"Bolton's opinion is that O'Brien was without doubt the man who fired at
you, looking to the type of gentleman he is, and the fact that you ran
into him immediately afterwards, and especially the fact that he actually
does possess an old rook rifle. He thinks he may have done it out of
sheer Irish deviltry, you offering so convenient a target, just as they
pot landlords in his own happy country. A man can hardly have drunk as
heavily as he must have done without upsetting his brain a bit, and this
theory seems to me not at all unlikely.
"Bolton thinks it hardly conceivable that O'B. can have had any
deliberate idea of getting rid of you, since it is certain that he wasn't
the man in oilskins you met the night you landed--or rather, dropped. He
can't have been _because he doesn't know a word of German_. We ought to
have thought of that clue ourselves. Bolton was on to it at once and
points out that it puts out of court the whole inhabitants of the island
except Miss Rendall who has a pretty good school-girl's knowledge of
German, and her father who has been abroad a lot and knows a bit of the
language. And apart from all other considerations, the man in oilskins
can't have been either of them owing to their height. Miss R. is too
short and Mr. R. too tall.
"Assuming therefore that you weren't a bit light-headed or anything of
that kind (which, I am bound to say, Bolton thinks quite a likely
explanation), the man you met _must_ have landed from a submarine and
gone away again in her.
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