Katharine smiled a little weakly. She was back again in her chair, but Sir Denis seemed to have forgotten to release her hand, which she made no effort to withdraw.
"It was perfectly ridiculous of me," she murmured, "but I was just telling Dick—he is back again for another four days' leave and we were talking about you at luncheon time—that I wasn't feeling very well, and your coming in like that was quite a shock. I am absolutely all right now. Do please sit down and explain," she begged, motioning him to a chair.
The waiter had disappeared. Sir Denis shook hands with Richard, who wheeled an easy-chair forward for him. He sat down between them and commenced his explanation.
"You see," he went on, "as a criminal I am really rather a fraud. When I tell you that I am an Irishman—perhaps you may have guessed it from my name—and a rabid one, a Sinn Feiner, and that for ten years I have lived with a sentence probably of death hanging over me, you will perhaps understand my hatred of England and my somewhat morbid demeanour generally."
Katharine was speechless. Richard Beverley indulged in a long whistle.
"So that's the explanation!" he exclaimed. "That was why you got mixed up with that German crew, eh?"
"That," Sir Denis admitted, "was the reason for my attempted enterprise."
"Attempted?" Richard protested. "But you brought it off, didn't you?"
"The end of the affair was really curious," Sir Denis explained. "I suppose, in a way, I did bring it off. I caught the mail train from Euston that night, got away with the papers and took them where I always meant to—to my old home on the west coast of Ireland. There, whilst I was waiting to keep an appointment with a German U-boat, I found out what happens to a man who has sworn an oath that he will never again look inside an English newspaper, and been obstinate enough to keep his word."
"Say, this is interesting!" Richard declared enthusiastically. "Why, of course, there have been great changes, haven't there? You Irish are going to have all that you want, after all."