“I know I haven’t,” said Davies.
“Well, you see the result. Our hand was forced. To have said nothing about Dollmann was folly—to have said he tried to wreck you was equal folly. The story we agreed on was the best and safest, and you told it splendidly. But for two reasons I had to harp on the daughter—one because your manner when they were mentioned was so confused as to imperil our whole position. Two, because your story, though the safest, was, at the best, suspicious. Even on your own showing Dollmann treated you badly—discourteously, say: though you pretended not to have seen it. You want a motive to neutralise that, and induce you to revisit him in a friendly way. I supplied it, or rather I only encouraged von Brüning to supply it.”
“Why revisit him, after all?” said Davies.
“Oh, come——”
“But don’t you see what a hideous fix you’ve put me in? How caddish I feel about it?”
I did see, and I felt a cad myself, as his full distress came home to me. But I felt, too, that, whosesoever the fault, we had drifted into a ridiculous situation, and were like characters in one of those tiresome plays where misunderstandings are manufactured and so carefully sustained that the audience are too bored to wait for the dénouement. You can do that on the stage; but we wanted our dénouement.
“I’m very sorry,” I said, “but I wish you had told me all about it. Won’t you now? Just the bare, matter-of-fact truth. I hate sentiment, and so do you.”
“I find it very difficult to tell people things,” said Davies, “things like this.” I waited. “I did like her—very much.” Our eyes met for a second, in which all was said that need be said, as between two of our phlegmatic race. “And she’s—separate from him. That was the reason of all my indecisions.” he hurried on. “I only told you half at Schlei. I know I ought to have been open, and asked your advice. But I let it slide. I’ve been hoping all along that we might find what we want and win the game without coming to close quarters again.”
I no longer wondered at his devotion to the channel theory, since, built on conviction, it was thus doubly fortified.
“Yet you always knew what might happen,” I said. “At Schlei you spoke of ‘settling with’ Dollmann.”