rt which goes with the charts. The chart of
Cardiff was handed to the captain in an inn on shore. It came from an
unknown person, who is mentioned as B.45."

Hillyard seized upon the report and read it through, and then the others
upon the top of that. Cloth, saddlery, equipment of various kinds were
needed in England, and a great sea-borne trade had sprung up between the
two countries, so that ships constantly went to and fro. In more than
one of these reports the hieroglyph B.45 appeared. But never a hint
which could lead to his detection--never anything personal, not a clue
to his age, his business, his appearance, even his abode--nothing but
this baffling symbol B.45.

"You have cabled all this home, of course," Hillyard observed to
Fairbairn.

"Yes. They know nothing of the B.45. They are very anxious for any
details."

"He seems to be a sort of letter-box," said Hillyard, "a centre-point
for the gathering in of information."

Fairbairn shook his head.

"He is more active than that," he returned, and he pointed to a passage
here and there, which bore him out. It was the first time that Martin
Hillyard had come across this symbol, and he was utterly at a loss to
conjecture the kind of man the symbol hid. He might be quite obscure,
the tenant of some suburban shop, or, again, quite prominent in the
public eye, the owner of a fine house, and generous in charities; he
might be of any nationality. But there he was, somewhere under the
oak-trees of England, doing his secret, mean work for the ruin of the
country. Hillyard dreamed that night of B.45. He saw him in his dreams,
an elusive figure without a face, moving swiftly wherever people were
gathered together, travelling in crowded trains, sitting at the
dinner-tables of the great, lurking at the corners of poor tenements.
Hillyard hunted him, saw him deftly pocket a letter which a passing
stranger as deftly handed him, or exchange some whispered words with
another who walked for a few paces without recognition by his side, but
though he hurried round corners to get in front of him and snatch a
glance at his face, he could never come up with him. He waked with the
sunlight pouring in between the lattices of his shutters from the Plaza
Cataluna, tired and unrefreshed. B.45! B.45! He was like some figure
from a child's story-book! Some figure made up of tins and sticks and
endowed with malevolent life. B.45. London asked news of him, and he
stalked through London