In addition to this, Michaud and other members of the Agency Gang would administer the drug in a particular way themselves, so that it deadened their victims’ memory from a time prior to the period of unconsciousness which it produced. It was, the newspaper article declared, a most extraordinary compound, and, being colorless and devoid of all smell, could be administered without arousing the least suspicion of its presence. For which reasons, no doubt, some members of the gang had gone so for as to dope other members with it, when they saw that by doing so they could themselves benefit. That had happened, it seemed, on the occasion when Archie La Planta had been called out of the box at the Alhambra whilst attending a performance of the Russian Ballet. On that night he had met a friend in the foyer, a member of the gang, who had suggested his joining him in a drink in his rooms, which were close by, in Charing Cross Road. La Planta, of course, all unsuspecting, had walked across to his friend’s rooms, yet when he had recovered consciousness in his own chambers in Albany, all recollection of his having gone to those rooms in Charing Cross Road and afterwards being conducted back to his own chambers by his “friend,” had completely faded from his memory. And the reason he had been doped that night and in that way--this the man who had doped him confessed afterwards under cross-examination--had been to keep him away from Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s supper party, a few hours later at her own house, where the same ruse had been employed by the same man, with a woman accomplice, who unseen had then taken from her the key of her safe, which they had then rifled, taking not only the valuables it contained, but inadvertently a packet of letters which proved to be the letters Cora Hartsilver had written to Sir Stephen Lethbridge, and those he had written to her. These documents Jessica had obtained some time before, by bribery, from servants dismissed by Cora and by Sir Stephen for inefficiency, and she had been holding them with a view to using them some day as levers to extort money from Cora; but the woman who had stolen them from the safe had taken that step herself and sent Cora the anonymous letter which had reached her when in Jersey.