Madness in the City of Magnificent

Intentions: A History of Race and

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Martin Summers
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 Madness in the City
of Magnificent Intentions
 Madness in the City
of Magnificent Intentions
A History of Race and Mental Illness
in the Nation’s Capital

M A RT I N SU M M E R S

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​085264–​1

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

For Karl
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  1

1. “Humanity Requires All the Relief Which Can Be Afforded”: The

Birth of the Federal Asylum  13

2. The Paradox of Enlightened Care: Saint Elizabeths in the Era of

Moral Treatment, 1855–​1877  39

3. “From Slave to Citizen”: Race, Insanity, and Institutionalization in

Post-​Reconstruction Washington, DC, 1877–​1900  71

4. Care and the Color Line: Race, Rights, and the Therapeutic
Experience, 1877–​1900   95

5. “Mechanisms of the Negro Mind”: Race and Dynamic Psychiatry

at Saint Elizabeths, 1903–​1937  125

6. “He Is Psychotic and Always Will Be”: Racial Ambivalence and

the Limits of Therapeutic Optimism, 1903–​1937  153

7. Mental Hygiene and the Limits of Reform: Saint Elizabeths in the

Community, 1903–​1937   190

8. “An Example for the Rest of the Nation”: Challenging Racial

Injustice at Saint Elizabeths, 1910–​1955  217

vii
viii Contents

9. Whither the Negro Psyche: Integration and Its Aftermath,

1945–​1970   247

10. From Model to Emblem: Community Mental Health and

Deinstitutionalization, 1963–​1987   277

Conclusion  309

Notes  315
Selected Bibliography  369
Index  377
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is not the book that I set out to write. Trained as a cultural historian of
the nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century United States, with particular interests in
race, gender, and sexuality, I intended to write a book about black masculinity,
institutions, and the state when I began my research in 2001. A chance encounter
in the National Archives with a dusty, brittle admissions book of a federal insane
asylum that summer set me on the path to writing this history of race and mental
illness in the nation’s capital. Over these past eighteen years, I have learned a
great deal about the field of medical history and even more about myself as a his-
torian. Along the way, I have accumulated many debts which I am grateful that
I now have the opportunity to acknowledge.
My largest intellectual debt is owed to scholars who showed a great deal of
enthusiasm, encouragement, and support for my project in its earliest stages.
As someone who was excited yet tentative about entering a field in which I had
no graduate training, my initial trepidation was alleviated by the early positive
responses from James Mohr, Ellen Herman, and Laura Briggs. Jim and Ellen, my
colleagues at the University of Oregon, were some of my most ardent champions
and wisest counsels. I thank them for the years of advice and friendship that
they have given me, as well as for all of the letters they have written on my be-
half. Laura was a commenter on a paper that I gave early in the research process,
and her engagement with the work and thoughtful remarks helped shape the
scope of the project and the kinds of questions that I ended up pursuing. She
has remained a steadfast source of support over the past dozen years, and I am
deeply appreciative.
My growth as a scholar has been made possible by the relationships that I have
developed and the conversations that I have had over the past several years with
other scholars who are doing important work on the history of race and med-
icine. I thank Dennis Doyle, Sharla Fett, Susan Reverby, Samuel Roberts, and
Keith Wailoo for the interest they have shown in my work, for their camaraderie,

ix
x Ack nowl edg ments

and for modeling the kind of scholarship that I aspire to produce. I am also
grateful to Laurie Green and John Mckiernan-​González, my former colleagues
at the University of Texas at Austin and collaborators, for the many hours-​long
discussions that we have had over kitchen tables, in hotel lobbies, and on the
phone over the past several years. Even though working on our coedited col-
lection delayed progress on this monograph, it was a rewarding experience and
greatly contributed to my maturation as a scholar. I thank them for their con-
stant companionship on this journey.
Writing a 132-​year history of a single institution and its relationship to the sur-
rounding community has required a great deal of archival, research, and financial
assistance. I want to thank the staffs at the American Antiquarian Society, DC
Public Library (Washingtoniana Division), George Washington University’s
Special Collections Research Center, Harvard University’s Houghton Library,
Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital Archives, Library of Congress, National
Archives, National Archives II, National Library of Medicine, and Saint
Elizabeths Hospital Archives. I especially want to thank Saint Elizabeths’ former
librarian, Velora Jernigan-​Pedrick, for her indispensable assistance in working
through an un-​inventoried collection. Matthew Gambino, who was working on a
dissertation on Saint Elizabeths, graciously put me in contact with Ms. Jernigan-​
Pedrick, and I am grateful to him for it. Clinical staff members and historical
enthusiasts Suryabala Kanhouwa and Jogues R. Prandoni generously shared
their knowledge about Saint Elizabeths and their published research with me.
The enthusiastic reception and support of Patrick Canavan, Saint Elizabeths’
CEO in the mid-​2000s, for my project was particularly welcome, as was the ad-
vice and offers of assistance by Marc Shaw, the lead architect of Saint Elizabeths’
new state-​of-​the-​art hospital.
This monograph could not have been completed without the timely and
professional assistance of the interdisciplinary services staffs at the University
of Oregon, the University of Texas at Austin, and Boston College. I am also
particularly indebted to the library staff at the National Humanities Center—​
Jean Houston, Eliza Roberts, Brooke Andrade, and Sarah Harris—​who ran an
incredibly well-​oiled machine and tracked down obscure material with alac-
rity and good cheer. I wish to thank Holly Reed and Kaitlyn Crain Enriquez of
the National Archives Still Pictures Division for their last-​minute assistance in
obtaining images for the book. I have also benefited from the excellent and me-
ticulous research skills of graduate students and undergraduate students alike,
including Elizabeth Medford, Juandrea Bates, Wangui Muigai, Adam Rathge,
Andrew Schneider, and Emily Sloan.
Financial support from a number of universities, research centers, and
foundations was indispensable. New Faculty and Summer Research Awards
from the University of Oregon in 2001 and 2003, respectively, funded the very
 Ack nowl edg ment s xi

