“Well, I want you to find me a man like that—one who’s always hanging about the Square, and is likely to know others who do the same. Can you find me a man of that sort?”
“Certainly, miss, I can. I see what you’re after, and I should say the chap we call ‘the Spaniard’ is about what you want. He’s a bloke who goes about in a long cloak and a broad-brimmed felt hat—often not much else, I should say, barring the remains of a pair of trousers—he’s pretty nearly always about in the Square, and he’s always talking to anyone he can find to listen.”
Ellery broke in. “Can you find him for us now?”
The constable looked at the sergeant. “If the sergeant here will let me leave the station for half an hour, I expect I can,” he said.
The sergeant was duly placated, and the two set off with Constable Mulligan. He led them, not into the Square, but into the little alley behind St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. There he pointed to the bar of a rather disreputable-looking public-house. “You go in there,” he said to Ellery, “and ask if the Spaniard is there. They’d know him. If I were to go in, they’d shut up like a knife when you aren’t looking.”
Ellery went in and ordered a drink. A glance round the bar showed him that the Spaniard was not in the bar at the moment. He turned to the woman behind the bar counter and asked her if she knew where to find the Spaniard. The woman looked at him with an air of surprise; but she made no reply. Then she turned to a curtained door behind her, and spoke through it. “Alf,” she said, “come here a minute.”
Alf speedily appeared in his shirtsleeves—a portly, middle-aged man, rather stolid to look at, but with a pair of cunning little eyes that looked at you, not steadily, but with a succession of keen, quick glances. Ellery heard the woman whisper to him, “This gent here’s asking for the Spaniard.”
“And what might you be wanting with the Spaniard, mister?” asked Alf, leaning across the bar, and speaking confidentially almost into Ellery’s ear.
“Certainly nothing to his disadvantage. But I want to know something, and I think he may be able to tell me.”
The publican looked at him a trifle suspiciously. “Is the gentleman known to you, maybe?” he asked.
“No; or I could probably find him for myself. I thought you might know him.”
“Well, he ain’t here,” said Alf, apparently making up his mind to Ellery’s disadvantage. Ellery began to expostulate; but at that moment, through the same curtained door through which mine host had come, walked a quite unmistakable figure—a very tall, thin man, with perfectly white hair and beard, the latter cut to a fine point. The newcomer wore a long and very threadbare black cloak, now green with age, and he seemed just about to place upon his head a very wide-brimmed black—or rather greenish—felt hat, which Ellery thought of instinctively as a “sombrero.” In a fine, high-pitched voice, perfectly cultivated but a good deal affected, and with a curious intonation that seemed like the affectation of a foreign accent, he addressed the woman behind the bar. “Did I hear my name spoken among you?” he asked.
The woman turned to Alf, who shrugged his shoulders.
“Here he is,” he said to Ellery. “I suppose you’d better ask him what you want.”
Ellery put on his best manners. “Sir,” said he to the man called the Spaniard, “may I have the honour of a few words with you on a matter which concerns me very deeply, and you, I must admit, scarcely at all?”
The Spaniard bowed low. “The honour, sir,” he replied, “is with me. For, as the poet says, ‘Honoured is he to whom man speaks the things of his heart.’ ”
“We will call the honours easy, if you please. But I shall be very much obliged for a few words with you.”
“If it please you, then, let us take the air together. I can speak and listen better under the sky.”
“With pleasure; but just a word before we go. My friend, Miss Cowper, and the—gentleman who brought me to you are waiting outside. You will not mind if they accompany us?”
Ellery had some misgiving that, suddenly confronted with a policeman, the old “Spaniard” might reach the conclusion that he had been led into a trap, and refuse to speak.
“And to whom do I owe the honour of this introduction?”
“Well, to be frank, he is a policeman; but he is acting quite in a nonprofessional capacity.”
The old man hesitated a moment. Then he said only, “Let us go.”
Outside, Ellery’s fears were speedily removed. He saw Joan and the policeman waiting a few doors off. The Spaniard saw them too, and, at sight of Mulligan, his face lighted up with pleasure. He greeted Joan with a low bow, and then turned to Mulligan with another.
“Ah, my friend, it is you. As the poet says, ‘Even among the thorns the rose is sweet.’ You are not, I thank God, as others of your cloth.” Then he turned to Ellery. “Mr. Mulligan and I are old friends,” he said: “but it is not always so between me and the guardians of law and order, as you quaintly term them.”
“Yes,” said Mulligan, smiling. “The Spaniard and I have had many a good talk together. But you didn’t know, did you, father, that I’d tracked you here. I wouldn’t go in because I thought there might be others who wouldn’t be so pleased to see me.”
“As always, the soul of consideration. The mark, gentlemen, of true chivalry. I will requite you as best I can by any service that I can do to your friends.” And again he lifted his hat, and made a sweeping bow.
When Joan and Ellery talked the thing over afterwards, they remembered that their eyes had met at this moment, and they had much ado not to laugh outright. They
