"I was visiting a day or two at the capital last week, and there are influences at work that you don't know about. It has grown away past and beyond any mere fight with the Hatch people. If the opposition can't make your administration a failure, it won't hesitate to get rid of you in the easiest way that offers."
There was silence in the major's den for a minute or so, and then the boss said:
"As usual, you know more than you are willing to tell me."
"Perhaps not," was the prompt answer. "Perhaps I am only the onlooker—who can usually see things rather better than the persons actually involved. Hitherto I have urged you to be bold, and then again to be bold. Now I am begging you to be prudent."
"In what way?"
"Careful for yourself. For example: you walked out here this evening; don't do that any more. Come in a taxi—and don't come alone."
I couldn't see his frown of disagreement, but I knew well enough it was there.
"There spoke the woman in you," he said. "If I should show the white feather that way, they'd have some excuse for potting me."
There was a silence again, and I got up quietly and crossed the dining-room to the big recessed window where I stood looking out into the darkness of the tree-shaded lawn. It was pretty evident that Mrs. Sheila knew a heap more than she was telling the boss, just as he had said, and I couldn't help wondering how she came to know it. What she said about the increased number of wrecks looked like a pointer. Was she in touch with the enemy in some way?
I knew that Major Kendrick heard all the gossip of the streets and the clubs, and that he carried a good bit of it home; but that wouldn't account for much inside knowledge of the real thing in Mrs. Sheila. Then my mind went back in a flash to what Maisie Ann had told me. Was the husband who ought to be dead, and wasn't, mixed up in it in any way? Could it be possible that he was one of those who were in the fight on the other side, and that she was still keeping in touch with him?