The Summons

"There were two carts waiting, to carry the tobacco up to the hills."

"Two?" José Medina interrupted sharply. "Let me think! That first cargo! It is so long ago."

Medina reflected carefully. Here was a detail of real importance which would put this Señor Hillyard to the test—if only he could himself remember. It was his first venture, yes! But there had been so many like to it since. Still—the very first. He ought to remember that! And as he concentrated his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he saw, he saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the felucca with its mast bent like a sapling in a high wind, and the great yard of the sail athwart the beam of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, and the carts—yes, the carts!

"There were two carts," he agreed, and a change was just faintly audible in his voice—a change for which up till now Hillyard had listened with both his ears in vain. A ring of cordiality, a suggestion that the barriers of reserve were breaking down.

"Yes, señor, there were two carts."

Medina was listening intently now. Would his visitor go on with the history of that night!

And Hillyard did go on.

"The tobacco barrels were packed very quickly into the carts, and the carts were driven up the beach and across the Royal road, and into a track which led back to the hills."

José Medina suddenly laughed. He could hear the groaning and creaking of those thin-wheeled springless carts which had carried all his fortunes on that night thirteen years ago, the noise of them vibrating for miles in the air of that still spring night! What terror they had caused him! How his heart had leaped when—and lo! Hillyard was carrying on the tale.

"Two of the Guardia Civil stepped from behind a tree, arrested your carts, and told the drivers to turn back to the main road and the village."

"You ran in front of the leading cart, and stood there blocking the way. The Guardia told you to move or he would fire. You stood your ground."

"Yes."

"Why the Guardia did not fire," continued Hillyard, "who shall say? But he did not."

"No, he did not," José Medina repeated with a smile. "Why? It was Fate—Fortune—what you will."

"You sent every one aside, and remained alone with the guards—for a long time. Oh, for a long time! Then you called out, and your men came back, and found you alone with your horses and your carts. How you had persuaded the guards to leave you alone——"

"Quien sabe?" said Medina, with a smile.

"But you had persuaded them, even on that first venture. So," and now Hillyard smiled. "So we took your carts up in to the mountains."

"We?" exclaimed José. He took a step forward, and gazed keenly into Martin Hillyard's face. Hillyard nodded.

"I was one of your companions on that first night venture of yours thirteen years ago."

"Claro! You were certainly there," returned José Medina, and he was no longer speaking either with doubt or with the exaggerated politeness of a Spaniard towards a stranger. He was not even speaking as caballero to caballero the relationship to which, in the beginning, Hillyard had most wisely invited him. He was speaking as associate to associate, as friendly man to friendly man. "On that night you were certainly with me! No, let me think! There were five men, yes, five and a boy from Valencia—Martin."

He pronounced the word in the Spanish way as Marteen.

"Who led the horse in the first cart," said Hillyard, and he pointed to his visiting card which José Medina still held in his hand. José Medina read it again.

"And José Medina owns two hundred motor-feluccas and employs eighteen thousand men," answered Hillyard.

José Medina held out his hand suddenly with a great burst of cordial, intimate laughter.

"Yes, we were companions in those days. You helped me to drive my carts up into the mountains. Good!" He patted Hillyard on the shoulder. "That makes a difference, eh? Come, we will go in again. Now I shall help you."

That reserve, that intense reserve of the Spaniard who so seldom admits another into real intimacy, and makes him acquainted with his private life, was down now. Hillyard had won. José Medina's house and his chattels were in earnest at Martin Hillyard's disposal. The two men went back through the house into a veranda above the steep fall of garden and cliff, where there were chairs in which a man could sit at his ease.

José Medina fetched out a box of cigars.

"You can trust these. They are good."

"Who should know if you do not?" answered Hillyard as he took one; and again José Medina patted him on the shoulder, but this time with a gurgle of delight.

"El pequeño Martin," he said, and he clapped his hands. From some recess of the house his wife appeared with a bottle of champagne and two glasses on a tray.

"Now we will talk," said José Medina, "or rather I will talk and you shall listen."

Hillyard nodded his head, as he raised the glass to his lips.

