, then
swinging round to his table caught sight of the two dead rodents.

"Here, what the blazes does he want to leave these things here for," he
cried irritably and, seizing a ruler, he swept them into the
waste-paper basket.

For the rest of the day Dorothy was conscious that John Dene's heart
was not in his work. Several times, when happening to look up
unexpectedly, she found his eyes on her, and there was in them an
anxiety too obvious to be dissimulated. John Dene was clearly worried.

"It's an extraordinary thing," Sage remarked later that afternoon to
Colonel Walton, "that apparently no one has ever thought of encouraging
a taste for apple-tart in guinea-pigs."

CHAPTER VI

MR. MONTAGU NAYLOR OF STREATHAM

Whilst John Dene was preparing interminable lists for the Victualling
and Stores Departments of the Admiralty, Department Z. was making
discreet and searching enquiries regarding Mr. Montagu Naylor of
Streatham. Among other things it discovered that he was essentially
English. The atrocities in Belgium and Northern France rendered him
almost speechless with indignation. Wherever he went, and to
whomsoever he met, he proclaimed the German an enemy to civilisation.
It was his one topic of conversation, and in time his friends and
acquaintance came to regard the word "Hun" as a danger signal.

Mr. Naylor had arrived at Streatham towards the end of 1909, coming
from no one knew whither; but according to his own account from
Norwich. He was of independent means, without encumbrances beyond a
wife, a deaf servant, registered as a Swiss, and a particularly
fierce-dispositioned chow, an animal that caused marked irregularity in
the delivery of his milk, newspapers and letters. Sometimes the animal
chose to resent the approach of all comers, and after the postman had
lost a portion of his right trouser-leg, he had decided that whatever
might happen to His Majesty's mails, the postman's calf was sacred.
Thenceforth he never delivered letters when James was at large.

Without participating in the postman's mishap, the paper-boy and
milkman had adopted his tactics. The dustman point-blank refused to
touch the refuse from "The Cedars" unless it were placed on the
pavement, and the gate securely closed.

Sometimes the readings of the electric and gas meters were formally
noted by officials, whose uniform began and ended with their caps;
sometimes they were not. Everything depended upon the geograph