“Do you know what he is telling them?” persisted Arrelsford.
“No, do you?”
“Yes,” returned the Secret Service Agent.
“Wait a moment, Captain Thorne,” said the General, impressed in spite of himself by this man’s earnestness, which made him disregard all orders, commands, and everything else. “Where is the despatch?”
Captain Thorne picked up the paper and handed it to the General, and then stepped back. He had played his last card. He played it desperately, boldly, and well.
“Well?” asked the General, looking from the despatch to the accuser, “what has he been telling them?”
“He began to give an order to withdraw Marston’s Division from its present position,” said Arrelsford, making a brilliant and successful guess at the probable point of attack in “Plan 3.”
“That is perfectly correct,” said General Randolph, looking at the paper.
“Yes, by that despatch, but that despatch is a forgery. It is an order to withdraw a whole division from a vital point. A false order, he wrote it himself. This is the turning point of the whole plot.”
“But why should he write it himself? If he wanted to send a false order, he could send it without putting it down on paper, couldn’t he?”