"I've just heard that his people have left the neighbourhood," he explained. "Mr. Hilliger, being a German, couldn't very well stay in Haddisport. Of course, the consulate has ceased to exist. He has had to shut up his office and apply for his passports. I shouldn't be at all surprised if he, as well as Max, was aboard that Dutch ketch—the Thor—that we spotted off the Silver Pit. Perhaps he even went with Max on board the mine-layer. Anyhow, he's said to have sold his business and gone off."
"It looks as if he'd known long beforehand that there was going to be war," Mark observed.
"That is what the men in the trawl market are saying," resumed Darby. "They are saying, too, that for years past he has been acting as an agent of the German Navy against Great Britain, using his fishing boats to fetch and carry information. What about that pigeon message? Had it anything to do with him? Did you get at what was in it?"
"Yes." Mark Redisham gave a cautious glance at his companion. "But I've got to keep it a secret."
"Right," nodded Darby. "Then I won't refer to it again. Are you going to call at Sunnydene? I don't suppose you will find any one there, except perhaps a caretaker. The German servants were dismissed quite a week ago."
Sunnydene was the name of the Hilligers' luxurious mansion on the edge of the cliff, to the north of the town. It was a conspicuous, stone-built house, with gables and turrets overgrown with creepers, flanked by fir trees grotesquely bent by the harsh winds of winter. In the middle of the front lawn there was a tall flagstaff, rigged like a schooner's mast, from which, on occasion, the German ensign was displayed. The lower as well as the upper windows commanded a wide expanse of the North Sea, and it was from one of them, opening upon the terrace, that Herr Hilliger had watched the Thor setting out, with his son on board.
Time and again during this day he had stood looking out towards the far horizon, as if he expected something to happen. And now in the dusk of the evening he was once more gazing outward, with an expression of grave anxiety in his watery, blue eyes.
"The pigeon has not yet come home, Seligmann!" he said, turning sharply and speaking in German to his secretary, who had just entered the room carrying an overcoat and a yellow leather handbag.
"No, mein herr," the secretary answered, "I have again been into the loft. It has not returned. And already the car is at the door. It is time that we start."
"Strange!" ejaculated Heir Hilliger. "I cannot understand it. Max was to set it free at ten o'clock this morning. A bird that has so often found its way across from Heligoland is not likely to have lost itself on a shorter journey. It cannot be that the Minna von Barnhelm failed to come out from Cuxhaven. She was to have been at sea, equipped and ready to begin her work at once when Max should signal to her that war had been declared. Nothing can have gone wrong—nothing!"