He grinned.
"They've struck the originality all right," he admitted, "but, Lord, the time that will be wasted court-martialling you fellows! However, let's hear the whole yarn from the beginning."
I began at the snapping of the cable and told him my adventures faithfully down to the moment when he unlocked my bedroom door. He only interrupted once or twice to get some point or other clear, and then when I had finished he leaned back and looked at me hard across the table.
"Roger," he said, "I've known you long enough and well enough to know that you are not a deliberate liar, but I hope you'll forgive my saying that this is a damned tough bullet to chew."
"It sounds a tall order," I admitted, "but it's true."
He filled his pipe thoughtfully.
"I may as well tell you," he said in a moment, "that I am not at present a very credulous person. From the moment this blessed war began and I got this job, I have done little else than investigate spy legends, and I have come to the deliberate conclusion that there is either a lot more imagination in the world than any one has ever dreamt of, or that mankind are chronic and inveterate liars. I haven't yet had the luck to find one single true bill in any story I've investigated."
"Your luck has turned now, Jack."
"Possibly," he said slowly, "and mind you, Roger, there's no doubt whatever that a devilish secret service system exists; or that it's being used against us for all it's worth. Secret petrol bases for their submarines, secret signallying from the shore, mine-laying by so-called neutral ships; all that sort of thing is going on under our noses. I've got several very shrewd suspicions and hope to bring off one or two little discoveries not a thousand miles from this very spot. In fact, if you had pitched on any one of three or four other islands for the scene of your tale, or if what you'd seen had been just a little different I wouldn't have questioned a word of your story. But Ransay is not one of the suspected islands, and your friend in oilskins doesn't fit into anything I happen to have heard from other sources."
"Look here," I said, "what's the good of being cousins if we aren't candid? Do you or don't you believe me?"