"Touching the Matter of Those Ships"

It has been said that Hillyard joined a service with its traditions to create. Indeed, it had everything to create, its rules, its methods, its whole philosophy. And it had to do this quickly during the war, and just for the war; since after the war it would cease to be. Certain conclusions had now been forced by experience quite definitely on Hillyard's mind. Firstly, that the service must be executive. Its servants must take their responsibility and act if they were going to cope with the intrigues and manœuvres of the Germans. There was no time for discussions with London, and London was overworked in any case. The Post Office, except on rare occasions, could not be used; telegrams, however ingenious the cipher, were dangerous; and even when London received them, it had not the knowledge of the sender on the spot, wherewith to fill them out. London, let it be admitted, or rather that one particular small section of London with which Hillyard dealt, was at one with Hillyard. Having chosen its men it trusted them, until such time as indiscretion or incapacity proved the trust misplaced; in which case the offender was brought politely home upon some excuse, cordially thanked, and with a friendly shake of the hand, shown the door.

Hillyard's second conclusion was that of one hundred trails, ten at the most would lead to any result: but you must follow each one of the hundred up until you reach proof that you are in a blind alley.

In pursuit of this conviction, Hillyard steamed out of Palma Bay on the morning of the day after his interview with José Medina, and crossing to the mainland cruised all the next night southwards. At six o'clock in the morning he was off a certain great high cape. The sea was smooth as glass. The day a riot of sunlight and summer, and the great headland with its high lighthouse thrust its huge brown knees into the water.

The Dragonfly slowed down and dawdled. Three men stood in the stern behind the white side-awning. Hillyard was on the bridge with his captain.

"I don't really expect much," he said, seeking already to discount a possible disappointment. "It's only a possibility, I don't count on it."

"Six o'clock off the cape," said the captain. "We are on time."

"Yes."

Both men searched the smooth sea for some long, sluggish, inexplicable wave which should break, or for a V-shaped ripple such as a fixed stake will make in a swiftly running stream.

"Not a sign," said the captain, disconsolately.

"No. Yet it is certainly true that the keeper of that lighthouse paid an amount equal to three years' salary into a bank three weeks ago. It is true that oil could be brought into that point, and stored there, and no one but the keeper be the wiser. And it is true that the Acquitania is at this moment in this part of the Mediterranean steaming east for Salonika with six thousand men on board. Let's trail our coat a bit!" said Hillyard, and the captain with a laugh gave an order to the signal boy by his side.

The boy ran aft and in a few seconds the red ensign fluttered up the flagstaff, and drooped in the still air. But even that provocation produced no result. For an hour and a half the Dragonfly steamed backwards and forwards in front of the cape.

Hillyard went to the wireless-room, and the yacht was put about for the great scarped eastern face of the Rock.

"One of the blind alleys," said Hillyard, as he ate his breakfast in the deck-saloon. "Next time perhaps we'll have better luck. Something'll turn up for sure."

Something was always turning up in those days, and the yacht had not indeed got its coal on board in Gibraltar harbour when a message came which sent Hillyard in a rush by train through Madrid to Barcelona. He reached Barcelona at half past nine in the morning, took his breakfast by the window of the smaller dining-room in the hotel at the corner of the Plaza Cataluña, and by eleven was seated in a flat in one of the neighbouring streets. The flat was occupied by Lopez Baeza who turned from the window to greet him.

"I was not followed," said Hillyard as he put down his hat and stick. Habit had bred in him a vigilance, or rather an instinct which quickly made him aware of any who shadowed him.

"No, that is true," said Baeza, who had been watching Hillyard's approach from the window.

"But I should like to know who our young friend is on the kerb opposite, and why he is standing sentinel."

Lopez Baeza laughed.

"He is the sign and token of the commercial activity of Spain."

From behind the curtains, stretched across the window, both now looked down into the street. A youth in a grey suit and a pair of orange-coloured buttoned boots loitered backwards and forwards over about six yards of footwalk; now he smoked a cigarette, now he leaned against a tree and idly surveyed the passers by. He apparently had nothing whatever to do. But he did not move outside the narrow limits of his promenade. Consequently he had something to do.

Hillyard left the youth to his gruesome sentry-go and turned back into the room. A man of fifty, with a tawny moustache, a long and rather narrow face and eyeglasses, was sitting at an office table with some papers in front of him.

"How do you do, Fairbairn?" Hillyard asked.

Fairbairn was a schoolmaster from the North of England, with a knowledge of the Spanish tongue, who had thrown up schoolmastering, prospects, everything, in October of 1914.

