“Nothing... Your information is quite correct.”
“Then, sir, I will tell you to your face you are a damned traitor.”
The Colonel was leaning forward in his excitement, his arm stretched out along the table. The man he addressed, and thus deliberately insulted, drew himself up straighter, his face set and stern, a cold glint in the steel-grey eyes that narrowed dangerously as they met the other’s angry gaze.
“I can excuse your heat, sir,” he replied with amazing control, “in consideration of your ignorance of the circumstances. Had things been otherwise, and it had been my privilege to criticise another’s disgrace, I should probably have made use of the same forcible language that you give utterance to... When we have been through the mire we recognise a different quality in the mud. Men have been reduced to the ranks for the misdemeanour for which I was dismissed the Service... Had I been reduced to the ranks I should have made a good soldier. My punishment, I contend, was unjust.”
“By which specious reasoning, I presume, you excuse the crime of treachery, and seek to justify a spirit of revenge?—or gain, was it?”
Lawless frowned.
“I make no excuses,” he returned curtly. “I don’t recognise that my actions need condoning. And I did not join the Boers’ side with thought either of revenge or gain...”
He halted abruptly, and, for the first time taking his eyes off the other’s face, stared hard at the unshaded lamp.
“It appears,” the Colonel interposed drily, “that you were actuated by blind impulse.”
Lawless drummed on the table with his fingers and said nothing. He felt strangely annoyed. And yet he had known positively that the facts must come to this man’s knowledge before long. In the circumstances it was little likely that he would make no inquiries concerning one he had employed in a secret and confidential matter. That he regretted his haste in having employed him was obvious. It was the term traitor that stuck in the Colonel’s gorge. He found it particularly distasteful to hold further intercourse with one so steeped in dishonour.