"Sorry," he said, apologetic—"but your generosity—when I looked for nothing better than arrest—was a bit too much for my nerves!"
"Nonsense!" the Englishman commented with brusque good-humour. "We're all upset. A drop of brandy will do us no end of good."
Unbuttoning his leather surtout, he produced a flask from an inner pocket, filled its metal cup, and offered it to the girl.
"You first, if you please, Miss Shannon. No—I insist. You positively need it."
She allowed herself to be persuaded, drank, coughed, gasped, and returned the cup, which Wertheimer promptly refilled and passed to Lanyard.
The raw spirits stung like fire, but proved an instant aid to the badly jangled nerves of the adventurer. In another moment he was much more himself.
Drinking in turn, Wertheimer put away the flask. "That's better!" he commented. "Now I'll be able to cut along with this blessed machine without fretting over the fate of Ekstrom. But till now I haven't been able to forget——"
He paused and drew a hand across his eyes.
"It was, then, Ekstrom—you think?" Lanyard demanded.
"Unquestionably! De Morbihan had learned—I know—of your bargain with Ducroy; and I know, too, that he and Ekstrom spent each morning in the hangars at St. Germain, after your sensational evasion. It never entered my head, of course, that they had any such insane scheme brewing as that—else I would never have so giddily arranged with Ducroy—through the Sûreté, you understand—to take Vauquelin's place…. Besides, who else could it have been? Not De Morbihan, for he's crippled for life, thanks to that affair in the Bois; not Popinot, who was on his way to the Santé, last I saw of him; and never Bannon—he was dead before I left Paris for Port Aviation."