"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 Jose. 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 Jose 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 a.s.sociate to a.s.sociate, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 Jose Medina still held in his hand. Jose Medina read it again.
"Marteen Hillyard." He came close to Hillyard, and looked in his eyes, and at the shape of his features, and at the colour of his hair. "Yes, it is the little Marteen," he cried, "and now the little Marteen swings into Palma in his great steam yacht. Dios, what a change!"
"And Jose Medina owns two hundred motor-feluccas and employs eighteen thousand men," answered Hillyard.
Jose 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. Jose 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.
Jose 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 Jose Medina patted him on the shoulder, but this time with a gurgle of delight.
"_El pequeno_ Martin," he said, and he clapped his hands. From some recess of the house his wife appeared with a bottle of champagne and two gla.s.ses on a tray.
"Now we will talk," said Jose Medina, "or rather I will talk and you shall listen."
Hillyard nodded his head, as he raised the gla.s.s to his lips.
"I have learnt in the last years that it is better to listen than to talk," said he. "_Salut!_"
CHAPTER XIV
"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 manoeuvres 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.
The third was the sound and simple doctrine that you can confidently look to Chance to bring you results, probably your very best results, if you are prepared and equipped to make all your profit out of chance the moment she leans your way. Chance is an elusive G.o.ddess, to be seized and held prisoner with a swift, firm hand. Then she"ll serve you. But if the hand"s not ready and the eye unexpectant, you"ll see but the trail of her robe as she vanishes to offer her a.s.sistance to another more wakeful than yourself.
In pursuit of this conviction, Hillyard steamed out of Palma Bay on the morning of the day after his interview with Jose 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 gla.s.s. 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.
"No good!" Hillyard at last admitted. "We"ll get on to the _Acquitania_, and advise her. Meanwhile, captain, we had better make for Gibraltar and coal there."
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 Cataluna, 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 b.u.t.toned 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 pa.s.sers 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.
"Yes," continued Baeza with a chuckle, "he is a proof of our initiative.
I thought as you do three days ago. For it is just three days since he took his stand there. But he is not watching this flat. He is not concerned with us at all. He is an undertaker"s tout. In the house opposite to us a woman is lying very ill. Our young friend is waiting for her to die, so that he may rush into the house, offer his condolences and present the undertaker"s card."