“Talk away,” answered the corporal cheerfully.
“I will,” replied the other sharply. “There’s a question that I want to ask you.... Why did you pot me in the wood at North Star Lodge three nights ago? That sort of thing is against the rules of your service, isn’t it?”
“It is,” answered the corporal, “and the answer to your other question is that I didn’t pot you.”
“You didn’t, hey? Then who the devil did?”
“I would give a goodish bit to know,” was the corporal’s reply. “The thing is a mystery to me.”
“But it’s no mystery to me,” answered the other, a trifle passionately. “You did it, and it’s no use trying to bluff me. I know you’ve been on my track for weeks, and that you were determined to get me by fair means or foul. If you think that lying is going to help you—”
“I am not lying,” interrupted Roger Bracknell. “I give you my word of honour that I am telling you the truth—and I say that not because I am afraid. It is true that I was trailing you, and that I was close at your heels at North Star. But I never shot you, I found you lying in the snow, as I thought, dead, but I’d nothing whatever to do with the shooting.”
“The devil!” cried the sick man, and from his tones the corporal knew that he was convinced. “Then who did it?”
The corporal saw a chance of further surprising his questioner—and took it.
“Well, there was the person whom you went to meet—your wife, you know.”