more definitely that Rosa had better return to her clerk's
stool in Hamburg. Rosa, however, had been intelligent enough to make
friends with one or two powerful Germans in Spain; and they pleaded for
her with this much success. She was given another three months within
which period she must really do something to justify her salary. So much
Martin Hillyard already knew; he learnt now that Jose Medina had
provided the great opportunity. To snatch him with his two hundred motor
feluccas and his eighteen thousand men from the English--here was
something really worth doing.

"What beats me," said Hillyard, "is why they didn't try to get at you
before."

"They didn't," said Medina.

Rosa, it seemed, used the argument which is generally sound; that the
old and simple tricks are the tricks which win. She discovered the hotel
at which Jose Medina stayed in Madrid, and having discovered it she went
to stay there herself. She took pains to become friendly with the
manager and his staff, and by professing curiosity and interest in the
famous personage, she made sure not only that she would have
fore-warning of his arrival, but that Jose Medina himself would hear of
a charming young lady to whom he appealed as a hero of romance. She knew
Jose to be of a coming-on disposition--and the rest seemed easy. Only,
she had not guarded against the workings of Chance.

The hotel was the Hotel de Napoli, not one of the modern palaces of
cement and steel girders, built close to the Prado, but an old house
near the Puerto del Sol, a place of lath and plaster walls and thin
doors; so that you must not raise your voice unless you wish your
affairs to become public property. To this house Jose Medina came as he
had many times come before, and Chance willed that he should occupy the
next room to that occupied by Rosa Hahn. It was the merest accident. It
was the merest accident, too, that Jose Medina whilst he was unpacking
his bag heard his name pronounced in the next room. Jose Medina, with
all his qualities, was of the peasant class with much of the peasant
mind. He was inquisitive, and he was suspicious. Let it be said in his
defence that he had enemies enough ready to pull him down, not only, as
we have seen, amongst his rivals on the coast, but here, amongst the
Government officials of Madrid. It cost him a pretty penny annually to
keep his balance on the tight-rope, as it was. He stepped noiselessly
over to the door and listened. The voic