“Why let that annoy you, Cora dear?” Yootha exclaimed. “Heaven knows why the woman dislikes you so, or why she dislikes me, as I know she does. I expect the truth is she has heard that we are trying to find out who she is. And I mean to go on trying, until I do find out.” “And I am with you. I am as certain as that I am standing here that she is an impostor of some sort, though up to the present she and her friends, Stapleton and La Planta, have been clever enough to hide the truth. Has it never struck you as strange, Yootha, that not a word got into the papers about the theft of her jewelry and things, though all one’s friends knew about it? What has made me think of that now is that I was told this morning by a friend of mine who writes or edits, or does something for some paper--no, you don’t know him--that Stapleton and Jessica Robertson both moved heaven and earth to prevent the affair being reported in the press.” “But why?” “Exactly--but why? I was wondering if she could have some reason for not wanting her name to get into the papers, but as one sees it in all the ‘social columns’ every day----” “That may have been the reason, nevertheless. The jewelry, et cetera, were, if you remember, apparently stolen by one of her guests that night, and possibly she suspects one of them and is afraid of the scandal which would follow if he, or she, were convicted of the theft. Indeed, I can’t think what other motive she can have had for not wanting anything to be said in the papers about the crime.” “I wonder,” Cora said thoughtfully. They would probably have been surprised if they had known that Captain Preston, too, who of course had also heard of the robbery, had been puzzling his brain to account for Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s aversion from press publicity in connection with the robbery. “I tell you it’s devilish odd, George,” he had said to his friend Blenkiron only the night before, as the two sat smoking together in his rooms in Fig Tree Court, “that woman and her dear friend Stapleton being so desperately anxious to keep the affair out of the papers. If you or I were burgled should we care a button if the facts were made public or not? Would anybody else whose house was burgled object to the fact being known? Then why this hush-hush movement on the part of Jessica Robertson and her friends--young La Planta, too, helped to keep it quiet.” “Who told you?” “Harry Hopford. He was with me in Flanders a long time, and I came across him in Whitefriars only the other day--he is back on his newspaper again. He said the steps that woman and her two friends took to prevent mention being made in the papers of the robbery at her house during one of her night parties, aroused a good deal of conjecture in Fleet Street. Some of the reporters were actually paid to say nothing about it. He told me so himself.” For some moments both were silent. “She must have had some strong motive for wanting to hush it up,” Blenkiron said at last.