tablecloth, he read in the Bund: the British communique
of the battle of the Somme, new villages taken, fortified woods
stormed, prisoners multiplying, the whole monstrous structure of the
German war-machine cracking and failing. While he read he ate and
drank tranquilly; no thoughts of yesterday's business intruded upon
his breakfast peace. He finished the communique.

Then: "Liars!" he commented, comfortably, reaching for his cup.
"Those English are always liars!"

It was a good and easy day that thus opened. The answers to his
telegrams did not begin to arrive till noon, and then they were only
formulae acknowledging receipt, which he did not need his code-book
to decipher. With his black umbrella opened against the drive of the
sun, he carried them at his leisure to the Baron, where he sat alone
in his cool upper chamber working deliberately among his papers,
received the customary ghost of a smile and the murmur, "Der gute
Haase," and got away. The slovenly porter, always with his look of
having slept in his clothes, tried to engage him in talk upon the
day's news. "You," said Herr Haase, stepping round him, "are one of
those who believe anything; schamen Sie sich!" And so back to the
comfortable villa on the hillside with its flaming geraniums and its
atmosphere of that comfort and enduring respectability which stood to
Herr Haase for the very inwardness of Germany. Yes, a good day!

It lasted as long as the daylight; the end of it found Herr Haase,
his lamp alight, his back turned to the Alpine-glow on the mountains,
largely at ease in his chair, awaiting the arrival of his
Dienstmadchen with the culminating coffee of the day. His yellow
cigar was alight; he was fed and torpid; digestion and civilization
were doing their best for him. As from an ambush there arrived the
fat, yellow telegraph envelope.

"Ach, was!" protested Herr Haase. "And I thought it was the coffee
you were bringing."

"'S Kaffee kommt gleich," the stout, tow-haired girl assured him; but
already he had torn open the envelope and was surveying its
half-dozen sheets of code. Two hours of work with the key, at least;
he groaned, and hoisted himself from his chair.

"Bring the coffee to the office," he bade, and went to telephone a
warning to the Baron.

The code was a cumbersome one; its single good quality was that it
passed unsuspected at a time when nervous telegraph departments were
refusing all ciphers. It consisted of brief phrases