“There would have been no fight; they would have run the sooner,—all the better for some of them,” he answered, and as he spoke the mirth passed from his face, leaving it stern and sad. “I ought to have had a revolver, of course, but I was pitched out of bed without any warning, as I presume you were. By the way, Mr. Wynn, in the official report no mention is made of our—how do you call it?”
“Scrimmage?” I suggested.
“Ah, that is the word. Our scrimmage. Your name is in the list of those wounded by the explosion of the bomb. It was a bomb, as perhaps you have learned. Believe me, as you are going to Petersburg, and expect to remain there for some time, you will be the safer if no one—beyond myself and the few others on the spot, most of whom can be trusted—knows that you saved my life. Ah, yes, indeed you did that!” he added quickly, as I made a dissentient gesture. “I could not have kept them off another minute. Besides, you saw them first, and warned me; otherwise we should both have been done for at once.”
“Do you know who they were?” I asked.
He shrugged his broad shoulders.
“I have my suspicions, and I do not wish others to be involved in my affairs, to suffer through me. Yet it is the others who suffer,” he continued, speaking, as it seemed, more to himself than to me. “For I come through unscathed every time, while they—”
He broke off and sat for a minute or more frowning, and biting his mustache.
A sudden thought struck me. I rose and crossed to the French window which stood open. Outside was a small balcony, gay with red and white flowers. I nipped off a single blossom, closed the window, and returned to where he sat, watching my movements intently.
“I, too, have my suspicions, sir,” I said significantly. “I wonder if they coincide with yours.”