“Thank you. It seems that things are starting to happen already. You heard what Cristoval Ventura said about the Reds’ first blow being struck tonight. Have you any idea what he was referring to?”
“None, unfortunately. I only know that it will not be a general rising.”
“Do you believe there is anything in his theory that the parties of the Right will be brought to destruction by fighting among themselves?”
“No. There are admittedly wide differences in their views about the future of the country but in this emergency our only hope was to combine against the Red menace. All the important leaders have sworn a solemn oath to accept the orders of Calvo Sotelo and his advisers for the salvation of National and Catholic Spain.”
“Well,” the Duke reached forward and picked up his glass, “here’s a health to him.”
Richard divided all that was left of the ‘Bollinger Green Stripe’ between Lucretia-José and himself. “Cristoval more or less warned us about this stuff,” he smiled turning round, “and it doesn’t seem very lucky to toast the new Dictator in such a poor bottle, especially on the morning of the 13th. Still, here goes. To Calvo Sotelo and the salvation of National and Catholic Spain!”
For some time they continued to talk in desultory manner, scarcely conscious of the colourful throng of dancers on the floor below, and all three preoccupied with thoughts of the momentous forces which were so inexorably gathering to rend the country from end to end.
It was nearly half-past three when Cristoval rejoined them. He looked neither cheerful nor cast down, only a little tired. “A business most unpleasant,” he said abruptly. “These methods of the gangster—ugh, they are horrible. But sometimes necessary if we are to make safe our Spain. ‘Some of our men have just killed Calvo Sotelo.”
Chapter XI
The Price of Secrecy
Four hours’ sleep was all that de Richleau and Richard allowed themselves. There was much to be done on this fateful Monday which had opened with the assassination of the Nationalist leader.
By nine o’clock the two friends were out on a shopping expedition. Their purchases consisted of a large supply of provisions, mostly tinned goods, a great number of tins of paint, and a set of stencils. Having carried these back to the Palacio in several journeys they divided the provisions, setting aside some special tinned delicacies to take with them to Valmojado and carrying the rest up to a bathroom on the fourth floor of the house. They next went down to visit Pédro.
The unfortunate caretaker had long since given up both pleading with and abusing him. They never visited him without their guns in their hands but always spoke to him cheerfully and quite evidently had no intention of harming him provided he behaved himself. Actually he now thought himself rather lucky not to have fared worse as they gave him plenty of wine and fed him much better than he had ever been fed before.
“Now, my man,” said the Duke, who had removed the stain from his face and had his hat pulled well down to hide his dyed hair so that he appeared much as Pédro had always seen him. “We are leaving here temporarily so we intend to give you a change of prison. We may be back tomorrow night or perhaps not for three or four days but if, when we do get back, we find you’ve made any attempt whatever to escape I shall just not bother further with you but shoot you out of hand. Understand?”
Pédro nodded morosely.
“Right then,” de Richleau waved his automatic casually towards the door. “Walk march and no monkey-tricks or you’ll get a bullet in your back.”
The caretaker was shepherded upstairs to the fourth-floor bathroom. It was sixty feet above the ground and looked out on the inner court of the Palace. Even if Pédro had been able to get the window open he could have yelled his head off before anyone would have heard him, and would have had to risk breaking his neck if he had attempted to regain his freedom by jumping out. As it was, de Richleau had taken the precaution of screwing four thick, wooden bars across the closed shutters outside, a few days before, in preparation for just such a transfer of their prisoner, and this made it impossible to open them. The room contained nothing whatever except its toilet accessories, black with the dust of years, a small arm-chair which had been carried in for Pédro’s comfort, a pile of bedding flung down in the bath since it was doubtful if he would use it for any other purpose, the provisions which would easily last a week and a considerable supply of wine which Richard had carried up that morning.
Having told Pédro that it would be quite useless for him to attempt to burst open the door, because they intended to erect a barricade outside, they locked him in and piled some heavy furniture against it.
“He won’t get out of there,” chuckled the Duke when they had finished. “Our only risk is that his friends may break in to find out what’s happened to him. That’s unlikely, though, as three of them have called in the past week and those have probably told the others by now that he’s in the country. Even if they do decided to investigate I doubt if they’ll look up here. It’s much more likely that they’ll clear out again when they’re satisfied his dead body’s not uttering up the basement. Come on. Let’s get down there.”
Downstairs they opened up two tins of paint; a large one of grey and a small one of black, both of which were of a special quick-drying variety. De Richleau had no intention of trusting anyone an inch further than he had to. He had planned to paint each of the bullion boxes over and stencil new markings on them so that they should give the impression that they contained small-arms ammunition. He knew that their frightful weight might give away their real contents to anyone used to handling munitions, but that neither ordinary people nor officers from the crack Spanish Regiments were used to heaving boxes of small-arms ammunition about.
In preparation for his scheme he had arranged with Richard that the boxes should not be restacked after they had been moved but laid out in rows along the corridors of the huge basement. It was not necessary to move any of them again but, since there were over two hundred of them, it took a solid four hours to paint the lot. When the job was done each bore a neat row of capital letters and figures on its lid and a large swastika, indicating that they came from Germany, which was made by a quadruple application of the ‘L’ in the stencil set.
