Yet labouring under my peculiar disadvantage, the task appeared a hopelessly impossible one.
As I went down the gang-plank and ranged up against Sadi's elbow, walking with him past the wine casks and other litter on Palma quay, it seemed to me that after all I should have to accept the risk and recruit this companion's aid. But such a decision was far too momentous to be hurriedly jumped at. The Recipe was safely locked in the yellow-green film. To most of the world its very existence was unknown, and I did not think that either Haigh or Weems or Cospatric would ever guess the manner in which it had been carried off and transferred to an invisible shape. Yes, the dark slide and its contents seemed safe in my possession, and as we entered the sacking-floored carriage that was to take us up to our Fonda, I registered a resolve concerning it. Pace accidents, I would cudgel my own resources for one entire year before I gave in and sought external aid.
At the Fonda de Mallorca I took, in Spanish fashion, a three-roomed suite, and for one entire day did not move out of their whitewashed fastnesses.
I sat thinking, thinking, and thinking, and felt my brain grow duller with every effort.
"This will not do," I told myself. "I am used to fresh air, and sunshine, and the sound of voices, and I must live amongst all these as usual if I am to puzzle out this riddle. The answer, the key, if it comes at all, will arrive in a snap and a sudden, and won't be got at by tedious pondering in an uncomfortable hermitage."
So the next morning I spent on the roof chatting with a girl who was hanging out clothes to dry on the roof adjoining, sniffing the scent of the oranges which came from a roof-garden across the street, toasting myself under the hot sun, and getting fanned by the sweet sea-air that poured up over the housetops from the curved bay beyond.
A bell clanged below, and I went down the steps to luncheon. The landlord, according to his wont with strangers who were entered as Señor and not as Don, intended that I should join the drummers' mess; but I was in no particular mood for that racy assembly just then, and bade Sadi take me to the dining-room at the other end of the house, where I sat down amongst garrison officers, proprietors come in from the country, and members of that bachelor fraternity which lived at the club opposite, and had their two principal daily meals here. They all knew one another, and had their well-worn cycle of conversation. They were tolerably cultured men, who rose superior to patois, and spoke pure and beautiful Castilian.
No one addressed me, and I did not open my mouth for speech. Probably it never dawned upon them that I understood a word of their tongue. We Anglo-Saxons abroad have not a reputation for being polyglot, and I never advertise my own small linguistic attainments unless specially called upon to do so. I do not care particularly for the trouble of talking myself, and one scores sometimes by a taste for silence. I made rather a good point that way once in a certain Genovese caffè.
When that desayuno had progressed as far as cold pickled tunny, which came as a fourth course, we had an addition to the party. There was a light pattering of feet along the tiles to the doorway, and I felt the men around me bow—as they bowed to each newcomer. I joined them in the salute, and heard with surprise, as the fresh arrival went round by the table-head, the rustle of skirts—of tweed skirts, or else of rough serge, I could not be certain which.
She took a seat opposite to me. The waiter placed before her a basin of soup. It was a Mallorquin soup, which consisted for the most part of slices of bread and a few slips of greens soaked in a very thin stock, with an egg broken over the whole so that the boiling mixture poached it lightly. Also there was a little oil added—native rancid oil. This sounds very nasty, but like the taste for olives, if a taste for that soup is once developed, it fascinates. Myself, I like this soup. The woman opposite did not. She told the waiter to take it away, naming it by its proper Mallorquin name.