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were grouped barrels, crates, sacks and cartons, their shapes vaguely outlined in the deep shadows. Someone had tried to cool the place and opened two of the shutters on the wall opposite the courtyard entrance, but the effort was only partially successful. Between the doorway where he stood and the barred windows, which were glassless, there was a hint of cross-ventilation, but the minute he started climbing the wooden stairs on his right, he felt the warm air close around him. It smelled of wine and wood, of leather and dust, with a touch of carnations from the perfume the girls liked to use. Their dressing-room was upstairs, part of a winding warren of little apartments. The men had their quarters on the ground floor, reached by apassage that began somewhere under the staircase; there, the smell of wine and wood and leather would be mixed with cigar smoke, hair oil, and lime cologne. To a stranger, the geography of this interior would be completely baffling. To Reid, it was a matter of fifteen wooden steps that hugged the wall all the way up to the landing, where there were two naked light bulbs, a venerable clock that had never yet failed in its timing, and two entrances. The one on the left to the girls’ side of the house; the one on the right to Tavita’s own corridor. It was this doorway he chose.
    It was a narrow hallway, with several small rooms branching from it. Tavita’s receiving room, dressing-room, bathroom, special sitting-room were on one side, and naturally over-looked the courtyard. The other side of the corridor had a series of little square spaces no better than interior boxes, where clothes were made and stored and cleaned and pressed under old Magdalena’s supervision. She would be there now, in the biggest of the boxes, a small skylight open above her grey head, a radio picking up some Algerian station and its soft wailing music, working alone, ironing out frills and ruffles on Tavita’s change of costume, her shapeless black dress bent over bright colours, gnarled hands smoothing out fine silks with strange delicacy.
    But as he passed her door, ready with a brief greeting and a friendly nod, he saw she was standing just inside the threshold, waiting. She put a finger to her lips, her other hand on his wrist, her eyes looked along the corridor as if she thought someone might be listening at its other end. So he took a step into the little room, carefully avoiding the wide hem of the white-and-yellow organza skirt that floated down from the ironing board,watching Magdalena’s pale, heavy, peasant face, with its tight lips and intense frown. She spoke in a deep hoarse whisper. “Important, this one. Very important. Tavita says you must get him away from here at once. Tonight. That’s what she says.”
    Reid looked at her in surprise. In the six years Tavita and he had been running this little operation, there had never been any request like this. There never had been any urgency. Secrecy, certainly; that was a necessary part of security. A refugee from Cuba, smuggled out of Havana into Málaga, needed a place where he could find safe shelter until he could continue his journey to other parts of the country. There, relatives or friends would help him. (They had been contacted quietly, weeks and sometimes months before, to make sure that they were able and willing.) But in Málaga there were Castro agents and informers watching for stowaways; and the first day of freedom for a penniless man, often hungry and sick, could be a perilous one. There had been cases of political refugees, barely off the docks, who had been shanghaied right back to where they had come from. Others had thought they’d be safe if they could reach a police station or some official bureau, ask for asylum, be willing to face detention until their case would be judged. But it seemed impossible to prevent publicity: the news would leak out. Within hours, there would be a request from Havana for the man’s extradition: he was a