IN BARCELONA
It was nine o'clock on a night of late August.
The restaurant of the Maison Dorée in the Plaza Cataluña at Barcelona
looks across the brilliantly-lighted square from the south side. On the
pavement in front of it and of its neighbour, the Café Continental, the
vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky numbers they had for
sale. Even in this wide space the air was close and stale. Within, a few
people left over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables placed
against the walls under flamboyant decorations in the style of
Fragonard. At a table Hillyard was sitting alone over his coffee. Across
the room one of the panels represented a gleaming marble terrace
overlooking a country-side bathed in orange light; and on the terrace
stood a sedan chair with drawn curtains, and behind the chair stood a
saddled white horse. Hillyard had dined more than once during the last
few months at the Maison Dorée; and the problem of that picture had
always baffled him. A lovers' tryst! But where were the lovers? In some
inner room shaded from the outrage of that orange light which never was
on sea or land? Or in the sedan chair? Or were their faces to be
discovered, as in the puzzle pictures, in the dappling of the horse's
flanks, or the convolutions of the pillars which supported the terrace
roof, or the gilded ornamentations of the chair itself? Hillyard was
speculating for the twentieth time on these important matters with a
vague hope that one day the door of the sedan chair would open, when
another door opened--the door of the restaurant. A sharp-visaged man
with a bald forehead, a clerk, one would say, or a commercial traveller,
looked round the room and went forward to Hillyard's table. He went
quite openly.
The two men shook hands, and the new-comer seated himself in front of
Hillyard.
"You will take coffee and a cigar?" Hillyard asked in Spanish, and gave
the order to the waiter.
The two men talked of the heat, the cinematograph theatres at the side
of the Plaza, the sea-bathing at Caldetas, and then the sharp-faced man
leaned forward.
"Ramon says there is no truth in the story, señor."
Hillyard struck a match and held it to his companion's cigar.
"And you trust Ramon, Señor Baeza?"
Lopez Baeza leaned back with a gesture of unqualified assent.
"As often and often you can trust the peasant of my country," he said.
Hillyard agreed with a nod. He gazed about the room.
"There is no one interesting here to-night," he said idly.
"No," answered Lopez Baeza. "The theatres are closed, the gay people
have gone to St. Sebastian, the families to the seaside. Ouf, but it is
hot."
"Yes."
Hillyard dropped his voice to a whisper and returned to the subject of
his thoughts.
"You see, my friend, it is of so much importance that we should make no
mistake here."
"_Claro!_" returned Lopez Baeza. "But listen to me, señor. You know that
our banks are behind the times and our post offices not greatly trusted.
We have therefore a class of messengers."
Hillyard nodded.
"I know of them."
"Good. They are not educated. Most of them can neither read nor write.
They are simply peasants. Yet they are trusted to carry the most
important letters and great sums of money in gold and silver from place
to place. And never do they betray their trust. It is unknown. Why,
señor, I know myself of cases where rich men have entrusted their
daughters to the care of the messengers, sure that in this way their
daughters will arrive safely at their destination."
"Yes," said Hillyard. "I know of these men."
"Ramon Castillo is as honest as the best of them."
"Yes, but he is not one of them," said Hillyard. "He is a stevedore with
thirty years of the quayside and at the port of Barcelona, where there
are German ships with their officers and crews on board."
Hillyard was troubled. He drew from his pocket creased letters and read
them for the twentieth time with a frowning countenance.
"There is so much at stake. Two hundred feluccas--two hundred
motor-driven feluccas! And eighteen thousand men, on shore and sea? See
what it means! On our side, the complete surveillance of the Western
Mediterranean! On the other side--against us--two hundred travelling
supply bases for submarines, two hundred signal stations. I want to be
sure! I want neither to give the enemy the advantage by putting him upon
his guard, nor to miss the great opportunity myself."
Lopez Baeza nodded.
"Why not talk with Ramon Castillo yourself?" he asked.
"That is what I want to do."
"I will arrange for it. When?"
"To-night," said Hillyard.
Lopez Baeza lifted his hands in deprecation.
"Yes. I can take you to his house--now. But, señor, Ramon is a poor man.
He lives in a little narrow street."
Hillyard looked quietly at Lopez Baeza. He had found men on the
Mediterranean littoral whom he could trust with his life and everything
that was his. But a good working principle was to have not overmuch
faith in any one. A noisome little street in the lower quarters of
Barcelona--who could tell what might happen after one had plunged into
it?
