"Well, a bad imitation, if you like."
The doctor paused as though he had finished a sentence, as though the amended phrase had interrupted his thought.
"Well?" said Edenborough grimly. "Did you hear how they got hold of it?"
"Intercepted in the post, I gathered, on its way abroad."
"In our post," said Edenborough. "Almost a casus belli in itself, I should have thought!"
"And have you no idea how it came there?" asked the doctor bluntly—but now he meant to be blunt; he was not sorry when his man flew into a feeble passion on the spot.
"What the devil do you mean, Doctor Dollar? I know no more about the matter than—I was going to say, than you do—but I begin to think you know more than you pretend!"
"I didn't think I had pretended," said Dollar, simply.
"Well, what do you know?" demanded Edenborough, in a fury of suspicion. "All, I suppose?" he added, with a schoolboy sneer, when the answer was slow to come.
"Yes; all," said the doctor, very gravely and reluctantly, as though driven into a pronouncement of life or death.