Absorbed by these thoughts he sat through dinner unobservant of his few neighbours at the long table. He was therefore surprised when, as he stood in the stone hall, lighting his cigar, a friendly hand was clapped down upon his shoulder, and an affable voice remarked:--
"Aha, dear friend! Finished the little job at Algeciras, I saw. What are you doing at Ronda?"
"What are you?" asked Charnock, as he faced the irrepressible Major Wilbraham.
"Trying to make seven hundred per annum into a thousand. You see I have no secrets. Now confidence for confidence, eh, dear friend?" and his eyes drew cunningly together behind the glowing end of his cigar.
"I am afraid that I must leave you to guess."
"Guessing's not very sociable work."
"Perhaps that's why I am given to it," said Charnock, and he walked between the stone columns and up the broad staircase.
The Major looked after him without the slightest resentment.
"Slipped up that time, Ambrose, my lad," he said to himself, and sauntered cheerfully out of the hotel.
Five minutes later Charnock passed through the square at a quick walk. Wilbraham was meditating a translation of the Carmen Sæculare, but business habits prevailed with him. He thrust the worn little Horace into his breast-pocket and followed Charnock at a safe distance. By means of a skill acquired by much practice, he walked very swiftly and yet retained the indifferent air of a loiterer. There was another picture of the tracker and the tracked to be seen that evening, but in Ronda instead of Tangier, and Charnock was unable to compare it with its companion picture, since, in this case, he was the tracked. The two men passed down the hill to the bridge. Charnock stopped for a little and stood looking over the parapet to the water two hundred and fifty feet below, which was just visible through the gathering darkness like a ridge of snow on black soil. Wilbraham halted at the end of the bridge. It seemed that Charnock was merely taking a stroll. He had himself, however, nothing better to do at the moment. He waited and repeated a stanza of his translation to the rhythm of the torrent, and was not displeased. Charnock moved on across the bridge, across the Plaza on the farther side of the bridge, up a street until he came to an old Moorish house that showed a blank yellow wall to the street and a heavy walnut door encrusted with copper nails.