The Golden Spaniard

by Dennis Wheatley

  “How about the others?” Rex asked.

  Simon’s eyes were quite steady as he said, “That’s where the real muddle comes in. They’re wanted for the shooting too, but.…”

  “Our earlier histories have not the same spotless Socialist purity as that of Rex,” the Duke finished for him.

  “Um,” Simon nodded. “That’s the snag. Tried everything I know but I daren’t take you out of here. Your lives wouldn’t be worth an hour’s purchase. They’ve got it in for both of you. That shooting put the lid on it because they believe you two started it and Rex only mixed in afterwards. I’ve done a lot for Government Spain but now most of my friends have gone off to Valencia I’m next to powerless.”

  “We can’t leave them here!” expostulated Rex.

  “Can’t you use your men to help the Guardias to protect this place?” Richard asked.

  “Ner. Would if I could but they won’t take orders to fight the crowd from me. Besides they’re too few to make any difference.” Simon tapped the pickaxe which the Duke had taken from him. “I was—er—hoping you had some scheme on when you asked for this.”

  “We have,” de Richleau smiled. “Don’t worry, Simon. I quite understand how you’re placed. You get Rex out of it and I.…”

  “To hell with that!” Rex cut in. “I’m in this thing with you.”

  “Thanks, Rex, but we can take care of ourselves now.”

  “You dead certain?” Rex insisted.

  “Yes. I’ve got a scheme. And actually it will help us if you go with Simon.”

  “Right, then. Look, Simon, I’ve gotten two folks I want to bring along. Will that be O.K.?”

  “Depends who they are.”

  “One’s a lovely. Doña Favorita. You met her, I’m told, in the Palace Hotel. The other’s a nice little kid. We pulled him out of the swimming-baths.”

  “Got to take you to prison, you know.”

  “Sure, but they’ll stand a better chance there than they would when the bunch there’s hauled into the street.”

  “Um. All right. Be quick, though. Don’t like the sound of things outside. Sooner we get off the better.”

  “That applies to us too,” said the Duke. “Many thanks for the pick, Simon. Take care of Rex and yourself”. Come on, Richard.”

  After hurried good-byes they parted, Rex dashing off into the back of the house to collect Doña Favorita and Alonso while de Richleau and Richard hurried upstairs.

  “Where’re you going? What’s the idea?” they were asked by many of the refugees who eyed the pickaxe curiously. The Duke ignored these questions. He had no wish to raise false hopes of escape in the hearts of these unfortunate people and he did not pause until he reached one of the two small rooms on the third floor at the back of the house which were usually frequented by the Mondragon-Villablanca circle.

  Having returned from his visit to the front windows the Marquis was there now with two of his friends.

  “Gentlemen!” said de Richleau swiftly. “My friend and I are about to attempt an escape. It distresses me immeasurably to have to tell you there is little hope of our being able to take you with us. But our case is somewhat different from your own. You stand some chance of surviving if you go quietly when the mob breaks in. We stand no chance at all. We are on a list of people to be shot immediately they are caught. Will you, very generously, give us your assistance to get away if we can?”

  “Willingly! Most certainly!” the three Spaniards replied at once and Mondragon-Villablanca asked, “What do you intend to do?”

  The Duke slammed the door shut and swung his pick a foot or two. “Hack a hole in this wall. If we can make an opening and get through in time we shall be safe. The British Commercial Attaché’s offices are next door.”

  The lean old Marquis nodded. “And, of course, they will not allow us to go through because we are not British.”

  “I very much fear it may prove so.”

  “No matter! How can we help?”

  “By keeping other people out of the room. If what we’re doing once gets round we’ll be besieged here by terrified people hoping to escape the same way. That would impede our work and we’ve little enough time as it is.”

  “Right, then! Go ahead and good luck to you. Don Joaquim and I will take post outside the door while Don Leopoldo watches from one of the front windows and reports how things are going from time to time. The back entrance has been blocked up with furniture now so it is just a question as to how long the Guardias can keep them out in front.”

