"Yes, I do."
"Well, what was it?"
It was again Fairbairn who spoke. Hillyard had not moved, nor did he even look up.
"It was Mario Escobar," said José Medina; and as he spoke he knew that the utterance of the name awakened no surprise in Martin Hillyard. Hillyard filled his pipe from the tobacco tin, and lighted it before he spoke.
"Do you know anything of this Mario Escobar?" he asked, "you who know every one?"
José Medina shrugged his shoulders, and threw up his hands.
"There was some years ago a Mario Escobar at Alicante," and José Medina saw Hillyard's eyes open and fix themselves upon him with an unblinking steadiness. Just so José Medina imagined might some savage animal in a jungle survey the man who had stumbled upon his lair.
"That Mario Escobar, a penniless, shameless person, was in business with a German, the German Vice-Consul. He went from Alicante to London."
"Thank you," said Hillyard. He rose from his chair and went to the window. But he saw nothing of the deck outside, or the sea beyond. He saw a man at a supper party in London a year before the war began, betraying himself by foolish insistent questions uttered in fear lest his close intimacy with Germans in Alicante should be known.
"I have no doubt that Mario Escobar came definitely to England, long before the war, to spy," said Hillyard gravely. He returned to the table, and took up again one of the empty glass tubes.