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
_Senor_ 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 wo