The Golden Spaniard

by Dennis Wheatley

  They went straight to the little hotel in the Calle Jardines as the most likely place to find Lucretia. She was not there but Fernandez told them that they would find her at the Café Roma, which was practically the only big café that had reopened.

  Avoiding the lights as far as possible they made their way to the Calle Ayala and along to the café. After a moment they saw Lucretia seated at a table inside with two other girls and five men.

  “We’ll have to go in so she can see us,” murmured the Duke and, keeping their hats well pulled down over their eyes, they walked through to a table near the wall where, if they sat sideways, comparatively few people would be facing them.

  It was ten minutes before Lucretia became aware of their presence and nodded almost imperceptibly but she did not leave her table to join them.

  The café was doing good business and the coloured shirts of the Popular Front men made it a real sight. Most of them and their women were hatless and armed but they seemed a good-humoured lot and did not attempt to interfere with the numerous civilians sitting tie-less but otherwise in ordinary clothes.

  Lucretia’s party was a success. They talked and laughed incessantly and showed no signs of breaking up, but de Richleau decided that the only thing to do was to stay there till they did. His main fear was that Cristoval might come in and join them. If that occurred and he recognised them, in spite of their rusty black, the young Socialist might prove most embarrassingly inquisitive, particularly about the sudden disappearance of the Duke’s birthmark.

  Fortunately Cristoval did not appear but it was a long and dreary wait, occasioning the consumption of innumerable coffees and cognacs, before Lucretia’s friends called for their reckoning, and even when they did leave she left with them.

  “Is it any good our sitting on?” asked Richard with a yawn.

  “Yes, she’ll come back,” de Richleau nodded and he proved right although it was another twenty minutes before she came in again and, greeting them with apparent surprise, sat down beside them.

  “I’m so sorry I’ve kept you so long,” she said softly. “But I didn’t dare come and talk to you while that crowd were here and I had rather a job in getting away from them. One of the men was just a bit tight and wanted to sleep with me.”

  Richard smiled. “I suppose your job entails your putting up with quite a number of those sorts of proposals.”

  The café was emptying and all the tables near them were vacant now so they could talk in low voices without any risk of being overheard.

  “Yes,” she shrugged. “But it doesn’t mean a thing to me now. I’ve developed a special technique for dealing with it. I’m terribly sympathetic but the faithful kind, and the only man who can make me feel a single thing is at present in South America. They always fall for that one. It was different with Mudra, though, and I’m terribly grateful to you both.”

  “Please don’t think another thing about it,” Richard murmured. “The only thing that worried us was that Simon might get on to our being in Valmojado, via Cristoval.”

  “I know. It nearly turned my golden locks to silver. I had no chance to tell either of you the other day, but your friend Simon has converted himself into a sort of gold-hunting bloodhound and mine heads his list of missing fortunes.”

  De Richleau chuckled. “We learnt that during our last visit to Madrid. In fact we had quite an entertaining chat with him when he called on us unexpectedly at your Palacio.”

  “Don’t underrate his ability,” Lucretia said gravely. “He’s an extraordinary intelligent person.”

  “My dear, you never said a truer thing. That’s why we’ve been so worried. If he learnt we’d even been seen in Valmojado he’d be out there inside thirty minutes. You see, he knows it was we who spirited away your millions.”

  “I gathered that. And for that reason I’ve moved Heaven and earth to isolate Cristoval from him all this past week. It hasn’t been easy because they like each other; but fortunately Cristoval likes me rather more. I’ve been positively unmaidenly in my demands for his exclusive company every moment he’s not working or sleeping since the Valmojado trouble. He’s on duty, of course, this evening.”

  “I like Cristoval,” said the Duke smoothly. “He’s a decent fellow even if he is a Bolshevik. I hope you haven’t found entertaining him too irksome.”

  Lucretia flushed and quickly changed the conversation by asking, “What brings you here tonight?”

  “We haven’t had a chance to see you alone since we got the stuff to Valmojado. Now, the job is done, or will be before morning, so we shall need your help again for the next move. Unless you have any other idea, I suggest shipping the goods out of the country by way of Alicante. It’s smaller than Valencia and not as Red, so there will be less likelihood of anyone attempting to commandeer our cooking-pots there. Moreover, although Valencia is forty miles nearer Madrid than Alicante as the crow flies, it’s twenty miles further off going round the coast by rail.”

  “How d’you propose to get them there?”

  “It’s bulk we’re up against rather than weight now. We shall need at least six and probably eight railway wagons to hold the whole consignment. We could, of course, send the stuff off from Madrid in the ordinary way but I’m very much against that as it means passing out of our hands altogether and entails running the risk of its being split up for despatch by several trains in the main goods yard. In addition, there are far too many Red Party bosses on the look-out here for equipment for their fighting organisations.”

  “Yes. I’m all against its being brought back to Madrid,” Lucretia agreed.

