Slipping from the station, I hurried across to the Place du Pont, where I knew there was a public telephone. I knew, of course, the password which "cleared the lines" for official messages, and in less than ten minutes I was in communication with Armand Hecq, at his house at St Germain, outside Paris. To him I briefly explained how matters stood. "I quite understand, Sant," he said. "Leave matters to me and continue your journey. _Bon voyage_! I shall read the _Matin_ every day." Then I rang off and hurried back to the station, just in time to catch the train as it drew out for the "Cote d'Argent," "the Silver Coast," as the French call that beautiful Biscayan seashore between the estuary of the Gironde and the golden sands of Spain. Through the miles of flat pine woods of that lovely marsh country called the Landes, where the shepherds stride on their high stilts and watch the trains go by, we sped ever south, by way of the ancient town of Dax and on to sun-blanched Bayonne. Now we were rapidly approaching the Spanish frontier, and I wondered what was transpiring between Hecq, in Paris, and the officials at Hendaye, the last French station, where the agents of police were stationed to prevent German spies from entering France by that particular back door. I was soon to learn that Hecq had not been idle. Late in the afternoon the train pulled up at Hendaye, and, as it seemed to me, had hardly halted at the platform when I caught sight of my shabby little man being escorted from the station in the relentless grip of a couple of stalwart French gendarmes. Evidently Hecq was taking no chances, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the removal of my incubus. It turned out later that the shabby little man was a clever German spy, and, of course, he paid the invariable penalty. Very soon the train moved across the long bridge over the river to Irun, and beyond. Thus we arrived at length at San Sebastian, the Brighton of Spain, at that moment in the full height of the sea-bathing season, and crowded with a motley assembly of Europeans of all nationalities, with, of course, a liberal sprinkling of desperate adventurers ever on the look-out for any crooked undertaking that promised plunder and profit.