“The clerk I mentioned just now also told me that at one time Archie La Planta represented an insurance firm in Amsterdam of which Lord Froissart was the principal director, and that before his death Froissart had been a good deal upset at what seems to have been a trick played upon his Company by some of the policy holders--apparently they insured valuable jewels and uncut precious stones which subsequently were stolen by the very men who had insured them, or rather by some of their accomplices; but as nothing could be proved the Company had to pay the full claim, though it did so under protest. Altogether, Johnson, there is a good deal I want to find out, but it will be a fine scoop for my paper if I succeed, and I feel confident I shall do so when I get to Paris.” “You did not tell me you were going to Paris,” Johnson said, smiling at the lad’s enthusiasm. “Or for that matter that you meant to try to solve the bunch of problems you have just enumerated.” “Didn’t I?” Hopford exclaimed. “Well, that is the idea. I am here for a short holiday, then I go to Paris where I have a friend on the staff of _Le Matin_, an extraordinarily clever fellow with a genius for putting together puzzles of this sort. He was in London last month, and when in course of conversation I chanced to speak about the two epidemics of suicide there had been among our society people, and mentioned the names of some of the victims, he became greatly interested, and started asking me all sorts of questions. “He referred to the subject several times again while in town, and finally told me that if I could go to Paris he thought he would be able to put me on to at least one useful clue, and suggested we might work the thing together--the subject would interest _Le Matin_ too, he said. Thereupon I consulted my chief who, though skeptical as to the likelihood of my succeeding, gave me leave to go to Paris for a week or two. Tell me, Johnson, have you any friends there who might be of use to me?” The doctor pondered for some moments. “Where are you going to stay in Paris?” he asked suddenly. “I stayed at the Brighton in the Rue de Rivoli the last time I was there,” Hopford answered, “but I thought this time of finding some little place in Clichy--my friend lives in Montmartre. Why do you ask?” “A friend of mine, a mental specialist--incidentally he is interested in your sort of work, and is wonderfully shrewd in putting two and two together--has a quaint little _appartement_ in the rather slummy Rue des Petits Champs, near the Place Jeanne d’Arc. If you would like to stay with him I know he would like to have you, and I feel confident you would hit it off together. He and I shared a house in Hong Kong, when I practiced there, and after a while I appointed him my _locum tenens_ in Shanghai.” “Shanghai!” Hopford seemed suddenly interested. For several seconds he did not speak.