The Golden Spaniard

by Dennis Wheatley

  Their pace had to be a moderate one on account of Richard’s leg but their spirits rose as they proceeded. Madrid had quietened down a lot since Richard and the Duke had last been loose in it. Only every other street lamp was lit and these had sheets of brown paper pasted over half the surface of their glass. A service of motor-buses was running but these had their blinds pulled down and only showed blue lights for headlamps. The windows in the tall blocks were carefully screened.

  They stuck to the main thoroughfares, considering them less dangerous than the chance of being pulled up as the only pedestrians in a byway. The necessity of adjusting their pace to Richard’s was to some extent an advantage. It prevented them from arousing suspicion by hurrying and gave them ample time to study the details of the dim vistas ahead. With anxious eyes constantly watching for the police they dreaded, they made their way cautiously from one long patch of shadow to another, crossing the streets innumerable times to reap the maximum advantage of the semi-darkness.

  All went well until they reached the very corner of the Fernando el Santo. At it a solitary policeman suddenly stepped out from the pitch-darkness of a doorway and said gruffly, “Your papers, Comrades?”

  Chapter XXIV

  The House of Mental Death

  Their only resource, short of shooting, was bluff, and summoning the last remnants of his ebbing strength de Richleau put up a magnificent show.

  “Keep away! Keep away!” he cried in Spanish, backing hurriedly from the policeman who had accosted them. “My friend’s little boy has a fever and we’re afraid it’s cholera.”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” muttered the man suspiciously.

  “We’re taking him to see Dr. Mendoza who is a refugee in the Finnish Legation; because he is an expert in tropical diseases,” protested the Duke.

  “Come on, let’s see your papers.”

  Suddenly de Richleau advanced again, going right up to him. “Just as you wish but for God’s sake don’t delay us. I fear I’ve got it too.” With a quick movement he laid his sound hand on the policeman’s wrist.

  As the man felt the dry, burning fingers of the feverish Duke his jaw fell. Almost leaping away he angrily signalled them on; but he did not leave them. He followed them at a respectable distance right up to the Finnish Legation. It proved just as well that he did since three Guardias Asalto were posted before it; not only to protect its inmates but to prevent unauthorised people going in.

  The Guardias were just about to come forward when the policeman shouted a hasty warning. The pseudo-infection party stood aside just by the Legation door while a swift conference was held. The Guardias knew of no Dr. Mendoza in the building, but then there were three or four hundred people there.

  In any case, cholera suspects could not be allowed to wander about the city. Several cases had been reported already; due, it was believed, to dead bodies being thrown into wells during the early days of the Revolution. All cholera patients were being isolated. These people should be sent at once to the Fever Hospital, but who was going to take them? The Guardias could not leave their post and the policeman certainly did not want the job. Perhaps they had not got cholera at all? Better let them see their doctor. If he were an expert he would know, then appropriate measures could be taken.

  With a swiftly suppressed sigh of relief de Richleau pressed the bell. The golden gate within which safety lay was opened to them and they passed provisionally inside.

  The Finnish Minister and his countrymen had not returned to Madrid as there were no Finns in the city requiring their protection. It is impossible to believe they were aware that their Spanish representative was piling up a fortune by selling immunity from the Terror to desperate Spaniards by sheltering them under the Finnish flag but that the Finns knew there were several hundred people in their house can hardly be doubted. Unlike some of the great Embassies to whose eternal shame it will be recorded that, under the guise of neutrality, they never raised a finger to save a life, it may well be that in generous humanity the Finns deliberately closed their eyes to the fact that many poor, broken souls had sought sanctuary within their gates.

  Once inside, the half-fainting Duke strove to arrange matters. At first the Spaniard in charge said that it was quite impossible to take them in owing to the house being crammed far in excess of its capacity already; but de Richleau opened his waistcoat and asked Rex to slit up the lining. On seeing some of the high-value notes which were neatly stitched into it the Spaniard began to change his tone. He said he could no longer house people for three thousand pesetas a head, as he had been doing when they brought him Doña Favorita.