"Touching the matter of those ships," said Hillyard, sitting down opposite to Fairbairn.

Fairbairn grinned.

"It worked very well," said he, "so far."

Hillyard turned towards Lopez and invited him to a seat. "Let me hear everything," he said.

Spanish ships were running to England with the products of Cataluña and returning full of coal, and shipowners made their fortunes and wages ran high. But not all of them were content. Here and there the captains and the mates took with them in their cabin to England lists of questions thoughtfully compiled by German officers; and from what they saw in English harbours and on English seas and from what secret news was brought to them, they filled up answers to the questions and brought them back to the Germans in Spain. So much Hillyard already knew.

"We might catch him perhaps on the rebound!" Hillyard suggested.

"Lopez thinks so," said Fairbairn, with a nod towards Baeza.

"I can find him this evening," Baeza remarked.

The three men conferred for a little while, and as a consequence of that conference Lopez Baeza walked through the narrow streets of the old town to a café near the railway station. In a corner a small, wizened, square man was sitting over his beer, brooding unhappily. Baeza took a seat by his side and talked with Juan de Maestre. He went out after a few minutes and hired a motor-car from the stand in front of the station. In the car he drove to the park and went once round it. At a junction of two paths on the second round the car was stopped. A short, small man stepped out from the shadow of a great tree and swiftly stepped in.

"Drive towards Tibidabo," Baeza directed the driver, and inside the dark, closed car Baeza and Juan de Maestre debated, the one persuading, the other refusing. It was long before any agreement was reached, but when Baeza, with the perspiration standing in beads upon his face, returned to his flat in the quiet, respectable street, he found Martin Hillyard and Fairbairn waiting for him anxiously.

"Hecho!" he cried. "It is done! Juan de Maestre will continue to go on board the ships and collect the information and write it out for the Germans. But we shall receive an exact copy."

"How?" asked Hillyard.

"Ramon will meet a messenger from Juan. At eight in the morning of every second day Ramon is to be waiting at a spot which from time to time we will change. The first place will be the cinema opposite to the old Bull Ring."

"Good," said Hillyard. "In a fortnight I will return."

He departed once more for Gibraltar, cruised up the coast, left his yacht once more in the harbour of Tarragona and travelled by motor-car into Barcelona.

"Now!" said Hillyard. "There are reports."

Fairbairn nodded grimly as he went to the safe and unlocked it.

"Pretty dangerous stuff," he answered.

"Reliable?" asked Hillyard.

Fairbairn returned with some sheets of blue-lined paper written over with purple ink, and some rough diagrams.

"I am sure," he replied. "Not because I trust Juan de Maestre, but because he couldn't have invented the information. He hasn't the knowledge."

Lopez Baeza agreed.

"Juan de Maestre is keeping faith with us," he said shortly, and, to the judgment of Lopez Baeza, Hillyard had learnt to incline a ready ear.

"This is the real thing, Hillyard," said Fairbairn, pulling at his moustache. "Look!"

He handed to Martin a chart. The points of the compass were marked in a corner. Certain courses and routes were given, and fixed lights indicated by which the vessel might be guided. There was a number of patches as if to warn the navigator of shallows, and again a number of small black cubes and squares which seemed to declare the position of rocks. There was no rough work in this chart. It was elaborately and skilfully drawn, the work of an artist.

"This is a copy made by me. Juan de Maestre left the original document with us for an hour," said Fairbairn, and he allowed Hillyard to speculate for a few seconds upon the whereabouts of that dangerous and reef-strewn sea. "It's not a chart of any bay or water at all. It's a plan of Cardiff by night for the guidance of German airships. Those patches are not shallows, but the loom in the sky of the furnaces. The black spots are the munition factories. Here are the docks," he pointed with the tip of his pencil. "The Jesus-Maria brought that back a week ago. Let it get from here to Germany, as it will do, eh? and a Zeppelin coming across England on a favourable night could make things hum in Cardiff."

"Do you see this?" Fairbairn continued. "This gives the exact line of the nets between the English and the Irish coasts, and the exact points of latitude and longitude where they are broken for the passage of ships, and the exact number and armament of the trawlers which guard those points."

Hillyard gazed closely at the chart. It gave the positions clearly enough, but it was a roughly-made affair, smudged with dingy fingers and uneven in its drawing. He laid it upon the table by the side of the map of Cardiff and compared one with the other.

