'How? What do you mean?'
'You asked me just now why I had not written you for some time. I had my reasons for silence. I was under a cloud for a time, and I wanted things cleared up before telling you anything.'
'Don't speak in riddles, Edgecumbe. What has been the trouble? Tell me quickly.'
'Oh, it's all over now, so I can speak fairly plainly, but for some days it was touch and go with me. Of course they kept in the background, but I was able to trace their handiwork.'
'What handiwork? Come, old man, don't keep me in suspense.'
'Oh, it was the old game. You remember how it was when you were in France, and some fellows shot at me. You remember, too, how I nearly died of poisoning at Bolivick, and that but for you I should have been done for. You said you traced Springfield's hands in everything. He's been trying on the same thing again,—only in another way.'
'What other way?'
He laughed quietly. 'I fancy he thought that when you weren't by I should be easy game, that I should be too simple to see through his plans. But I happened to keep my eyes skinned, as the Americans say. It was this way: by some means or another, some important information went astray, and got into the German lines. Of course the Huns made the most of it, and we suffered pretty heavily. As it happened I was at that time in the confidence of the General in command of the D.H.Q., and there seemed no one else on whom suspicion could fall. But I was warned in time. I had been told that both Springfield and St. Mabyn had been in close confab with the General, and I knew that if they could do me a nasty turn, they would. So I checkmated them.'
'How? Tell me the details.'
'I'm afraid I mustn't do that. You know how military secrets are regarded, and as even yet the scheme I discussed with the General is not completed, my lips are sealed. But I found that Springfield had suggested to the General that my loss of memory was very fishy—a mere blind in fact to cover up a very suspicious past. He also told him he was sure he had seen me, in pre-war days, in Berlin, wearing the uniform of a German officer. Had I not been able to show an absolutely clean sheet I should have been done for. As it was, there was a time when I wouldn't have given a sou for my life. I was, of course, shut off from the General's confidence, and pending the results of the inquiry was practically a prisoner.'