“Commodore Graham?” she repeated with an air of perplexity, as though this was the first time she had ever heard the name.

Across her shoulder Hillyard looked into a broad room, where three other girls sat at desks, and against one wall stood a great bureau with many tiny drawers like pigeon-holes.  Several of these drawers stood open and disclosed cards standing on their edges and packed against each other.  Hillyard’s hopes revived.  Not for nothing had he sat from seven to ten in the office of a shipping agent at Alicante.  Here was a card-index, and of an amazing volume.  But his interlocutor still barred the way.

“Have you an appointment with Commodore Graham?” she asked, still with that suggestion that he had lunched too well and had lost his way.

“No.  But he sent for me across half the world.”

The girl raised a pair of steady grey eyes to his.

“Will you write your name here?”

She allowed him to pass and showed him some slips of paper on a table in the middle of the room.  Hillyard obeyed, and waited, and in a few moments she returned, and opened a door, crossed a tiny ante-room and knocked again.  Hillyard entered a room which surprised him, so greatly did its size and the wide outlook from its windows contrast with the dinginess of its approach.  A thin man with the face of a French abbe sat indolently twiddling his thumbs by the side of a big bureau.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Mr. Hillyard?”

“Yes.”

Commodore Graham nodded to the girl, and Hillyard heard the door close behind him.

“Won’t you sit down?  There are cigarettes beside you.  A match?  Here is one.  I hope that I didn’t bring you home before your time.”

“The season had ended,” replied Hillyard, who was in no mood to commit himself.  “In what way can I help you?”

“Bendish tells me that you know something of Spain.”

“Spain?” cried Hillyard in surprise.  “Spain means Madrid, Bilbao, and a host of places, and a host of people, politicians, merchants, farmers.  What should I know of them?”

“You were in Spain for some years.”

“Three,” replied Hillyard, “and for most of the three years picking up a living along the quays.  Oh, it’s not so difficult in Spain, especially in summer time.  Looking after a felucca while the crew drank in a cafe, holding on to a dinghy from a yacht and helping the ladies to step out, a little fishing here, smuggling a box of cigars past the customs officer there—­oh, it wasn’t so difficult.  You can sleep out in comfort.  I used to enjoy it.  There was a coil of rope on the quay at Tarragona; it made a fine bed.  Lord, I can feel it now, all round me as I curled up in it, and the stars overhead, seen out of a barrel, so to speak!”