Our young friend is waiting for her to die, so that he may rush into the house, offer his condolences and present the undertaker's card." Hillyard left the youth to his gruesome sentry-go and turned back into the room.

A man of fifty, with a tawny moustache, a long and rather narrow face and eyeglasses, was sitting at an office table with some papers in front of him.
"How do you do, Fairbairn ?" Hillyard asked.
Fairbairn was a schoolmaster from the North of England, with a knowledge of the Spanish tongue, who had thrown up schoolmastering, prospects, everything, in October of 1914.
"Touching the matter of those ships," said Hillyard, sitting down opposite to Fairbairn.
Fairbairn grinned.
"It worked very well," said he, "so far." Hillyard turned towards Lopez and invited him to a seat.

"Let me hear everything," he said.
Spanish ships were running to England with the products of Cataluna and returning full of coal, and shipowners made their fortunes and wages ran high.

But not all of them were content.

Here and there the captains and the mates took with them in their cabin to England lists of questions thoughtfully compiled by German officers; and from what they saw in English harbours and on English seas and from what secret news was brought to them, they filled up answers to the questions and brought them back to the Germans in Spain.