The two men went down the stairs and into the street.  It was empty now and black, but at the far end, as at the end of a tunnel, the Rambla blazed and roared and the crowds swung past like a procession.

“It is best that we should separate here,” said Lopez Baeza, “if you have no further instructions.”

“Touching the matter of those ships,” Hillyard suggested.

“Senor Fairbairn has it in hand.”

“Good.  Then, my friend, I have no further instructions,” said Hillyard.  “I agree with you about Ramon.  I will go first.”

He shook hands with Baeza, crossed the road and disappeared into the mouthway of an alley which ran up the hill parallel to the Rambla.  The alley led into another side street, and turning to the right, Hillyard slipped out into the throng beneath the trees.  He sauntered, as idle and as curious as any in that broad walk.  He took a drink at a cafe, neither hiding himself unnaturally nor ostentatiously occupying a chair at the edge of the awning.  He sat there for half an hour.  But when he rose again he made sure that no one was loitering to watch his movements.  He sauntered up to the very end of the Rambla past the ice-cream kiosque.  The great Plaza spread in front of him, and at the corner across the road stood a double line of motor-cars, some for hire, others waiting for parties in the restaurants opposite.  He walked across the roadway and disappeared in between the motor-cars as if he intended to cross the Plaza by the footway to the Paseo de la Reforma.  A second later a motor-car shot out from the line and took the road to Tarragona.

Hillyard was inside the car.  The tall houses of the city gave place to villas draped in bougainvillea behind gardens of trees.  Then the villas ceased and the car sped across the flats of Llobegrat and climbed to the finest coast-road in the world.  It was a night for lovers.  A full moon, bright as silver, sailed in the sky; the broad, white road rose and dipped and wound past here and there a blue cottage, here and there a peasant mounted on his donkey and making his journey by night to escape the burning day.  Far below the sea spread out most gently murmuring, and across a great wide path of glittering jewels, now a sailing-ship glided like a bird, now the black funnels of a steamer showed.  So light was the wind that Hillyard could hear the kick of its screw, like the beating of some gigantic clock.  He took his hat from his head and threw wide open his thin coat.  After the heavy days of anxiety he felt a nimbleness of heart and spirit which set him in tune with the glory of that night.  Suspicions, vague and elusive, had for so long clustered about Jose Medina, and then had come the two categorical statements, dates and hours, chapter and verse!  He was still not sure, he declared to himself in warning.  But he was sure enough to risk the great move—­the move which he alone could make!  He should no doubt have been dreaming of Joan Whitworth and fitting her into the frame of that August night.  But he had not thought of her by one o’clock in the morning; and by one o’clock in the morning his motor-car had come to a stop on the deserted quay of Tarragona harbour under the stern of an English yacht.