early stages of this project, as did research monies associated with the university’s
Underrepresented Minority Recruitment Program. A Dean’s Fellowship from
UT-​Austin in 2006 provided further research support. An American Council of
Learned Societies Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship allowed me to spend a year
at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to the ACLS, I would
like to extend my gratitude to Barbara Grosz, then dean of Radcliffe; Judith
Vichniac, director of the fellowship program; and the Radcliffe staff, especially
Melissa Synott. I want to thank the Office of the Provost of Boston College for a
sabbatical fellowship in the spring of 2011 that enabled me to begin writing. The
provost also provided supplemental funding for a National Humanities Center
fellowship in 2013–​14. I would like to acknowledge the wonderful leadership
and staff of the NHC—​Geoffrey Harpham, Elizabeth “Cassie” Mansfield, and
Lois Whittington in particular—​as well as the generous support of Ruth W. and
A. Morris Williams Jr. I would not have been able to complete this book without
them. Karen Carroll’s editorial assistance while I was an NHC fellow improved
the manuscript’s clarity and sharpness. Finally, I want to thank all of those people
who have kindly given their time to write letters of recommendations over the
years—​for more unsuccessful fellowship proposals than I care to admit. In addi-
tion to Jim Mohr and Ellen Herman, these generous folks include Laura Briggs,
King Davis, Glenda Gilmore, and Robert Self.
I have profited enormously from the support and friendship of amazing
colleagues at a number of institutions. At the University of Oregon, Ellen
Herman, Shari Huhndorf, Jeff Ostler, and the late Peggy Pascoe were ideal senior
colleagues and invaluable friends. Jafari Allen, Tiffany Gill, Frank Guridy, Jim
Sidbury, and James Wilson made UT-​Austin a welcoming place and an invig-
orating, if all too brief, intellectual sojourn. I have benefited from the leader-
ship in the Department of History at Boston College, including past and present
chairs Lynn Johnson, Jim Cronin, Robin Fleming, Kevin Kenny, and Sarah
Ross. I have also enjoyed a collegial environment and especially the friendship
of Robin Fleming, Kevin Kenny, Lynn Johnson, Priya Lal, Patrick Maney, Karen
Miller, Arissa Oh, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Sarah Ross, Dana Sajdi, Franziska
Seraphim, and Deborah Levenson, my stalwart and star-​crossed Spanish tutor.
I am indebted to my current and former colleagues in the African and African
Diaspora Studies Program, especially Richard Paul, Régine Jean-​ Charles,
Cynthia Young, and Rhonda Frederick for their friendship and support.
In the course of writing this book, I have had the good fortune of receiving
excellent and challenging feedback from friends, colleagues, and strangers. The
following folks have contributed to the final shape of this book either through
reading drafts of chapters or the entire manuscript or just through questions
and comments delivered in informal or formal conversations: Heidi Ardizzone,
Elizabeth Alexander, Elizabeth Armstrong, Nancy Bercaw, Susanna Blumenthal,
xii Ack nowl edg ments

Julian Bourg, Joel Braslow, Lundy Braun, Erika Bsumek, Simone Caron, Sylvia
Chong, Nancy Cott, Dennis Doyle, Matthew Gambino, Tiffany Gill, Janet
Golden, Jennifer Gunn, Mark Hauser, Rana Hogarth, Lynn Johnson, Stephen
Kenny, Elizabeth Krause, Regina Kunzel, Toni Lester, Deborah Levenson,
David Levering Lewis, Jacqueline Malone, Michelle Moran, Rebecca Nedostup,
Deirdre Cooper Owens, Anne Parsons, Naomi Rogers, Tim Rood, Jonathan
Sadowsky, Dana Sajdi, Londa Schiebinger, Robert Self, Suman Seth, Karen
Sotiropoulos, Melissa Stein, Melissa Stuckey, Megan Sweeney, Emma Teng,
and Rhonda Y. Williams. The process of writing this book was also enormously
enriched by the many discussions that I had with a phenomenal array of scholars
at the National Humanities Center—​in hallways, over glasses of wine during
happy hour, and over delectable meals, especially Tuesdays’ grits! For their in-
tellectual camaraderie, I would particularly like to acknowledge the members of
the History, Race, and the State Seminar, especially Julie Greene, Luis Cárcamo-​
Huechante, Sylvia Chong, Tim Marr, Elizabeth Krause, Martha Jones, Evelyn
Brooks Higginbotham, and Marixa Lasso; and members of the Knowledge and
Context Seminar, especially Andy Jewett, Lynn Festa, Chad Heap, and Charlie
McGovern. Various versions of chapters were presented at a number of con-
ferences and public lectures. For their generous engagement with my work,
I would especially like to thank the organizers of and audiences at the University
of Notre Dame’s Henkels Lecture in April 2007; the University of Mississippi’s
Porter L. Fortune, Jr. Symposium in March 2012; the University of Oregon’s
Peggy Pascoe Memorial Lecture Series in November 2013; the University
of Minnesota’s Dorothy Bernstein Lecture in the History of Psychiatry in
September 2014; and the History Department at Brown University in March
2016. The anonymous readers for Oxford University Press also provided invalu-
able feedback, and I thank them for it.
At Oxford University Press, I have benefited from Nancy Toff ’s support,
editorial diligence, and low tolerance for language that obfuscates rather than
clarifies. I also want to thank Nancy’s assistant, Elizabeth Vaziri; Marie Felina,
the book’s project manager; and Judith Hoover, the copy editor.
It gives me extraordinary pleasure to be able to acknowledge my friends and
family, whose steadfast support means the world to me. Unfortunately, two of
my friends and mentors did not live long enough to see this book’s publication.
Peggy Pascoe and Clement Alexander Price taught me a great deal about being
a good historian, a good teacher, and a good soul. I’m still trying to live up to the
standard they set.
I have had the good fortune of having Franklin Parrish in my life for more
than half of it. We both keep getting better with age, I like to think. I met Erika
Bsumek in my first year of graduate school, and she has been a dear friend ever
since. I thank her for all of the encouragement and support she has given me over
 Ack nowl edg ment s xiii

the years and for all of the wonderful times and life events that we have been
able to share. I also want to thank the Fujiwara-​Morozumi clan, our West Coast
family. Lynn, Steve, Kyra, Joanna, and Martin have enriched my life in more ways
than I can count, and I am so grateful to them for it.
I thank my father, Charles Summers, and my brother, Scott Summers, for
modeling for me what it is to live a life of integrity and purpose. Although I did
not end up working with the same kind of student population, my late mother
Loretta Summers’ passion for teaching, along with the way that she led her life,
continues to inspire me. I also thank my father’s partner, Kay Henry; my sister-​
in-​law, Wendy Summers; my niece and nephew, Lauren and Christian Summers;
my aunt, Barbara Mead; my godsister Nikitea Vaughn; and my godson, Liam
Hannon, for their love and support. And words cannot express how much I love
and miss my sister, Carla Summers, who taught me so much about life, music,
and food. I think about her every day.
And, finally, I am so happy to be able to acknowledge Karl Mundt. He has had
to endure more closed study doors over the past decade than a husband should
have to, and he has never once complained. His love and support as a partner
and a friend are beyond measure. Whenever an academic asks me if my husband
is an academic as well, his or her eyes light up when I respond, “No, he is a chore-
ographer and a dance teacher.” I don’t know what that says about our respective
career choices. But I do know that I could not have made a better choice for a
life partner.
 Introduction