  “May God reward you and have you in His keeping, gentlemen,” replied the Duke solemnly as the three Spaniards hurried from the room.

  “Who did that message to Simon come from really?” Richard asked. “You didn’t send it, did you?”

  “No, no. Lucretia-José’s been our Guardian Angel this time,” smiled the Duke. “She must have heard of the trouble here and being unable to aid us herself, decided to get Simon busy. Her making him bring a pick was a stroke of genius.”

  “Bless her,” said Richard seizing the pick and setting-to on the wall with a will, but it was ten minutes before they succeeded in getting the first brick out. After that things went easier. The Duke took a turn with the pick but had to surrender it again to Richard after a few moments. Although the palm of his hand was healed his two-months-old wound still hurt him when he exercised it violently.

  Each of Don Leopoldo’s reports became more alarming. The soldiers had gone and the crowd was howling again. The Guardias were almost in tears begging the people not to dishonour them by making them surrender the building. Almost every window in the front of the house had been smashed. The mob had torn down some scaffolding farther up the street and were bringing it to use as a battering ram against the door. As these bulletins were passed back by Mondragon-Villabianca Richard worked with desperate fury. The sweat was pouring from him.

  The wall was two bricks thick and he had only managed to make a hole about a foot square when a voice called from the other side in Spanish.

  “Stop this! You can’t come through here.”

  “Can’t I?” roared Richard. “You damn’ well see if I can’t!” and with a mighty swipe he dislodged three more bricks.

  “This is British property,” called the voice angrily. “We cannot allow any but British subjects in this building.”

  “We are British!” shouted the Duke. “Don’t stand there arguing—whoever you are. Pull some of those loose bricks away.”

  Now that the hole was a fair size the work progressed much more rapidly and the several people on the far side of the wall were helping by kicking away bricks which protruded round its jagged edge.

  “Good enough,” said de Richleau after a moment, and stooping down he thrust his head through a cloud of dust in the opening. The other room looked as though it were little used. Piles of old letter-files were stacked against the opposite wall and the four men who stood there had obviously been brought to the place by the violent knocking of the pick.

  “Got your passports?” asked the man who appeared to be in charge.

  “Yes. My British passport is stitched up in the sole of my boot; my friend’s carrying his in his pocket. We’ll show them in a minute. But there are three Spaniards here. I beg you to let them come in with us.”

  “Impossible!” said the man. “As it is the Chargé d’Affaires may go off the deep end about this.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, your coming in through the wall.”

  “By God, he’d better not!” snapped the Duke furiously. “I’ll pay for the wall, but this is a matter of life and death. One word of incivility from your Chargé d’Affaires and I’ll go direct to the Prime Minister about it.”

  “All right, all right,” protested the man, considerably taken aback. “I only said he might kick up a fuss. He evacuated all his refugees weeks ago and he doesn’t want any more. He’s enough trouble on his hands as it is.”

  “Never mind that. What about these Sp
aniards—three men—surely you can hide them somewhere?”

  “No. It simply can’t be done. We’d all get the sack. The Chief would be livid. He even dreams Neutrality in his sleep, I think. Those are his orders from home and he carries them out dead to the letter.”

  “I’ll chance it and take them in at the flat,” said a quiet voice. De Richleau looked up from the hole. A slim, fair young man had spoken.

  “You’re nuts, Arthur,” said the other. “You’re always doing crazy things like this and that flat of yours must be crammed with half the nobility of Spain already. The Chief would have a fit if he knew what was going on there.”

  “The Reds may shoot me one day, but he can’t,” shrugged the fair man. “If I lose my job what’s the matter compared to saving people’s lives?” Glancing down at de Richleau he added, “Bring your friends along.”

