The Summons Part 35

"Rosa Hahn, then."

"Yes," said Jose Medina.

Jose rose and unlocking a drawer in his bureau took out from it a sheaf of photographs. He selected one and handed it with a smile to Hillyard.

It was the portrait of a good-looking girl, tall, dark, and intelligent, but heavy about the feet, dressed in Moorish robes, and extended on a divan in Oriental indolence against a scene cloth which outdid the luxuries of Llalla Rookh.

"That's the lady, I think."

Medina gazed at the picture with delight. He touched his lips with his fingers, and threw a kiss to it. His sharp, sallow face suddenly flowered into smiles.

"Yes. What a woman! She has real intelligence," he exclaimed fervently.

Jose Medina was in the habit of losing his heart and keeping his head a good many times in an ordinary year.

"It's an extraordinary thing," Martin Hillyard remarked, "that however intelligent they are, not one of these young ladies can resist the temptation to have her portrait taken in Moorish dress at the photographer's in the Alhambra."

Jose Medina saw nothing at all grotesque or ridiculous in this particular foible.

"They make such charming pictures," he cried.

"And it is very useful for us, too," remarked Hillyard. "The photographer is a friend of mine."

Jose was still gazing at the photograph.

"Such a brain, my friend! She never told a story the second time differently, however emotional the moment. She never gave away a secret."

"She probably didn't know any," said Hillyard.

But Jose would not hear of such a reason.

"Oh, yes! She has great influence. She knows people in Berlin--great people. She is their friend, and I cannot wonder. What an intelligence!"

Martin Hillyard laughed.

"She seems to have fairly put it over you at any rate," he said. He was not alarmed at Jose Medina's fervour. For he knew that remarkable man's capacity for holding his tongue even in the wildest moments of his temporary pa.s.sions. But he took the photograph away from Medina and locked it up again. The rapturous reminiscences of Rosa Hahn's intelligence checked the flow of that story which was to lead him to B45.

"So you know about her?" Jose said with an envious eye upon the locked drawer.

"A little," said Martin Hillyard.

Rosa Hahn was a clerk in the office of the Hamburg-Amerika Line before the war, and in the Spanish Department. She was sent to Spain in the last days of July, 1914, upon Government work, and at a considerable salary, which she enjoyed. She seemed indeed to have done little else, and Berlin, after a year, began to complain. Berlin had a lower opinion of both her social position and her brains than Jose Medina had formed.

Berlin needed results, and failing to obtain them, proceeded to hint more and more definitely that Rosa had better return to her clerk's stool in Hamburg. Rosa, however, had been intelligent enough to make friends with one or two powerful Germans in Spain; and they pleaded for her with this much success. She was given another three months within which period she must really do something to justify her salary. So much Martin Hillyard already knew; he learnt now that Jose Medina had provided the great opportunity. To s.n.a.t.c.h him with his two hundred motor feluccas and his eighteen thousand men from the English--here was something really worth doing.

"What beats me," said Hillyard, "is why they didn't try to get at you before."

"They didn't," said Medina.

Rosa, it seemed, used the argument which is generally sound; that the old and simple tricks are the tricks which win. She discovered the hotel at which Jose Medina stayed in Madrid, and having discovered it she went to stay there herself. She took pains to become friendly with the manager and his staff, and by professing curiosity and interest in the famous personage, she made sure not only that she would have fore-warning of his arrival, but that Jose Medina himself would hear of a charming young lady to whom he appealed as a hero of romance. She knew Jose to be of a coming-on disposition--and the rest seemed easy. Only, she had not guarded against the workings of Chance.

The hotel was the Hotel de Napoli, not one of the modern palaces of cement and steel girders, built close to the Prado, but an old house near the Puerto del Sol, a place of lath and plaster walls and thin doors; so that you must not raise your voice unless you wish your affairs to become public property. To this house Jose Medina came as he had many times come before, and Chance willed that he should occupy the next room to that occupied by Rosa Hahn. It was the merest accident. It was the merest accident, too, that Jose Medina whilst he was unpacking his bag heard his name p.r.o.nounced in the next room. Jose Medina, with all his qualities, was of the peasant cla.s.s with much of the peasant mind. He was inquisitive, and he was suspicious. Let it be said in his defence that he had enemies enough ready to pull him down, not only, as we have seen, amongst his rivals on the coast, but here, amongst the Government officials of Madrid. It cost him a pretty penny annually to keep his balance on the tight-rope, as it was. He stepped noiselessly over to the door and listened. The voices were speaking in Spanish, one a woman's voice with a guttural accent.

"Rosa Hahn," said Hillyard as the story was told to him in the cabin of the yacht.

"The other a man's voice. But again it was a foreign voice, not a Spaniard's. But I could not distinguish the accent."

"Greek, do you think?" asked Hillyard. "There is a Levantine Greek high up in the councils of the Germans."

Jose Medina, however, did not know.

"Here were two foreigners talking about me, and fortunately in Spanish.

I was to arrive immediately; Rosa was to make my acquaintance. What my relations were with this man, Hillyard--yes, you came into the conversation, my friend, too--I was quickly to be persuaded to tell.

Oh--you have a saying--everything in your melon patch was lovely."

"Not for nothing has the American tourist come to Spain," Hillyard murmured.

"Then their voices dropped a little, and your B45 was mentioned--once or twice. And a name in connection with B45 once or twice. I did not understand what it was all about."

"But you remember the name!" Fairbairn exclaimed eagerly.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, what was it?"

It was again Fairbairn who spoke. Hillyard had not moved, nor did he even look up.

"It was Mario Escobar," said Jose Medina; and as he spoke he knew that the utterance of the name awakened no surprise in Martin Hillyard.

Hillyard filled his pipe from the tobacco tin, and lighted it before he spoke.

"Do you know anything of this Mario Escobar?" he asked, "you who know every one?"

Jose Medina shrugged his shoulders, and threw up his hands.

"There was some years ago a Mario Escobar at Alicante," and Jose Medina saw Hillyard's eyes open and fix themselves upon him with an unblinking steadiness. Just so Jose Medina imagined might some savage animal in a jungle survey the man who had stumbled upon his lair.

"That Mario Escobar, a penniless, shameless person, was in business with a German, the German Vice-Consul. He went from Alicante to London."

"Thank you," said Hillyard. He rose from his chair and went to the window. But he saw nothing of the deck outside, or the sea beyond. He saw a man at a supper party in London a year before the war began, betraying himself by foolish insistent questions uttered in fear lest his close intimacy with Germans in Alicante should be known.

"I have no doubt that Mario Escobar came definitely to England, long before the war, to spy," said Hillyard gravely. He returned to the table, and took up again one of the empty gla.s.s tubes.

"I wonder what he was to do with these."

Jose Medina had opened the door of the saloon once more. A beam of sunlight shot through the doorway, and enveloped Hillyard's arm and hand. The tiny slim phial glittered like silver; and to all of them in the cabin it became a sinister engine of destruction.

"That, as you say, is your affair. I must go," said Jose, and he shook hands with Hillyard and Fairbairn, and went out on to the deck. "_Hasta luego!_"

"_Hasta ahora!_" returned Hillyard; and Jose Medina walked down the steps of the ladder to his felucca. The blue sea widened between the two vessels; and in a week, Hillyard descended from a train on to the platform of the Quai D'Orsay station in Paris. He had the tubes in his luggage, and one box of them he took that morning to Commandant Marnier at his office on the left bank of the river with the letter which gave warning of their arrival.