For most of its history, Saint Elizabeths Hospital was considered by nearly eve-
ryone who had a relationship to it to be an exceptional institution. Founded in
1855 in Washington, DC, the insane asylum was envisioned by Congress and
Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce as providing “the most humane
care and enlightened curative treatment” to the soldiers and sailors of the na-
tion as well as the residents of the nation’s capital. While considering an offer to
become its first superintendent, Dr. Charles H. Nichols expressed the desire to
his friend, the reformer Dorothea Lynde Dix, that he be given the resources and
latitude to build a “model hospital.” Dr. William Alanson White, who directed
the hospital for nearly the first four decades of the twentieth century, often spoke
of the institution’s unique position as a research and teaching hospital. Its loca-
tion in the nation’s capital, its funding from the federal government, its prox-
imity to elite medical schools, and its special patient population made White’s
assessment of Saint Elizabeths’ singularity one that was shared by his colleagues
in the psychiatric profession. Even as the paradigm of mental health care was
transitioning from the large public hospital to the decentralized community
center model in the post–​World War II era, government and hospital officials
hoped that Saint Elizabeths would “provide an example for the Nation” in how
to make the transformation seamlessly.1
Saint Elizabeths’ exceptionalism—​both presumed and real—​was due in no
small part to its status as a federal institution in a federal district. For roughly
a century, during which the care of the mentally ill fell primarily to state and
local governments, Saint Elizabeths was one of the few mental hospitals that
was largely funded by Congress and that served patients who were considered
wards of the federal government.2 In some ways, when Nichols aspired to make
Saint Elizabeths a model hospital, he was expressing his belief that he and his
staff could make it the pacesetter for the rest of the nation’s asylums. But he and
those who followed him as superintendent also maintained a certain investment
in the notion that Saint Elizabeths’ exceptionalism exceeded national borders.
As it was, effectively, the national asylum, Saint Elizabeths carried the burden

1
2 Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions

of representing the virtues of the American medical profession’s approach to

treating mental illness. Those associated with the hospital often interpreted
this burden not as an unwanted responsibility but as an opportunity to dem-
onstrate the American capacity to keep pace with the advances in the treatment
of mental illness made by the British, French, and German medical professions
and to trumpet the values that were specific to American culture and society. As
Nichols’s successor, Dr. William Whitney Godding, expressed in 1878, shortly
after assuming leadership of the hospital, Saint Elizabeths “should be in a posi-
tion to show to other nations the liberal provision that America makes for her
defenders when they become insane.”3
In the very early days of its operation, the hospital’s Board of Visitors articu-
lated this particular strain of exceptionalism when it reported on the construc-
tion of a lodge for African American patients. “The erection and occupancy of a
lodge for colored insane,” the board boasted, “possessing most of the provisions
of an independent hospital, inaugurates, we believe, the first and only special
provision for the suitable care of the African when afflicted with insanity, which
has yet been made in any part of the world, and is particularly becoming to the
Government of a country embracing a larger population of blacks than can be
found in any other civilized state.”4 While the board pointed to the lodge as a
testament to the liberal humanitarianism, scientific and medical advancement,
and racial magnanimity of the United States, the segregation of black and white
patients was befitting an institution located in a city in which the slave trade had
been banned only six years earlier and in which slavery would be legal for an-
other six years.
The coexistence of these seemingly contradictory features of Washington,
DC—​the rhetoric of freedom and equality and the reality of slavery and
racism—​was reflected in the label Charles Dickens gave the capital after his visit
in the early 1840s. The “City of Magnificent Intentions” referred directly to the
grandness of the capital’s design and architecture and the relative emptiness of
the city itself. But when he wrote of slave traders in Washington as “hunters en-
gaged in the Pursuit of Happiness,” Dickens was also critiquing the emptiness of
the grand ideals of American democracy.5
The need to construct separate facilities for a racial group that, despite
occupying an ambiguous position in the psychiatric imagination, would con-
stitute a significant portion of its patient population was further indicative of
the exceptionalism of Saint Elizabeths. From its very beginning, in fact, Saint
Elizabeths admitted African American patients. Some were soldiers and sailors,
but the majority of African Americans committed were civilian residents of the
District of Columbia who were medically diagnosed as insane and legally deter-
mined to be too poor to afford private care. Although they did not always come
close to matching their percentage of the total population of the District, the
 Int roduc tion 3

substantial numbers of African Americans in Saint Elizabeths made it one of the

few insane asylums in the United States with a significant racially heterogeneous
patient population before the mid-​twentieth century. As such, the hospital is an
ideal site in which to examine the coexistence of racialist thought and scientific
objectivity, medical altruism and racist treatment, and institutional power and
individual agency.
This book is a history of the relationship between Washington, DC’s
African American community and Saint Elizabeths Hospital from its founding
in 1855 to the deinstitutionalization of the District’s mentally ill popula-
tion in the 1970s and 1980s. It is at once a cultural history of medicine that
acknowledges the real materiality of disease while also taking into account the
socially constructed nature of illness; an institutional history that situates both
the admirable and the less than noble efforts of medical professionals within
an ever evolving field of psychiatric knowledge and the more mundane arenas
of bureaucracy and politics; and a social history of African American patients
and the communities that cared for, loved, feared, and abandoned them.6 In
weaving these various strands together, the book reveals the connections
among ideas of racial difference, moral and medical understandings of mental
disease, the institutional disciplining of “deviant” bodies, the myriad ways in
which those who were diagnosed as insane bore their illness, and their own
attempts as well as those of their families and friends to manage their thera-
peutic experience.

