“What does it mean?” she asked feverishly. “Henry? A D.S.O. for Henry for special services?”
“It means,” he told her, with a forced smile, “that your husband is, as you put it in your expressive language, a fraud.”
CHAPTER XXXII
For a moment Philippa was unsteady upon her feet. Lessingham led her to a chair. From outside came the low, cautious hooting of the motor horn, calling to its dilatory passenger.
“I can not, of course, explain everything to you,” he began, in a tone of unusual restraint, “but I do know that for the last two years your husband has been responsible to the Admiralty for most of the mine fields around your east coast. To begin with, his stay in Scotland was a sham. He was most of the time with the fleet and round the coasts. His fishing excursions from here have been of the same order, only more so. All the places of importance, from here to the mouth of the Thames, have been mined, or rather the approaches to them have been mined, under his instructions. My mission in this country, here at Dreymarsh—do not shrink from me if you can help it—was to obtain a copy of his mine protection scheme of a certain town on the east coast.”
“Why should I shrink from you?” she murmured. “This is all too wonderful! What a little beast Henry must think me!” she added, with truly feminine and marvellously selfish irrelevance.
“You and Miss Fairclough,” Lessingham went on, “have rather scoffed at my presence here on behalf of our Secret Service. It seemed to you both very ridiculous. Now you understand.”
“It makes no difference,” Philippa protested tearfully. “You always told us the truth.”
“And I shall continue to do so,” Lessingham assured her. “I am not a clever person at my work which is all new to me, but fortune favoured me the night your husband was shipwrecked. I succeeded in stealing from him, on board that wrecked trawler, the plan of the mine field which I was sent over to procure.”