They had a short break for lunch and afterwards changed their clothes, Richard becoming again the Sporting Englishman and the Duke his French man-of-all-work, Hypolite Dubois. They then set out for Valmojado.
The Duke had ascertained that although it was twenty-odd miles away it could be reached by bus in just under the hour, and a long, low, comfortable motor-coach took them out there. As is often the case abroad strangers were talking together much more freely than they would have done in England. While the autobus sped swiftly along one of those fine, smooth, metalled roads that were a legacy from the late Dictator, Primo de Rivera, the talk was all of the death of the unfortunate Calvo Sotelo.
Only that afternoon the authorities at the East Cemetery had telephoned Seguridad Headquarters to know what they were to do with a body which the police had left in their mortuary early that morning. The corpse had been shot through the breast and the right eye. The news that it was that of Calvo Sotelo had spread through the city like wild-fire.
Many rumours about the affair were current, and as far as the facts could be ascertained they seemed to be on these lines. A few days earlier a gang of Fascists had shot down a member of the police force, who was known to be a staunch supporter of the Reds, as he was leaving a cinema. A friend of the dead man had sworn to be revenged. At three o’clock that morning a squad of police had driven up to Sotelo’s apartment in a van and, rousing him from sleep, produced a warrant for his arrest. He had not appeared particularly concerned about it as numerous other Reactionary leaders, including young José Antonio Primo de Rivera, were already in prison and, after a careful examination of the warrant, had gone quietly with his captors. The next thing his family learned was that he had been brutally murdered.
The passengers
in the auto-bus, who included a number of working people, were frankly horrified. Everyone agreed that such a cold-blooded outrage was beyond all limits. A Fascist rising was now a certainty and the equally dreaded Reds would swarm out to challenge their supremacy. No one could predict how matters would end but they were quite convinced that whichever way it went they would be the sufferers.
Most of them, till then, had become so inured to rumours of coming risings and coups d’état that they no longer believed in them. The majority did not care who ran the country as long as they were allowed to earn their living in peace. Mussolini and Hitler seemed to have improved the state of things in Italy and Germany, according to certain papers, but Stalin was doing wonderful things in Russia with his Collective Farming and Five-Year Plans, according to others. Whoever came out on top there would be new taxes; but probably trying to feed one’s family under the Falangists would be no worse than under Largo Caballero and his U.G.T. They rather inclined to the popular sixty-seven-year-old Socialist. But, of course, he was out for himself just as much as the dead Sotelo had been. To hell with all of them. Yet if one said that, the whole country would go Anarchist, which must be prevented at all costs. No, if you thought it over, perhaps, after all, that might not be such a bad thing.
De Richleau, not wishing to draw attention to himself, took little part in the discussion. The birthmark, which was the high-spot of his disguise, made him more conspicuous than he cared about as it was. He pretended to be slightly deaf and confined himself to supporting the majority who were for keeping the peace at any price.
Richard could understand little of what was going on so he spent most of the journey gazing out of the window. Having crossed the Manzanares, which in the July heat was no more than a trickle of water in the middle of a broad, dry ditch with concrete embankments on both sides, they passed through some straggling suburbs, the sister towns of Carabanchel-bajo and Carabanchel-alto, then entered the open country. It was flat, highly cultivated but deserted except for a few women working in the fields under the torrid sun. No cottages or villages broke the monotony of the road; only, here and there, the long wall of a private enclosure with a latticed gazebo, like an airy summer-house, perched on one of its corners, and it was difficult to realise that they were only a few miles from a capital city.
At Valmojado the Duke and Richard were the only passenger to descend. The auto-bus deposited them in the little square and sped on to other towns. A yellow stucco church with a cross-surmounted dome occupied one side of the square; the paint was flaking from its tall doors and some ragged children played listlessly on its steps. There was a small hotel and half a dozen blowsy-looking general shops. In the centre of the open space several rows of trees had been pleached to form a shady canopy; beneath it was a well round which some peasant women with coloured handkerchiefs draped over their hair stood gossiping.
The Duke went over and inquired the whereabouts of the factory. They answered with ready smiles and voluble information. “Down the street there, Señor. It is five minutes’ walk—not more. There can be no mistake, it is the only factory here. Does El Señor seek Juan Coello, the manager? Wait but one moment, Señor, and my son shall show you. Pepe! Pepe! Come here, you good-for-nothing.”
A merry-eyed but painfully thin urchin led them down a cobbled street the newest building in which must have been well over a hundred years old. Here and there semicircular topped arches pierced the frontages which had been mellowed to a uniform hue by time and weather. The dark shadows in their recesses contrasted strongly with the glare outside. The street dwindled into two rows of peasant hovels, through the low doors of which could be seen more live-stock than humanity, and it ended in the fields where the factory stood on the extreme outskirts of the townlet.
The place looked quite modern, only about ten years old, and consisted of three long, low buildings with glass roofs slanting towards the north, a square smelting-house from which a fifty-foot chimney rose, a two-storied block of offices and a number of corrugated-iron sheds.