  A bargain was eventually struck at twenty thousand pesetas for the three men and Alonso; a heavy payment but they were in no position to argue and, including the balance of the cash they had brought with them from England and the profits on the Duke’s metal deals, he and Richard still had more than twice that sum on them even after purchasing the Valmojado factory from Señor Gomara.

  In addition all four had to give a signed undertaking that if they left the Legation they would not demand readmission to it and that they would not communicate with anyone outside during their stay there. The Spaniard insisted on this mainly for his own protection but also because he did not want to get into trouble through Royalists engineering plots while in his charge.

  There were two doctors among the refugees and one room on the fourth floor had been set aside as a sanatorium. Two of the five beds in it were cleared of a carbuncle case and a man with a sprained ankle for the benefit of Richard and the Duke. Some nuns were in attendance and, suffering as they did from strong inhibitions about the propriety of seeing, much less washing, the male form, the Englishmen found their nurses’ standard of cleanliness left much to be desired; but the doctors were efficient and pronounced the wounds troublesome although not dangerous.

  The Spaniard in charge reported to the policeman that the name of the doctor they had come to see was Herrero, not Mendoza, and that Doctor Herrero had diagnosed the glandular swellings of the eldest of the men and the boy as mumps, not cholera. Since mumps was not included in the list of diseases scheduled for isolation the question of a dangerous epidemic spreading from the Finnish Legation, if they remained there, did not arise. The Doctor said that as both his patients were running high temperatures he had put them to bed at once, and as the other two might develop the infection at any moment he thought it best to allow them to stay with their friends.

  The policeman was fortunately aware of the extraordinarily painful manner in which mumps may affect the adult male so he quickly lost all further desire to interview Rex and Richard. The Guardias, who were on very friendly terms with the man who ran the Legation, agreed quite readily that all four of the newcomers should be allowed to accept the proffered hospitality. That they were really another batch of refugees the Guardias did not doubt but they kept their own council; partly because they were being very well paid for shutting their eyes to such things and partly because they were decent, orderly fellows who strongly disapproved of the wholesale murder that was going on in Madrid. Doctor Herrero, an olive-skinned Spaniard with a lisp, conveyed the news of their immunity from arrest to the new refugees who were at last able to consider themselves safe.

  Rex and Alonso were taken below to a cellar, which was half-full of valuable merchandise that had been stored there for safe keeping by a number of shrewd people just before the outbreak, and were told that they must doss down there as well as they could. Every bed, sofa and couch in the building was already occupied and the majority of its male inmates were sleeping on the floors and in the passages.

  There were several other men in the cellar already and these shared out various soft goods such as bales of silk and lace with Rex who made up beds for Alonso and himself. It was rather smelly down there and horribly stuffy but not uncomfortable.

  Next morning the whole colony of refugees was a-twitter about the new arrivals. De Richleau inquired for Doña Favorita and, chaperon
ed by two nuns, she was allowed in to see him. This chaperonage tickled him immensely in view of her circumstances at their first meeting but he was much too gallant and kind a man to dream of recalling her little flutter with Don Palacio, much less the top of an hotel bedroom wardrobe.

  She was as demure now as the strictest etiquette could demand that a daughter of General de los Passos-Inclán should be; and Richard, after greeting her from his bed, marvelled, not for the first time, at the amount of guile which could be hidden behind a young and charming female countenance.

  In spite of this forced repression of her normal high spirits she was unaffectedly glad to see them and listened eagerly to that portion of their adventures which de Richleau elected to give her. It was pointless for him to keep up the pretence of being Hypolite Dubois any longer so he told her his real name and, introducing her to Rex and Alonso, asked her to present them to such people as she knew in the house.

  Doña Favorita willingly obliged and so class-ridden was the whole establishment that she gained a temporary notoriety from the disclosure of the fact that her own rescuer had proved to be a Duke.

