The Summons (novel)/XII

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 cafes—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 Doree, 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.