She made the statement with a detached bitterness that spoke volumes for its sincerity.
I felt too that she was telling me the truth about George. A man who could lie as he did at the trial was quite capable of betraying his country or anything else. Still, the infernal impudence and treachery of his selling my beautiful torpedo to the Germans filled me with a furious anger such as I had not felt since I crouched, dripping and hunted, in the Walkham woods.
I looked up at Sonia, who was leaning forward and watching me with those curious half-sullen, half-passionate eyes of hers.
"Why did George tell those lies about me at the trial?" I asked.
"I don't know for certain; I think he wanted to get rid of you, so that he could steal your invention. Of course he saw how valuable it was. You had told him about the notes, and I think he felt that if you were safely out of the way he would be able to make use of them himself."
"He must have been painfully disappointed," I said. "They were all jotted down in a private cypher. No one else could possibly have understood them."
She nodded. "I know. He offered to sell them to us. He suggested that the Germans might be willing to pay a good sum down for them on the chance of being able to make them out."
Angry as I was, I couldn't help laughing. It was so exactly like
George to try and make the best of a bad speculation.
"I can hardly see the doctor doing business on those lines," I said.
"It was too late in any case," she answered calmly. "Just after he made the offer you escaped from prison." There was another pause. "And what were you all doing down in that God-forsaken part of the world?" I demanded.