“You haven’t condescended to tell me where you were going.”
“I was going, if you want to know, to stay with Sybil Manning at her little place in the New Forest.”
“Indeed?” said her husband, in his rasping voice, and a gleam of triumph sparkled in his crafty eyes. “Now it happens that I, not being quite the fool you and Mr. Baltazar have thought me, rang up Lady Manning. It was the first thing I did when I read your letter. I knew you would bolt, straight to her. I’ve often thought of bringing in a Bill in Parliament to deprive her of existence. She answered me herself. She had heard nothing of you, knew nothing of you.”
“Naturally,” she said jeeringly. “But,” she added, carrying the war into enemy’s quarters, “she knows everything about you. Everything, my friend. So will the Prime Minister.”
“I was with the Prime Minister this morning,” said Donnithorpe. “I told him all about my Saturday evening’s effort in the cause of solidarity. We parted the best of friends, and my position is secure.”
“What about Fordyce’s article this morning?”
“This morning I couldn’t conceive how the fellow had got the information. This evening or to-morrow morning”—he tapped his breast pocket—“if I am asked, I can point to a dual source of leakage.”
He folded his arms, the crafty political intriguer, thin and triumphant.
“Of us two,” said Baltazar, “it strikes me that you are the damnder scoundrel.”
“What you think is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” retorted Donnithorpe. “What does interest me is the fact that my wife was going to stay with Lady Manning in the New Forest while Lady Manning is in London, and that when I find her here with you, she decides not to go to the New Forest after all.”