General Crandall gave his wife a pat on the shoulder and put her aside with a mechanical gesture. He took a step toward Woodhouse, who still stood stiffly before the opened doors; the dazed governor walked like a somnambulist.
"Who—who the devil are you, sir?" he managed to splutter.
"I am Captain Cavendish, General." Again the hand came to stiff salute on the visor of the pith helmet. "Captain Cavendish, of the signal service, stationed at Khartum, but lately detached for special service under the intelligence office in Downing Street."
The man's eyes jumped for an instant to seek Jane Gerson's face—found a smile breaking through the lines of doubt there.
"Your papers to prove your identity!" Crandall demanded, still in a fog of bewilderment.
"I haven't any, General Crandall," the other replied, with a faint smile, "or your Indian, Jaimihr Khan, would have placed them in your hands after the search of my room yesterday. I've convinced Major Bishop of my genuineness, however—after we left your house and when the moment for action arrived. A cable to Sir Ludlow-Service, in the Downing Street office, will confirm my story. Meanwhile I am willing to go under arrest if you think best."
"But—but I don't understand, Captain—er—Cavendish. You posed as a German—as an Englishman."
"Briefly, General, a girl secretly in the pay of the Downing Street office—Louisa Schmidt,—Josepha, the cigar girl, whom you ordered locked up a few hours ago—is the English representative in the Wilhelmstrasse at Berlin. She learned of a plan to get a German spy in your signal tower a month before war was declared, reported it to London, and I was summoned from Khartum to London to play the part of the German spy. At Berlin, where she had gone from your own town of Gibraltar to meet me, she arranged to procure me a number in the Wilhelmstrasse through the agency of a dupe named Capper——"
"Capper! Good Lord!" Crandall stammered.
"With the number I hurried to Alexandria. Woodhouse—Captain Woodhouse, from Wady Halfa—a victim, poor chap, to the necessities of our plan, fell into the hands of the Wilhelmstrasse men there, and I gained possession of his papers. The Germans started him in a robber caravan of Bedouins for the desert, but I provided against his getting far before being rescued, and the German agents there were all rounded up the day I sailed as Woodhouse."