Racializing Disease, Racializing the Sufferer

Race—​as both ideology and lived experience—​figured prominently in how
hospital officials understood the mission of the institution and subsequently
designed and operated it, in how hospital officials conceptualized categories
of mental disease and consequently developed therapeutic regimes to address
them, and in how patients experienced their confinement in Saint Elizabeths.
Ideas of racial difference functioned in the hospital’s clinical settings and wards
in more complex ways than the segregation of patients that was customary in
medical institutions prior to the mid-​twentieth century, or the racial animosity
that some white doctors, nurses, and attendants, immersed in a racist culture,
would have inevitably exhibited toward their black patients. Ideas of racial dif-
ference were foundational to the production and deployment of psychiatric
knowledge from the mid-​nineteenth to the mid-​twentieth century. Indeed, what
a history of Saint Elizabeths reveals is the ways in which the American psychi-
atric profession engaged in an (often) unarticulated project that conceptualized
the white psyche as the norm. This not only meant that the white sufferer of
4 Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions

mental illness occupied center stage in the psychiatric profession’s conscious-

ness, even though this was rarely explicitly expressed. It also meant that the psy-
chiatric profession’s routine manufacturing of racial difference constructed the
black psyche as alien and fundamentally abnormal. This belief in distinctive ra-
cial psyches contributed to the persistent marginalization of mentally ill African
Americans over the course of the development and evolution of American psy-
chiatry, from the era of moral treatment in the mid-​nineteenth century to the
rise of neurology in the late nineteenth and the hegemony of dynamic psychiatry
in the mid-​twentieth.
A history of Saint Elizabeths and its relationship to the District’s African
American community encourages a fundamental reassessment of how race and
racism operated in the asylum and larger psychiatric profession. The historiog-
raphy of mental illness and mental institutions in the United States is several
decades old and has produced numerous interpretive schools: from asylums as
manifestations of benevolent reform to asylums as mechanisms of social control.7
As robust as this historiographic tradition has been, however, few scholars have
situated race at the center of their examinations of the asylum. Until recently, few
of the works that have dealt with the presence of African Americans in mental
institutions have used race as a category of analysis, instead merely documenting
the discriminatory treatment to which they were subjected. In other words,
they largely assumed that race relations within the asylum simply mirrored the
relationships between blacks and whites that existed in the larger culture.8 While
this was certainly the case in many respects, more recent work has begun to ex-
plore the manner in which ideas of racial difference were embedded in the very
ways that psychiatrists thought about mental health and mental illness and how
they subsequently treated and managed patients.9 The important challenge of
current historical scholarship on mental illness and psychiatry in the United
States is to unearth the complex, subtle, and explicit ways that psychiatrists and
experts in cognate fields produced and reproduced the “truth” of racial differ-
ence as they incorporated these preconceptions into their approaches to insane
whites and people of color.10
Psychiatrists’ positing of the reality of distinctive racial psyches and their
prioritizing the white sufferer of mental illness began before Saint Elizabeths
opened its doors in 1855 and continued to shape much of the institution’s ethos.
In situating the hospital in a part of the District considered to be a healthy en-
vironment for whites, and by justifying the racial segregation of patients on the
principle of therapeutic efficacy, for instance, Superintendent Nichols placed
the restoration of reason and the preservation of sanity for white Americans
at the center of his medical mission. Some six decades later, with the enthusi-
astic support of Superintendent White, many of Saint Elizabeths’ psychiatrists,
capitalizing on their access to large numbers of African American patients,
 Int roduc tion 5

undertook clinical research aimed at developing comparative profiles of the

black and white psyche. In doing so, they theorized the existence of a norma-
tively primitive black psyche, which, similar to the psyche of a child, might serve
as a window into understanding the abnormal psychology of the white sufferer
of mental illness.
The presumption of a primitive, or child-​like, black psyche, moreover, in-
hibited the development of intensive psychotherapeutic engagements between
white psychiatrists and African American patients. At a point in the early twen-
tieth century when mental illness was beginning to be understood as a product
of an individual’s maladjustment to his or her environment, the dynamic psy-
chiatric approach of plumbing the depths of a person’s unconscious through
psychotherapy was rarely applied to African Americans. Indeed, the extent to
which psychotherapy was used on African American patients at Saint Elizabeths
prior to World War II was shaped, in the main, by the acute need to address the
surface manifestations of their psychoses and a desire to transform them into
tractable laborers. Although there were certainly some black patients who un-
derwent the kind of intensive psychotherapy aimed at unearthing the complexes
that underlay their mental illness, they were hardly the typical patients to re-
ceive this particular type of intervention. Saint Elizabeths’ psychiatrists were
doing more than just privileging white sufferers of mental illness, however;
they were also constructing a paradigmatic black madness that aligned with
both the profession’s prevailing knowledge about mental illness and their own
assumptions about the racial character of people of African descent. As the his-
tory of Saint Elizabeths illustrates, psychiatrists’ struggle with the existence of
a group of people considered to possess a distinctive and inferior psyche led to
a great deal of ambiguity, ambivalence, and antipathy when it came to treating
mentally ill African Americans.
The ambiguous nature of the mad Negro had its very origins in the early
nineteenth century, when physicians began characterizing insanity as a disease
that was associated with the advent of modernity. Rapid economic develop-
ment, educational advancement, and democratization, particularly, created an
environment in which individuals were constantly exposed to phenomena that
might result in physical and mental enervation, emotional stress, or heightened
passions. The counterpart to civilization-​induced insanity was the presumed
mental health of those races situated lower on the evolutionary scale or those
people who were caught in cultural stasis, including Africans and people of
African descent, Native Americans, and indigenous peoples in Australia, New
Zealand, and the South Pacific. Physicians based their explanations of so-​called
primitive people’s alleged immunity to mental illness on both biological and cul-
tural postulates, indicating the intimate relationship between body and mind in
nineteenth-​century medical thought.
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thrown him over, or even that he had thrown you over. Have you
heard from him lately?”
“Not very lately,” Yootha replied quickly, with a slight frown which
Jessica did not fail to notice. “He has gone back to London, I
believe.”
“‘You believe.’ That doesn’t sound promising, does it?” and she
laughed in her deep voice, though it was not a pleasant laugh.
“When a man is engaged to be married, especially to such a
charming girl—​a girl any man ought to be proud to speak to, let
alone be engaged to—​it isn’t very considerate of him to leave her in
the lurch in the way Captain Preston left you. And if he neglects you
now, don’t you think he’s pretty sure to begin neglecting you when
you have been married a little while?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Yootha answered awkwardly. “Men are queer
animals. I have always said so. At one time I made up my mind
never to marry.”
“But changed it directly you had the privilege of meeting Captain
Preston.”
She spoke almost with a sneer.
“Not directly,” the girl said weakly, conscious that, had she drunk
less champagne and had all her wits about her, she would have said
something different, would have stood up for her lover.
Jessica edged a little closer to her.
“Why not give him up?” she murmured so that nobody but Yootha
could hear. “He has not treated you well; he has not played the
game, has he now? Just think—​he is supposed to be your lover, yet
after swearing, as I am sure he has done, he has never in his life
before met any woman to approach you, he leaves you alone, lets
you go roaming about the Continent with two men and a woman he
intensely dislikes, and himself calmly returns to England without
even wishing you good-by! Does that look like true love, dear? Does
it look like love at all? Supposing a man you knew nothing about
were going to marry some friend of yours, what would you think,
what would you say, if all at once he treated her like this? Take my
advice, Yootha,” she went on, speaking lower still, “give him up.
Write to him to-morrow; come up to my room and write to him at
once; saying that in view of all that has happened you have decided
to break off your engagement. He won’t break his heart—​break his
heart, I should think not!—and believe me, you will one day thank me
for having saved you from marrying a man who doesn’t love you.”
As she stopped speaking she refilled the girl’s glass with
champagne.
“And now listen to me,” she ended under her breath. “I have
something serious to say to you.”
 CHAPTER XXVIII.

