nt 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 Cataluna
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-cafes, 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