"This," he said, touching the roughly-drawn map of a section of the Channel, "this is the work of the ship's captain?"

"Yes."

"But what of this?" and Hillyard lifted again the elaborate chart of Cardiff by night. "Some other hand drew this."

Fairbairn agreed.

"Yes. Here is the report which goes with the charts. The chart of Cardiff was handed to the captain in an inn on shore. It came from an unknown person, who is mentioned as B.45."

Hillyard seized upon the report and read it through, and then the others upon the top of that. Cloth, saddlery, equipment of various kinds were needed in England, and a great sea-borne trade had sprung up between the two countries, so that ships constantly went to and fro. In more than one of these reports the hieroglyph B.45 appeared. But never a hint which could lead to his detection—never anything personal, not a clue to his age, his business, his appearance, even his abode—nothing but this baffling symbol B.45.

"You have cabled all this home, of course," Hillyard observed to Fairbairn.

"Yes. They know nothing of the B.45. They are very anxious for any details."

"He seems to be a sort of letter-box," said Hillyard, "a centre-point for the gathering in of information."

Fairbairn shook his head.

Hillyard smiled with contentment. He could understand a German going to any lengths for Germany. He was prepared to do the same himself for his country. But when a neutral under the cloak of his neutrality meddles in this stupendous conflict for cash, for his thirty miserable pieces of silver, he could feel no inclination of mercy.

"Let the neutrals keep out!" he murmured. "This is not their affair. Let them hold their tongues and go about their own business!"

In a Sleeping-Car

The night express from Paris to Narbonne and the Spanish frontier was due to leave the Quai d'Orsay station at ten. But three-quarters of an hour before that time the platform was already crowded, and many of the seats occupied. Hillyard walked down the steps a little before half-past nine with the latest of the evening papers in his hand.

"You have engaged your seat, monsieur," the porter asked, who was carrying Hillyard's kit-bag.

"Yes," said Martin absently. He was thinking that on the boulevards the newsboys might now be crying a later edition of the papers than that which he held, an edition with still more details. He saw them surrounded in the darkened street by quiet, anxious groups.

"Will you give me your ticket, monsieur?" the porter continued, and as Hillyard looked at him vacantly, "the ticket for your seat."

Hillyard roused himself.

"I beg your pardon. I have a compartment in the sleeping-car, numbers eleven and twelve."

Amongst many old principles of which Martin Hillyard had first learned the wisdom during these last years, none had sunk deeper than this—that the head of an organisation cannot do the work of any of its members and hope that the machine will run smoothly. His was the task of supervision and ultimate direction. He held himself at the beck and call of those who worked under him. He responded to their summons. And it was in response to a very urgent summons from Fairbairn that he had hurried the completion of certain arrangements with the French authorities in Paris and was now returning to the south! But he was going very reluctantly.

The controller, in his brown uniform with the brass buttons and his peaked cap, stood at the steps of the car with the attendant.

"Eleven and twelve," said Hillyard, handing to him his ticket.

The attendant, a middle-aged, stout man with a black moustache and a greasy face, shot one keen glance from under the peak of his cap at the occupant of numbers 11 and 12, and then led the way along the corridor.

The compartment was empty. Hillyard looked around it with a grudging eye.

"I am near the middle of the coach here, I think," he said.

"Yes, monsieur, quite in the middle."

He spoke irritably, with that tone of grievance peculiar to the man who thinks his health is much worse than it is.

"Can I get coffee in the morning?" he asked.

"At half-past six, monsieur. But you must get out of the train for it."

Hillyard uttered an exclamation of disgust, and shrugged his shoulders. "What a country!" the gesture said as plainly as speech.

"But it is the war, monsieur!" the attendant expostulated with indignation.

"Oh, yes, I know! The war!" Hillyard retorted with ill-humour. "Do I want a bath? I cannot have it. It is the war. If a waiter is rude to me, it is the war. If my steak is over-cooked it is the war. The war! It is the excuse for everything."

He told the porter to place his bag upon the upper berth, and, still grumbling, gave him some money. He turned sharply on the attendant, who was smiling in the doorway.

"Ah, it seems to you funny that an invalid should be irritable, eh?" he cried. "I suppose it must be—damnably funny."

"Monsieur, there are very many men who would like to-night to be invalids with a sleeping compartment to themselves," returned the attendant severely.

