The Summons Part 25

Twelve years had pa.s.sed since he had seen Jose Medina, but he had changed less than Hillyard expected. Martin remembered him as small and slight, with a sharp mobile face and a remarkable activity which was the very badge of the man; and these characteristics he retained. He was still like quick-silver. But he was fast losing his hair, and he wore pince-nez. The dress of the peasant and the cautious manner of the peasant, both were gone. In his grey lounge suit he had the look of a quick-witted clerk.

"You wished to see me, senor," he repeated, and he laid the card upon the table.

"For a moment. I shall hope not to detain you long."

"My time and my house are yours."

Jose Medina had clearly become a _caballero_ since those early days of adventure. Hillyard noted the point for his own guidance, thanking his stars meanwhile that the gift of the house was a meaningless politeness.

"I arrived at Palma this morning, in a yacht," said Hillyard.

Jose Medina was prepared for the information. He bowed. There had been neither smile nor, indeed, any expression whatever upon his face since he had entered the room.

"I have heard of the yacht," he said. "It is a fine ship."

"Yes."

Jose Medina looked at Hillyard.

"It flies the English flag."

Hillyard bowed.

"As do your feluccas, senor, I believe."

A mere twitch of the lips showed that Medina appreciated the point.

"But I," continued Hillyard, "am an Englishman, while you, senor----"

Jose Medina was not, if he could help it, to be forced to cry "a hit"

again.

"Whereas I, senor, am a neutral," he answered. The twitch of the lips became a smile. He invited Hillyard to a chair, he drew up another himself, and the two men sat down over against one another in the middle of that bare and formal room.

That one word neutral, so delicately emphasised, warned Hillyard that Jose Medina was quite alive to the reason of his visit. He could, of course, have blurted it out at once. He could have said in so many words, "Your tobacco factories are on French soil, and your two hundred feluccas are nominally owned in Gibraltar. Between French and English we shall close you down unless you help." But he knew very well that he would have got no more than fair words if he had. It is not thus that delicate questions are approached in Spain. Even the blackmailer does not dream of bluntly demanding money, or exposing his knowledge that he will get it. He pleads decently the poverty of his family and the long illness of his mother-in-law; and with the same decency the blackmailed yields to compa.s.sion and opens his purse. There is a gentlemanly reticence to be observed in these matters and Hillyard was well aware of the rules. He struck quite a different note.

"I shall speak frankly to you, Senor Medina, as one _caballero_ to another"; and Jose Medina bowed and smiled.

"I put my cards upon the table. I ask you whether in your heart you are for the Germans or for us."

Jose Medina hitched his chair a little closer and holding up one hand with fingers spread ticked off his points, as he spoke them, with the other.

"Let us see! First, you come to me, senor, saying you are English, and speaking Spanish with the accent of Valencia. Good! I might reply, senor, how do I know? I might ask you how I am to be sure that when that British flag is hauled down from your yacht outside the bay over there, it is not a German one which should take its place. Good! But I do not make these replies. I accept your word as a _caballero_ that you are English and not an enemy of England laying a trap for me. Good!" He took off his eye-gla.s.ses and polished them.

"Now listen to me!" he continued. "I am a Spaniard. We of Spain have little grievances against England and France. But these are matters for the Government, not for a private person. And the Government bids us be neutral. Good! Now I speak as a private person. For me England means opportunity for poor men to become great and rich. You may say I have become rich without the opportunities of England. I answer I am one in many thousands. England means Liberty, and within the strict limits of my neutrality I will do what a man may for that great country."

Hillyard listened and nodded. The speech was flowing and spoken with great fervour. It might mean much. It might mean nothing at all. It might be the outcome of conviction. But it might again be nothing more than the lip-service of a man who knew very well that England and France could squeeze him dry if they chose.

"I wish," said Hillyard cordially, "that the captains of the ports of Spain spoke also with your voice."