NUMBER FIFTEEN.
When Yootha awoke next morning, her head was aching badly.
She had only a confused recollection of the events of the previous
night, and the more she tried to remember exactly what had
happened, the greater the tangle became.
Her blinds were down and the room was still almost in darkness,
as she had not yet been called. For about an hour she remained in a
sort of disturbed half-sleep; then gradually she began to wonder
what the time could be. Through the open windows the sound of
traffic came to her, which made her think it must be late. She turned
to look at her watch. It had stopped at four in the morning.
She felt under her pillow for the electric bell push, and some
minutes later one of the hotel maids entered.
“What time is it?” Yootha asked.
“Close on one o’clock, miss.”
“One o’clock! But why was I not called? Why was my cup of tea
not brought?”
“I will inquire, miss,” and the maid left the room, closing the door
behind her.
Soon she returned. She said that before Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson
had left she had said that Miss Hagerston was very tired and must
not be disturbed.
“How do you mean, before she left?” Yootha inquired. “Where has
she gone?”
“I have no idea, miss. She left the hotel this morning with her
maid, and the two gentlemen who were with her have gone too.”
 “You mean gone away? Gone, with their luggage?”
“Yes, miss.”
Yootha started up in bed.
“But this is extraordinary!” she exclaimed. “They never said a
word yesterday about leaving. Has no message been left for me?”
“No, miss. I made that inquiry.”
A whole flood of thoughts, doubts, suspicions, surged through the
girl’s brain. Oh, if only she could remember exactly what had
happened on the previous night! But the harder she tried to
concentrate her thoughts, the more impossible she found it to
remember anything. She could recollect playing and winning in the
Casino during the afternoon and evening; after that her mind was a
blank. She could not recollect even where she had had supper, or
with whom, or if she had had supper at all!
Then, all at once, her heart seemed to stop beating. Ever since
the night she and Jessica and her friends had together broken the
bank at Dieppe, Jessica had been acting as her banker. That is to
say she had suggested that in order to save Yootha trouble—​so she
put it—​she would advance her money to play with, as much as she
might want, and, in return, take charge of the girl’s winnings. Every
morning she had come to Yootha and told her the exact sum she
held belonging to her, and out of it she had handed Yootha whatever
sum she asked for. But there had been no record or
acknowledgment, or aught else in writing. Yootha had placed implicit
confidence in her friend and now—​—
She saw it all, and her mouth went suddenly dry. Jessica had left
her, taking with her the whole of the very considerable sum she,
Yootha, had won during the past weeks. Had she not been so lucky,
Jessica and her friends would no doubt have left her long before.
Now, probably, they had come to the conclusion enough money had
been won by her to make it worth their while to decamp with it. And
what could she do? If she tried to claim it Jessica would, of course,
say she knew nothing whatever about it, and perhaps declare her to
be suffering from a delusion.
 Breakfast was brought to her room, but she could not touch it.
Then suddenly a feeling of terrible loneliness came over her. She
realized she was alone in Monte Carlo, where she knew nobody but
people to whom Jessica had introduced her, and whom she had no
wish to meet again. True, she had money enough to pay her fare
home, but had she enough to pay the bill at this very expensive hotel
where she had been staying already a fortnight? To offer the
manager a cheque might, she felt, lead to unpleasantness should he
refuse to accept it.
She dressed as quickly as she could, and went out into the town.
The sun was shining brightly, and the band playing, and crowds of
well-dressed men and women seemed to be everywhere. She was
conscious, as she wandered aimlessly through the beautiful gardens
of the Casino, of attracting attention and admiration.
Presently her gaze rested on the entrance to the Casino. A
stream of people was passing in and out. The band was playing a
jazz which she loved, and the music stirred her pulse. For the
moment the thought of her distress rested less heavily on her mind.
And then, all at once, the gambling fever, which had temporarily
subsided, began to reassert itself. Play would be in full swing now,
she reflected. She pictured the crowd grouped around the roulette.
She heard the croupier’s bored voice droning “Faites vos jeux,” and
“Rien n’va plus,” and the rattle of the little ball as it spun merrily
round in the revolving well. Then she saw the numbers slowing
down, saw them stop, and heard the croupier calling: “Le numéro
quinze!”
She opened her vanity bag, pulled out the money it contained,
and proceeded to count it carefully. It was all the ready money she
possessed. Certainly it did not amount to enough to settle her hotel
bill for the past fortnight, and the bill was bound to be presented
soon. She had come to look upon winning at the tables as a matter
of daily routine. Also, she yearned to play again. The Casino with its
heated atmosphere, its scented women, its piles of notes and its
chink of gold, seemed to be calling to her, beckoning her to come
and fill her depleted coffers at its generous fount of wealth,
especially now that she needed money. For a brief moment she
thought of Preston, and of their last meeting, and of his earnest
warning. Then, dispelling the disagreeable reflection, she stuffed her
money back into her bag, shut it with a snap, rose, and walked
quickly in the direction of the famous Temple of Mammon.
She had little difficulty in securing a seat. For a minute or two she
watched the play. Then she backed the number she had thought of
while in the gardens—​le numéro quinze.
It came up.
She backed it again, and once more swept in her winnings. Then
she started playing en plein, recklessly and with big stakes, as she
had been in the habit of doing. But her luck had suddenly changed.
Again and again she lost. She doubled, and trebled, and quadrupled
her stakes.
But still she lost.
In less than half an hour she had only a single louis left, and,
rising abruptly, she walked out of the salon like a woman in a dream.
A louis! Of what use was that? She went back to her hotel, and
locked herself in her room. Her brain felt on fire. She thought she
was going mad. She wanted to cry, but could not.
For an hour she lay on her bed, suffering mental agony. Then with
an effort she got up, and sent off a telegram.
 CHAPTER XXIX.

A MESSAGE FROM YOOTHA.

