“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 voices were speaking in Spanish, one a woman’s voice with a guttural accent.

“Rosa Hahn,” said Hillyard as the story was told to him in the cabin of the yacht.

“The other a man’s voice.  But again it was a foreign voice, not a Spaniard’s.  But I could not distinguish the accent.”

“Greek, do you think?” asked Hillyard.  “There is a Levantine Greek high up in the councils of the Germans.”

Jose Medina, however, did not know.

“Here were two foreigners talking about me, and fortunately in Spanish.  I was to arrive immediately; Rosa was to make my acquaintance.  What my relations were with this man, Hillyard—­yes, you came into the conversation, my friend, too—­I was quickly to be persuaded to tell.  Oh—­you have a saying—­everything in your melon patch was lovely.”

“Not for nothing has the American tourist come to Spain,” Hillyard murmured.

“Then their voices dropped a little, and your B45 was mentioned—­once or twice.  And a name in connection with B45 once or twice.  I did not understand what it was all about.”