“Evidently built in Primo’s time,” remarked the Duke. “Valmojado isn’t on the railway but the Dictator’s fine arterial roads would have opened it up to transport by lorry. Some shrewd fellow chose this place because he could get the ground for next to nothing and at the same time have a supply of labour handy that had never before been tapped for commerce. It will suit us admirably.”
Little Pepe was suitably rewarded for having been their guide and they entered the factory office. The three clerks were a seedy-looking lot, and Coello, the manager, was a little rabbit of a man who smirked and salaamed all over the place directly he had seen the documents which proved Richard to be the new owner. De Richleau’s signature as Hypolite Dubois was now on the contract as witness, so it was all in order. Señor Gomara had not informed him that he was thinking of disposing of the property, Coello said, but he did not appear at all distressed by this sudden change of masters once he was assured that he was to be kept on in his job.
The Duke acted only as an interpreter. He spoke without deference but clearly indicated that Richard was his boss and gave Coello to understand that Richard’s family had big metal interests in Birmingham. Richard, as a younger son, had been sent out to develop what would be no more than a small subsidiary in Spain.
Richard looked grave, said little, except to ask Coello staccato questions through de Richleau, and led the way everywhere without hesitation when they started on a tour of the factory.
In the first shop to which they were taken Coello presented the foreman of the works, Jacinto Vincente, and it was soon obvious to them that Jacinto was the real power in the place. He was a fine old chap of over sixty with a handsome grey moustache, brushed fiercely upwards on either side of his full-lipped mouth, blue eyes, hook nose, mahogany skin, and wearing a pair of gold rings in his ears; a regular pirate of a fellow.
De Richleau explained that as Richard’s interpreter he would have to see a lot of Jacinto and expressed the hope that they would work well together. The old foreman declared that it would not be his fault if they failed to do so and took charge of the tour of inspection.
When it was over Coello was told to inform the hands that they would all be retained, subject to good behaviour, and the principals returned to the office.
The Duke exchanged a few sentences with Richard in English, then said to Coello, “Mr. Eaton is anxious to inspect the books as soon as possible so he has decided not to go back to Madrid this evening. He is sending me in to collect our luggage and directly I return we can settle down to the job.”
Coello looked very surprised. “But why tonight?” he expostulated. “We could do that tomorrow or Wednesday.”
“The English are a very impatient people.” smiled the Duke. “They altogether lack the sense of leisure which is so charming in you Spaniards. Mr. Eaton too has a fondness for doing a lot of his work at night. He says he does not wish to keep you up and that he will ask you any questions that may arise in the morning.”
“El Señor is most considerate but I will stay willingly. It may be that he will not understand our system of book-keeping.”
“My own chequered career has included some months in the office of a Spanish commercial house so I hope to be able to make things clear to him. The only trouble is that the people at the local hotel will not be pleased if they have to wait up for us until three o’clock or perhaps later.”
“No, they would not like that,” Coello agreed. “Valmojado is a quiet place. It has not even a cinema. Everybody is in bed and asleep before midnight.”
“Well, it cannot be helped. Mr. Eaton will have to pay extra for someone to stay up for us—unless …” De Richleau’s face suddenly brightened as though he had been struck by a great idea, “unless there is somewhere we could doss down here? You know how eccentric these English are. They seem to take pleasure in discomfort, but they are good masters.”
Coello looked doubtful. “There are six or eight camp beds and some b
lankets packed away upstairs. We have suffered from many strikes in Spain these last few years and they are used for the police guard which protects the plant when riots are threatened, but.…”
“Let us see them,” de Richleau cut him short, and in a few moments matters had been arranged. He was to return to Madrid by the last bus which passed through Valmojado at eight-forty, and come back in a hired car with the ‘luggage’ while Richard dined at the local inn. On the Duke’s return both of them would burn the midnight oil over the ledgers and, later, sleep on the premises.
By this time the factory-hands were going off for the night and by seven o’clock Coello and his staff, somewhat dazed by this invasion but by no means unhappy about it, departed leaving Richard and the Duke on their own.
De Richleau heaved a heavy sigh once Coello was out of the yard in front of the office building. “Well, that’s that.” He jangled the manager’s keys. “We’re in possession. Although, if they’d run to a night-watchman, Lord knows how I should have got rid of him short of murder—and that might have been a little awkward to laugh off in the morning.”
“If they have to have police protection here when a strike is on I wonder they’re not afraid of sabotage or someone breaking in to steal stuff in normal times,” Richard hazarded.
“No, no. The Spaniards are honest people. If they strike they strike, and they’ll even kill to secure what they’re after. But when there’s no dispute on the masters have nothing to fear whatever. I was only afraid they might have a watchman as a precaution against fire, but they’re incredibly slack about that sort of thing and it looks as if Gomara was so mean that he preferred to run the risk of falling foul of his insurance company rather than pay one. Now they’ve all gone, let’s have another look round.”
Their second inspection included a visit to the corrugated-iron sheds. Most of these were used as warehouses and contained stacks of aluminium goods, which had been Gomara’s speciality, but two held stores of raw material and one was empty.
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