"I will come with you," he said.
"Good," said Lopez. "I will go on ahead." And once more Hillyard's quiet
eyes rested upon Baeza's face. "It is not wise that we should walk out
together. There is no one here, it is true, but in the chairs outside
the cafés--who shall say?"
"Yes. You go on ahead," Hillyard agreed. "That is wise."
Lopez rose.
"Give me five minutes, señor. Then down the Rambla. The second turning
to the right, beyond the Opera House. You will see me at the corner.
When you see me, follow!"
Hillyard rose and shook hands cordially with Lopez Baeza with the air of
a man who might never see his friend again for years. Baeza commended
him to God and went out of the restaurant on to the lighted footway.
Hillyard read through the two creased letters again, though he knew them
by heart. They had reached him from William Lloyd, an English merchant
at Barcelona, at two different dates. The first, written six weeks ago,
related how Pontiana Tabor, a servant of the firm, had come into Lloyd's
private office and informed him that on the night of the 27th June a
German submarine had entered a deep cove at the lonely north-east point
of the island of Mallorca, and had there been provisioned by José
Medina's men, with José Medina's supplies, and that José Medina had
driven out of Palma de Mallorca in his motor-car, and travelling by
little-known tracks, had been present when the operation was in process.
The name of a shoemaker in a street of Palma was given as corroboration.
The second letter, which had brought Hillyard post-haste off the sea
into Barcelona, was only three days old. Once more Pontiana Tabor had
been the bearer of bad news. José Medina had been seen entering the
German Consulate in Barcelona, between eleven and twelve o'clock of the
morning of August 22nd.
Hillyard was greatly troubled by these two letters.
"We can put José Medina out of business, of course," he reflected. For
José Medina's tobacco factories were built at a free port in French
territory. "But I want the man for my friend."
He put the letters back in his pocket and paid his bill. As he went out
of the Maison Dorée, he felt in the right-hand pocket of his jacket to
make sure that a little deadly life preserver lay ready to his hand.
He did not distrust Lopez Baeza. All the work which Baeza had done for
him had, indeed, been faithfully and discreetly done. But--but there was
always a certain amount of money for the man who would work the double
cross--not so very much, but still, a certain amount. And Hillyard was
always upon his guard against the intrusion of a contempt for the
German effort. That contempt was easy enough for a man who, having read
year after year of the wonders of the loud-vaunted German system of
espionage, had come fresh from his reading into contact with the actual
agents. Their habit of lining their pockets at the expense of their
Government, their unfulfilled pretensions, their vanity and
extravagance, and, above all, their unimaginative stupidity in their
estimation of men--these things were apt in the early years of the war
to bewilder the man who had been so often told to fall down before the
great idol of German efficiency.
"The German agent works on the assumption that the mind of every
foreigner reasons on German lines, but with inferior intelligence. But
behind the agent is the cunning of Berlin, with its long-deliberated
plans and its concocted ingenuity of method. And though on the whole
they are countered, as with amazement they admit, by the amateurs from
England, still every now and then--not very often--they do bring
something off."
Thus Hillyard reasoned as he turned the corner of the Plaza Cataluña
into the wide Rambla. It might be that the narratives of Pontiana Tabor
and the denials of Ramon Castillo were all just part of one little
subsidiary plan in the German scheme which was to reach its achievement
by putting an inconvenient Englishman out of the way for good in one of
the dark, narrow side streets of Barcelona.
After the hot day the Rambla, with its broad tree-shaded alley in the
middle, its carriage-ways on each side of the alley, and its shops and
footwalks beyond the carriage-ways, was crowded with loiterers. The
Spaniard, to our ideas, is simple in his pleasure. To visit a
cinematograph, to take a cooling temperance drink at the Municipal
Kiosque at the top of the Rambla, and to pace up and down the broad walk
with unending chatter--until daybreak--here were the joys of Barcelona
folk in the days of summer. Further down at the lower end of the Rambla
you would come upon the dancing halls and supper-cafés, with separate
rooms for the national gambling game, "Siete y Media," but they had
their own clientele amongst the bloods and the merchant captains from
the harbour. The populace of Barcelona walked the Rambla under the
great globes of electric light.
Hillyard could only move slowly through the press. Every one dawdled.
