“Almost any man or woman, not excepting the most virtuous, may under certain circumstances get let in for blackmail, and the wonder to me is that more are not blackmailed. Look at this so-called ‘epidemic’ of suicide that everybody is talking about and that the papers are full of. My private opinion is that some, at any rate, are victims of blackmail, who have taken their lives to escape public exposure.” “But blackmailed by whom?” “Ah, there you have me. The whole thing reads to me as though the victims, if blackmailed, were charged by the same person, or it may have been by members of some gang, or an organization of some sort. Don’t you remember the series of suicides which took place a year ago and that--oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hartsilver. I had quite forgotten.” “Pray don’t apologize, Doctor Johnson. I am most interested in what you say. I wonder--I wonder if poor Henry----” “I knew your husband slightly, Mrs. Hartsilver, and I must say I was amazed when I read of the tragedy. The last man--the very last man----” “So everybody said. Blackmail! Now I wonder if----” Unconsciously she stopped, for strange thoughts, reflections, memories of little incidents, were crowding in upon her. Then quickly her train of thought shot away into a different channel. The man she had loved so dearly, young Sir Stephen Lethbridge--the whole of the terrible affair came back to her, as though it had happened the day before. “Exactly the way Molesley made away with himself,” again she heard her husband’s voice, unemotional, cold as ice. And in Viscount Molesley’s room a quantity of burnt papers, she remembered reading, had been found in the grate and scattered beside the body. CHAPTER XIX. WITHOUT A STAIN. Alix Stothert, the mysterious manager of the Metropolitan Secret Agency, lived in the house with the bronze face, on the top floor, and so did his partner, the woman known as Madame Camille Lenoir. They were a sinister couple, of whom nobody seemed to know anything, and the police, when questioned concerning them, as they had been on more than one occasion, refused to make any statement. That the police looked upon them with no favorable eye was generally admitted by those in a position to know, and the inference naturally drawn was that Scotland Yard was jealous of the Metropolitan Secret Agency’s extraordinary success in making discoveries which led to the arrest of criminals while the police failed to obtain even clues. They lived a strange life, apparently, for the door leading into the suite of rooms which they occupied was always kept locked--it had two Yale locks--and no servants or other helpers were ever admitted.