Three minutes the eclipse lasted; then, as suddenly as it began, it ended.
A blazing, blinding wave of light flooded the world, and the stars that had studded the sky went out.
"Yes--yes, I know I'm a fool." Grayson's face was bathed in perspiration. "It's--it's my temperament. But never again! It's an experience."
He shook his head, as his trembling legs carried him down the hillside.
"You're all right," said Baggin reassuringly. "I'll admit that it was a bit spooky." He tapped his pocket mechanically, and stopped dead.
"Gone!" he gasped, and dived into his pocket. "My memorandum book!" Suddenly he grasped his companion and shook him savagely.
"It was you, damn you! I felt you pawing over me in the dark."
Grayson looked at him good-naturedly. "Don't be an ass, Baggin," he said. "What would I do with your code when I had it? God knows I don't want the responsibility of this business!"
Baggin released him sullenly. "I--I beg pardon, Grayson. But I did feel hands upon me in the darkness, and thought at the time it was you. I daresay it was that accursed Spaniard."
He looked about him eagerly. The crowd was dispersing in all directions. The stranger was not to be seen.
"Thank Heaven, the thing was in cipher. He won't be able to make anything of it, anyway. He probably thought it was a fat wallet full of money, and will be desperately disappointed." He laughed mirthlessly. Plainly he was greatly disturbed.
Grayson observed him with a malicious satisfaction. "You shouldn't carry valuables around in a place like this," he remarked gravely.
The two men descended the hill and made their way to their hotel.
The stranger went into the cathedral, and took from the pocket of his mantle a small memorandum book.
"'Men babble away their secrets, and whisper away their lives,'" he murmured with a smile. "Never was my friend Baggin more apropos."
He set to work upon the cipher. It was very quiet in the cathedral.
That evening, at ten o'clock, the trim serving-maid tapped lightly at the sitting-room door of the two American gentlemen, and tendered Baggin, who answered it, a card.
"Tell him to come up," he said in a surly voice. He flipped the bit of pasteboard across to his friend. "Poltavo! What the devil is he doing in this part of the world? No good, I'll be bound."