"I may as well be quite open with you, Farrar, knowing that I can rely upon an officer and a gentleman to be discreet. I presume that you are not aware that I am a member of the British Secret Service?"
"A 'tec?" inquired the sub, without betraying any unwonted surprise. "I'm not going to be arrested for manslaughter, I hope?"
"Far from it," replied Entwistle; "especially as the victim is in no great danger from the pellets. He is, nevertheless, in a very hazardous position, for which I have to thank you."
"Me?" exclaimed the sub incredulously.
"Certainly. The fellow you shot is a man who is greatly in request. He is none other than Thomas Middlecrease, known in Germany and elsewhere as Ernst von Gobendorff, and, I venture to suggest, the principal in the attempt to blow up Poldene Bridge."
"I saw the man on the train," remarked Farrar. "He was in military uniform. Hanged if I could see much resemblance to the man I shot—build, perhaps, but nothing else."
"The peppering of the pellets made a very efficient disguise," said Entwistle. "The anguish of the wounds tends to contract the facial muscles. I hope you will be able to identify him. Your dog, Bruno, may also be able to afford us some assistance. Hullo! here's the faithful spaniel on guard, I see."
"And there's the place where the man was when I fired," explained the sub. "See, the gorse shows the track of the pellets."
Entwistle made no remark, but forced his way through the bushes by the same track as the one made by the two officers when they carried von Gobendorff away from the scene.
"H'm!" he exclaimed softly as his hand closed upon the butt of a small but extremely powerful automatic pistol that lay partly hidden in the long grass. "Friend Gobendorff was evidently under the impression that you two fellows were tracking him, the presence of Miss Greenwood notwithstanding. He meant to make a fight for it. From the impressions upon the ground I take it that the fellow was kneeling up and looking first in your direction and then towards young Greenwood. The safety-catch of this weapon being released tends to confirm my belief that he meant to make use of the pistol. It was at the moment that he was looking at your friend that the pellets caught him, otherwise he would have received a great portion of the charge full in the face instead of the side of the face."