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. Then, tearing off the top sheet of the block, he wrote the Spanish address out, and under it, “Father can come back on or about August 19. Boutet is expecting him.”
He hesitated for some time over the signature. And then, at last, he put the English Christian name of “Emily.”
He pushed the book back, well out of sight, then shutting the safe hastened downstairs again.
At any moment Polly might return home; they were early folk at the Deanery.
Anna had already got up. “I think I must be going home,” she observed. “My ladies will soon be back. I do not like them to find the house empty—though Mrs. Otway knows that I am here.”
“Do you ever have occasion to go to the Post Office?” he said thoughtfully.