  The Duke needed no second bidding. Telling Richard to go through the hole he ran to the door and called in Mondragon-Villablanca, Don Joaquim and Don Leopoldo, who had just arrived to say the Guardias had at last given way and the leaders of the mob were already in the hall. Overwhelming de Richleau with thanks they scrambled into the British building.

  Directly he had got through Richard recognised the fair young man as the same who had advised him to take Doña Favorita to the Finnish Legation. “Why, it’s Arthur Talbot!” he cried as they shook hands. “This is the second time you’ve helped us out.”

  It could only be a matter of moments now before the Reds were upstairs and entering the remoter rooms of the Finnish Legation, so the escapers and their new hosts set to work piling up a great stack of letter-files over the hole in the wall so that anyone seeing it from the other side might imagine it had been made weeks before.

  Arthur Talbot explained that he had been taken on among others as additional staff for the Embassy during the troubles and was now in charge of a building round the corner in the Fernando el Santo on the far side of the Comité de Transporte. It was known as the British Embassy Annexe and he had taken over the top floor as his own residence.

  The escapers were led up to an attic to wait until night since the only way for them to reach Talbot’s flat, apart from going round by the street, was to walk along the top of a high wall which could be seen in the day from the back windows of the Transport building.

  One of the other men brought them up some cold food and some bottles of beer during the evening, with the good news that there had been no massacre in the Finnish Legation. A company of Communists had arrived on the scene, who, with their usual adherence to discipline, had obeyed their officers’ orders to march all the refugees off to prison.

  Planes came over and dropped some bombs, Franco’s artillery was shelling the University City, and in the distance the muted mutter of machine-gun fire could be faintly heard. At one o’clock in the morning Arthur Talbot came for his protégés, led them down to a lower floor, and opened a window which overlooked a courtyard at the back of the Transport building. Enclosing one side of the courtyard was a very solid red brick wall nearly a foot-and-a-half wide but thirty feet in height, and to slip from it would have meant either death or serious injury. Their perilous journey then began.

  De Richleau, with his hatred of heights, felt sick and wretched, but Richard went in front of him and Don Joaquim, who was a fine muscular young man, behind. Talbot led the way and after an anxious five minutes they arrived opposite the flat roof of a laundry which was behind the British Embassy Annexe. It was a seven-foot jump down on to it and from there they had only to walk across a short iron footbridge, which spanned another courtyard, to the pantry of Talbot’s flat.

  The flat would have accommodated a good-sized family. It had a very big hall, two reception rooms, six bedrooms, and two bathrooms; moreover, it was beautifully furnished and contained some admirable works of art.

  “What delightful quarters you have here,” the Duke remarked as their host poured drinks for his five new guests.

  “Yes, nice, aren’t they?” the fair young man replied. “The place really belongs to an old Marquesa. She’s still here, of course, and I’ll introduce you to her tomorrow. I happened to call on her just after she’d been warned the Reds were coming to get her so I commandeered the place and plastered Union Jacks all over it. The people over the road gave me an awful wigging at the time but they’re rather glad to have it as an Annexe now. It gives them a lot of additional storage on the lower floors and extra garages as well.”

  Talbot had rearranged the sleeping quarters of seven other Spaniards whom he was protecting under the guise of servants in his flat, in order to provide some accommodation for the five new-comers and, although they had to do with makeshift beds they all turned in with more cheerfulness than they had for many weeks past.

  In the morning plans were discussed. Talbot told them that in order to be able to give asylum to others he always endeavoured to move his guests on as soon as it could be managed. He had already had several dozen refugees through his hands and practice had taught him a great deal about fooling the Reds.

  The Chilean Ambassador, who was the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps in Madrid, had arranged with the Government for a special train to convey large numbers of the refugees from the various Embassies and Legations to the frontier in September but, having agreed to that, the Government would do no more. However, it was only a few of the greater Democratic countries’ Embassies which were maintaining such a strict neutrality that they gave the appearance of being pro-Red. The others, particularly most of the South American Embassies and Legations, were doing every mortal thing they could to help, and certain of the members of their staffs could be persuaded not to examine particulars of applications for passports too closely when it was a question of saving lives.

