“How you keep on about your age,” she said. “You may be getting on physically, but how many men of your age possess your clear brain and your clear intelligence? I don’t look forward to the Schomberg inquiry, I can assure you. What can they suspect? And who can have applied for the exhumation? Not his relatives, I am sure. They were too anxious to inherit his estate to be likely to want inquiries to be made. And I am not of your opinion that Johnson and Blenkiron made the application.” Nobody, listening to Camille then, would have believed her to be the common French woman familiar to clients of the Metropolitan Secret Agency. For now, closeted with her partner in their private sitting-room, she spoke excellent English, while her foreign accent was barely perceptible. The telephone bell rang, and Camille answered it. Then she pressed her palm on the transmitter. “Preston,” she said laconically. “He wants to speak to you at once.” Stothert took the instrument. “That you, Captain Preston?” he asked. “No, I can’t see you to-night.” “Yes. Almost any time to-morrow would suit me.” “I am sorry. I have no further news as yet, but I hope to have some soon.” “Oh, yes, we are getting on famously, and on the right line, I feel sure. By the way, I take it the announcement of your approaching marriage in to-day’s papers is official?” “It is. Then I congratulate you. Good night, Captain Preston.” “He has not read the announcement about the exhumation, apparently, and it was no affair of mine to tell him,” Stothert remarked, when he had rung off. “We must tell him something soon about Jessica, if only to keep him quiet. By the way, Stapleton told me recently that Levi Schomberg had hinted to him more than once that Mrs. Hartsilver was a designing woman. What can Schomberg’s reason have been for saying what we know to be manifestly untrue?” “Probably the same reason which prompted him to make other false statements,” Camille replied. “We may learn that, and other curious things concerning Levi at the inquiry.” The news that apparently some mystery surrounded Levi Schomberg’s death aroused considerable comment. Though rarely seen in public places, he had been well known to a comparatively large circle of London Society, and had borne, rightly or wrongly, the reputation of being the most “accommodating” man of his calling in London.