"There"s a big wireless," said Commodore Graham.
"At Soller. On the other side of Mallorca from Palma. You cross a wonderful pa.s.s by the old monastery where Georges Sand and Chopin stayed and quarrelled."
The literary reminiscence left Commodore Graham unmoved.
"Did you ever go to Iviza?"
"For a month with a tourist who dug for ancient pottery."
Graham swung round to his bureau and drummed with the tips of his fingers upon the leather pad. He made no sign which could indicate whether he was satisfied or no. He lit a cigarette and handed the box to Hillyard.
"Did you ever come across a man called Jose Medina?"
Eleven years had pa.s.sed since the strange days in Spain, and those eleven years not without their sharp contrasts and full hours.
Hillyard"s act of memory was the making of a picture. One by one he called up the chain of coast cities wherein he had wandered. Malaga, with its brown cathedral; Almeria and its ancient castle and bright blue-painted houses glowing against the brown and barren hills; Aguilas, with its islets; Cartagena, Gandia, Alicante of the palms; Valencia--and under the trees and on the quays, the boatmen and the captains and the resplendent officials whom he had known! They took shape before him and a.s.sumed their names. He dived amongst them for one Jose Medina.
"Yes," he replied at last, "there was a Jose Medina. He was a young peasant of Mallorca. He always said jo for yo."
Graham"s eyes brightened and his lips twitched to a smile. He glanced aside to his bureau, whereon lay a letter written by Paul Bendish at Oxford.
"He probably has a larger acquaintance with the queer birds of the Mediterranean ports than any one else in England. But he does not seem to be aware of it. But if you persist in sitting quiet his knowledge will trickle out."
Commodore Graham persisted, and facts concerning Jose Medina began to trickle out. Jose"s father had left him, the result of a Spanish peasant"s thrift, a couple of thousand pesetas. With this Jose Medina had gone to Gibraltar, where he bought a felucca, with a native of Gibraltar as its nominal owner; so that Jose Medina might fly the flag of Britain and sleep more surely for its protection. At Gibraltar, with what was left of his two thousand pesetas and the credit which his manner gained him, he secured a cargo of tobacco.
"Gibraltar"s a free port, you see," said Hillyard. "Jose ran the cargo along the coast to Benica.s.sim, a little watering-place with a good beach about thirty kilometres east of Valencia. He ran the felucca ash.o.r.e one dark night." Suddenly he stopped and smiled to himself. "I expect Jose Medina"s in prison now."
"On the contrary," said Graham, "he"s a millionaire."
Hillyard stared. Then he laughed.
"Well, those were the two alternatives for Jose Medina. But I am judging by one night"s experience. I never saw him again."
Commodore Graham touched with his heel a bell by the leg of his bureau.
The bell did not ring, but displaced a tiny shutter in front of the desk of his secretary in the ante-room; and Hillyard had hardly ended when the girl was in the room and announced:
"Admiral Carstairs."
Commodore Graham looked annoyed.
"What a nuisance! I am afraid that I must see him, Mr. Hillyard."
"Of course," said Hillyard. "Admirals are admirals."
"And they know it!" said Commodore Graham with a sigh.
Hillyard rose and took his hat.
"Well, I am very grateful to you, Mr. Hillyard," said Graham. "I can"t say anything more to you now. Things, as you know, are altogether very doubtful. We may slip over into smooth water. On the other hand," and he twiddled his thumbs serenely, "we may be at war in a month. If that were to be the case, I might want to talk with you again. Will you leave your address with Miss Chayne?"
Hillyard was led out by another door, no doubt so that he might not meet the impatient admiral. He might have gone away disheartened from that interview with its vague promises. But there are other and often surer indications than words. When Miss Chayne took down his address, her manner had quite changed towards him. She had now a frank and pleasant comradeship. The official had gone. Her smile said as plainly as print could do: "You are with us now."
Meanwhile Commodore Graham read through once more the letter of Paul Bendish. He turned from that to a cabled report from Khartum of the opinion which various governors of districts had formed concerning the ways and the discretion of Martin Hillyard. Then once more he rang his bell.
"There was a list of suitable private yachts to be made out," he said.
"It is ready," replied Miss Chayne, and she brought it to him.
Over that list Commodore Graham spent a great deal of time. In the end his finger rested on the name of the steam-yacht _Dragonfly_, owned by Sir Charles Hardiman, Baronet.
CHAPTER IX
ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT WHITE SATIN
Goodwood in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen! There were some, throwers of stones, searchers after a new thing on which to build a reputation, who have been preaching these many years past that the temper of England had changed, its solidity all dissolved into froth, and that a new race of neurotics was born on Mafeking night. Just ninety-nine years before this Goodwood meeting, when Napoleon and the veterans of the Imperial Guard were knocking at the gates of Brussels, a famous ball was given. Goodwood of the year nineteen-fourteen, _mutatis mutandis_, did but repeat that scene, the same phlegmatic enjoyment of the festival, the same light-heartedness and sure confidence under the great shadow, and the same ending.
The whispered word went round so that there should be no panic or alarm, and of a sudden every officer was gone. Goodwood of nineteen fourteen and a July so perfect with sunlight and summer that it seemed some bird at last must break the silence of the famed beech-grove! All the world went to it. The motor-cars and the coaches streamed up over Duncton Hill and wound down the Midhurst Road to pleasant Charlton, with its cottages and gardens of flowers. Martin Hillyard went too.
As he walked away from Captain Graham"s eyrie he met Sir Chichester Splay in Pall Mall.
"Where have you been these eight months?" inquired Sir Chichester. ""The Dark Tower" is still running, I see. A good play, Mr. Hillyard."
"But not a great play, of course," said Martin, his lips twitching to a smile.
"I have been looking for you everywhere," remarked Sir Chichester. "You must stay with us for Goodwood. My wife will never forgive me if I don"t secure you."
Hillyard gladly consented. It would be his first visit to the high racecourse on the downs--and--and he might find Stella Croyle among the company. It would be a little easier for him and for her too, if they met this second time in a house of many visitors. He had no comfortable news to give to her, and he had shrunk from seeking her out in the Bayswater Road. Wrap the truth in words however careful, he could not but wound her. Yet sooner or later she must hear of his return, and avoidance of her would but tell the story more cruelly than his lips.
"Yes, I will gladly come," he said, "if I may come down on the first day."
He was delayed in London until midday, and so motored after luncheon through Guildford and Chiddingfold and Petworth to Rackham Park. The park ran down to the Midhurst Road, and when Hillyard was shown into the drawing-room he walked across to the window and looked out over a valley of fields and hedges and low, dark ridges to the downs lying blue in the sunlight and the black forests on their slopes.
From an embrasure a girl rose with a book in her hand.
"Let me introduce myself, Mr. Hillyard. I am Joan Whitworth, and make my home here with my aunt. They are all at Goodwood, of course, but they should be back at any moment."
She rang the bell and ordered tea. Somewhere Hillyard realised he had seen the girl before. She was about eighteen years old, he guessed, very pretty, with a wealth of fair hair deepening into brown, dark blue eyes shaded with long dark lashes and a colour of health abloom in her cheeks.
"You have been in Egypt, uncle tells me."
"In the Sudan," Hillyard corrected. "I have been shooting for eight months."
"Shooting!"
Joan Whitworth"s eyes were turned on him in frank disappointment. "The author of "The Dark Tower"--shooting!"