Watched by the eyes of the other men who had accompanied them, Tom and his cousin went off with their companion and were soon within the city, for the place had opened on the arrival of the British. Plunging into a side street, they wended their way towards the lower quarters of the city and were soon threading narrow alleys with noisome slums on either hand. Then their guide turned into a doorway and tapped three times sharply. Once more he gave his signal. Scurrying feet were heard. Stairs groaned and squeaked beneath a descending weight. The door was dragged open on rusty hinges. "Enter--how many?" "Three." "Then enter." Led by the one who had opened the door, and next by the rascally muleteer with whom they had scraped an acquaintance, Tom and his cousin entered the narrow, dark passage. They climbed the same groaning, squeaking flight of stairs, and then plunged into a room but dimly lighted. Ten men were present, a full ten, seated about a rickety table. Who were they? Conspirators? Yes, without doubt. Was José there? Impossible to say. Then any other they could recognize? No--yes. Tom's eyes pierced the flimsy disguise of one of the men present. It was the selfsame rascal captured outside Ciudad Rodrigo, whom he had impersonated, a spy then, and one now, one, moreover, whose sharp eyes might easily penetrate his own disguise and bring a hornet's nest about him. "But it's duty," he murmured softly to himself, as he took a seat. "Wellington's orders must be obeyed. I'm here to unravel a plot and make an end of a set of ruffians who are a nuisance and a danger to my countrymen." Yes, it was duty. But the risk! Tom and his cousin had still to fathom its depth, had still to face the consequences of this rash visit. CHAPTER XVIII The Conspirators' Den Imagine a low-ceilinged room, the whitening long since gone a dull smoke colour, cobwebs in the corner, dust on every angle and ridge, and a floor innocent of scrubbing-brush for many a long day. Imagine an atmosphere charged with pungent smoke from the pipes and cigarettes of ten conspirators, smoke generated by tobacco of the coarsest and foulest. Add to that the nauseating fumes of an oil lamp, trimmed perhaps a month before, flickering, red, and smoky. Then picture the forms and faces of those ten conspirators gathered about a huge, rickety table, forms of small proportion for the most part, slim and lithe as becomes the young man of Spain, but alternated in the case of two at least by the grossest stoutness. Double chins were owned by that more aged couple. Their faces were masked by bushy eyebrow, and fierce moustaches, that curled upwards, while their chins were clad and obscured by black beards of a week's growth. For the rest, they were mostly clean-shaven, hawk-eyed, keen, blinking at the newcomers through the smoke which filled the chamber.