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On the frontier, at Hendaye, a despatch was handed in to me through the carriage window. It was from Stearine, and contained these words, whose terrible significance I was designed to learn later—

‘United States warship Maine arrived harbour Havana.’

The agent of the Sugar Trust had been too careful to say more. But it was clear that he regarded this event as a move in the game played by the great exporting Trusts.

From the moment of our arrival in Madrid I was no longer able to keep a close watch on Kehler, though by a sort of tacit agreement we stayed at the same hotel. I found out that he was paying visits to the Provincials of the Jesuit and Franciscan Orders, and had been admitted as a visitor to one or two convents, and for a time I was tempted to relax my suspicions, and to think that the Bavarian was engaged in some Catholic espionage. These doubts were suddenly dissipated by my meeting him one day in the courtyard of the hotel attired in the habit of a priest—the dress of which he had been deprived on account of his youthful misconduct.