“Damn you, Julian!” he exclaimed.  “If I could stand on two legs, I’d break your head.  How dare you come here and talk such rubbish.”

“Isn’t there some truth in what I have just said?” Julian asked sternly.

“Not a word.”

Julian was silent for a moment.  Furley was sitting upright upon the sofa, his keen eyes aglint with anger.

“I am waiting for an explanation, Julian,” he announced.

“You shall have it,” was the prompt reply.  “The companion of the man who was shot, for whom the police are searching at this moment, is a guest in my father’s house.  I have had to go to the extent of lying to save her from detection.”

“Her?” Furley gasped.

“Yes!  The youth in fisherman’s oilskins, into whose hands that message passed last night, is Miss Catherine Abbeway.  The young lady has referred me to you for some explanation as to its being in her possession.”

Furley remained absolutely speechless for several moments.  His first expression was one of dazed bewilderment.  Then the light broke in upon him.  He began to understand.  When he spoke, all the vigour had left his tone.

“You’ll have to let me think about this for a moment, Julian,” he said.

“Take your own time.  I only want an explanation.”

Furley recovered himself slowly.  He stretched out his hand towards the pipe rack, filled another pipe and lit it.  Then he began.

“Julian,” he said, “every word that I have spoken to you about the night before last is the truth.  There is a further confession, however, which under the circumstances I have to make.  I belong to a body of men who are in touch with a similar association in Germany, but I have no share in any of the practical doings—­the machinery, I might call it—­of our organisation.  I have known that communications have passed back and forth, but I imagined that this was done through neutral countries.  I went out the night before last as an ordinary British citizen, to do my duty.  I had not the faintest idea that there was to be any attempt to land a communication here, referring to the matters in which I am interested.  I should imagine that the proof, of my words lies in the fact that efforts were made to prevent my reaching my beat, and that you, my substitute, whom I deliberately sent to take my place, were attacked.”

“I accept your word so far,” Julian said.  “Please go on.”

“I am an Englishman and a patriot,” Furley continued, “just as much as you are, although you are a son of the Earl of Maltenby, and you fought in the war.  You must listen to me without prejudice.  There are thoughtful men in England, patriots to the backbone, trying to grope their way to the truth about this bloody sacrifice.  There are thoughtful men in Germany on the same tack.  If, for the betterment of the world, we should seek to come into touch with one another, I do not consider that treason, or communicating with an enemy country in the ordinary sense of the word.”