Then, who were Stothert and his companion, Madame Camille Lenoir? He had been told that they had come to London together and started their strange business without friends or introductions. Had they other partners? And if so, who were they? Madame Leonora Vandervelt, the beautiful adventuress who had committed suicide by throwing herself out of an hotel window, had been convicted on each of the three occasions she had appeared in the divorce court on evidence supplied by the Metropolitan Secret Agency. Twice the well-known Society woman, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, had visited the house with the bronze face with reference to thefts of some of her valuable jewelry, and each time the thief had been caught within a fortnight. Then her friend Stapleton when his Fiat car was stolen while he was choosing shirts at Wing’s in Piccadilly--this fact mentioned in Court created some amusement--had gone direct to Bloomsbury and interviewed Alix Stothert, with the result that both car and thief had been traced to Llandudno, and the thief arrested there while actually in the car. That and a dozen similar examples of the Metropolitan Secret Agency’s amazing efficiency occurred to him, and the more he thought about the Agency, the more he marveled. Another question he asked himself was why the Agency should have rented that big house in Bloomsbury, seeing that their offices in it occupied apparently no more than four rooms, the rest of the house being in consequence empty and waste space. When he had lost himself in the house that afternoon he must have wandered, he reflected, into a dozen rooms or more, not one of which was even furnished, though nearly all had carpets. On the previous occasion when he had visited the Agency, he had seen six or eight clerks apparently hard at work, but the only people in authority were Stothert and the rather common Frenchwoman. And the more he thought, the more puzzling the problem seemed to be. Not the least astonishing thing was that the partners should have found it necessary to continue working so late at night after probably working hard all day. He had, like most people, heard rumors about the house, including the story that people were seen to enter it who never came out again, but to such legends he paid no heed. He had just asked himself if it might not be advisable to deal carefully with this man and woman who treated him always with so much deference and outward courtesy, when the taxi drew up at his house in Queen Anne’s Gate. CHAPTER VI. CORA HARTSILVER’S CONFESSION. Though Yootha Hagerston had now inherited the little fortune left to her by her aunt, she had not thought it necessary to change her mode of living, or even to move from her flat near Knightsbridge into more expensive quarters, as one or two of her snobbish-minded acquaintances had told her they supposed she would do.