“I say, Davies,” I said, “I’m awfully sorry I chaffed you about Fräulein Dollmann.” (No answer.) “Didn’t you see I couldn’t help it?”
“I wish to Heaven we had never come in here,” he said, in a hard voice; “it comes of landing _ever_.” (I couldn’t help smiling at this, but he wasn’t looking at me.) “Here we are, given away, moved on, taken in charge, arranged for like Cook’s tourists. I couldn’t follow your game—too infernally deep for me, but——” That stung me.
“Look here,” I said, “I did my best. It was you that muddled it. Why did you harp on ducks?”
“We could have got out of that. Why did you harp on everything idiotic—your letter, the Foreign Office, the _Kormoran_, the wreck, the——?”
“You’re utterly unreasonable. Didn’t you see what traps there were? I was driven the way I went. We started unprepared, and we’re jolly well out of it.”
Davies drove on blindly. “It was bad enough telling all about the channels and exploring——”
“I gave in to you. We can’t explore any more now.”
“Oh, hang the wreck! It’s all a blind, or he wouldn’t have made so much of it. There are all these channels to be——”
“Oh, hang the channels! I know we wanted a free hand, but we’ve got to go to Norderney some time, and if Dollmann’s away——”
“Why did you harp on Miss Dollmann?” said Davies.
We had worked round, through idle recrimination, to the real point of departure. I knew Davies was not himself, and would not return to himself till the heart of the matter was reached.
“Look here,” I said, “you brought me out here to help you, because, as you say, I was clever, talked German, and—liked yachting (I couldn’t resist adding this). But directly you really _want_ me you turn round and go for me.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean all that, really,” said Davies; “I’m sorry—I was worried.”
“I know; but it’s your own fault. You haven’t been fair with me. There’s a complication in this business that you’ve never talked about. I’ve never pressed you because I thought you would confide in me. You——”
“Well, you see the result. Our hand was forced. To have said nothing about Dollmann was folly—to have said he tried to wreck you was equal folly. The story we agreed on was the best and safest, and you told it splendidly. But for two reasons I had to harp on the daughter—one because your manner when they were mentioned was so confused as to imperil our whole position. Two, because your story, though the safest, was, at the best, suspicious. Even on your own showing Dollmann treated you badly—discourteously, say: though you pretended not to have seen it. You want a motive to neutralise that, and induce you to revisit him in a friendly way. I supplied it, or rather I only encouraged von Brüning to supply it.”