It was seven in the morning when Preston was awakened by his
servant, Tom, and handed a telegram which had just arrived.
Before he opened it he guessed it must be from Yootha. It ran as
follows:
“I am in great trouble. Can you possibly come to me? I am
alone here and ill in bed. Jessica and the others have left
Monte Carlo. Do please telegraph a reply as soon as this
reaches you.”
Preston was not a man to deliberate. He always made up his
mind at once, and acted without hesitation.
“Is the messenger waiting?” he asked Tom, who still stood at his
bedside.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then give me a foreign telegram form.”
Swiftly he scribbled the answer.
“Give that to the boy,” he said, “and sixpence for himself, and tell
him to get back to the post office as quickly as he can. Then come
back to me.”
In a moment the man returned.
“Pack my suit-case, Tom. I am going to Monte Carlo at once.”
“For how long, sir?”
“Pack enough for a fortnight.”
 He traveled through to the Riviera without stopping in Paris, and
drove direct to the Hotel X. Upon inquiring for Yootha he was told
that the doctor was with her. The hotel manager looked grave when
Preston inquired how ill she had been.
A moment later the door opened, and a solemn-faced gentleman
of patriarchal aspect entered. The manager at once introduced him
to Preston, and explained who Preston was.
“She has dropped off to sleep at last,” the doctor said. “I had to
give her a mild narcotic. She has been eagerly awaiting your arrival
since she received your wire, and I believe your presence will do her
more good than anything else. She appears to be suffering chiefly
from shock—​a mental shock of some sort. Her nerves are greatly
upset.”
When some hours later Yootha awoke, her gaze rested upon her
lover seated beside her bed. For a moment she fancied she must
still be dreaming. Then, with a glad cry, she sat up and stretched her
arms out to him.
“Oh, my darling,” she cried, “how good of you to have come to
me! Even when I got your telegram I feared that something might
detain you. I have had a terrible time since last we met—​terrible!”
For a minute they remained locked in each other’s arms, the
happiest moments they had spent since that never-to-be-forgotten
evening under the shadow of the Sugarloaf Mountain in
Monmouthshire. And then, perhaps for the first time, Yootha realized
to the full the joy of being truly loved by a man on whose loyalty and
steadfastness she knew she could implicitly depend.
Yootha’s recovery was rapid, and in the following week Preston
decided to take her to Paris, which she was anxious to visit, never
having been there.
“You had better telegraph to your aunt and ask if she can meet us
there, as you say she is well again,” he said. “It wouldn’t do for us to
stay there alone, as long as conventions have to be considered,” and
he smiled cynically. “Which reminds me that Harry Hopford is in
Paris—​I had a letter from him yesterday. I am sure he will be glad to
see you.”
And so, some days later, they arrived at the Hôtel Bristol, where
they found Yootha’s aunt awaiting them. She was a pleasant, middle-
aged woman with intelligent eyes and a sense of humor, and she
greeted them effusively.
“You don’t hesitate to make use of me when I am in health,” she
said laughingly to her niece. “I had not the least wish to come to
Paris, but now I am very glad I have come. Yes, I am well again, but I
don’t think you look as if Monte Carlo and its excitement had agreed
with you. By the way, a delightful young man called here yesterday
to ask if you had arrived. He was so pleasant to talk to that I
persuaded him to stay to lunch. He seemed to think a lot of you. His
name is Hopford.”
“Harry Hopford! A capital lad. I am glad you met him. He served
under me in France and was quite a good soldier.”
“He told me he had served under you. He wants you to meet him
at an address in Clichy at nine to-morrow night. I have the address
somewhere.”
“A bit of luck for me, your coming to Paris,” Hopford said when
they met on the following night. “I particularly wanted to see you,
Preston. My inquiries and those of these friends of mine,” he had just
introduced to Preston the two Paris detectives, his friend on Le
Matin, and Johnson’s friend Idris Llanvar, “have succeeded in
making some astonishing discoveries concerning Jessica and her
friends, and now I am on the way to tracking Alix Stothert to his lair.”
“Alix Stothert!” Preston exclaimed. “What has he to do with it?”
“A good deal, apparently. To begin with, he appears to be a friend
of Stapleton’s, for a friend of mine in London has, at my request,
been watching Stapleton’s house near Uckfield, called The Nest.
Stothert goes there frequently, it seems; my friend believes he calls
there for letters. And the other day some fellow arrived there,
knocked and rang, and then, getting no answer, went and hid in the
undergrowth in the wood close by, and remained watching the
house. While he was watching, Stothert arrived and was met by a
girl who, my friend says, is employed by Stothert secretly, and the
two went into the house. When the fellow who had lain concealed in
the wood—​and been himself watched by my friend—​went back to
Uckfield, my friend followed him on a bicycle, and finally shadowed
him back to London and to an hotel—​Cox’s in Jermyn Street. But,
though afterwards he made inquiries at the hotel, he was unable to
find out who the fellow was.”
“George Blenkiron, when in town, generally stays at Cox’s,”
Preston said reflectively.
“Does he? Then he may know who the man is, and his name. I’ll
write to him to-morrow. It is such a small hotel.”
Hopford had also a good deal to say about Mrs. Timothy
Macmahon and her intimacy with the late Lord Froissart; about
Marietta Stringborg and her husband; about Fobart Robertson,
whose whereabouts, he said, he was likely soon to discover; and
about Alphonse Michaud, proprietor of the Metropolitan Secret
Agency at the house with the bronze face. One important fact he had
already established—​Michaud was intimately acquainted with
Jessica and Stapleton. Yet at the Royal Hotel in Dieppe, Preston had
told him, Jessica, Stapleton and La Planta had openly stated that
they knew Michaud only by name.
“Which confirms the suspicion I have for some time entertained,”
Hopford went on, “that Jessica and her friends are in some way
associated with the house with the bronze face.”
“There I can’t agree with you,” Preston said. “In view of all that
has happened, such a thing seems to me incredible. Why, we used
to consult the Secret Agency concerning Jessica and her past
history, don’t you remember? And they found out for us several
things about her.”
“Several things, yes, but not one of the things they ‘found out’ was
of importance. It is the Agency’s business, to my belief, to hunt with
the hounds and run with the hare, and they do it successfully. Surely
you recollect Mrs. Hartsilver’s telling us how she and Miss Hagerston
had been shown by Stothert what he declared to be the actual pearl
necklace belonging to Marietta Stringborg, and saying the necklace
stolen from her at the Albert Hall ball and afterwards found in Miss
Hagerston’s possession, was made of imitation pearls? Well, I can
prove that on that occasion, as well as at other times, Stothert
intentionally lied.”
“Then what is your theory?”
“That in some way, yet to be discovered, Jessica and her gang—​
for they are a gang—​and the Metropolitan Secret Agency, are
playing each other’s game and have played it for a long time.
Incidentally I have found out, too, that La Planta once represented
an insurance company in Amsterdam, of which Lord Froissart was
chairman or director, and that—​—”
“Forgive my interrupting you, Hopford,” Preston cut in, “but what
you say reminds me that I too was told, by a Major Guysburg I met in
Dieppe. He is a man you ought to meet; he was leaving for America
when we parted, but ought soon to be back, and he promised to look
me up in town on his return. And he can tell you a lot about Alphonse
Michaud, who, he assured me, at one time ran a most disreputable
haunt in Amsterdam.”
Hopford produced his notebook.
“How do you spell the major’s name?” he asked quickly, and
Preston told him.
“And where does he stay when in town?”
“At Morley’s Hotel, I believe,” and Hopford wrote that down too.
“Now for heaven’s sake don’t say ‘how small the world is,’
Preston,” Hopford observed lightly as he replaced his notebook in his
pocket, “because that is a platitude which makes me see red. I must
see Guysburg directly he arrives in London. Certainly we are getting
on. I suppose Guysburg didn’t speak about a diamond robbery in
Amsterdam from a merchant living in the Kalverstraat, which took
place some years ago? The thief was never caught.”
Preston laughed.
 “The very thing he did tell me,” he answered. “The stones had
been insured by Michaud, to whom the insurance money was paid
under protest because the idea had got about that Michaud himself,
or some person employed by him, had stolen them.”
Hopford turned to the French woman-detective, and raised his
eyebrows.
“You hear that?” he said to her in French. “Isn’t it strange how
small—​no, I won’t say it! Mademoiselle was employed,” he
addressed Preston again, “on that very case in Amsterdam, and
feels as convinced to-day as she did then that Michaud, aided by La
Planta, spirited away the stones. Yet nothing could be proved. There
were not even sufficient clues to justify the arrest of either of the two
men. By the way, I am trying to get mademoiselle to return to London
with me, and she hopes she will be able to. Also I have forgotten to
tell you that Idris Llanvar is a famous mental specialist practicing
here in Paris—​isn’t that so, Llanvar? Years ago he was Johnson’s
locum tenens in Shanghai, when Johnson practiced in Hong Kong. It
was Johnson who kindly gave me an introduction to him, when he
and I met in Jersey. Aren’t you glad, Preston, that Johnson is going
to marry Mrs. Hartsilver? I think she is such a charming woman,
though I don’t know her very well. But I met the late Henry Hartsilver
once or twice—​a typical profiteer, and, I thought, a most offensive
person. She was well rid of him. Did you know Sir Stephen
Lethbridge?”
Preston looked at Hopford oddly.
“What makes you suddenly ask that?” he said. “What was your
train of thought?”
“I had no train of thought, so far as I am aware,” Hopford replied.
“But there is a vague rumor in London that someone, a woman, a
friend of Stothert’s, holds certain letters written by Mrs. Hartsilver to
Sir Stephen Lethbridge, or by Sir Stephen to her, and that this
woman is trying to sell them to Mrs. Hartsilver. Incidentally, Preston,
your name has been whispered in relation to the affair, which leads
me to suspect that Mistress Jessica may not be wholly unassociated
with this latest attempt at blackmail. Llanvar had a letter from
Johnson yesterday, who is still in Jersey, and in it he alluded to the
rumor, but in very guarded language.”
Preston did not answer. His lips were tightly closed. Then, as if to
distract attention from what Hopford had just said, he produced his
cigar case and passed it round.

