"No," she said, rising to her feet. "No doubt I can wait for a fortnight."
"That's right, Olivia," I said. "I will arrange a plan. Meanwhile, where can I hear from you and you from me? It will not do for us to meet too often. Have you friends who will be staunch?"
"I wonder," she said slowly. "Enrique Gimeno and his wife, perhaps."
"We will not strain their friendship very much. But we can meet at their house. You can leave a letter for me there, perhaps, and I one for you."
Enrique Gimeno was a Spanish merchant and a gentleman. So far, I felt sure, we could trust him. There was one other man in Santa Paula on whom I could rely, the agent of the steamship company to which the Ariadne belonged. I rang him up on the telephone that afternoon and arranged a meeting after dark in a back room of that very inferior hotel in the lower town where for some weeks I had lived upon credit. The agent, a solid man with business interests of his own in Maldivia, listened to my story without a word of interruption. Then he said:
"There are four things I can do for you, and no more. In the first place, I can receive here the lady's luggage in small parcels and put it together for her. In the second, I can guarantee that the Ariadne shall not put into Las Cuevas until dusk, and shall leave the same night. In the third, I will have every bale of cargo already loaded into her before the passenger train comes alongside from Santa Paula. And in the fourth, I will arrange that the Ariadne shall put to sea the moment the last of her passengers has crossed the gangway. The rest you must do for yourself."
"Thank you," said I. "That's a great deal."
But the confidence was all in my voice and none of it at all in my heart. I went back to Juan Ballester and tried persuasion with him.
"I have seen Olivia Calavera this afternoon," I said to him.
"I know," said he calmly.