Chapter Thirteen.
How Berlin Obtains Information.
At last the day—or rather the night—which we had been expecting came. The sun had risen in a cloudless sky, and all day long had poured down a fierce flood of heat and light. London was stifling. Everyone seemed to be the victim of heat lassitude; tempers were decidedly short, and even the most amiable of people seemed suddenly to have developed raw-edged nerves. Added to all this was an uneasy presentiment of danger; “There will be a big raid to-night,” was the thought in the back of everyone’s mind.
In order to avoid arousing Mostyn Brown’s suspicions that his house was being watched, we had given up, apparently, all observation on the place during daylight. But not in reality. In a house on the other side of the Square, directly facing that occupied by Mostyn Brown, I had hired a room on the third floor, and from the window, with the help of powerful field-glasses, we could keep the house under the strictest watch. We had not even to enter the Square to reach our tower of vantage, for there was a back entrance from an adjoining street.
Towards this eyrie I had bent my steps, and on arriving I found Aubert in a state of suppressed excitement.
“Look!” he said, handing me the glasses, and, taking them from him, I levelled them at Mostyn Brown’s room.
The ribbon on the parrot’s cage had been changed to yellow!
But this was not all. The sun shone full on the window of Mostyn Brown’s house and his room was strongly illuminated. The field-glasses showed us that Mostyn Brown was at home, a most unusual thing in the day-time, and that with him was Blind Heinrich. How Heinrich had got there we could not imagine. Aubert had not seen him enter. They were seated on chairs drawn up to the table, and were poring intently over a book, apparently making memoranda on sheets of paper. As we watched, Madame Gabrielle, habited as a coster girl and carrying a huge basket of flowers, came slowly along the Square, past Mostyn Brown’s house and round past the house in which we were seated.