n open telegram.

"You speak Spanish?" he panted.

"A little," said Dick. "French better."

"I have no French, senor," replied the sergeant, "But my business is not
so much with you as with this gentleman," he glanced at the telegram, "in
the grey coat with the fur collar, the grey cap, the goggles in a grey
felt mask, the small dark moustache, the grey buckskin gloves." (Carmona
had noticed everything.) "Our instructions are to prevent the Marques de
Casa Triana from going into Spain."

"Casa Triana? What do you mean?" cried Dick. Then he laughed. "Is the
person you're talking about a Spaniard?"

"He is, senor."

Dick laughed a great deal more. "Well, I guess you'll have to look
somewhere else. There's a mistake. The gentleman in the grey coat and all
the other grey things has hardly enough Spanish to know what you're
driving at."

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and looked determined. "There is no
mistake in my instructions, senor. I am sorry, but it is my duty to detain
that gentleman. If there is an error there will be apologies."

"I should say there jolly well was an error," sputtered Dick, in his wild
combination of Spanish and English and American. "George, show your card.
He thinks you're a Spaniard, who's 'wanted.' "

The gentleman in the grey coat showed the visiting cards of Mr. George
Smith, and the Spanish soldier examined them gloomily. "Anybody might have
these," said he, half to us, half to a group of his countrymen. "Senor, I
must reluctantly ask you to descend and to come with me. It will be much
better to do so quietly."

"Of all the monstrous indignities," shouted Dick. "I'm a newspaper
correspondent on a special detail. I'll wire the American minister in
Madrid, and the English Ambassador too. I'll--"

But the gentleman in the grey coat had obeyed the sergeant. He had also
taken off his goggles.

"It will be all right in a few hours, or a few days," said he in English.
"You must go on. Don't worry about me."

"Go on without you?" echoed Dick, breaking again into astonishing Spanish
for the benefit of the official. "Well, if you really don't mind, as I'm
in the dickens of a hurry. You can follow by train, you know, as soon as
you've proved to these blunderers that you're George Smith."

"If you are Senor George Smith, you will be free as soon as the photograph
of the Marques de Casa Triana has been sent on by the police at Madrid,"
said the sergeant. "If not--" he did not finish