Yes, Mr. Hayley was fond of talking, but, as Anna had said just now, he
talked without saying anything, and she was too busy to pay much heed to
what he did say. He had come to dinner yesterday, that is, Saturday, but
he had had to leave Witanbury early this morning. The one thing Anna
_did_ remember having heard him remark, for he said it more than once,
was that up to the last moment they had all thought, in _his_ office,
that there would be no war.

"He is not the only one. I, too, believed that the war would only come
next year," observed Anna's host ruefully.

The old woman thought these questions quite natural, for all Germans
have an insatiable curiosity concerning what may be called the gossip
side of life.

At last Manfred Hegner pushed back his chair.

"Will you look at the pictures in these papers, Frau Bauer? I have to go
upstairs for something. I shall not be gone for more than two or three
minutes." He opened wide a sheet showing the Kaiser presiding at fire
drill on board his yacht.

Then, leaving his visitor quite happy, he hurried upstairs, and going
into his bedroom, locked the door and turned on the electric light. With
one of the twin tiny keys he always carried on his watch-chain he opened
his safe, and in a very few moments had found what he wanted. Polly
would indeed have been surprised had she seen what it was. From the back
of the pile of letters she had never disturbed, he drew out a shabby
little black book. It was a book of addresses written in alphabetical
order, and there were the names of people, and of places, all over the
Continent. This little book had been forwarded, registered, by one of
its present possessor's business friends in Holland some ten days ago,
together with a covering letter explaining the value, in a grocery
business, of these addresses. Mr. Hegner was not yet familiar with its
contents, but he found fairly quickly the address he wanted--that of a
Spanish merchant at Seville.

Taking out the block, which he always carried about with him, from his
pocket, he carefully copied on it the address in question. Then he
turned over the thin pages of the little black book till he came to
another address. This time it was the name of a Frenchman, Jules Boutet,
who lived in the Haute Ville, Boulogne. He put this name down, too, but
he did not trouble about Boutet's address. Finally he placed the book
back in the safe, among the private papers which Polly never disturbed.