  Richard and the Duke were amazed as they listened to this slight, short, fair fellow while he spoke with such quiet modesty of the splendid rescue work he was doing. He seemed little more than a boy; yet, behind his lazy, rather heavy-lidded eyes there were evidently wits as sharp as needles and his slender frame concealed the heart of a lion. It made them very proud to know that at least one Englishman on the staff of their Embassy was living up to the great tradition of Britain in championing the defenceless.

  He had many amusing as well as tragic stories to tell and, amongst them, related how he had once been in a café, in the early days of the Revolution, when it was raided by Anarchists. They asked him for his papers and, unfortunately, he had left them at home. As, owing to his upbringing, he spoke Spanish like a native they refused to believe he was an Englishman.

  Smiling slightly he turned to Richard and asked, “What would you have done if one of them had suddenly come forward to you and said, ‘All right, then! If you’re an Englishman recite to me the first act of Hamlet’?”

  “Lord knows!” laughed Richard. “I couldn’t even quote the opening lines. Did you manage it?”

  “No. Instead I gave him the bawdy poem Rochester slipped into King Charles II’s pocket and the limerick about the ‘Mate of the Lugger’ as a makeweight. After that it turned out quite a jolly evening. Some of these Anarchists would not be at all bad fellows if they hadn’t this unpleasant complex about what they term ‘learning to kill without passion for the eventual betterment of mankind’.”

  The five ex-refugees from the Finnish Legation were introduced to Talbot’s other guests and allotted various official posts on the domestic staff of the flat. De Richleau offered himself as assistant cook, then, getting Talbot aside for a private conversation, he asked if it were safe to use the telephone.

  Talbot shook his head. “Better not risk it. The Reds have had their eye on me for weeks. They’d raid this place under the hour if it ceased to be part of the B.E. The line’s always being tapped. But what’s the trouble? D’you want to get in touch with somebody? I’ll take a message if you like.”

  “That’s good of you. But are you sure you won’t be followed?”

  “Yes. The best heads in the o
ld Seguridad have all gone into the basket. Most of them were Monarchists, like the Guardia Civile. The new crowd, who’re mostly self-appointed, are a poor lot of fish. One oaf who held me up a few weeks ago actually asked me to hold his pistol so that he could use both hands to search me.”

  De Richleau disliked the idea of disclosing even a portion of Lucretia-José’s secret to anyone but he knew there was nothing else for it and, since he had to do so, he had already made up his mind that it could not be in safer keeping than with Arthur Talbot.

  He told the young man that he and Richard had come to Spain to do a certain little job for the Nationalists and they believed their part in it was finished. If this were so both of them would be exceedingly grateful for any help which would enable them to get back to England but, before leaving, he must see a certain person to assure himself that the job was satisfactorily completed.

  Talbot had heard of the ‘Golden Spaniard’ and, while being greatly intrigued to hear that she was in secret communication with Monarchist sympathisers, realised at once how immensely important it was that her connection with them should not leak out. It was decided that a verbal message to her would be less risky than committing anything to paper and that Talbot should just tell her where the Duke was and that he was very anxious to see her. In order to convince her that it was not a trap, Talbot was given by the Duke his London address, the date she had lunched with him and the Christian names of her father and mother; none of which things revealed her true identity, and all of which could have been known to few people except her and himself.

  After the siesta Talbot, first taking special precautions to throw any possible shadowers off his track, set off to Rios Rosas, while the Duke spent one of the most enjoyable afternoons he had had for a long time with the old lady who owned the flat, examining her art treasures; among them were two Murillos, a Goya, and a Rubens.

  It was eight o’clock before Talbot got back, as Lucretia-José had been out when he arrived at her flat and he had had to watch the place for a long time before she had put in an appearance.