“The execution of Quesada has put an end to the whole wicked question.  So long as the offender was only put in prison with the certainty of release at the end of the war, whilst his family lived comfortably on German money, the game went merrily on.  But the return of the “Mondragon,” minus her executed mate, has altered the whole position.  Juan de Maestre has nothing whatever to do nowadays.”

Hillyard smiled with contentment.  He could understand a German going to any lengths for Germany.  He was prepared to do the same himself for his country.  But when a neutral under the cloak of his neutrality meddles in this stupendous conflict for cash, for his thirty miserable pieces of silver, he could feel no inclination of mercy.

“Let the neutrals keep out!” he murmured.  “This is not their affair.  Let them hold their tongues and go about their own business!”

He received Fairbairn’s letter in the beginning of the year 1916.  He was still no nearer at that date to the discovery of B.45; nor were they any better informed in London.  Hillyard could only wait upon Chance to slip a clue into his hand.

CHAPTER XV

IN A SLEEPING-CAR

The night express from Paris to Narbonne and the Spanish frontier was due to leave the Quai d’Orsay station at ten.  But three-quarters of an hour before that time the platform was already crowded, and many of the seats occupied.  Hillyard walked down the steps a little before half-past nine with the latest of the evening papers in his hand.

“You have engaged your seat, monsieur,” the porter asked, who was carrying Hillyard’s kit-bag.

“Yes,” said Martin absently.  He was thinking that on the boulevards the newsboys might now be crying a later edition of the papers than that which he held, an edition with still more details.  He saw them surrounded in the darkened street by quiet, anxious groups.

“Will you give me your ticket, monsieur?” the porter continued, and as Hillyard looked at him vacantly, “the ticket for your seat.”

Hillyard roused himself.

“I beg your pardon.  I have a compartment in the sleeping-car, numbers eleven and twelve.”

Amongst many old principles of which Martin Hillyard had first learned the wisdom during these last years, none had sunk deeper than this—­that the head of an organisation cannot do the work of any of its members and hope that the machine will run smoothly.  His was the task of supervision and ultimate direction.  He held himself at the beck and call of those who worked under him.  He responded to their summons.  And it was in response to a very urgent summons from Fairbairn that he had hurried the completion of certain arrangements with the French authorities in Paris and was now returning to the south!  But he was going very reluctantly.