“For a month with a tourist who dug for ancient pottery.”

Graham swung round to his bureau and drummed with the tips of his fingers upon the leather pad.  He made no sign which could indicate whether he was satisfied or no.  He lit a cigarette and handed the box to Hillyard.

“Did you ever come across a man called Jose Medina?”

Eleven years had passed since the strange days in Spain, and those eleven years not without their sharp contrasts and full hours.  Hillyard’s act of memory was the making of a picture.  One by one he called up the chain of coast cities wherein he had wandered.  Malaga, with its brown cathedral; Almeria and its ancient castle and bright blue-painted houses glowing against the brown and barren hills; Aguilas, with its islets; Cartagena, Gandia, Alicante of the palms; Valencia—­and under the trees and on the quays, the boatmen and the captains and the resplendent officials whom he had known!  They took shape before him and assumed their names.  He dived amongst them for one Jose Medina.

“Yes,” he replied at last, “there was a Jose Medina.  He was a young peasant of Mallorca.  He always said jo for yo.”

Graham’s eyes brightened and his lips twitched to a smile.  He glanced aside to his bureau, whereon lay a letter written by Paul Bendish at Oxford.

“He probably has a larger acquaintance with the queer birds of the Mediterranean ports than any one else in England.  But he does not seem to be aware of it.  But if you persist in sitting quiet his knowledge will trickle out.”

Commodore Graham persisted, and facts concerning Jose Medina began to trickle out.  Jose’s father had left him, the result of a Spanish peasant’s thrift, a couple of thousand pesetas.  With this Jose Medina had gone to Gibraltar, where he bought a felucca, with a native of Gibraltar as its nominal owner; so that Jose Medina might fly the flag of Britain and sleep more surely for its protection.  At Gibraltar, with what was left of his two thousand pesetas and the credit which his manner gained him, he secured a cargo of tobacco.

“Gibraltar’s a free port, you see,” said Hillyard.  “Jose ran the cargo along the coast to Benicassim, a little watering-place with a good beach about thirty kilometres east of Valencia.  He ran the felucca ashore one dark night.”  Suddenly he stopped and smiled to himself.  “I expect Jose Medina’s in prison now.”

“On the contrary,” said Graham, “he’s a millionaire.”

Hillyard stared.  Then he laughed.

“Well, those were the two alternatives for Jose Medina.  But I am judging by one night’s experience.  I never saw him again.”

Commodore Graham touched with his heel a bell by the leg of his bureau.  The bell did not ring, but displaced a tiny shutter in front of the desk of his secretary in the ante-room; and Hillyard had hardly ended when the girl was in the room and announced: 

“Admiral Carstairs.”