“Now!” said Hillyard.  “There are reports.”

Fairbairn nodded grimly as he went to the safe and unlocked it.

“Pretty dangerous stuff,” he answered.

“Reliable?” asked Hillyard.

Fairbairn returned with some sheets of blue-lined paper written over with purple ink, and some rough diagrams.

“I am sure,” he replied.  “Not because I trust Juan de Maestre, but because he couldn’t have invented the information.  He hasn’t the knowledge.”

Lopez Baeza agreed.

“Juan de Maestre is keeping faith with us,” he said shortly, and, to the judgment of Lopez Baeza, Hillyard had learnt to incline a ready ear.

“This is the real thing, Hillyard,” said Fairbairn, pulling at his moustache.  “Look!”

He handed to Martin a chart.  The points of the compass were marked in a corner.  Certain courses and routes were given, and fixed lights indicated by which the vessel might be guided.  There was a number of patches as if to warn the navigator of shallows, and again a number of small black cubes and squares which seemed to declare the position of rocks.  There was no rough work in this chart.  It was elaborately and skilfully drawn, the work of an artist.

“This is a copy made by me.  Juan de Maestre left the original document with us for an hour,” said Fairbairn, and he allowed Hillyard to speculate for a few seconds upon the whereabouts of that dangerous and reef-strewn sea.  “It’s not a chart of any bay or water at all.  It’s a plan of Cardiff by night for the guidance of German airships.  Those patches are not shallows, but the loom in the sky of the furnaces.  The black spots are the munition factories.  Here are the docks,” he pointed with the tip of his pencil.  “The Jesus-Maria brought that back a week ago.  Let it get from here to Germany, as it will do, eh? and a Zeppelin coming across England on a favourable night could make things hum in Cardiff.”

Hillyard laid the sketch down and took another which Fairbairn held out to him.

“Do you see this?” Fairbairn continued.  “This gives the exact line of the nets between the English and the Irish coasts, and the exact points of latitude and longitude where they are broken for the passage of ships, and the exact number and armament of the trawlers which guard those points.”

Hillyard gazed closely at the chart.  It gave the positions clearly enough, but it was a roughly-made affair, smudged with dingy fingers and uneven in its drawing.  He laid it upon the table by the side of the map of Cardiff and compared one with the other.

“This,” he said, touching the roughly-drawn map of a section of the Channel, “this is the work of the ship’s captain?”

“Yes.”

“But what of this?” and Hillyard lifted again the elaborate chart of Cardiff by night.  “Some other hand drew this.”

Fairbairn agreed.

“Yes.  Here is the report which goes with the charts.  The chart of Cardiff was handed to the captain in an inn on shore.  It came from an unknown person, who is mentioned as B.45.”