  “Good. Then this is what I propose. The junction of Aranjuez through which the main line to Alicante passes is only twenty-five miles east of Valmojado. We must get the wagons we require shunted on to a siding there. If you can arrange that, well and good if not I shall try and get it done by bribery. There’s nothing unusual about a manufacturer being anxious to get a big consignment of goods away quickly to fulfil a special contract and being prepared to pay the official who helps him do it. In unsettled times like these, too, nobody’s going to be surprised if the manufacturer has undertaken to deliver personally and wants to travel with his stuff.

  “In this way I hope that Richard and I will be able to see the whole of our pots and pans through to Alicante and so prevent any chance of some of the wagons being side-tracked or pilfered. Once we’re in Alicante we go a hundred per cent British, and with the British Consul behind us, arrange for these British-owned goods to be shipped out of Spain in a British ship. There’s no reason at all for the Customs people to be the least suspicious. In fact, they should be pleased rather than otherwise that a fine export order is going out, as it means badly needed money coming into Spain. Your part is to supply us with lorries for the twenty-five-mile run from Valmojado to Aranjuez. If you could let us have twenty we could move the lot in two shifts, but if you can only arrange for ten it means four trips and a two-day job.”

  Lucretia shook her head sadly. “My dear friend, what you ask is impossible. Three weeks ago I had the whole resources of La Renovacion Española to call upon. Even Army transport could be used for our secret work, as you know. Then, I could have got you a special train if you had needed one but now I doubt if I could raise two lorries for you, let alone ten.”

  “That’s bad luck!” muttered the Duke. “I realised, of course, that a certain portion of your organisation here must have been mopped up but I thought it would still be functioning.”

  “It is—underground. Most of our friends in the garrison were sacrificed, quite uselessly, by Fanjul, which was a sad blow, and we lost a lot of good men in the street fighting. We’re losing them constantly through police raids and the hundreds of murders that occur each night, but that doesn’t affect the fact that at least a third of Madrid’s population is still anti-Red.”

  “The so-called Fifth Column of General Franco?”

  She nodded. “We’re working like stevedores to prepare them f
or a rising when the time comes but all the same we can’t move freely any more. Practically every private car was commandeered within four days of the outbreak. Half the fools know so little about motors they’ve simply run them till they’ve seized up and then pinched others. That’s why you see abandoned cars in every street. The case with lorries is little better. I could easily get the permits and the men but I can’t possibly use C.N.T. lorries for the job and I simply can’t think where you’d get others now.’

  “I suppose we’ll have to use horse transport then,” de Richleau said. “But that’s going to make things infinitely more difficult. The twenty-five miles to the railway would be nothing for lorries, but with mules and horses.…”

  “Besides, think of the number of vehicles we’d want,” Richard broke in. “We’d have a column a mile long and innumerable questions to answer in every village through which we passed with all these blasted Committees everywhere.”

  “I know,” the Duke frowned. “I don’t like it a bit. There must be some better way. We’ll have to leave it until I’ve had a little time to think things out.”

  “Naturally I’d have liked to have it out of the country,” Lucretia said slowly, “but at least it’s safe where it is now. And that’s the great thing.”

  “Yes, it’s safe enough. No one could possibly guess what those pots and pans conceal unless they knew of our association with the gold in the first place. Besides there’re seven of us to keep an eye on it at the factory and the new Committee precludes any further trouble with the workers. Give me a day or two to think it over and we’ll find a method of transporting it to Aranjuez yet.”

  “How are things going otherwise?” asked Richard.

  “As well as can be expected,” Lucretia replied. “Russia is naturally throwing her weight against us but the help we are receiving from the other Dictator countries should balance that. The British and American Governments would both be with us too, I think, if they were not quite so scared of their Labour groups. Everybody wants to have a finger in everyone else’s pie these days, and every Democratic country’s got its minorities which hamper clear-cut policies. The old rulers used to know what they wanted and got on with the job but, somehow, lately the world seems to have got into a shocking mess.”

  “That’s largely owing to the decentralisation of Governments,” remarked the Duke. “The more the world is split up into separate independent states, the greater the trouble which must inevitably result. Each state endeavours to achieve its own selfish ambitions at the expense of its neighbours. Tariff barriers go up, emigration laws make it impossible for the highly populated states to disperse their surplus millions into the vast barren areas which could easily support them, and the free exchange of enlightened thought between different peoples tends to become interrupted.”

  Richard nodded. “That’s happening even inside the British Empire. During the Victorian age it prospered enormously and no one can say that its peoples were governed harshly. We made money out of our overseas territories but we put our profits back into them and more, we did an immense amount to suppress barbarous customs, prevent tribal wars and bring civilisation to countless millions of backward people. Now, a succession of spineless Governments has betrayed their trust. The Empire’s being allowed to disintegrate into a number of separate entities. Some bits of it, like Egypt and the Irish Free State, have broken away altogether, others have gained this thing called ‘Independence’, but at what a price! Instead of being fully one with us they make their own treaties and have their own representatives. It sounds all right but the day’ll come when these young nations’ll have to face the results of their independent policies.”