  Rex soon came to hate the place, and the two invalids would not have stayed a moment in it, once they were able to get about again, if their lives had not depended on their doing so. They had only exchanged one prison for another and of the two they were inclined to prefer their old cell.

  In the Legation they were able to move freely from room to room, and if the delicacies Simon had sent them before were excluded, they enjoyed slightly better food, but they were never alone owing to the crowding of the building and at times the narrow, bigoted outlook which dominated the inmates of the place drove them almost frantic.

  In the prison the captives had spent endless time and ingenuity in passing on a few words of consolation and hope to each other; here, where they could communicate freely, they talked of little but the revenge they would take on their enemies when the war was won, and malicious tittle-tattle about each other.

  An incredible old Duquesa ruled the roost among the refugees. The nine priests among them acted as a kind of sycophantic bodyguard to this old tyrant and a score of spineless men danced attendance on her. Court etiquette and rules governing social precedence had developed to a more farcical degree of formality in Spain during the Victorian era than they ever achieved under Le Roi Soleil two centuries earlier at Versailles; and this selfish, crafty, abysmally ignorant old woman, whose sole knowledge consisted of church services and the Spanish equivalent of Debrett, had the whole weight of a giant ‘snob’ tradition behind her.

  Most of the other dowagers of rank accepted her leadership as natural and fitting while the broader-minded put up with it rather than face social ostracism. The younger women were kept in a state of tutelage differing little from that imposed on novices in a convent and, after virtually forced confessions, the Dowager’s squad of priests dealt out heavy penances in Paters and Aves to any of them caught intriguing with one of the men. The majority of the rich bourgeois who had bought their way into this grim sanctuary were so pleased at finding themselves cheek by jowl with people of rank that they aped their manners and slavishly followed every whim of the old Duquesa.

  So lost were these people to all sense of reality that they frequently spoke disparagingly of many of the Generals who were fighting their battle, referring to them contemptuously as men of indifferent birth and, therefore, of no moment. In spite of the unhealthily congested state of the building they had set aside the largest room in it for a chapel, so this could be used only for religious services which were held three times daily. Only illness served as a valid excuse for non-attendance and the Duquesa openly vented her displeasure on those who did not go to confession at least once weekly.

  Social precedence was strictly preserved in the seating at the long tables where the refugees took their meagre meals. No one was allowed to go in before the Duquesa, and when she rose from the table everyone had to get up whether they had finished or not. The question of rank even extended to sanitary arrangements. As there were only seven lavatories in the building for the use of three-hundred-odd people, queues had to be formed each morning and every member of the huge household had his or her place in a queue allotted solely on social qualifications.

  There was, of course, a handful of rebels of both sexes. A few whose social status was so low that the Duquesa could not imagine how they had got in at all and a certain number, mostly much-travelled aristocrats, who refused to be bored by the interminable succession of services. They kept very much to themselves and formed a little coterie which had gravitated to two small rooms on the third floor at the back of the house.

  Rex had little malice in his nature but he could not refrain from poking fun at the Duke and Richard about the company in which they found themselves. If these were the sort of folks they were fighting for, he said, he would like to see his friends compelled to live with them for twelve months at least. That would be the best possible punishment for all interfering reactionaries.

  De Richleau took it in good part, explaining that the Duquesa and her set were only a small section of the Nationalists and the equivalent of the Catholic Black nobility of Italy whose power Mussolini had curbed quite effectively; stupid, narrow people whose continued existence was an anachronism in this modern age; but, he pointed out, pathetic and useless as they might be, they at least did not commit wholesale murder in order to force their political creed upon their fellow-citisens.

  The Duke’s advent into this almost mediaeval society proved something of a bombshell. The wound in his arm was doing nicely but the tear in the side of his right palm gave him considerable pain, so he was not allowed to leave the sickroom until a week after his arrival.

  It was the end of the first week in September and he came downstairs on the day the Socialist, Largo Caballero, at last openly took over the Government in order to strengthen the resistance of Madrid’s defenders to the rapidly approaching army of General Franco, who had now been appointed supreme Commander of the Nationalist forces.