Jose Medina neither a.s.sumed an ignorance of the German leanings of the port officials nor expressed any a.s.sent. But, as if he had realised the thought which must be pa.s.sing in Hillyard's mind, he said:

"You know very well, senor, that I should be mad if I gave help to the Germans. I am in your hands. You and France have but to speak the word, and every felucca of mine is off the seas. But what then! There are eighteen thousand men at once without food or work thrown adrift upon the coast of Spain. Will not Germany find use for those eighteen thousand men?"

Hillyard agreed. The point was shrewd. It was an open, unanswerable reply to the unuttered threat which perhaps Hillyard might be prompted to use.

"I have spoken," continued Jose Medina. "Now it is for you, senor. Tell me what within the limits of my neutrality I can do to prove to you the sincerity of my respect for England?"

Hillyard took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his pocket. He drew a rough map.

"Here are the Balearic Islands; here, farther to the west, the Columbretes; here the African coast; here the mainland of Spain. Now watch, I beg you, senor, whilst I sketch in the routes of your feluccas.

At Oran in Africa your factories stand. From them, then, we start. We draw a broad thick line from Oran to the north-east coast of Mallorca, that coast upon which we look down from these windows, a coast honeycombed with caves and indented with creeks like an edge of fine lace--a very storehouse of a coast. Am I not right, Senor Don Jose?" He laughed, in a friendly good-humoured way, but the face of Jose Medina did not lose one shade of its impa.s.siveness. He did not deny that the caves of this coast were the storehouse of his tobacco; nor did he agree.

"Let us see!" he said.

"So I draw a thick line, since all your feluccas make for this island and this part of the island first of all. From here they diverge--you will correct me, I hope, if I am wrong."

"I do not say that I shall correct you if you are wrong," said Jose Medina.

Hillyard was now drawing other and finer lines which radiated like the sticks of an outspread fan from the north-east coast of Mallorca to the Spanish mainland; and he went on drawing them, unperturbed by Jose's refusal to a.s.sist in his map-making. Some of the lines--a few--ended at the Islands of the Columbretes, sixty miles off Valencia.

"Your secret storehouse, I believe, senor," he remarked pleasantly.

"A cruiser of our Government examined these islands most carefully a fortnight ago upon representations from the Allies, and found nothing of any kind to excite interest," replied Jose Medina.

"The cruiser was looking for submarine bases, I understand, not tobacco," Martin Hillyard observed. "And since it was not the cruiser's commission to look for tobacco, why should it discover it?"

Jose Medina shrugged his shoulders. Jose Medina's purse was very long and reached very high. It would be quite impolitic for that cruiser to discover Jose Medina's tobacco stores, as Medina himself and Martin Hillyard, and the captain of the cruiser, all very well knew.

Martin Hillyard continued to draw fine straight lines westwards from the northern coast of Mallorca to the mainland of Spain, some touching the sh.o.r.e to the north of Barcelona, some striking it as far south as Almeria and Garrucha. When he had finished his map-making he handed the result to Jose Medina.

"See, senor! Your feluccas cut across all the trade-routes through the Mediterranean. Ships going east or going west must pa.s.s between the Balearics and Africa, or between the Balearics and Spain. We are here in the middle, and, whichever course those ships take, they must cross the lines on which your feluccas continually come and go."

Jose Medina looked at the map. He did not commit himself in any way. He contented himself with a question: "And what then?"

"So too with the German submarines. They also must cross and cross again in their cruises, those lines along which your feluccas continually come and go."

Jose Medina threw up his hands.

"The submarines! Senor, if you listen to the babblers on the quays, you would think that the seas are stiff with them! Schools of them like whales everywhere! Only yesterday Palma rang with the account of one. It pursued a French steamer between Minorca and Mallorca. It spoke to a fishing boat! What did it not do? Senor, there was no submarine yesterday in the channel between Minorca and Mallorca. If there had been I must have known."

And he sat back as though the subject were disposed of.

"But submarines do visit these waters, Senor Medina, and they do sink ships," replied Hillyard.

Jose Medina shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.

"_Claro!_ And it is said that I supply them with their oil." He turned swiftly to Hillyard. "Perhaps you have heard that story, senor?"