"That is in the Isle of Wight?"
"Yes," John answered; "that accounts for them seizing me—they traced me from the Isle of Wight."
Cherriton and Manners exchanged glances; neither man felt at all comfortable. But Cherriton felt that he had pressed the matter enough. He suddenly assumed his air of bland amiability, but it sat ill on him.
"Well, Manners," he exclaimed, looking at his confrère, "you were mistaken—you assumed that our dear friend Treves had escaped, and were in a great fluster of anxiety on his behalf; whereas the little misfortune that occurred to him was all a mistake."
"All a mistake," repeated John.
"And now, I think," Cherriton remarked, taking up his grey felt hat and denting it carefully with his hand, "I think we will not keep you from your wife any longer."
For the second time that day he gripped John's hand in his, and John, looking back into his cold blue eyes, felt the steady, penetrating power of Cherriton's gaze.
"Here was a man," thought John, "used to command—a man possessed of exceptional powers of mind and physique. You are a daring fellow," thought John; "a subtle and cunning worker of evil, but for once in your life you are mistaken. I am not the man you think, either in name or in character."
Then a singular thing happened to John. On the very instant when his fingers slid away from the other's touch a flaming instinct ran through him—a passionate impulse to leap upon the other's throat and squeeze the life out of him came upon him as a definite and conscious wish. Though he had known Cherriton only for two days, he felt a great hate swirl up in him against this serenely poised, potent enemy. Against Manners, whom he knew, and whom Dacent Smith knew to be a spy, he felt nothing of this. That afternoon he had been instructed well and thoroughly by Dacent Smith. Dacent Smith had talked much with him, drawing him out, subtly examining him as to his aspirations and his powers. And gradually, during the talk of that afternoon, Smith had come to realise that in John Manton he possessed a keen and highly-wrought weapon. Here was a young man who had fought for his country, who was willing to fight for it again in any circumstances. And long before the end of that interview the chief of a great branch of the Secret Service had laid his hand on John's arm.
"Manton," he had explained, "you were wasted as a sergeant at Scarthoe Head. There are big things awaiting you. You have fought the enemy in the open; from to-day you shall fight him in the dark. You will find him more tricky and subtle and dangerous than he was in France"—then he had paused a moment, looking at John. "Accidents sometimes happen, Manton, my boy!"