As a matter of fact, Hillyard had reasons of his own to doubt the truth of the story which ascribed to Medina the actual provisioning of a submarine--reasons which had nothing whatever to do with Jose Medina himself.
The destruction of shipping by German submarines in this western section of the Mediterranean had an intermittent regularity. There would be ten successive days--hardly ever more than ten days--during which ships were sunk. Thereafter for three weeks, steamships and sailing ships would follow the course upon which they were ordered, without hurt or loss.
After three weeks, the murderous business would begin again. There was but one explanation in Hillyard"s opinion.
"The submarines come out of Pola. When they reach the line between the Balearics and the Spanish coast, they have oil for ten days" cruising, and then return to their base," he argued.
Now, if a submarine had been provisioned by Jose Medina in a creek of Mallorca, the ten days" cruise would be extended to three weeks. This had never happened. Moreover, the date fixed by Pontiana Tabor happened to fall precisely in the middle of one of those periods of three weeks during which the terror did not haunt those seas. Pontiana Tabor had not known enough. He had fixed his date at a venture.
"Yes," said Hillyard, rising from his chair. "I agree with you, Senor Ramon. Tabor is a liar. What troubled me was that I had no clue as to why he should lie. You have given me it, and with all my heart I thank you."
He shook the stevedore"s hand and stood for a moment talking and joking with him upon other subjects. Hillyard knew the value of a smile and a jest and a friendly manner. Your very enemy in Spain will do you a good turn if you meet him thus. Then he turned to Baeza.
"I shall be back, perhaps, in a week, but perhaps not. I will let you know in the usual way."
The two men went down the stairs and into the street. It was empty now and black, but at the far end, as at the end of a tunnel, the Rambla blazed and roared and the crowds swung past like a procession.
"It is best that we should separate here," said Lopez Baeza, "if you have no further instructions."
"Touching the matter of those ships," Hillyard suggested.
"Senor Fairbairn has it in hand."
"Good. Then, my friend, I have no further instructions," said Hillyard.
"I agree with you about Ramon. I will go first."
He shook hands with Baeza, crossed the road and disappeared into the mouthway of an alley which ran up the hill parallel to the Rambla. The alley led into another side street, and turning to the right, Hillyard slipped out into the throng beneath the trees. He sauntered, as idle and as curious as any in that broad walk. He took a drink at a cafe, neither hiding himself unnaturally nor ostentatiously occupying a chair at the edge of the awning. He sat there for half an hour. But when he rose again he made sure that no one was loitering to watch his movements. He sauntered up to the very end of the Rambla past the ice-cream kiosque.
The great Plaza spread in front of him, and at the corner across the road stood a double line of motor-cars, some for hire, others waiting for parties in the restaurants opposite. He walked across the roadway and disappeared in between the motor-cars as if he intended to cross the Plaza by the footway to the Paseo de la Reforma. A second later a motor-car shot out from the line and took the road to Tarragona.
Hillyard was inside the car. The tall houses of the city gave place to villas draped in bougainvillea behind gardens of trees. Then the villas ceased and the car sped across the flats of Llobegrat and climbed to the finest coast-road in the world. It was a night for lovers. A full moon, bright as silver, sailed in the sky; the broad, white road rose and dipped and wound past here and there a blue cottage, here and there a peasant mounted on his donkey and making his journey by night to escape the burning day. Far below the sea spread out most gently murmuring, and across a great wide path of glittering jewels, now a sailing-ship glided like a bird, now the black funnels of a steamer showed. So light was the wind that Hillyard could hear the kick of its screw, like the beating of some gigantic clock. He took his hat from his head and threw wide open his thin coat. After the heavy days of anxiety he felt a nimbleness of heart and spirit which set him in tune with the glory of that night.
Suspicions, vague and elusive, had for so long cl.u.s.tered about Jose Medina, and then had come the two categorical statements, dates and hours, chapter and verse! He was still not sure, he declared to himself in warning. But he was sure enough to risk the great move--the move which he alone could make! He should no doubt have been dreaming of Joan Whitworth and fitting her into the frame of that August night. But he had not thought of her by one o"clock in the morning; and by one o"clock in the morning his motor-car had come to a stop on the deserted quay of Tarragona harbour under the stern of an English yacht.
CHAPTER XIII
OLD ACQUAINTANCE
At six o"clock on the second morning after Hillyard"s visit to Barcelona, the steam-yacht _Dragonfly_ swept round the point of La Dragonera and changed her course to the south-east. She steamed with a following breeze over a sea of darkest sapphire which broke in sparkling cascades of white and gold against the rocky creeks and promontories on the ship"s port side. Peasants working on the green terraces above the rocks stopped their work and stared as the blue ensign with the Union Jack in the corner broke out from the flagstaff at the stern.
"But it"s impossible," cried one. "Only yesterday a French mail-steamer was chased in the pa.s.sage between Mallorca and Minorca. It"s impossible."
Another shaded his eyes with his hand and looked upon the neat yacht with its white deck and shining bra.s.s in contemptuous pity.
"Loco Ingles," said he.
The tradition of the mad Englishman has pa.s.sed away from France, but it has only leaped the Pyrenees. Some crazy multi-millionaire was just running his head into the German noose. They gave up their work and settled down contentedly to watch the yacht, multi-millionaire, captain and crew and all go up into the sky. But the _Dragonfly_ pa.s.sed from their sight with the foam curling from her bows and broadening out into a pale fan behind her; and over the headlands for a long time they saw the streamer of her smoke as she drove in to Palma Bay.
