"His suicide was certainly quite unaccountable," declared Sir Houston. "I often reflect and wonder whether he really did commit suicide--and yet it was all quite plain and straightforward. He must have swallowed a tablet--coated, no doubt, or the effect must have been far more rapid." "But why did he declare that he'd been shot?" asked Trustram, whose fine, strong face was dark and thoughtful. "Ah! Who knows? There's the mystery," replied the great pathologist. "Of course, men sometimes have curious hallucinations immediately prior to death. It might have been one." "He was in terrible agony--poor fellow," Jack remarked. "No doubt, no doubt. But the drug would, of course, account for that." "Then, in the light of your expert medical knowledge, you don't think that his death was a mysterious one?" Jack queried. "No, I don't say that at all," was the reply of the busy man, who was working night and day among the wounded in the hospitals. "I merely say that Jerrold was poisoned--and probably by his own hand. That's all." "You say `probably,'" remarked Trustram. "Could that man, Rodwell, have had anything to do with it do you think?" "My dear Mr Trustram, how can we possibly tell?" asked Sir Houston. "What real evidence have we got? None." "And so clever are our enemies that we are not likely ever to get any, I believe," was Trustram's hard reply. "I only know what has happened to our plans for the defeat of the German Fleet. Is it really possible that this Lewin Rodwell, one of the most popular men in England, is a German agent?" "If you dared to say so, the whole country would rise and kill you with ridicule," remarked Jack Sainsbury. "Once the British public establishes a man as a patriot, their belief in him remains unshaken to the very end. This war is a war where spies and spying, treachery and double-dealing, play a far bigger part than the world ever dreams. Jerrold always declared to me that there were German spies in every department of the State, just as there are in France, in Russia, and in Italy. No secret of any of the European States is a secret from the central spy-bureau in Berlin." "Jerrold knew that. He set out sacrificing body and soul--nay, his very life--to assist our Intelligence Department," Trustram remarked.