“And it was you and not he who was in the house when Mrs. Penfield called out that the police were in the house?”
“Yes, that was I. I didn’t understand why she called out, but it served as a warning to me that she expected him. And so when I got back to my uncle’s I got my revolver out of the drawer. The first I heard of him being in England was when Inspector Murchison told us, although I was prepared in a way after finding that Lumsden had been here. Murchison spoke of him as Brett, but I did not know him by that name. So to make sure I got Mrs. Penfield out of the house by a hoax on the telephone and broke into the place in her absence. I did not know that it was you who came back with her.”
“But his object in breaking into your room was probably to get some article of yours which would help to bring suspicion against you with regard to Lumsden’s death. No doubt it was he who took the glasses which were subsequently found in the well. As you lost a pair of glasses in the storm and arrived at the farm without them, Miss Maynard probably mentioned the fact to Brett. Did you tell her that you had lost your glasses that night?”
“I forget. Oh, yes, I did! I mentioned it when we were looking at the cryptogram on the stairs.”
“He was certainly an enterprising scoundrel.”
“Don’t you wish to know why I wanted to kill him?” asked the young man after a pause.
“I do, very much.”
“I feel that I must speak about it,” he said. “And you are the only man to whom I can. You heard Murchison tell us that Lumsden and Brett, as he called himself, had been tortured by the Germans but that they gave away no information. That is their version; let me tell you the truth about them. Both of them belonged to my company in France. Lumsden had been under me for four or five months and I had nothing against him. He was a fairly good soldier and I thought I could depend upon him. Powell—or Brett—had come over with a recent draft. One night when I was holding a short advanced trench to the south of Armentières I sent Lumsden and Brett out on a listening patrol. The trench we were holding was reached through a sap: it was the first of four or five that were being dug as jumping off places for an attack on the German trenches.
“It was just about midnight that I sent Lumsden and Brett out and they ought to have been back by 2 a. m. It was the middle of summer and dawn commenced about 3 a. m. Either they had been captured or had lost their way and were waiting for dawn. When it was light enough to see the landscape, two figures appeared on the parapet of a German trench in front about three hundred yards away. They were calling and gesticulating to us. At that distance it was impossible to make out what they were saying, but from their gestures we gathered that the Germans had deserted the trench and it was ours if we liked to go over and occupy it.
“It came as such a surprise that none of us stopped to think; but if we had stopped no one would have thought of treachery. The men went over the parapet—every one of them. It was a race—they were laughing and joking as to who should be there first. And when we were within forty yards or so there was a volley from rifles and machine guns. The bullets seemed to come from every quarter. The men were taken by surprise and they dropped almost before they had time to realize what had happened. I was one of the first to go down but it was only a bullet in the leg. As I lay where I fell I was struck by another bullet in the shoulder. Then I crawled to a shell hole for shelter. I found seven of my men there, all of whom had been hit.