"Armitage was her name," Quinn replied. "Lelia Armitage. At least that was the name she was known by in Washington, and even the investigations which followed Melville Taylor's exposure of her foreign connections failed to reveal that she had been known by any other, save her maiden name of Lawrence."
"Where is she now?" I asked.
"You'll have to ask me something easier," and Quinn smiled, a trifle wistfully, I thought. "Possibly in London, perhaps in Paris, maybe in Rio or the Far East. But wherever she is, the center of attention is not very far away from her big violet-black eyes. Also the police of the country where she is residing probably wish that they had never been burdened with her."
"You mean—"
"That she was a crook? Not as the word is usually understood. But more than one string of valuable pearls or diamonds has disappeared when milady Armitage was in the neighborhood—though they were never able to prove that she had lifted a thing. No, her principal escapade in this country brought her into contact with the Secret Service, rather than the police officials—which is probably the reason she was nailed with the goods. You remember the incident of the 'leak' in the peace note, when certain Wall Street interests cleaned up millions of dollars?"
"Perfectly. Was she to blame for that?"
"They never settled who was to blame for it, but Mrs. Armitage was dealing through a young and decidedly attractive Washington broker at the time and her account mysteriously multiplied itself half a dozen times.
"Then there was the affair of the Carruthers Code, the one which ultimately led to her exposure at the hands of Taylor and Madelaine James."
The Carruthers Code [Quinn went on] was admittedly the cleverest and yet the simplest system of cipher communication ever devised on this side of the Atlantic, with the possible exception of the one mentioned in Jules Verne's "Giant Raft"—the one that Dr. Heinrich Albert used with such success. Come to think of it, Verne wasn't an American, was he? He ought to have been, though. He invented like one.