A. E. W. Mason

“ Hillyard dropped his voice to a whisper and returned to the subject of his thoughts.
"You see, my friend, it is of so much importance that we should make no mistake here."
"Claro!" returned Lopez Baeza. "But listen to me, señor. You know that our banks are behind the times and our post offices not greatly trusted. We have therefore a class of messengers."
Hillyard nodded.
"I know of them."
"Good. They are not educated. Most of them can neither read nor write. They are simply peasants. ”

“ There was but one explanation in Hillyard's opinion.
"The submarines come out of Pola. When they reach the line between the Balearics and the Spanish coast, they have oil for ten days' cruising, and then return to their base," he argued.
Now, if a submarine had been provisioned by José Medina in a creek of Mallorca, the ten days' cruise would be extended to three weeks. This had never happened. Moreover, the date fixed by Pontiana Tabor happened to fall precisely in the middle of one of those periods of three weeks during which the terror did not haunt those seas. ”

“ The second letter, which had brought Hillyard post-haste off the sea into Barcelona, was only three days old. Once more Pontiana Tabor had been the bearer of bad news. José Medina had been seen entering the German Consulate in Barcelona, between eleven and twelve o'clock of the morning of August 22nd.
Hillyard was greatly troubled by these two letters.
"We can put José Medina out of business, of course," he reflected. For José Medina's tobacco factories were built at a free port in French territory. "But I want the man for my friend." ”

“ Hillyard was speculating for the twentieth time on these important matters with a vague hope that one day the door of the sedan chair would open, when another door opened—the door of the restaurant. A sharp-visaged man with a bald forehead, a clerk, one would say, or a commercial traveller, looked round the room and went forward to Hillyard's table. ”

“ 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 Cataluña 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. ”

“ He put the letters back in his pocket and paid his bill. As he went out of the Maison Doree, he felt in the right-hand pocket of his jacket to make sure that a little deadly life preserver lay ready to his hand. ”