Yootha was very anxious to see, as she put it, “everything in Paris
worth seeing,” from the Bastille to the Ambassadeurs and the
Cascade, and from the Louvre to the Palais de Versailles, so during
the next few days Preston devoted himself to her entirely. The art
galleries in particular appealed to her, also the Quartier Latin with its
queer little streets of cobble stones and its stuffy but picturesque old-
world houses of which she had so often heard. Exhibitions like the
Grand Guignol and the Café de la Mort, on the other hand, she
detested.
Hopford and Llanvar had dined with them once, and afterwards
Hopford’s friend on Le Matin had piloted them all to various
interesting night-haunts of which English folk visiting Paris for the
most part know nothing. He had also taken them into curious
caverns below the Rue de la Harpe and streets in its vicinity, and
shown them the houses there propped up from below with enormous
wooden beams where the arches built over those old quarries have
given way.
“But how come there to be quarries here at all?” Yootha had
asked in surprise.
The representative of Le Matin had evidently expected the
question, for at once he had entered into a long explanation about
how, when Paris was first built, stones for building purposes had
been quarried out in the immediate neighborhood; how the City had
gradually reached the edge of those quarries, and how, in order to
be able to continue to extend the City, it had been necessary to arch
the quarries over and then erect buildings on the arches themselves.
 “Of course the good folk who live in those houses above our
heads,” he laughed as he pointed upward, “have no idea that their
houses are propped up from below, and some day they may get the
surprise of their lives by finding themselves and their houses
suddenly swallowed up in the bowels of the earth.”
It was late when finally they had all separated. Then Hopford, on
arriving at Rue des Petits Champs, had found a blue telegram
awaiting him. It came from his chief, who said Hopford must return at
once.
“I have most important news for you,” the message had ended.
 CHAPTER XXX.

