“Forgive me if I have conveyed a wrong impression,” Johnson said, stopping in his walk. “I assure you I did not mean to imply what you think. Nothing was further from my mind. No, my thoughts were traveling in quite a different channel. Tell me, Mrs. Hartsilver, are Miss Hagerston and Captain Preston now on terms of intimacy with Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson? They appeared to be the other day, and I was surprised, because I was under the impression that their acquaintanceship with her had for some time past been, how shall I put it--rather strained?” “Indeed it was more than rather strained,” Cora answered quickly. “Mrs. Robertson detests Yootha almost as much as she detests me, and I think I am safe in saying that she bears Captain Preston no love at all. As we are speaking in confidence I may as well tell you that Miss Hagerston, Captain Preston, myself, and one or two others have for some months past suspected Jessica Mervyn-Robertson and her friends, Mr. Aloysius Stapleton and Mr. Archie La Planta, of being impostors of some sort, if nothing worse; we have reasons for suspecting this. Consequently we have been making private inquiries about them of the Metropolitan Secret Agency and other sources, and this, I think, they have got to know. Captain Preston and Yootha accepted their invitation to tea on their house-boat chiefly out of curiosity, I believe, and were greatly surprised at the exceptionally friendly reception accorded them. I think they made a mistake in associating with Mrs. Robertson at all in the circumstances.” Johnson smiled. “As that is so, Mrs. Hartsilver, perhaps you will admit me to your little group which suspects ‘Mrs. Jessica’ and her two satellites of not being all that they seem to be. Tell me, wasn’t Captain Preston in Shanghai at one time?” “Yes, I have heard him say so.” “Well, from the middle of 1910 to the end of 1912 I practiced in Hong Kong. Englishmen, as I dare say you know, become very clannish when exiled in places of that sort. I used to visit Shanghai rather frequently, where I had a _locum tenens_, and if Mrs. Jessica and a notorious young woman named Angela Robertson are not the same--oh, but they are the same, I am perfectly positive they are. Stapleton, too, lived in Shanghai for a while--that must have been in 1911. He made the Astor Hotel his home, remember, and though I only saw him once or twice, and never met him to speak to, my _locum tenens_ had all sorts of extraordinary stories about him, and my _locum_ was not a man to heed idle gossip.”