They would probably have been surprised if they had known that Captain Preston, too, who of course had also heard of the robbery, had been puzzling his brain to account for Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s aversion from press publicity in connection with the robbery.
“I tell you it’s devilish odd, George,” he had said to his friend Blenkiron only the night before, as the two sat smoking together in his rooms in Fig Tree Court, “that woman and her dear friend Stapleton being so desperately anxious to keep the affair out of the papers. If you or I were burgled should we care a button if the facts were made public or not? Would anybody else whose house was burgled object to the fact being known? Then why this hush-hush movement on the part of Jessica Robertson and her friends—young La Planta, too, helped to keep it quiet.”
“Who told you?”
“Harry Hopford. He was with me in Flanders a long time, and I came across him in Whitefriars only the other day—he is back on his newspaper again. He said the steps that woman and her two friends took to prevent mention being made in the papers of the robbery at her house during one of her night parties, aroused a good deal of conjecture in Fleet Street. Some of the reporters were actually paid to say nothing about it. He told me so himself.”
For some moments both were silent.
“She must have had some strong motive for wanting to hush it up,” Blenkiron said at last.
“That is what I say. Now, what can the reason have been? I tell you again, George, there is more behind those people than anybody suspects. And who are they? And where do they come from? You can try as you like, but you won’t find out.”
“I certainly don’t believe Mrs. Robertson’s story that her father was a sheep farmer in Queensland. I know every town and village in Queensland, have known them over twenty years, and it is impossible that if her father had been sheep farming out there, even in a small way, I should not have known him, at any rate by name.”
“It seems that the police were not notified of the theft. Only the Metropolitan Secret Agency was told about it, and for a wonder it failed to discover a clue. You know how clever that Agency is in running thieves to earth. I am told it hardly ever fails, though there are queer rumors as to the methods it employs to catch criminals.”
It was Harry Hopford, though Preston did not know it, who had told Cora Hartsilver about the hushing up in the press. They were not intimately acquainted; Hopford had met Cora at a dance one night which he was attending professionally, and afterwards they had recognized each other at the Chelsea Flower Show and engaged in conversation. Thus neither Hopford nor Cora suspected that the other was acquainted with Captain Preston.