  “You’re right there,” agreed the Duke. “The fear of foreign aggression is growing in them. They can still look to the Homeland for support if they are attacked, but they will no longer be able to count on the whole undivided backing of the old Empire. In many instances their interests run counter to each other. In some there are Socialist Governments which may decide on peace at any price unless they are attacked themselves. That they should deal with their own internal problems is wise and just, but a great Imperial parliament to which they could all have sent representatives should have been established, so that on Imperial questions the Empire could have maintained its solidarity. Unity is strength, division weakness. There was sound sense in the old Roman symbol of the fasces—a bundle of sticks tied together.”

  The café was almost empty. Lucretia beckoned to the waiter to bring two more coffees. “Go on,” she said to the Duke. “What would you suggest then?”

  He shrugged. “Unfortunately we can’t put the clock back, but a few determined statesmen might stop the rot that has permeated the world since the Great War.”

  “How?”

  “By refusing to countenance the absurd claims of small minorities. I mentioned Rome just now. No one can say that the Romans were an ignorant or barbarous people, but they stood no nonsense. They ruled from the borders of Scotland to the Persian Gulf and where they ruled they maintained the Pax Romana. There were occasional revolts in their frontier provinces but, under them, no wars brought misery to the people of France, Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Morocco, or even distant Britain for centuries. Latin was the common tongue of all educated people, and whatever their birthplace they could exchange ideas with equal ease in Bath, Budapest, or Baghdad. They did not think in the narrow confines of nationality but as Roman citisens who owned the civilised world between them. The Isis-worshippers, the Christians and the Manicheans were suppressed because they were secret societies having anti-social aims. But apart from such subversive movements which threatened to undermine the State, a Roman could be a Jew or Gentile, Fire-worshipper or Epicurean, and no one sought to interfere with his religious practices.”

  “You think that all national movements should be suppressed then?”

  “Yes. Look at the mess there is today in Central Europe. The old Austro-Hungarian Empire had no model Government but at least it was a happy country. A few fanatics made trouble from time to time because they wanted to force everyone in their districts to speak some aboriginal peasant language that no stranger could understand, but they were only locked up when they started breaking windows. Under the treaties of Versailles and Trianon statesmen who should have known better split Middle Europe up and created all sorts of new nations to quarrel with each other. Worse, the matter hasn’t ended there because each of them has in it minorities which want to rule themselves, and the appalling thing is that the great powers take these demands seriously. If they go on that way the only end can be Europe reduced to a patchwork quilt with frontiers every twenty-five miles and the whole place reduced to a Tower of Babel. How can there be peace and progress and the spread of culture in such a madhouse? It is the safety and welfare of the majorities that matter, and the majority of people all the world over don’t want to be led into senseless squabbles by a handful of the sort of lunatics who in normal times would be boosting nudism, nut-diets, or neo-Gaelic poetry.”

  “Now! Now!” Richard smiled. “You mustn’t let yourself get all worked up about it.”

  “Forgive me,” laughed the Duke. “Sometimes I let my tongue run away with me. Time’s getting on. We should be moving.”

  “Are you going back tonight?” Lucretia asked.

  “Directly we’ve seen you home.”

  “Rios Rosas is simply miles from here.”

  “No matter. The streets of Madrid at night are no place for a girl alone, especially in times like these.”

  “Then we’ll go to the Calle Jardines. That’s much nearer and hardly out of your way at all. I’ve got a room there in which I sleep sometimes.”

  All Madrid’s taxis had either been commandeered or broken down through misuse by the rabble, but they got an old horse-cab and told the driver to take them to the corner of the Gran Via and Calle Clavel. It was not very late but only a bar was open here and there and the lack of lights
gave the streets all the appearance of a war-time city. When the cabby set them down they turned into the maze of narrow ways to complete their journey on foot, since Lucretia was anxious that as few people as possible should ever see her enter or leave the hotel which camouflaged her secret headquarters.

  It was unlucky that, just round the corner, a street lamp happened to be outside a small restaurant and that they passed it at the very moment that four men came out. The glare from the lamp momentarily dazzled them after the darkness of the narrow by-way, and they only glimpsed the men as black forms silhouetted against the brightly-lit interior of the place. Richard was on the inside of the pavement and he almost collided with the group but checked himself in time with the intention of letting them pass in front of him while de Richleau and Lucretia walked on.

  Without the least warning a fist smashed into the side of Richard’s face and he went down flat in the gutter. Next second a heavy boot landed in his stomach. Everything blacked out for a moment except a sickening ghastly mist of pain.

  Seeing their leader attack Richard the other three men hurled themselves on the Duke from behind. He spun round whipping out his gun, but before he could raise it one of them had struck his wrist with a length of lead piping. The pistol dropped from his nerveless fingers just as the second fellow hit him on the head. He reeled and went down under a rain of blows that knocked him half unconscious.