"Well, I don't want to talk about it any more," said Hillyard roughly, and he shouldered his way out again on to the platform.

The attendant followed him. The smile upon his face was sleeker than ever. He was very amused and contented with his passenger in the compartment numbers 11 and 12. He took the cap off his head and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"Ouf! It is hot to-night." He looked after Hillyard with a chuckle, and remarked to the controller, "This is a customer who does not like his little comforts to be disarranged!"

The controller nodded contemptuously.

"They must travel—the English! The tourism—that is sacred, even if all Europe burns."

The war has killed many foolish legends, but none more foolish than the legend of the typical Frenchman, conceived as a short, rotund, explosive person, with a square, brown beard of curly baby-hair and a shiny silk hat with a flat brim. There have been too many young athletes of clean build on view whose nationality, language and the uniforms of powder-blue and khaki could alone decide. The more curious might, perhaps, if the youth were in mufti, cast a downward glance at the boots; but even boots were ceasing to be the sure tell-tale they once used to be. This man descending the stairs with a limp was the Commandant Marnier, of the 193rd Regiment, wounded in 1915, and now attached to the General Staff. He was in plain clothes; he was looking for Martin Hillyard, and no stranger but would have set him and the man for whom he was looking in the same category of races.

The Commandant Marnier saw Martin Hillyard clearly enough long before he reached the foot of the stairs. But nevertheless he greeted him with an appearance of surprise.

"But what luck!" he said aloud. "You leave by this train?"

"Yes. It may be that I shall find health."

"Yes, yes. So your friends will pray," returned the Commandant, falling into Hillyard's pace.

"The telegram we sent for you——" Marnier began.

"Yes!"

"There is an answer already. Your friend is unhurt. I have brought you a copy. I thought that perhaps I might catch you before your train started."

He gave the slip of typewritten message into Hillyard's hand.

"That was most kind of you," said Hillyard. "You have removed a great anxiety. It would have been many days before I should have received this good news if you had not gone out of your way to hurry with it here."

"Bah! We may not say 'comrade' as often as the Boche, but perhaps we are it all the more. I will not come further with you towards your carriage, for I have still a few things to do."

He shook Hillyard by the hand and departed. Hillyard turned from him towards his sleeping-car, but though his chief anxiety was dispelled, his reluctance to go was not. And he looked at the long, brightly-lit train which was to carry him from this busy and high-hearted city with a desire that it would start before its time, and leave him a derelict upon the platform. He could not bend his thoughts to the work which was at his hand. The sapphire waters of the South had quite lost their sparkle and enchantment. Here, here, was the place of life! The exhilaration of his task, its importance, the glow of thankfulness when some real advantage was won, a plot foiled, a scheme carried to success—these matters were all banished from his mind. Even the war-risk of it was forgotten. He thought with envy of the men in trenches. Yet the purpose of his yacht was long since known to the Germans; the danger of the torpedo was ever present on her voyages, and the certainty that if she were sunk, and he captured, any means would be taken to force him to speak before he was shot, was altogether beyond dispute. Even at this moment he carried hidden in a match-box a little phial, which never left him, to put the sure impediment between himself and a forced confession of his aims and knowledge. But he was not aware of it. How many times had he seen the red light at Europa Point on Gibraltar's edge change to white, sometimes against the scarlet bars of dawn, sometimes in the winter against a wall of black! But on the platform of the Quai d'Orsay station, in a bustle of soldiers going on short leave to their homes, and rattling with pannikins and iron-helmets, he could remember none of these consolations.

He reached his carriage.

"Messieurs les voyageurs, en route!" cried the controller.

"What a crowd!" Hillyard grumbled. "Really, it almost disposes one to say that one will never travel again until this war is over."

"Who is in the next compartment on the other side of the lavatory?" Hillyard asked.

"A manufacturer of Perpignan and his wife."

"Does he snore?" Hillyard asked. "If he snores I shall not sleep. It should be an offence against your bye-laws for a traveller to snore."

He crossed one leg across his knee and unlaced his shoe.

The attendant came into the room.

"It is possible, monsieur, that I might hurry and fetch you your coffee in the morning," he said.

"It is worth five francs to you if you do," replied Hillyard.

"Then monsieur will not move from his compartment until luncheon. I will see to it. Monsieur will bolt his door, and in the morning I will knock when I bring the coffee."

