I asked.

Again Sonia shrugged her shoulders. "I can't say. The doctor and my
father never tell me anything that they can keep to themselves. Most
of what I know I have picked up from listening to them and putting
things together in my own head afterwards. I am useful to them, and to
a certain point they trust me; but only so far. They know I hate them
both."

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.

The question was a little superfluous as far as I was concerned, but I
felt that Sonia would be expecting it.

"Oh, we weren't there for pleasure," she said curtly. "We wanted to be
near Devonport, and at the same time we wanted a place that was quite
quiet and out-of-the-way. Hoffman found the house for us, and we took
it furnished for six months."

"It was an extraordinary stroke of luck," I said,