Yardley’s colleague later said that the story of the blue-eyed blonde was a “damned lie,” and that the only things taken from the office were a couple of bottles of booze. “It was my booze and I think [Yardley] took it himself.” As for Madame de Victorica, she did exist, but Yardley embellished her biography. He admitted to friends that he fictionalized parts of the book. He compressed time, invented dialogue, added “bunk” and “hooey,” and made no apologies: “To write saleable stuff one must dramatise.”
