The heat was stifling in the Gran Ancora at Barcelona, an obscure but grandiloquently named café of more than doubtful reputation. At dilapidated tables in the long apartment which served as a saloon groups of rough-looking men were drinking steadily. The fumes of strong tobacco poisoned the heavy atmosphere, flies swarmed over everything, the air was full of the reek of stale drink and unwashed humanity.
Though it was but early evening the ill-omened place was already filling up. It was a notorious haunt of betting men and some of the worst characters of the town, frequented by desperadoes who were ready to undertake any deed of violence if it offered the promise of plunder. The swarms of anarchists, who are the curse of Spain, found there a ready welcome and congenial companionship.
At a table at one end of the long room, sat a solitary individual who was reading the “Diario,” an anarchist journal devoted to the preaching of doctrine of the most revolutionary type. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him, though now and again curious glances were directed towards him. He took no notice of the hubbub around him, but went on calmly reading his paper and sipping slowly at a glass of the villainous wine which seemed to be the favourite beverage of the habitués of the house.
The stranger was no other than Dick Manton. He had come to Barcelona on the trail of a gang of international crooks who had got away with a hundred thousand francs by a clever bank swindle in Paris. Had his identity been suspected his life in that haunt of depravity would not have been worth five minutes’ purchase.
But he sat there undisturbed, apparently oblivious of what was going on around him, but in reality keenly on the alert and with one hand close to the butt of the heavy revolver which, as he well knew, he might be called upon to use at any moment in the deadliest earnest.
Manton stiffened suddenly as his eye fell on the queer jumble of figures quoted above. They were buried away in a mass of advertisements and might well be overlooked by the casual reader. As Dick well knew, the “Diario” was used for all kinds of queer communications to all kinds of queer people, and he was attracted by the hint of mystery, a lure which he could never resist. The jumble of figures fascinated him. He had a strange feeling that it would be well worth while to try to decipher the weird cryptogram. But he knew better than to try to do so there. It was not healthy to try in public to pry into the secrets of the underworld of Barcelona.
Dick Manton had had a strange and adventurous career. But as he gazed at the odd announcement, he had a premonition that he was on the edge of a mystery stranger than anything that he had so far encountered.
Having read the queer cryptogram over and over again, Dick slipped the paper into his pocket.
Presently he finished his wine and sauntered out, with an uneasy feeling that made him wonder whether he would reach the door without a bullet in his back. He got out in safety, however, and once clear of the doubtful neighbourhood of the café, made his way swiftly to his rooms at the “Hôtel Falcon.”