“I don’t merely think so, I am almost sure it would. I believe it might indirectly help us in our investigations concerning Miss Froissart’s strange death.” “In that case I certainly will go.” “And you will advise us in advance of the costume you will wear? Please don’t fail to do that. A mask and fancy costume are to be obligatory, I hear.” When Lord Froissart had gone, Stothert and his partner breathed more freely. It was true that their “firm” calling itself the Metropolitan Secret Agency, had obtained a wonderful reputation for getting secret information about people’s private lives, but rumors were rife regarding the methods it employed to achieve its aim. Women of high station, anxious to rid themselves of their husbands; husbands desiring to prove their wives’ alleged infidelity, and many others, now almost invariably went straight to the Metropolitan Secret Agency, or “the house with the bronze face” as Society people too had come to call it, and generally within a week the Agency would put them in possession of enough indisputable evidence to damn the suspected party irrevocably and forever. Certainly the amount the Agency knew about the private lives and affairs of more than half the peerage was astonishing. How they came by it all was a problem which rival agencies tried in vain to solve, and, having failed to solve it, some would proceed to vent their spleen by spreading false stories concerning the house with the bronze knocker, its inmates, and the way the business carried on there was conducted. Not that either Stothert or his French partner cared in the least what was said about them. As the former was fond of remarking: “They can say what they like about us, but they can’t prove the truth of even a single statement.” As Lord Froissart drove homeward in a taxi, his thoughts became centered on the house with the bronze face, and its strange tenants. The Metropolitan Secret Agency had been in existence less than three years, yet already it was looked upon as the premier inquiry agency in London. Though it never advertised, everybody in Society knew of its existence, and the rapidity with which it supplied information, which was invariably accurate, was common talk.