ng to do.

"Yes," continued Baeza with a chuckle, "he is a proof of our initiative.
I thought as you do three days ago. For it is just three days since he
took his stand there. But he is not watching this flat. He is not
concerned with us at all. He is an undertaker's tout. In the house
opposite to us a woman is lying very ill. Our young friend is waiting
for her to die, so that he may rush into the house, offer his
condolences and present the undertaker's card."

Hillyard left the youth to his gruesome sentry-go and turned back into
the room. A man of fifty, with a tawny moustache, a long and rather
narrow face and eyeglasses, was sitting at an office table with some
papers in front of him.

"How do you do, Fairbairn?" Hillyard asked.

Fairbairn was a schoolmaster from the North of England, with a knowledge
of the Spanish tongue, who had thrown up schoolmastering, prospects,
everything, in October of 1914.

"Touching the matter of those ships," said Hillyard, sitting down
opposite to Fairbairn.

Fairbairn grinned.

"It worked very well," said he, "so far."

Hillyard turned towards Lopez and invited him to a seat. "Let me hear
everything," he said.

Spanish ships were running to England with the products of Cataluna and
returning full of coal, and shipowners made their fortunes and wages ran
high. But not all of them were content. Here and there the captains and
the mates took with them in their cabin to England lists of questions
thoughtfully compiled by German officers; and from what they saw in
English harbours and on English seas and from what secret news was
brought to them, they filled up answers to the questions and brought
them back to the Germans in Spain. So much Hillyard already knew.

"A pilot, Juan de Maestre, went on board the ships, collected the
answers, made a report and took it up to the German headquarters here.
That Ramon Castillo found out," said Fairbairn. "Steps were taken with
the crew. The ships would be placed on the black list. There would be no
coal for them. They must be laid up and the crews dismissed. The crew of
the _Saragossa_ grasped the position, and the next time Juan de Maestre
stepped on board he was invited to the forecastle, thumped, dropped
overboard into the salubrious waters of the dock and left to swim
ashore. Juan de Maestre has had enough. He won't go near the Germans any
more. He is in a condition of extreme terror and neutrality. Oh, he's
wonderfully neutral j