“Well, Olive and I preferred having an escort and Captain Granet was a most agreeable one. He took us down in a car his uncle has just given him—a sixty horse-power Panhard. I never enjoyed motoring more in my life.”
“You are all very foolish,” Thomson said slowly. “I am going to tell you something now, dear, which you may not believe, but it is for your good, and it is necessary for me to have some excuse for the request I am going to make. Granet is under suspicion at the War Office.”
“Under suspicion?” Geraldine repeated blankly.
“Nothing has been proved against him,” Thomson continued, “and I tell you frankly that in certain quarters the idea is scouted as absurd. On the other hand, he is under observation as being a possible German spy.”
Geraldine for a moment sat quite still. Then she broke into a peal of laughter. She sat up, a moment later, wiping her eyes.
“Are you really serious, Hugh?” she demanded.
“Absolutely,” he assured her, a little coldly.
She wiped her eyes once more.
“Hugh, dear,” she sighed, patting his hand, “you do so much better looking after your hospitals and your wounded than unearthing mare’s-nests like this. I don’t think that you’d be a brilliant success in the Intelligence Department. As to the War Office, well, you know what I think of them. Captain Granet a German spy, indeed!”
“Neither the War Office nor I myself,” Thomson continued, “have arrived at these suspicions without some reason. Perhaps you will look at the matter a little more seriously when I tell you that Captain Granet will not be allowed to return to the Front.”