Collins, as soon as they had left, wound up the electric wires connecting the little tin pans of petrol at each corner of the field, and hid the pans themselves in the hedge. Then, having removed all traces of the machine’s presence there, he started back on his three-mile walk to the obscure little village in which he had taken up his quarters.
Next day he relaxed his vigilance on the Manor Farm and, with an elderly man, a retired schoolmaster whom he had met in the bar of The George, he went for a day’s fishing in the river which ran outside the village.
The old man, whose name was Haddon, had a wide knowledge of local affairs, and as soon as Collins mentioned Mrs. Cator and her son, he exclaimed:
“Ah! They had a very good manager in Mr. Bush, but he went away about a month before the war. He was a German, though he called himself Belgian.”
“How do you know he was a German?” asked Collins.
“Well, because my daughter’s in the post-office here, and she says that once or twice letters came for him bearing a Dutch stamp, and addressed to ‘Herr Büch,’ which is a German name.”
“Yes. That’s curious, isn’t it?”
“And there were some other curious facts, too. Before the war two foreigners very often came down to the Manor Farm to spend the week-end—gentlemen from London. I met them once or twice and heard them speaking in German.”
“But Mr. Cator isn’t German, is he?” asked Collins.
“Who knows? Some Germans who’ve lived here for years speak English so well that you can’t tell,” declared the ex-schoolmaster.