The Courts of the Morning by John Buchan

The waiter at the Regina was an exemplary servant. He dispensed the morning meal of fruit and coffee with soft-footed alacrity. At the midday déjeuner, when it was the custom of the Company's officials, including some of the greatest, to patronise the hotel, he had the big round table in the north window, and in a day or two had earned the approval of his fastidious clients. Miguel was his name, and presently he was addressed by it as if he had been an old feature of the establishment. Those solemn gentlemen talked little, and at their meals they did not ransack the wine-list or summon the cook, but each had his little peculiarities of taste which Miguel made it his business to remember. He was always at their elbow, smiling gravely, to anticipate their wants. In the evening the restaurant was less full, only the guests living in the hotel and a few junior officials, for it was the custom of the magnates to dine at the club. In the evening Miguel was frequently off duty in the restaurant, engaged in other branches of hotel work, and twice a week he had his time after 7 p.m. to himself.

The waiter did not spend his leisure hours in his attic bedroom, which was like an oven after the sun had beat all day on the slatted roof. Once or twice he joined his fellow-employees in a visit to the cinema or to a shabby little gaming-room where one drank cheap aguardiente and played a languid kind of poker. But generally he seemed to have business of his own, and the negro porter at the back entrance grew familiar with his figure arriving punctually on the stroke of midnight, and chaffed him heavily about an imaginary girl. It was no one's business to keep a watch on this humble half-caste, whose blood showed so clearly in his shadowy fingernails and dull yellow skin. But if he had been followed, curious things might have been noted.