“But how could they ruin Preston? What had he ever done to give the gang an opening?”
“Nothing dishonorable, of course; I don’t believe he could be dishonorable if he tried. But it seems that years ago he backed two bills for a brother officer whom he looked upon as a friend. The fellow turned out to be a scoundrel; was cashiered, later became one of the gang’s ‘creatures,’ and actually faked the bills into bills for much larger amounts. And those faked bills were, if Preston refused to help in the plot against Mrs. Hartsilver—it had to do with some compromising letters she had written—to be presented for payment this month. Poor chap! No wonder he has been looking so dreadfully ill of late. It would be interesting to know how many suicides the Agency Gang has been responsible for directly and indirectly. Since that night at Henley Preston has always carried a loaded pistol in his pocket, and he vowed he would shoot that former brother officer of his dead if ever he met him again. And he would have done it, too, and have chanced the consequences.
“As for that robbery of Marietta Stringborg’s necklace at the ball at the Albert Hall, the whole thing was a bluff. The pearls were not real, and it was Stringborg himself who took them from his wife at supper and slipped them into Miss Hagerston’s bag. Jessica Mervyn-Robertson had become furious at Yootha Hagerston’s determination to find out all about her, furious, too, with Mrs. Hartsilver, and the others who were making the same attempt—she had heard about these attempts from Stothert, because Preston, Mrs. Hartsilver and Miss Hagerston had several times consulted the Metropolitan Secret Agency—and she had made up her mind to ruin them financially and socially, and indeed that, her first attempt to disgrace Miss Hagerston, might well have been accomplished.
“Really,” he continued, “there would seem to be no end to the machinations to which the Agency-Gang have had recourse within the past few years. We shall never know one-tenth of the crimes they committed or tried to commit. Several of the gang’s members were actually staying with Sir Stephen Lethbridge at his place in Cumberland, Abbey Hall, as his guests, when he shot himself. By the way, I hear that Fobart Robertson has at last been discovered, living in a garret in Lyons, and that he is being brought over to give evidence against his wife and Stapleton and others regarding the secret exportation of the Chinese drug from Shanghai long ago. He ought to prove a useful witness.”
And so the clouds which had so darkened Yootha’s and Cora’s happiness, the happiness also of Preston and of Johnson, had at last almost rolled away. The four had arranged to be married towards the end of the month, and already were busy buying trousseaux, acknowledging letters of congratulation and the receipt of presents, and attending to the many other matters which so engross prospective brides and bridegrooms. George Blenkiron had promised to act as best man to his life-long friend, Charles Preston, and the latter had decided to send in his papers at an early date, for, though an excellent soldier, the monotonous life of an officer in peace time would, he knew, bore him to extinction.
Harry Hopford had asked Johnson to allow him to be his best man, “in return,” as he put it, “for services rendered, and the way I helped to bring about your engagement!” Johnson suspected, and Cora knew, that Hopford himself had been greatly attracted by “the beautiful widow,” as she was commonly called; and perhaps had the lad not had sense enough to realize that for him to hope to marry Cora when almost his sole source of income consisted of the salary he was paid by the newspaper to which he was attached, and the payments he received from miscellaneous other journals to which he contributed, was hopeless, he might have felt tempted to press his own suit.
True, he had once gone so far as to think the matter over seriously, carefully weighing the pros and cons, but the decision he had come to was that Cora did not care for him sufficiently to be likely to accept him even should he have the audacity to propose to her. The thought that if he did propose to her and she accepted him he would, after the marriage, be in a position to abandon his profession and live thenceforward on her income, of course, never entered his mind.
“I pity any woman who marries a journalist or a literary man,” he said mentally, as he considered possibilities one night over a cigar. “We writing folk may have our good points, but I think our chronic irritability more than outweighs them, to say nothing of our inconstancy where women are concerned, our ‘sketchiness,’ and our lack of mental balance. If I were a woman I would any day sooner marry a lawyer or a stockbroker than a man who earns his livelihood by his pen. Such people at any rate give their wives a sporting chance of being able to live with them in peace, whereas we news seekers and scribblers——”
He shrugged his shoulders, and smiled as he mixed himself a brandy and soda. Yet even then he could not wholly dispel from his imagination the picture of Cora Hartsilver. Suddenly his telephone rang, and he unhooked the receiver.
A fire had broken out in Smithfield and was making rapid headway—a big fire—steamers hastening to it from all directions—yes, half a column, but a column if possible—yes, not later than midnight——