"Good," returned Hillyard ungraciously.

The attendant retired, and Hillyard closed the door. But the ventilating lattice in the lower part of the door was open, and Hillyard could see the legs of the attendant. He was waiting outside—waiting for what? Hillyard smiled to himself and took down his bag from the upper berth. He had hardly opened it when the attendant knocked and entered.

"You will not forget, monsieur, to bolt your door. In these days it is not wise to leave it on the latch."

"I won't forget," Hillyard replied surlily, and once more the attendant retired; and again he stood outside the door. He did not move until the bolt was shot. The attendant seemed very pleased that this fool of a tourist who thought of nothing but his infirmities should safely bolt the door of the compartments numbers 11 and 12; and very pleased, too, to bring to this churlish, discontented traveller his coffee in the morning, so that he need not leave compartments numbers 11 and 12 unguarded. Hillyard chuckled as the attendant moved away.

"I am to be your watch-dog, am I? Your sentinel? Very well! Come, let me deserve your confidence, my friend."

"Compartments numbers 11 and 12 on the night train from the Quai d'Orsay station to Cerbère. Good!" murmured Hillyard. "Here I am in compartments numbers 11 and 12. Now we wait until the married couple from Perpignan and the attendant are comfortably asleep."

He undressed and went to bed, but he did not sleep. He lay in the berth in the darkness, listening intently as the train rushed out of Paris across the plains of France. Once or twice, as the hours passed, he heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor outside, and once the faintest possible little click told that the latch of his door had been lifted to make sure that the bolt was still shot home in its socket. Hillyard smiled.

"You are safe, my friend," he breathed the words towards the anxious one in the corridor. "No one can get in. The door is locked. The door of the dressing-room too. Sleep in your corner in peace."

The train sped over a moonlit country, spacious, unhurt by war. It moved with a steady, rhythmical throb, like an accompaniment to a tune or a phrase, ever repeated and repeated Hillyard found himself fitting words to the pulsation of the wheels. "Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbère ... Barcelona ... Madrid ... Aranjuez and the world"; and back again, reversing the order: "Madrid ... Barcelona ... Cerbère ... Paris ... Berne ... Berlin."

But the throb of the train set the interrogation at the end of the string of names. So that the sequence of them was like a question demanding confirmation....

The door of the manufacturer was unlocked, the steps folded in their place, and Hillyard back again in his bed before two minutes had passed. And once more the throb of the train beat into a chain of towns which went backwards and forwards like a shuttle in his brain. But there was no note of interrogation now.

"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbère ... Barcelona ... Madrid ... Aranjuez and the world"; and with a thump the train set a firm full stop to the sequence. Across the broad plain, meadowland and plough, flower-garden and fruit the train thundered down to the Pyrenees. Paris was far away now, and the sense of desolation at quitting it quite gone from Hillyard's breast.

"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbère ... Barcelona ... Madrid."

Here was one of the post-roads by which Germany reached the outer world. Others there were beyond doubt. Sweden and Rotterdam, Mexico and South America—but here was one, and to-morrow, nay, to-day, the communication would be cut, and Germany so much the poorer.

The train steamed into Cerbère at one o'clock of the afternoon.

"But I am leaving France!" cried Hillyard. "I go on into Spain. Why should France, then, examine my luggage?"

"It is the war, monsieur."

Hillyard lifted up his hands in indignation too deep for words. He gathered together his bag and his coat and stick, handed them to a porter and descended. He passed into the waiting-room, and was directed by a soldier with a fixed bayonet to take his place in the queue of passengers. But he said quietly to the soldier:

"I would like to see M. de Cassaud, the Commissaire of Police."

Hillyard was led apart; his card was taken from him; he was ushered instantly into an office where an elderly French officer sat in mufti before a table. He shook Hillyard cordially by the hand.

"You pass through? I myself hope to visit Barcelona again very soon. Jean, wait outside with monsieur's baggage," this to the porter who had pushed in behind Hillyard. M. de Cassaud rose and closed the door. He had looked at Hillyard's face and acted quickly.

"It is something more than compliments you want from me, monsieur. Well, what can I do?"

"The second sleeping-car, compartments numbers 11 and 12," said Hillyard urgently. "In the water-tank of the lavatory there is a little metal case with letters from Berlin for Barcelona and Madrid. But wait, monsieur!"