BLENKIRON’S NARRATIVE.
London was now almost full again, after its two months of social
stagnation, for October was close at hand. Already announcements
were appearing in the newspapers of balls and dances, receptions
and dinner parties, and other forms of entertainment with which
people with money to spend and no work to do endeavor to kill time.
And among the social receptions largely “featured” was one to be
given by Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson at her house in Cavendish Place in
the third week in October.
Johnson and Mrs. Hartsilver were back in town, so were Captain
Preston and Yootha Hagerston, and George Blenkiron was staying
at Cox’s Hotel, but none of the five had been invited to Jessica’s
reception. The leading London newspapers had been asked to send
representatives, however, and at his request Harry Hopford had
been detailed by his chief to attend.
Among the visitors at Morley’s Hotel, in Trafalgar Square, was a
dark man, obviously a foreigner, with black, rather oily hair and a
carefully waxed moustache, a florid complexion and a tendency to
obesity. Hopford noticed his name in the visitors’ book when he went
to inquire for Major Guysburg who, Preston had told him, had just
arrived there from America. The foreigner’s name was Alphonse
Michaud.
“Major Guysburg is dining out,” Hopford was told.
He lit a cigarette, paused in the hall for a moment, then decided to
look up Blenkiron, whom he had not seen since his return to town,
but who was staying at Cox’s Hotel in Jermyn Street. On his way he
called at a flat in Ryder Street, and found a friend of his at home and
hard at work writing. It was the friend who had, at his request,
watched Stapleton’s “cottage,” The Nest, near Uckfield, while he,
Hopford, had been in Paris.
“I am on my way to see a friend at Cox’s Hotel,” Hopford said,
when the two had conversed for some moments, “quite a good
fellow, name of Blenkiron. Would you care to come along? You might
run across the person you shadowed from The Nest to Cox’s that
day, you never know.”
Blenkiron was in, Hopford was told, and a messenger took his
card. A few minutes afterwards he was asked “please to come up.”
“’Evening, Blenkiron,” he said, as he was shown in. “Hope I am
not disturbing you, eh? Tell me if I am, and I’ll go away. I have
brought a friend I should like to introduce,” and he stepped aside to
let his friend advance.
Silence followed. In evident astonishment Hopford’s friend and
Blenkiron stared at each other.
“Haven’t we met before?” the latter said at last. “Surely on the
road from The Nest to Uckfield—​—”
The other smiled.
“Yes,” he replied. “And I followed you back to town, and to this
hotel. Afterwards I tried to find out your name, and who you were,
but failed. I hope you will forgive me, Mr. Blenkiron; but I should like
you to know I followed you at Hopford’s request.”
The three burst out laughing.
“So you, Blenkiron,” Hopford exclaimed, “are the rascal whose
identity has so puzzled us! Really, this is amusing.”
Whisky was produced, and soon all three were on the best of
terms.
“Have you heard the latest about the house with the bronze
face?” Blenkiron asked presently.
“No, what?” Hopford answered eagerly.
 “Alix Stothert, Camille Lenoir, and a girl of quite good family, and
well-known in Society—​I am not at liberty to tell you her name—​and
several others were arrested there about six o’clock this evening for
being accomplices in attempted blackmail. In connection with the
blackmail charge any number of people we know are likely to be
involved. The names of three you will, I expect, guess at once.”
“J. and Co.”
Blenkiron nodded.
“By Jove, how splendid!” Hopford exclaimed. “Who told you all
this, George?”
“The Commissioner of Police himself, so the information is
accurate enough.”
Hopford sprang to his feet.
“May I use your telephone?” he asked, as he walked quickly
towards the door. “Come and stand by me and I’ll dictate the whole
story through right away!”
“Hopford, sit down!” Blenkiron shouted imperatively, pointing to
the chair from which the lad had just risen. “Not a word of what I
have told you is to appear in the press until I authorize it. Not a word!
Do you understand?”
“But the other papers will get it,” Hopford exclaimed, with his hand
on the door handle.
“They won’t. That I promise you. The Commissioner of Police, an
intimate friend of mine, told me while I was dining with him to-night
that the whole affair is to be kept out of the papers until the entire
gang has been arrested. If you print a line now you will defeat the
ends of justice by warning the unarrested accomplices, and so,
probably, enabling them to escape. I mean what I say, Hopford.
Preston, Miss Hagerston, Johnson and Mrs. Hartsilver will be here
soon—​I telephoned asking them to come as I had, I said, something
important to tell them. There will be supper, so you and your friend
had better stay.”
Hopford reflected.
 “Have you room for yet one more at supper?” he asked suddenly.
“Major Guysburg, a friend of Preston’s, is at Morley’s—​just come
from America. He knows a lot about a man, Alphonse Michaud, who
is the mainspring of the Metropolitan Secret Agency, and is also at
Morley’s. I have not yet met Guysburg, but Preston has explained to
him who I am, and the major is greatly interested in the movements
of J.’s gang. He should, in fact, be able to throw further light on some
of the curious happenings of the last two years.”
“Then by all means ring him up and ask him to come along,”
Blenkiron answered. “But you are mistaken about Michaud’s being at
Morley’s, Hopford, because he was one of those arrested this
evening at the house with the bronze face.”
“Michaud arrested? Good again! But what was he arrested for?”
“Attempted blackmail—​same as the others. But in Michaud’s case
there is a second charge. Michaud, the Commissioner tells me, turns
out to be a regular importer, on a big scale, of a remarkable drug you
have already heard about, which is made and only procurable in
Shanghai, Canton, and Hankau. The secret of this drug belongs to
one man—​a Chinaman.
“Now, sixteen years ago Michaud served a sentence of five years’
imprisonment in a French penitentiary for attempted blackmail;
became, on his release, a greater scoundrel than ever, and finally
succeeded in becoming naturalized as an Englishman. Then he went
out to the East, set up in business in Canton, and eventually scraped
acquaintance with a Shanghai wine merchant named Julius
Stringborg, who introduced him to Fobart Robertson, Timothy
Macmahon, Levi Schomberg, Alix Stothert, Stapleton, and several
others, including, of course, Angela Robertson.
“Months passed, and then one day Michaud turned up in London
again. None suspected, however, that he was now engaged in
secretly importing the strange drug, for which he soon found a ready
sale at a colossal profit. Some of the properties of the drug you
already know, but it has other properties. Then, after a while he
started systematically blackmailing many of his clients, for to be in
possession of the drug, without authority, is in England a criminal
offense. Not content with that, however, he now decided, in order to
be able to extend his operations, to take into his confidence one or
two of his friends. Among those friends were Marietta Stringborg and
her husband, Angela Robertson and Timothy Macmahon. Those four
formed the nucleus of a little gang of criminals which has since
increased until—​—”
The arrival of Preston and Yootha Hagerston, followed almost
immediately by Johnson and Cora Hartsilver, put an end to
Blenkiron’s narrative. All were now greatly excited, and eager for
information concerning the house with the bronze face and what had
happened there; so that when Major Guysburg was announced he
found himself ushered into a room where everybody seemed to be
talking at once.
 CHAPTER XXXI.

CONCLUSION.
The two-column article which appeared in only one London
morning newspaper created a profound sensation. Quoted in part in
the evening newspapers throughout the country, it became the
principal topic of conversation in the clubs and in the streets, but in
particular in social circles over the whole of the United Kingdom.
That the most important secret information agency in London, an
organization which had come to be looked upon as the most
enterprising and trustworthy there had ever been in the Metropolis,
and which half the peerage, to say nothing of the ordinary
aristocracy, had at one time and another consulted in confidence,
should suddenly be discovered to be nothing more than the
headquarters of a nest of rogues and blackmailers, dealt Society a
terrible blow.
The blow was all the harder because clients of the so-called
Metropolitan Secret Agency knew they had poured into the ears of
the benevolent-looking old man who called himself Alix Stothert,
secrets about themselves, their relatives, and their friends, which
they would not for untold gold have related had they dreamed such
secrets might ever be revealed. And now, to their horror, it seemed
that at least a dozen well-known Society people, or rather people
well-known in Society and believed to be the “soul of honor,” were,
and had been all the time, active members of the “Agency Gang,” as
it was now termed, prominent among them being Mrs. Mervyn-
Robertson, Aloysius Stapleton, handsome young Archie La Planta,
and the rich retired tradesman and his wife, Julius and Marietta
Stringborg, to name only a few.