Though at first the conversation of the four was commonplace and conventional, by degrees, as was inevitable, it drifted to a subject in which all were deeply interested. Lord Froissart had been relating as much as he deemed it advisable to tell them about his unpleasant experience in the house with the bronze face, when Cora suddenly asked: “Might not the Metropolitan Secret Agency be able to discover some clue which would lead to the mysteries being cleared up which surround the many strange deaths that have occurred within the past year or so? You and I both have cause, Lord Froissart, to wish that something could be done in that respect.” For a moment nobody spoke. Mrs. Hartsilver and Lord Froissart had known each other some years, and once before, about a month previously, they had spoken about this. “Well, as you have broached the subject,” he said at last, “I don’t mind telling you now that my visit to the house in question was made for the purpose of consulting Stothert on that very point. The series of tragedies that has occurred is so remarkable that one cannot help thinking there must have been some reason for it. And if I may say so, Mrs. Hartsilver, your husband’s death was, in my opinion, the most astonishing of all. I can say with truth that if anybody had asked me to pick out from among my many acquaintances the man I considered the least likely to make an attempt on his life, I should unhesitatingly have named poor Hartsilver. Self-destruction was a thing we once spoke about, and he appeared to have a horror of the bare thought of it.” “I wonder, Mrs. Hartsilver,” Captain Preston said slowly, and as he spoke he fixed his great gray eyes upon her, “if you can tell me anything about this woman whose name seems to be on everybody’s lips, and whose portrait we see in all the picture papers--this Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson?” A tense silence followed. “I am afraid I cannot,” Cora said, after a pause. “People say she is of Australian extraction, and that her father was a sheep farmer.” “I have heard that, too,” Lord Froissart said quickly. “Therefore three of us have heard it, and presumably from different sources. Yet this afternoon a friend of mine, George Blenkiron, who has lived twenty years in Australia and knows the up country and down, assured me that there is no sheep farmer of the name of either Robertson or Mervyn-Robertson out there, nor ever has been within his recollection.” “But Mervyn-Robertson is surely her husband’s name?” Yootha said. “Quite right. Oddly enough, however, her maiden name was Robertson. Blenkiron knew that much, though he doesn’t live in London, or mix much in London society. He found it out quite by accident, and in rather a curious way.” CHAPTER VII. CONCERNS “DEAR JESSICA.”