  De Richleau’s rank unquestionably entitled him to the same position among the men as the Duquesa occupied among the women. To the surprise and consternation of a group of assembled Spaniards he firmly but courteously repudiated his right of priority to the second-best privy in the house at the morning queue. Last comers, he said, should obviously come last, and he was one of the latest group to join the household.

  His statement was at first regarded as only a meaningless politeness, but when they became convinced that he really meant what he said it produced an effect which, within those narrow confines, was the equivalent of a major International Crisis. To save face a fat, smooth-tongued priest, named Dom Francesco, pressed the Duke to go first, if for no other reason than because he was a foreigner and a guest on Spanish soil.

  The Duke pointed out that at the moment, perhaps fortunately, they were not on Spanish but on Finnish soil. With a worried look Dom Francesco hurried off to place the matter with the utmost discretion before the Duquesa. She refused to believe him. De Richleau had many more quarterings than herself; he could claim half the Monarchs and ex-Monarchs of Europe as second or third cousins. He had the right to be addressed as ‘cousin’ by them when he was with them. He was one of the very few non-royal Knights of the Most Mighty and Puissant Order, the Golden Fleece, and, as such, himself a Hidalgo of Spain. It was utterly unthinkable that such a man should go after little Condes whose titles dated only from yesterday, and even common merchants.

  The diplomatic Dom Francesco tried fresh persuasion, but the Duke stood firm. The whole business of the morning was held up. The situation was becoming acute. What in the world were they to do?

  The frightful problem was solved by a tall, bald-headed man who had been watching the proceedings with much amusement. He introduced himself to de Richleau as the Marquis de Mon-dragon-Villablanca and suggested that in future they should draw lots for their places in the queue. The Duke agreed to thi
s immediately and Dom Francesco gave way. He begged that the matter should not be mentioned to the other men in the house as he was most anxious that it should not get round to the Duquesa via one of their wives but, of course, it leaked out and the whole community was soon either scandalised or tittering over the affair.

  This led to a minor revolution and a considerable falling-off of the attendance at the religious services. About a fifth of the refugees went over to the rebels, among whom the witty Mon-dragon-Villablanca had been one of the original leaders. The Duquesa was furious and saved her face by spreading a rumour that the ‘poor dear Duke’ was no longer responsible for his actions as the horrors he had witnessed had turned his brain.

  De Richleau attended service once a day, not to appease her but because he knew that many of these poor people, whatever their outward pettiness, were perpetually tortured by thoughts of what might be happening to their dear ones and found much consolation in the practice of their faith. Therefore he wished to show publicly that he was no mocker at any consolations that faith might offer; but he refused confession and, consequently, the sacrament.

  With such a large majority behind her the Duquesa continued to dominate the household and it remained a place of gloom. There had already been one birth and another was expected. A wedding was solemnised with half-hearted rejoicing. Several love-affairs were in progress and an occasional scandal set all tongues wagging maliciously. A section of the men played games of chance, and some among them gambled away piece by piece vast estates which they no longer possessed.

  There was no dancing, no attempts to organise lectures, few books other than the works of reference in the office for the men to read and, owing to lack of needles and thread, little needlework on which the women could employ themselves. Debates had been attempted but were soon stopped by the priests on account of the thousand-and-one controversial matters affecting religion, some of which were almost certain to be dragged in. The food was dull and monotonous; all the drink in the place, except water and the daily ration of coarse wine, had long since been consumed. There was only one radio, and whenever Insurgent broadcasts were being given from Seville they were jammed by Madrid; consequently the refugees had to rely on foreign stations and the Duquesa banned dance-music as unsuitable at a time when all should be giving themselves to meditation and prayer. The tedium of the days was increased by the monotonous religious chanting and the vapid tittle-tattle only relieved by impertinent pronouncements as to what the Generals ought to do to save Spain.