Quickly his train of thought ran on. There was not an empty taxi in sight, so he decided to walk part of the way. One thought led to another. Solutions to the problem which puzzled him suggested themselves, only to be dismissed one after another as improbable. Then suddenly an idea occurred to him. Could there be another woman in the case? Some woman who was jealous of Mrs. Hartsilver? Instantly the name Jessica Robertson rose to his lips. Why, of course, that must be it! At a loss to suspect any of her guests of having robbed her safe, she would take the opportunity, if opportunity occurred, of casting suspicion on the widow who lived in Park Crescent, and whose beauty and personality rivaled her own. Stapleton’s partiality for Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson was common talk. She, no doubt, had hinted her desire to him, and he had happened to remember it while being interviewed on the subject of the approaching ball. So far, so good. A mystery to a newspaper reporter is like red meat to a tiger. Hopford felt that he had struck a mystery now which might develop later into a scandal. Then he remembered that at the Chelsea Flower Show he had met Mrs. Hartsilver. He must become friendly with her, and then he would play his cards. He entered his office with a light heart. Those five ten-pound notes would be most useful, but what gratified him most was the thought of the news “story” he felt he was on the track of. Not the “story” Stapleton had hinted at. From the first he had not had the slightest intention of using that. Even if it possessed a grain of truth, which he doubted, that was not the sort of stuff he wanted for his paper, while to set out deliberately to wreck a woman’s good name on no evidence in return for payment, was not to be countenanced for a moment. No, he would never see that second fifty pounds. And, so thinking, he sighed. “Hullo, what’s up?” asked a colleague who sat near him. “Got the hump or something?” “Oh, shut it!” Hopford snapped. “I’m dog tired.” “For that matter so am I, but I don’t groan over it,” his neighbor rapped back. “And yet I well might, after reporting two inquests and a cremation in one afternoon.” Hopford laughed. “Never mind,” he said. “Yesterday you attended two parades of _mannequins_, one in swimming suits. You told me so yourself, so you haven’t much to grumble at.” For some minutes both went on writing, turning out their “copy” at a great pace. “Odd thing this suicide--what?” Hopford’s friend remarked as he laid down his fountain pen at last and pinned his sheets of copy together. “What suicide?” Hopford inquired, while his pen ran swiftly on. “You haven’t heard? Everybody is talking about it in the clubs, though none of the evening papers has the story. I got details at the Junior Carlton, where I dined to-night. Lord Froissart belongs there.” “Froissart! You don’t mean that Lord Froissart has committed suicide!” Hopford exclaimed, stopping in his work and looking up.