“Yes,” said Appleby.
“Then it would be a kindness if you would hand this letter to the captain to post in America,” he said. “It is of some importance to the Señor Harding and others.”
“With pleasure, but why not post it here?”
The banker laid his hand on Appleby’s shoulder, and shook his head significantly. “One does not trust anything of importance to the post just now,” he said. “This is an affair in which the greatest discretion is necessary. When one puts anything he does not wish the administration to know in a letter he burns the blotting paper.”
Appleby was not altogether astonished, but he took the packet the banker handed him; and when they shook hands the latter once more glanced at him warningly.
“The discretion!” he said. “You will remember—the discretion.”
[XIII — THE SECOND ATTEMPT]
IT was at a brisk walk Appleby left the banker’s house, but he stopped a few minutes later where several streets branched off from a little plaza. He had some trifling business with a tobacco merchant who lived in one of them, but he decided after a moment’s reflection that it was scarcely likely he would find the man, who probably spent the evenings at a café, at home just then. Appleby had, however, stopped somewhat suddenly, and noticed that the footsteps he had heard behind him also ceased a second or two later. This, he surmised, had in all probability no special significance; but he raised his hand to an inner pocket where the letter the banker had given him lay. It was evidently of some importance, and he remembered that it was not money the man he had surprised at the hacienda was in search of.
As it happened he carried another letter, which he meant to ask somebody at the “Four Nations” to post. It was of very little consequence, and contained only a list of American tools and machinery which Harding dealt in, and Appleby smiled as he slipped it into the lower pocket of his jacket. Then he took out his cigar-case and slowly lighted a cigar, so that anybody who might be watching him should find a motive for his delay. He looked about him cautiously as he did so.
The plaza was small and dark, though a thin crescent moon was just rising over the clustering roofs. Its faint light silvered the higher portions of the two square church towers that rose blackly against the velvety indigo with one great star between them, but the rest of the building, which was the one Nettie Harding had found shelter in, was blurred and shadowy. Beyond it a few lights blinked in the calle he had just passed through, but they only intensified the darkness of the narrow gap between the flat-roofed houses, and—for it was getting late—the street seemed utterly silent. Yet Appleby had certainly heard footsteps, and no closing of a door to account for their cessation. The houses were large in that vicinity, and built, for the most part, round a patio, the outer door of which not infrequently consisted of a heavy iron grille which could scarcely be closed noiselessly. In front of him two streets branched off, one broad and well paved, the other narrow and very dark. The latter, however, led straight to the “Four Nations,” past the carniceria, or butchery, and two or three of the little wine-shops of shady repute which are usually to be found close to the principal church in a Spanish town. Here and there a blink of light streamed out from the open lattice of one of them.