He rose, preparatory to leaving.
“Wait a minute, Hopford, wait a minute,” Stapleton exclaimed, trying to conceal his eagerness as he laid a hand on the lad’s shoulder to detain him. “I asked you to name a sum, remember—I have no idea what terms are usual in such cases. Sit down again and I may, after all, be able to meet your wishes.”
With assumed reluctance the reporter sank back into the chair from which he had just risen, and for another ten minutes he and Stapleton continued to converse. And when, finally, the former left the house, he carried in his breast-pocket five new ten-pound notes, and chuckled as he thought of Stapleton’s promise to hand him five more notes on the publication of the scoop.
CHAPTER X.
A PARAGRAPH FOR THE PAPERS.
“Fifty pounds easily earned,” Hopford murmured as he strolled along Maida Vale, looking about him for a taxi. “I thought all along that fellow was hot stuff, in spite of the way the papers cocker him up. And so he wants people to think Mrs. Hartsilver committed, or at any rate had a hand in, that theft? What a blackguard! Now, I wonder why he owes her a grudge? Yes, he must owe her a grudge, and a pretty bad one, or he would never go so far as that.”
Quickly his train of thought ran on. There was not an empty taxi in sight, so he decided to walk part of the way. One thought led to another. Solutions to the problem which puzzled him suggested themselves, only to be dismissed one after another as improbable. Then suddenly an idea occurred to him. Could there be another woman in the case? Some woman who was jealous of Mrs. Hartsilver?
Instantly the name Jessica Robertson rose to his lips. Why, of course, that must be it! At a loss to suspect any of her guests of having robbed her safe, she would take the opportunity, if opportunity occurred, of casting suspicion on the widow who lived in Park Crescent, and whose beauty and personality rivaled her own. Stapleton’s partiality for Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson was common talk. She, no doubt, had hinted her desire to him, and he had happened to remember it while being interviewed on the subject of the approaching ball.
So far, so good. A mystery to a newspaper reporter is like red meat to a tiger. Hopford felt that he had struck a mystery now which might develop later into a scandal. Then he remembered that at the Chelsea Flower Show he had met Mrs. Hartsilver. He must become friendly with her, and then he would play his cards.
He entered his office with a light heart. Those five ten-pound notes would be most useful, but what gratified him most was the thought of the news “story” he felt he was on the track of. Not the “story” Stapleton had hinted at. From the first he had not had the slightest intention of using that. Even if it possessed a grain of truth, which he doubted, that was not the sort of stuff he wanted for his paper, while to set out deliberately to wreck a woman’s good name on no evidence in return for payment, was not to be countenanced for a moment.