“She knows but little more than what I already know. He lived with me at Shepperton, and had few secrets from me.”
“Did you ever suspect him to be a spy?”
“Not for one moment. He had plenty of money of his own, and was in no sense an adventurer.”
“Well,” exclaimed the Premier, turning to his colleague at last. “It is extraordinary—most extraordinary.”
Lord Warnham nodded acquiescence, and said, “Yes, there is a deep and extraordinary mystery somewhere: a mystery we must, for the sake of our own honour, penetrate and elucidate.”
“I entirely agree,” answered the other. “We have been victimised by clever spies.”
“And all owing to Deedes’s culpable negligence,” added Lord Warnham, testily, glancing at me.
“No, I am inclined to differ,” exclaimed the Premier. He had never acted very generously towards me, and I was surprised that he should at this moment take up the cudgels on my behalf. “To me it appears, as far as the facts go, that Deedes has been victimised in the same manner as ourselves.”
“But if he had exercised due caution this terrible catastrophe could never have occurred,” the Foreign Minister cried impatiently, tapping the table with his pen in emphasis of his words.
“A little more than mere caution, or even shrewdness, is required to defeat the efforts of the Tzar’s spies,” the Premier said quietly. “In my opinion, Deedes, although in a measure under suspicion, cannot be actually condemned. Remember, among Ogle’s correspondence he discovered evidence of an undoubted attempt to forge his handwriting.”