Hillyard dawdled too. He passed the Opera House, and a little further
down saw across the carriage-way, Lopez Baeza in front of a lighted
tobacco shop at the corner of a narrow street. Hillyard crossed the
carriage-way and Baeza turned into the street, a narrow thoroughfare
between tall houses and dark as a cavern. Hillyard followed him. The
lights of the Rambla were left behind, the houses became more slatternly
and disreputable, the smells of the quarter were of rancid food and bad
drains. Before a great door Baeza stopped and clapped his hands.
A jingle of keys answered him, and rising from the step of another house
the watchman of the street crossed the road. He put a key into the door,
opened it, and received the usual twopence. Baeza and Hillyard passed
in.
"Ramon is on the top floor. We have to climb," said Baeza.
He lit a match, and the two men mounted a staircase with a carved
balustrade, made for a king. Two stories up, the great staircase ended,
and another of small, steep and narrow steps succeeded it. When Baeza's
match went out there was no light anywhere; from a room somewhere above
came a sound of quarrelling voices--a woman's voice high and shrill, a
man's voice hoarse and drunken, and, as an accompaniment, the wailing of
a child wakened from its sleep.
At the very top of the house Baeza rapped on a door. The door was
opened, and a heavy, elderly man, wearing glasses on his nose, stood in
the entrance with the light of an unshaded lamp behind him.
"Ramon, it is the chief," said Baeza.
Ramon Castello crossed the room and closed an inner door. Then he
invited Hillyard to enter. The room was bare but for a few pieces of
necessary furniture, but all was scrupulously clean. Ramon Castillo set
forward a couple of chairs and asked his visitors to be seated. He was
in his shirt-sleeves, and he wore the rope-soled sandals of the Spanish
peasant, but he was entirely at his ease. He made the customary little
speech of welcome with so simple a dignity and so manifest a sincerity
that Hillyard could hardly doubt him afterwards.
"It is my honour to welcome you not merely as my chief, but as an
Englishman. I am poor, and I take my pay, but Señor Baeza will assure
you that for twenty-five years I have been the friend of England. And
there are thousands and thousands of poor Spaniards like myself, who
love England, because its law-courts are just, because there is a real
freedom there, because political power is not the opportunity of
oppression."
The little speech was spoken with great rapidity and with deep feeling;
and, having delivered it, Ramon seated himself on the side of the table
opposite to Hillyard and Baeza and waited.
"It is about Pontiana Tabor," said Hillyard. "He is making a mistake?"
"No, señor; he is lying," and he used the phrase which has no exact
equivalent in the English. "He is a _sin verguenza_."
"Tell me, my friend," said Hillyard.
"Pontiana Tabor swears that José Medina was seen to enter the German
Consulate before noon on August the 22nd. But on August the 21st Medina
was in Palma, Mallorca; he was seen there by a captain of the Islana
Company, and a friend of mine spoke to him on the quay. If, therefore,
he was in the German Consulate here on the 22nd, he must have crossed
that night by the steamer to Barcelona. But he did not. His name was not
on the list of passengers, and although he might have avoided that, he
was not seen on board or to come on board. I have spoken with officers
and crew. José Medina did not cross on the 21st. Moreover, Señor Baeza
has seen a letter which shows that he was certainly in Palma on the
23rd."
"That is true," said Baeza. "Medina was in Palma on the 21st, and in
Palma on the 23rd, and he did not cross to Barcelona on the night of the
21st, nor back again to Palma on the night of the 22nd. Therefore he was
not seen to visit the German Consulate on the morning of the 22nd, and,
as Ramon says, Pontiana is lying."
"Why should Pontiana lie?" asked Hillyard.
Ramon took his pince-nez from the bridge of his nose, and, holding them
between his finger and thumb, tapped with them upon his knee.
"Because, señor, there are other contrabandists besides José Medina; one
little group at Tarragona and another near Garucha--and they would all
be very glad to see José Medina get into trouble with the British and
the French. His feluccas fly the British flag and his factories are on
French soil. There would be an end of José Medina."
The letters were put in front of Hillyard. He read them over carefully,
and at the end he said:
"If Pontiana Tabor lied in this case of the Consulate--and that seems
clear--it is very likely that he lied also in the other. Yes."
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 José 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 José 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, Señor
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.
"Señor 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 café, 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 clustered about José
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.