planta had been called out of the box at the Alhambra whilst attending a performance of the Russian Ballet. On that night he had met a friend in the foyer, a member of the gang, who had suggested his joining him in a drink in his rooms, which were close by, in Charing Cross Road. La Planta, of course, all unsuspecting, had walked across to his friend’s rooms, yet when he had recovered consciousness in his own chambers in Albany, all recollection of his having gone to those rooms in Charing Cross Road and afterwards being conducted back to his own chambers by his “friend,” had completely faded from his memory.
And the reason he had been doped that night and in that way—this the man who had doped him confessed afterwards under cross-examination—had been to keep him away from Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s supper party, a few hours later at her own house, where the same ruse had been employed by the same man, with a woman accomplice, who unseen had then taken from her the key of her safe, which they had then rifled, taking not only the valuables it contained, but inadvertently a packet of letters which proved to be the letters Cora Hartsilver had written to Sir Stephen Lethbridge, and those he had written to her. These documents Jessica had obtained some time before, by bribery, from servants dismissed by Cora and by Sir Stephen for inefficiency, and she had been holding them with a view to using them some day as levers to extort money from Cora; but the woman who had stolen them from the safe had taken that step herself and sent Cora the anonymous letter which had reached her when in Jersey.
And all through it was the same. To right and left clients of the house with the bronze face and intimate friends of Jessica, of Stapleton, of La Planta’s, of Mrs. Stringborg and her husband, and of other members of the Agency Gang, had been secretly pilloried and made to pay, while from time to time members of the gang had themselves been victimized by one or other of their own traitorous accomplices, generally through the medium of the Chinese drug. Levi Schomberg, though not a member, had by accident been made aware of the existence of the gang, its ramifications and its methods, a client to whom he had once advanced a considerable sum having promised to reveal what he called “the whole organization of an extraordinary secret society of criminals operating in this country and on the Continent” if Levi would cancel a portion of the debt. This the moneylender had, after some demur, agreed to do, with the result that afterwards he had been himself able to extort money from Jessica and Stapleton, and other members, under threats of exposure, in precisely the same way that they levied blackmail on their victims.
“And La Planta,” Hopford said, as he and others were talking the case over in the reporters’ room some time after his article had appeared. “La Planta admits that he drugged Levi Schomberg in the box at the Albert Hall on the night of the ball, though he swears it was not his intention to poison him. Either he mistook the dose he administered in the whisky and soda, he says, or else Levi must have had a weak heart—Doctor Johnson will probably have something to say about that. La Planta declares, too, that he gave the drug on the advice of Stapleton, who handed him the actual dose, saying it was the right amount. Whether it was or not, I suppose we shall never know, though Stapleton has yet to be cross-examined. And another thing we shall probably never know is why Levi Schomberg disliked Mrs. Hartsilver so intensely. He never missed an opportunity of maligning her when her back was turned. Can he at one time or another have tried to extort money from her, and failed? Or have tried to make love to her, and been turned down? Or can he have had some reason for fearing her?”
“Talking of that, Hopford,” his colleague said, after a pause, “do you remember the night you stood up so stoutly for Mrs. Hartsilver, the night I told you that you must be biased in her favor because you knew her socially? What, after all, was the truth about those rumors concerning her and concerning Captain Preston? Did you ever find out? I tried to, but I heard nothing more.”
“Why,” Hopford answered, “that was more of the Agency Gang’s dirty work. They invented a scandalous story, which they put up to Preston when he was in his house-boat during Henley week. The story would take too long to tell—George Blenkiron got it at first hand from the Commissioner of Police, and retailed it to me practically word for word. The upshot was that Preston would have either to abet—assisted by Miss Hagerston, whom, I see, he is to marry next week—an attempt to blackmail Mrs. Hartsilver, or himself be ruined financially, which of course would have ended his army career. Members of the gang, Blenkiron tells me the Commissioner of Police assures him, were the originators of those unwholesome rumors which, you remember, were common talk in clubland.”