The Golden Spaniard

by Dennis Wheatley

  Side by side they pounded up the stairs, past the salon, past their bedrooms, past the landing down a corridor from which lay Pédro’s barricade, to the servant’s quarters under the roof of the big house. Like the old campaigner that he was, de Richleau had already investigated possible lines of retreat when they had first taken up their residence in the Palacio.

  Kicking up the dust as he ran he led the way to a room where a wooden ladder led to a skylight. Springing up its steps he thrust the skylight up and propped it open with a piece of wood that lay there for the purpose.

  Outside, the starlight showed a broad, flat ledge along which it would have been easy to walk, but he did not climb out on to it. Instead, he turned round, sat down on one of the upper rungs of the ladder and said:

  “Off with your shoes—stuff them in your pockets.”

  He pulled off his own as he spoke and Richard, obeying, asked, “What does A do now? They’re certain to search the attics and with all this filthy dust we can’t possibly hide our tracks even by tiptoeing along in our stockinged feet.”

  “That’s just it,” replied the Duke. “I’m hoping the dust is going to prove our salvation. We’ve laid a fine trail up here to the skylight and there’s not the suggestion of another on the whole of this floor. It’s a fairly good bet that they’ll think we’ve gone out on to the roof.”

  “Good idea if we were ghosts but how do we dispose of our physical bodies in the meantime? We can’t move out of here without making fresh tracks.”

  “Oh, yes we can. We’re going to walk back along our own.”

  Quickly but carefully, with his torch held out in front of him, de Richleau led the way on tiptoe out of the attic and down the stairs. On the second floor he paused. Two large, well-beaten paths through the dust showed plainly there. They divided in the middle of the landing and each of them led to one of the bedrooms they had occupied for numerous nights.

  “Tired?” asked the Duke suddenly, as they reached the place where the two tracks joined.

  “What’s the good of worrying about that? We won’t get any sleep tonight.”

  De Richleau smiled. “We might. Anyway I intend to try. There are over two hundred rooms in the Palacio. Even if Simon is suspicious of our false trail to the roof at first and has a quick look round, the last places he’ll think of hunting for us are the salon and our bedrooms. It’s a gamble, but if you can manage with one pillow and lie down under the bed instead of on it, leaving your door wide open in case they look in, we might pull it off.”

  “By Jove! You’re right,” Richard grinned. “It’s a sporting chance anyhow.”

  They separated at once and disappeared into their rooms. It was abominably stuffy under the great four-poster beds and both of them gave way to sneezing-fits from the dust which rose in clouds as they crawled under the heavy valances, but once they settled down they felt a quite unreasonable sense of security in their precarious hiding-places. At first they listened intently but the doors of the cellars held longer than they had dared to hope. They had been under the beds more than a quarter of an hour before the sound of running footsteps reached them. The elephantine pounding of Rex’s feet on the stairs was followed by Simon’s quick patter.

  Without a pause they passed the landing and raced on; evidently following the trail to the skylight. After about five minutes they came down again and walked straight into Richard’s room. He caught the flash of a torch under the edge of the valance and held his breath as he heard Simon say, ‘These are the bedrooms they occupied.”

  A moment later they had gone into the Duke’s room next door but they only remained there a few seconds. When they came out they entered into a violent argument on the landing.

  Neither de Richleau nor Richard heard it all, but scraps of the heated discussion came to them in the silence of the old house. That the fugitives had gone out over the roof-tops seemed to be agreed by the hunters, but upon the procedure next to be followed they strongly disagreed. Simon was for calling in the police and having a house-to-house search made throughout the whole block, but Rex would not allow it. He pointed out that they themselves could not be everywhere at once and that the Duke and Richard, having had twenty-five minutes’ clear start, might now be hidden in any one of a thousand places.

  He maintained that if the capture were effected without their being present there was too great a risk that promises might be forgotten and a gun-fight ensue.

  Simon argued that their friends were now unarmed but Rex refused to risk their being harmed. In the shadows on the rooffops, he pointed out, the Spanish police might easily make some fatal mistake. Much better keep the block surrounded so that the fugitives could not escape, and order a systematic search by daylight in the morning.

  Still arguing the two went downstairs but it was quite clear to the listeners on their beds of dust that Rex’s stand against immediate action had saved them for the time being. Both felt it was safer to stay where they were rather than risk being surprised by a further visit, so they made the best of the hard floor by turning over on their stomachs and with their heads on their dirty pillows drifted off to sleep.

  A little after six Richard woke and roused the Duke. They talked over the situation in the light of the scraps of conversation they had heard and agreed, in view of Simon’s feeling that they would be certain to get away during the night, that the watchers had most probably been withdrawn, with the exception of those on the front door.

  Police were urgently needed for hundreds of special duties so it was hardly likely that Simon would be able to keep a considerable force kicking their heels round the block all day.

  They decided that their best hope lay in a policy of masterly inactivity. There was no reason why Simon or his minions should return to the Palacio unless they made a room-to-room search of the entire block; the longer the fugitives could remain concealed there the more convinced would any watchers in the street become that they had escaped.

