ifferent 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 Jose
Medina's men, with Jose Medina's supplies, and that Jose 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. Jose 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 Jose Medina out of business, of course," he reflected. For
Jose 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 age