d stored there, and no
one but the keeper be the wiser. And it is true that the _Acquitania_ is
at this moment in this part of the Mediterranean steaming east for
Salonika with six thousand men on board. Let's trail our coat a bit!"
said Hillyard, and the captain with a laugh gave an order to the signal
boy by his side.

The boy ran aft and in a few seconds the red ensign fluttered up the
flagstaff, and drooped in the still air. But even that provocation
produced no result. For an hour and a half the _Dragonfly_ steamed
backwards and forwards in front of the cape.

"No good!" Hillyard at last admitted. "We'll get on to the
_Acquitania_, and advise her. Meanwhile, captain, we had better make for
Gibraltar and coal there."

Hillyard went to the wireless-room, and the yacht was put about for the
great scarped eastern face of the Rock.

"One of the blind alleys," said Hillyard, as he ate his breakfast in the
deck-saloon. "Next time perhaps we'll have better luck. Something'll
turn up for sure."

Something was always turning up in those days, and the yacht had not
indeed got its coal on board in Gibraltar harbour when a message came
which sent Hillyard in a rush by train through Madrid to Barcelona. He
reached Barcelona at half past nine in the morning, took his breakfast
by the window of the smaller dining-room in the hotel at the corner of
the Plaza Cataluna, and by eleven was seated in a flat in one of the
neighbouring streets. The flat was occupied by Lopez Baeza who turned
from the window to greet him.

"I was not followed," said Hillyard as he put down his hat and stick.
Habit had bred in him a vigilance, or rather an instinct which quickly
made him aware of any who shadowed him.

"No, that is true," said Baeza, who had been watching Hillyard's
approach from the window.

"But I should like to know who our young friend is on the kerb opposite,
and why he is standing sentinel."

Lopez Baeza laughed.

"He is the sign and token of the commercial activity of Spain."

From behind the curtains, stretched across the window, both now looked
down into the street. A youth in a grey suit and a pair of
orange-coloured buttoned boots loitered backwards and forwards over
about six yards of footwalk; now he smoked a cigarette, now he leaned
against a tree and idly surveyed the passers by. He apparently had
nothing whatever to do. But he did not move outside the narrow limits of
his promenade. Consequently he had somethi