"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 goddess, 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 assistance 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 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.
"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 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.
"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."
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.
"A pilot, Juan de Maestre, went on board the ships, collected the
answers, made a report and took it up to the German headquarters here.
That Ramon Castillo found out," said Fairbairn. "Steps were taken with
the crew. The ships would be placed on the black list. There would be no
coal for them. They must be laid up and the crews dismissed. The crew of
the _Saragossa_ grasped the position, and the next time Juan de Maestre
stepped on board he was invited to the forecastle, thumped, dropped
overboard into the salubrious waters of the dock and left to swim
ashore. Juan de Maestre has had enough. He won't go near the Germans any
more. He is in a condition of extreme terror and neutrality. Oh, he's
wonderfully neutral just now."
"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.
Fairbairn and Lopez Baeza received him. It was night, and hot with a
staleness of the air which was stifling. The windows all stood open in
the quiet, dark street, but the blinds and curtains were closely drawn
before the lamps were lit.
"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."
Hillyard laid the sketch down and took another which Fairbairn held out
to him.
"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.
"He is more active than that," he returned, and he pointed to a passage
here and there, which bore him out. It was the first time that Martin
Hillyard had come across this symbol, and he was utterly at a loss to
conjecture the kind of man the symbol hid. He might be quite obscure,
the tenant of some suburban shop, or, again, quite prominent in the
public eye, the owner of a fine house, and generous in charities; he
might be of any nationality. But there he was, somewhere under the
oak-trees of England, doing his secret, mean work for the ruin of the
country. Hillyard dreamed that night of B.45. He saw him in his dreams,
an elusive figure without a face, moving swiftly wherever people were
gathered together, travelling in crowded trains, sitting at the
dinner-tables of the great, lurking at the corners of poor tenements.
Hillyard hunted him, saw him deftly pocket a letter which a passing
stranger as deftly handed him, or exchange some whispered words with
another who walked for a few paces without recognition by his side, but
though he hurried round corners to get in front of him and snatch a
glance at his face, he could never come up with him. He waked with the
sunlight pouring in between the lattices of his shutters from the Plaza
Cataluña, tired and unrefreshed. B.45! B.45! He was like some figure
from a child's story-book! Some figure made up of tins and sticks and
endowed with malevolent life. B.45. London asked news of him, and he
stalked through London. Where should Hillyard find his true image and
counterpart?
* * * * *
It is not the purpose of this narrative to describe how one Christobal
Quesada, first mate of the steamship _Mondragon_, utterly overreached
himself by sending in a report of a British hospital ship, sure to leave
the harbour of Alexandria with gun-carriages upon her deck; how the
report was proved to be a lie; how it was used as the excuse for the
barbarous sinking of the great ships laden with wounded, and ablaze from
stern to stern with green lights, the red cross glowing amidships like a
wondrous jewel; how Christobal Quesada was removed from his ship in a
French port, and after being duly arraigned for his life, met his death
against a prison wall. Fairbairn wrote to Martin Hillyard:
"_The execution of Quesada has put an end to the whole
wicked question. So long as the offender was only put in
prison with the certainty of release at the end of the war,
whilst his family lived comfortably on German money, the
game went merrily on. But the return of the "Mondragon,"
minus her executed mate, has altered the whole position.
Juan de Maestre has nothing whatever to do nowadays._"
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!"
He received Fairbairn's letter in the beginning of the year 1916. He was
still no nearer at that date to the discovery of B.45; nor were they any
better informed in London. Hillyard could only wait upon Chance to slip
a clue into his hand.