  Having collected some of the food they had brought for Pédro, from the salon, they went down to the basement and boiled some kettles of water for a hot bath. The rest of the day they took it in turns to sleep on Pédro’s bed down there, or watch.

  Late that evening they rummaged through his slender wardrobe, which smelt strongly of moth-balls and garlic. His best black suit provided a change for Richard and the Duke made do with a pair of grease-stained overalls. He brushed back his dyed black hair under an old blue beret and removed the ‘birthmark’ from his face. Both took off their collars and Richard donned a broad-brimmed, black sombrero. Making up the discarded garments into a parcel they proceeded upstairs to visit the caretaker.

  As they began to remove the barricade on the fourth floor in front of the bathroom, de Richleau said:

  “It’s a wonder Simon didn’t spot this when he first had a look round the Palacio”

  “Once he’d done the detective act with the cigar butts I don’t suppose he bothered much,” Richard replied. “He said, himself, that he was sure we hadn’t lugged the gold up to the attics on account of its weight so I doubt if he went higher than our bedrooms. Even if he did, one can quite understand his missing this lot with all the windows shuttered. It’s almost as dark here by day as it is by night.”

  “True, and it’s some way from the staircase, but I don’t think he can have come up so far until last night, otherwise our tracks in the dust would have given things away—and last night he was in a hurry.”

  Pédro was pathetically glad to see them. He had come to regard their visits as harmless but necessary to his drink supply and he was down to his last two bottles.

  Now that their earlier occupation of the Palacio was known to Simon and the authorities, there was no point in detaining the caretaker any longer. When he heard that he was to be released he was overjoyed but his exuberant delight was a little damped when the Duke informed him that he would have to work for his freedom until the following morning. De Richleau did not want him rushing out of the Palac
io, within ten minutes of their own attempt to escape, to inform the police of what clothes they had worn and what time they had left.

  First, Pédro was made to strip and his things were removed so that he could not go out before he had fixed up some sort of garments. Next, they tied his feet and one hand with eighteen lengths of cord in a succession of nautical knots which it would take him at least an hour to unpick with his one free hand.

  The Duke then presented him with five thousand pesetas in banknotes as compensation for his illegal imprisonment; also a small chisel for the purpose of cutting the lock out of the door when they had fastened it behind them on their departure. The chisel was left on a shelf so that Pédro could not get at it until he had untied his bonds and they reckoned it would be a good six to eight hours before he could give the police any particulars about them.

  Night had fallen by the time they crawled out of the skylight on to the roof. De Richleau had no hesitation about the place he wanted to make for. On his first reconnaissance he had noted a tradesman’s lift at the back of a building which faced on to one of the streets at right angles to the Paseo de Recoletos, but progress was slow as the one thing he hated was heights.

  It took them an hour to reach their objective with Richard clutching the Duke’s arm. He was in a muck sweat the whole time and swore he could never have done it if he had had to pass so near to those terrifying gulfs in daylight.

  The tradesman’s lift descended to a small court. Richard was scared that his friend would be overcome by vertigo while climbing down the frail iron framework of which it was constructed but de Richleau shook his head.

  “I’m quite all right as long as I’ve something to cling to,” he said. “The worst part of the job’s over for me unless we run into trouble down below.”

  He sat down, gripped the nearest metal strut firmly and swung himself out to one of the thin, perpendicular girders; Richard followed, seizing the other. It was hard on their palms and fingers as they went down hand-over-hand but they reached the bottom safely three minutes later.

  To their joy they found there was no necessity to break into the lower floor of the building in order to get through to the street, for a covered alleyway led from one side of the courtyard to it.

  They took the plunge like old-fashioned bathers, one toe at a time. Edging along the alley they gained its corner and stood there for a little while in the shadow thrown by the arch, observing the people in the street.

  All of them were passers-by, which seemed a good sign; watchers would almost certainly have been stationary. They could not see either of the corners clearly but decided to risk someone being on the look-out for them there. At a sign from the Duke they braved anything that was to come and, stepping quickly on to the pavement, walked smartly down it.

  There was a man on the corner and, displaying his Seguridad badge, he challenged them to show their papers. They produced their C.N.T. Party cards, of which Simon had no knowledge, and after a cursory glance the detective allowed them to pass.

  In the Calle Alva the garage-owner looked at them suspiciously on account of their altered appearance but, after a word with him, they undid their bundle and changed back into their former clothes; de Richleau making himself up again as Hypolite Dubois.

  It was necessary that they should reappear at Valmojado as the people there had always known them, but Pédro had never seen them in this guise and the Duke knew that he would describe them to the police as he had seen them last—dressed in his own clothes which they were now abandoning.

  One thing worried de Richleau greatly—the loss of their weapons—and he asked the man at the garage if, by any chance, he could supply the deficiency.

  “Madrid’s lousy with firearms these days,” the man replied, “what with those the Reds take off our people and those our people snitch from dead Reds. Any preference as to make?”