M. de Cassaud was already at the door.

"It is the attendant of the sleeping-car who hides them there. If he can be called into an office quietly on some matter of routine and held there whilst your search is made, then those in Madrid and Barcelona to whom these letters are addressed may never know they have been sent at all!"

"He is giving an account of his blankets and his towels. There are two soldiers at the door. He is safe. Come!" said the Commissaire.

They crossed the platform to the carriage, whilst Hillyard described the attendant's anxiety that he should bolt his door. "No doubt he gave the same advice to the manufacturer of Perpignan," Hillyard added.

It was M. de Cassaud who arranged and mounted the steps in the tiny washing-room.

"Look, monsieur," said Hillyard, and he pointed to the little aperture in the coloured glass of the window. "One can see from the corridor what is going on in this room. That is useful. If a traveller complains—bah, it is the war!" and Hillyard laughed.

M. de Cassaud looked at the window.

"Yes, that is ingenious," he said.

He drained off the water, folded back his sleeve, and plunged his arm into the tank. Then he uttered a little cry. He drew up into the light an oblong metal can, like a sandwich-case, with the edges soldered together to make it water-tight. He slipped it into his pocket and turned again to the window. He looked at it again curiously.

"Yes, that is ingenious," he said softly, like a man speaking to himself. Then he led the way back to his office, looking in at the guard-room on the platform to give an order on the way.

The soldered edges of the case were quickly split asunder and a small package of letters written on very thin paper revealed.

"You will let me take these on with me," pleaded Martin. "You shall have them again. But some of them may want a special treatment of which we have the secret."

"After all I found them," Martin urged.

"It would be unusual," said M. de Cassaud. "The regulations, you know——"

Martin Hillyard smiled.

"The regulations, for you and me, my friend, are those we make ourselves."

M. de Cassaud would admit nothing so outrageous to his trained and rather formal mind. But he made a list of these letters and of their addresses as though he was undecided. He had not finished when a sergeant entered and saluted. The attendant of the sleeping-car had been taken to the depot. He had been searched and a pistol had been found upon him. The sergeant laid a very small automatic Colt upon the table and retired. M. de Cassaud took up the little weapon and examined it.

"Do you know these toys, Monsieur Hillyard?" he asked.

"Yes. They are chiefly used against the mosquitoes."

"Oh, they will kill at twenty-five paces," continued the Commissaire; and he looked quickly at Hillyard. "I will tell you something. You ran some risk last night when you explored that water-tank. Yes, indeed! It would have been so easy. The attendant had but to thrust the muzzle of this through the opening of the window, shoot you dead, raise an alarm that he had caught you hiding something, and there was he a hero and you a traitor. Yes, that is why I said to you the little opening in the window was ingenious! Ah, if he had caught you! Yes, if he had caught you!"

Martin was quick to take advantage.

"Then let me have those letters! I will keep my French colleagues informed of everything."

"Very well," said M. de Cassaud, and he suddenly swept the letters across to Hillyard, who gathered them up hastily and buttoned them away in his pocket before de Cassaud could change his mind.

"It is all very incorrect," said the Commissaire reproachfully.

Tricks of the Trade

"Now!" said Hillyard.

Fairbairn fetched a couple of white porcelain developing dishes to the table. Hillyard unlocked a drawer in his bureau. They were in the deck-saloon of the Dragonfly, steaming southwards from Valencia. Outside the open windows the brown hill-sides, the uplands of olive trees and the sun-flecked waves slipped by in a magical clear light; and the hiss of the beaded water against the ship's planks filled the cabin with a rustle as of silk. Hillyard drew a deep breath of excitement as he took out from the drawer the letters he had carried off from M. de Cassaud. He had travelled straight through Barcelona to Valencia with the letters in his pocket, picking up Fairbairn at the Estación de Francia on the way, and now, in the sunlight and in the secrecy of the open sea, they were to appraise the value of their catch.

They sat at the table and examined them, opening the envelopes with the skill and the care which experience had taught them. For, even though this post-road was henceforth closed it might possibly be worth while to send forward these letters. One or two were apparently family letters for German soldiers, interned at Pampluna; one or two were business communications from firms in Berlin to their agents in Spain; and these seemed genuine enough.

"They may be of value to the War Trade Board," said Fairbairn; and he put them aside for dispatch to London. As he turned back Hillyard cried suddenly:

"Here we are!"