"There is," said Haigh dryly; "but I think we can make bold to leave that out of the calculations. The odds are piled up star-high, as it is, against Mr. Spectacles having a confidential agent here at all whom he would be inclined to trust with such a job. But when you suppose that the pair of them have a ready-arranged cipher in full working order, why, then, infinity is a small figure for the chances against it. Cabling is out of the question, old chappie. In fact, set alongside of that the idea of flying across carries ordinary probability with it."
"And as," I added, "the port captain at Ciudadella wires that he has had no single incoming vessel during the last ten days, and we know that none have come into Port Mahon except the fleet and the _Antiguo Mahones_ and ourselves, we've arrived at the most unpickable deadlock that two grown men ever scratched their heads over."
"That," said Haigh, "is about the size of it; and so I vote we just let the Recipe slide, and enjoy ourselves on the other goods the gods have kindly provided. Come across to the next room. The conductor of the opera company's staying there, and if the opera company's rank bad, the conductor, at any rate, is a musician."
Up till that time I knew nothing of Haigh's gifts in the musical line, and a bit of a revelation was in store for me. It did not come all at once. The conductor of the opera company ("_reputado maestro D. Vincente Paoli_" the lean handbills styled him) opened the concert, and it was not until he and Haigh had some difference over the accentuation of a note in an air from Bizet's _I Pescatori di Perle_ that my shipmate strode over the piano stool.
The old professional's face was amusing to watch. Good-natured contempt for amateur theory was very plainly written on it at first. That gave way to surprise and wonder; and then these merged into undiluted admiration.
Haigh had given his version of the disputed passage, and then saying, "This is rather a fine bit too," had played through the Moor's fierce love song; after which, without any words being spoken, he verged off into other melody which we could appreciate even though we failed to recognize its origin. It was all new to us, and after a while we began to see that the player was his own composer.