me astonishment at my wonderful intuition; but he didn't, not
a scrap. Even Cary was at first disappointing, though he warmed up
later, and did me full justice. "Trehayne a spy!" cried Cary. "He
looked a smart good man."

"I am not saying that he wasn't," snapped Dawson, whose nerves were
very badly on edge. "He was obeying the orders of his superiors as we
all have to do. He gave his life, and it was for his country's
service. Nobody can do more than that. Don't you go for to slander
Trehayne. I watched him die--on his feet."

Cary turned to me. "What made you think it was Trehayne?" he asked.
This was better. I looked at Dawson, who was brooding in his chair
with his thoughts far away. He was still seeing those eyes fading out
under the glare of the electrics between the steel decks of the
_Malplaquet_!

"It was a sheer guess at first," said I, preserving a decent show of
modesty. "When I heard how the enemy plotted and Dawson
counter-plotted with all those skilled workmen in his detective
service, it occurred to me that an enemy with imagination might
counter-counterplot by getting men inside Dawson's defences. I
couldn't see how one would work it, but if German agents, say, could
manage to become trusted servants of Dawson himself, they would have
the time of their lives. So far I was guessing at a possibility,
however improbable it might seem. Then when Dawson told us that he had
sent Trehayne into the _Antigone_ and that he was the one factor
common to both vessels--the workmen and the maintenance part were all
different--I began to feel that my wild theory might have something in
it. I didn't say anything to you, Cary, or to Dawson--he despises
theories. Afterwards Trehayne came in and I spoke to him, and he to
me, in French. He did not utter a dozen words altogether, but I was
absolutely certain that his French had not been learned at an English
public school and during short trips on the Continent. I know too much
of English school French and of one's opportunities to learn upon
Continental trips. It took me three years of hard work to recover from
the sort of French which I learned at school, and I am not well yet.
The French spoken by Trehayne was the French of the nursery. It was
almost, if not quite, his mother tongue, just as his English was.
Trehayne's French accent did not fit into Trehayne's history as
retailed to us by Dawson. From that moment I plumped for Trehayne as
the cutter of gun wires."