"Till it's been decoded. If you like, Mr. Napier can explain how afterwards. What it means is:
"Troopship leaves Southampton at seven to-night. Four searchlights playing constantly over harbor. No convoy."
There was a moment of deathlike silence. The woman stood as motionless as the carved banister at her back.
"Gavan," Sir William cried out, "is it true?"
"It's true," he said.
"You say this information was sent—" The terror in the old man's face evoked the shattered and shattering image of a torpedoed ship, a sea full of drowning soldiers.
"We stopped it at the post-office."
Relieved of the crowning horror, Sir William shook off the paralysis that had held his restlessness in a vice. He hurried half a dozen steps up the hall and half a dozen down, jingling and muttering, "This—going on in my house!" He drew up into a jerk as the woman darted forward and planted herself in his way.
"Why not in your house?" she demanded wildly. "Haven't you a hand and two sons in what's going on elsewhere? What are you doing to my brothers and friends? Is it worse to be drowned than to have your head battered to pulp? Than to have six inches of steel run through your stomach? Wouldn't it make you want to kill your enemies to see what I saw at the Newton Hackett drill-ground—a bag stuffed with straw, hung up—and hear the Staff Sergeant call it Fritz, and shout out, 'Now, men, straight for his kidneys!'"
"Gavan!" Sir William's voice called hoarsely, "make an end of this!" He went down the passage at the double, and shut himself in his private room.