Hillyard, standing by the captain"s side upon the bridge, watched the great cathedral rise from out of the water at the end of the bay, towers and flying b.u.t.tresses and the ma.s.s of brown stone, before even a house was visible. The _Dragonfly_ pa.s.sed a German cargo steamer which had sought refuge here at the outbreak of war. She was a large ship, full of oil, and she had been moved from the quay-side to an anchorage in the bay by the captain of the port, lest by design or inadvertence she should take fire and set the town aflame. There she lay, a source of endless misgiving to every allied ship which sailed these waters, kept clean and trim as a yacht, her full crew on board, her dangerous cargo below, in the very fairway of the submarine; and there the scruples of the Allies allowed her to remain while month followed month. Historians in later years will come across in this or that Government office in Paris, in London and in Rome, warnings, appeals, and accounts of the presence of this ship; and those anxious for a picturesque contrast may set against the violation of Belgium and all the "sc.r.a.p of paper"
philosophy, the fact that for years in the very centre of the German submarine effort in the Western Mediterranean, the German steamer _Fangturm_, with her priceless cargo of oil, was allowed by the scrupulous honour of the Allies to swing unmolested at her anchor in Palma Bay. Hillyard could never pa.s.s that great black ship in those neutral waters without a hope that his steering-gear would just at this moment play him false and swing his bows at full speed on to her side.
The _Dragonfly_ ran past her to the arm of the great mole and was moored with her stern to the quay. A small crowd of gesticulating idlers gathered about the ropes, and all were but repeating the phrases of the peasants upon the hill-side, as Hillyard walked ash.o.r.e down the gangway.
"But it"s impossible that you should have come."
"Just outside there is one. The fisherman saw her yesterday."
"She rose and spoke to one of the fishing-boats."
"But it is impossible that you should have come here."
"Yet I am here," answered Hillyard, the very mad multi-millionaire.
"What will you, my friends? Shall I tell you a secret? Yes, but tell no one else! The Germans would be most enraged if they found out that we knew it. There aren"t any submarines."
A little jest spoken in a voice of good-humour, with a friendly smile, goes a long way anywhere, but further in Spain than anywhere else in the world. The small crowd laughed with Hillyard, and made way for him.
A man offered to him with a flourish and a bow a card advertising a garage at which motor-cars could be hired for expeditions in the island.
Hillyard accepted it and put it into his pocket. He paid a visit to his consul, and thereafter sat in a cafe for an hour. Then he strolled through the narrow streets, admired this and that ma.s.sive archway, with its glimpse of a great stone staircase within, and mounted the hill.
Almost at the top, he turned sharply into a doorway and ran up the stairs to the second floor. He knocked upon the door, and a maid-servant answered.
"Senor Jose Medina lives here?"
"Yes, senor."
"He is at home?"
"No, senor. He is in the country at his _finca_."
Hillyard thanked the girl, and went whistling down the stairs. Standing in the archway, he looked up and down the street with something of the air of a man engaged upon a secret end. One or two people were moving in the street; one or two were idling on the pavement. Hillyard smiled and walked down the hill again. He took the advertis.e.m.e.nt card from his pocket and, noting the address, walked into the garage.
"It will please me to see something of the island," he said. "I am not in Mallorca for long. I should like a car after lunch." He gave the name of a cafe between the cathedral and the quay. "At half-past two? Thank you. And by which road shall I go for all that is most of Mallorca?"
This was Spain. A small group of men had already invaded the garage and gathered about Hillyard and the proprietor. They proceeded at once to take a hand in the conversation and offer their advice. They suggested the expedition to Miramar, to Alcudia, to Manacor, discussing the time each journey would take, the money to be saved by the shorter course, the dust, and even the gradients of the road. They had no interest in the business in the garage, and they were not at all concerned in the success of Hillyard"s excursion. That a stranger should carry away with him pleasant recollections of the beauties of Mallorca, was a matter of supreme indifference to them all. But they were engaged in the favourite pursuit of the Spaniards of the towns. They were getting through a certain small portion of the day, without doing any work, and without spending any money. The majority favoured the road past Valdemosa, over the Pa.s.s of Soller to Miramar and its rocky coast on the north-east side of the island, as indeed Hillyard knew the majority must. For there is no road like it for beauty in the Balearics, and few in all Spain.
"I will go that way, then," said Hillyard, and he strolled off to his luncheon.
He drove afterwards over the plain, between groves of olive and almond trees with gnarled stems and branches white with dust, mounted by the twisting road, terraces upon his left and pine-clothed mountainside upon his right, past Valdemosa to the Pa.s.s. The great sweep of rock-bound coast and glittering sea burst upon his view, and the boom of water surging into innumerable caves was like thunder to his ears. At a little gate upon the road the car was stopped at a word from Hillyard.
"I am going in here," he said. "I may be a little while."
The chauffeur looked at Hillyard with surprise. Hillyard had never been to the house before, but he could not mistake it from the description which he had been given. He pa.s.sed through an orchard to the door of an outrageous villa, built in the style of a Swiss chalet and glaring with yellow paint. A man in his shirt-sleeves came to the door.
"Senor Jose Medina?" Hillyard inquired.
He held out his card and was ushered into the room of ceremony which went very well with the exterior of the yellow chalet. A waxed floor, heavy white lace curtains at the windows, a table of walnut-wood, chairs without comfort, but with gold legs, all was new and never to be used and hideous. Hillyard looked around him with a nod of comprehension.
This is what its proprietor would wish for. With a hundred old houses to select from for a model--no! This is the way his fancies would run. The one beauty of the place, its position, was Nature"s. Hillyard went to the window, which was on the side of the house opposite to the door. He looked down a steep terraced garden of orange trees and bright flowers to the foam sparkling on the rocks a thousand feet below.
"You wished to see me, senor," and Hillyard turned with curiosity.