  “No,” smiled the Duke. “Anything which will take nine millimetre ammunition.”

  The man went upstairs and returned a few minutes later with a brace of Mausers. “Take these,” he said, “and use them to drill holes through as many of the brutes as you can. They got my boy two nights ago and I’m only waiting to be relieved of this job before I have a cut at them.”

  On the way to Valmojado they noticed several cars abandoned on the roadside and, in one place, a small private firing party blazed off at some unfortunate, just before they reached an open field where unauthorised executions were taking place.

  Near the first building of Valmojado they were challenged. Some Militiamen were now on picket duty there under a soldier in the uniform of the Regular Army. They were so used by now to producing the fake C.N.T. cards that they almost slipped up. To have done so in Valmojado, where they were known as Don Ricardo and Comrade Hypolite Dubois, might have proved fatal

  They recovered their wits just in time. At the sight of the foreign passports there was some argument amongst the men but the Revolution was now nine days old and the sympathies of the other European countries already known in Spain. Italy, Germany and Portugal were definitely pro-insurgent; Russia, France and Britain in favour of the legally elected Government. The travellers were clearly nationals of friendly democracies and, after a moment, the Militia hailed them as comrades. There was much raising of clenched fists and cries of “Salud”, to which they duly responded before driving on.

  In the square they found lines of horses tethered to the trees and an odd assortment of wagons. Every room in the little hotel, which had evidently been taken over as Headquarters, was blazing with light and groups of armed Government supporters were standing about, talking together.

  It was just midnight when they reached the factory and old Jacinto had serious news for them. After a week of licence the wilder spirits among the factory hands had calmed down and the others were sick of kicking their heels doing nothing. None of them knew what they were striking for and all of them wanted to be paid their last week’s wages although they had done no work.

  That morning, being a Monday, they had gradually congregated in the main yard and eventually a deputation of them had gone off to interview Coello and Jacinto. In the absence of the factory owner, the manager had offered to agree to any reasonable terms the men put forward, but the trouble was they refused to state any terms.

  Their leader, Matias Falcon, was a Syndicalist and for years past it had been part of the policy of the Spanish Syndicalist groups that they would not agree to any binding terms with their employers. They were not Communists and lived at daggers drawn with Stalin’s followers; Trotsky being their patron saint. Actually the Syndicalists were near-Anarchists by faith but were not prepared to carry individualism to its logical conclusion of destruction of all order.

  They were at one with the Anarchists in wishing to abolish all forms of Central Government and Local Authority, but prepared to combine among themselves in taking over and running separate factories or large estates on the lines of the original Workers’ Soviets. Matias Falcon was urging his followers among the men to sling out the owner’s representatives and start working the aluminium plant for their own profit.

  Jacinto had stalled off any decision by pointing out that the supplies of raw material had to be obtained before goods could be manufactured and that when they were manufactured somebody had to sell them before there would be any money to pay wages. Such matters could not be carried out by poorly educated factory-hands like themselves, and so some sort of managerial staff must be retained for that purpose, if for no other. A good proportion of the workers were with him and, after a prolonged discussion, it had been decided to call a meeting of all hands for ten o’clock the following morning.

  The situation was an extremely grave one. If Matias Falcon succeeded in his designs the workers would be certain to take over the stock as well as the plant. There was no possible way of moving the gold at such short notice and, unless something drastic were done, it looked as if Lucretia’s millions would be distributed over half Governm
ent-held Spain and that, during the next few weeks, many a housewife, all unknown to herself, would be cooking in pots and pans worth more than all her other possessions put together.

  If that happened it would be impossible to trace each separate article, even when peace was restored, and the Coralles fortune would be irretrievably lost.

  “How much work is there still to be done?” asked the Duke.

  “We have been at it twelve days, Señor,” Jacinto replied. “The camouflaging of the gold is nearly finished. Let us say, another two nights for that. But there is much painting still to be done; it will be another week at least before all is completed.”

  “It doesn’t matter about the men coming back to work and they’re welcome to any profits they can make but somehow or other we’ve got to keep them out of the sheds,” de Richleau said quickly. “I see there are troops now in the town and Regulars among them. D’you think that, at a pinch, we might persuade either them or the police to put a guard on our property?”

  Jacinto’s gold earrings glinted in the light from the furnace as he shook his fine old head. “I doubt it, Señor. The column only arrived this evening and they are mostly Marxists. Their first act was to shoot the officers of the Guardia and compel the rest to take a new oath of the Republic.”

  The Duke and Richard had had plenty of sleep during the last twenty hours so they stripped off their coats and set to work on their pot-painting, but it was a gloomy session and they were no less depressed when they crawled into their camp beds six hours later.

  On Tuesday morning the meeting called for ten-thirty was well attended. Owing to the principle, now running through Government Spain like an infection, that everyone should have a finger in everyone else’s business, any number of people came along who had nothing whatever to do with the factory; among them Lieutenant Mudra, a broad-shouldered, square-faced man who was in command of the column of Militia, and a dozen or so of his men.