“Well?” asked Richard.
Rex looked at his feet uncomfortably. “I’ve got a bit of a confession to make. Mind you, I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done but I hope you won’t take it too badly.”
“What the deuce are you talking about?”
“You just read what I’ve written to Simon,” Rex grinned suddenly. “I’d rather you learnt about it that way because I don’t want to do any crowing act. I’ll be seeing you, and I guess your sense of humour’ll prevent you wanting to kick me too hard in the pants when you’ve thought it over.”
Richard guessed what was in the letter but he looked completely mystified and smiled only when Rex had turned away. Running down to Marie-Lou in her cabin Richard spread the letter out and read it to her. It was a detailed account of Rex’s stay at Valmojado; how he had found the golden henhouse, converted the gold into bombs, foiled the Nationalists into letting him get away with the Flying Sow, and tricked Richard into dropping the golden bombs just north-east of Madrid near Hortaleza.
For half an hour they laughed themselves nearly sick over the document and were both quite red in the face when they came on deck again to face the grinning Rex.
Richard played his part very skilfully; a blend of annoyance at having been so completely fooled, admiration for the extremely clever way in which the job had been done, and resignation at losing the gold after all. Marie-Lou helped by insisting that Rex should give them fuller details of his marvellous coup and so distracted his attention somewhat from Richard in the very tricky role he had to play.
“Of course,” said Richard after a while, “you realise I’m entitled to consider the game still on? You’re a prisoner on board this yacht and by letting me see this letter you’ve spilled the beans a bit too soon. There’s nothing to stop me refusing to send it.”
“Nothing at all,” agreed Rex amiably. “But that won’t help you any. Those bombs fell in Government territory and plenty of folks will have been out to take a look at ‘em. Why was it that in all twenty the fuses went off but the bombs failed to explode? The Government bomb experts will naturally want to know that. Half Madrid will be talking about those golden eggs by this time and they’ll be safe some place by now. My letter only tells Simon how the job was done.”
“Yes, I’m afraid you’re right,” Richard admitted sadly. “I’d better add a paragraph to my letter to the Duke about it. There’s no sense in his staying any longer in Madrid now. God, how I’ve been done! You old devil, I’d like to …. Still, I must say it was a darn fine bit of work.”
He went off to add the paragraph but it was only to confirm that poor old Rex really believed he had got away with his scheme and had not the faintest suspicion that the gold was really lying a few feet under the water some fifteen miles west of Malaga.
Captain Sanderson took both letters ashore. Rex’s was despatched via the ordinary post to Simon in Madrid and Richard’s under cover of Arthur Talbot, via the British Consulate. As soon as the Captain was aboard again the Golden Gull turned southwest and headed down the coast once more.
Richard appeared to nurse an injured pride throughout the short wait off Malaga but he cheered up remarkably quickly once they had left the port behind. At dinner he was so cheerful that Rex felt certain the next act in the farce they were playing for each other’s benefit was due to start. He opened the ball at the end of the meal himself by saying, “I’d like to hand it to you, Richard, for taking your defeat so gamely.”
“That’s nice of you, old chap, but there’s a reason for it,” said Richard, suddenly becoming quite grave. “Have you ever been put in irons?”
“Have I what?” laughed Rex.
“Put in irons. You know—those things they shackle mutinous sailors with. I don’t really know if we’ve got any on board but I think we can rake up a pair of handcuffs.”
“What in heck are you talking about?” Rex appeared extremely puzzled but he knew exactly what was coming.
“Just this. It’s a shocking abuse of hospitality but we did our best to persuade you to leave the yacht at Valencia. I couldn’t tell you about it until you’d sent off your letter to Simon and we were safe out of port, but since you elected to remain with us I’m faced with a rather tricky situation. I’m now compelled to ask you either to give me your word that you’ll not attempt to leave this yacht or communicate with anyone outside its personnel until I say you may, or to take steps which will ensure your being unable to do so.”
“Is this some sort of loony game?” Rex asked. “If so, you might let me in on how we play.”
“Poor Rex,” said Marie-Lou. “Naturally you don’t understand, but I’m afraid the time has come when we’ve got to break it to you. It’s frightfully hard luck, I know, but your lovely scheme didn’t come off. Richard knew about it all the time. He dropped the dud bombs outside Madrid and the gold ones in the bay where.…”
“What!” shouted Rex, springing up from the table.
Marie-Lou rose too and reached up a small hand to Rex’s shoulder. “Darling, we’re both so sorry but do try and take it calmly. Have a little more brandy; it’s very good brandy, I believe.”
“But how the hell …?”
Richard began to describe the part he had played as modestly as he could while Rex sank slowly into his chair and listened, his face depicting alternate anger and amazement.
“So you see the situation,” Richard ended. “I can’t have you letting Simon know what’s really happened, so I’ve got to ask you to make this choice.”
“It was clever,” said Rex. “I’ll admit that and I don’t quite know what to do. Will you give me till tomorrow morning to think it over?”
“Certainly, old chap, providing you promise not to make any move whatever in the meantime. No trying to bribe my wireless operator, swimming ashore, or anything of that kind.”
Rex only asked for time because he felt it would look more in character if he made some pretence of contemplating coming into the game again. Actually he had no need to as he had already done all there was to do. He gave his parole for the night, did his turn of displaying mild sulks for the rest of the evening and, in the morning, came forward with a frank acknowledgement that, Richard having bested him, he would take no further action to try to prevent his collecting the gold.
Richard and Marie-Lou were delighted at being spared the unpleasant necessity of locking him up, and the yacht having reached the bay by midday on Saturday, all three of them went off in the launch that afternoon to have a look at the bombs.
During Richard’s brief early morning trip two days before he had been very fully occupied, so neither he nor Rex had had an opportunity to study the bay in daylight. The sandy shore stretched in an unbroken curve for about four miles. Two hundred yards inland it was broken by black boulders, then came the road which they could not see from their position on the water. Immediately beyond it rose the foothills of the Sierra Mijas, brown, barren and desolate. It was an inhospitable coast but it had its own grandeur. In all the long stretch of sand, rocks, dark cliffs and frowning mountains only two buildings were visible; the villa on the headland where Richard had stayed years before, now, apparently, untenanted; and the old monastery on its crag a little inland near the middle of the bay.
They noted with some concern that the flag of Government Spain floated over the monastery and that two wagons with half a dozen men were crawling up the winding, fourth-class road which passed out of sight to its left. The greater part of the front of the rambling old building consisted of a long wall, from which it was a sheer drop of five hundred feet to the rocks below, and over its top the upper halves of two tiny figures showed. Richard focused his binoculars on them and declared that they were Militiamen with rifles. Evidently the place had been taken over by the military as a guard post to cover the coast road and the track which led up into the mountains towards the enemy lines.
They speculated as to what the men in the monastery could have seen of the Flying Sow’s strange la
nding three nights before and decided that it could have been little if anything at all. Up on their crag they were a good four miles distant from the wreck and, fortunately, she had come down when it was nearly dark. They must have seen her come over and swoop along the bay but probably thought she had flown off again as, except for a small piece of her tail the knife edge of which was turned towards them, she had been under water before morning.
The presence of the Militiamen in the monastery made Richard decide that it would be best for the yacht not to remain off the bay permanently, and that it would be wisest to buoy the bombs about sunset because the sun rose over the bay, lighting the whole scene within a few moments of its getting up, whereas it set behind the mountains which would give them over an hour of sufficient but obscured light.
They measured the exact depth of each bomb with a lead line and marked them, with their respective depths, on a rough chart. By the time they had done the wind was getting up and it was clear they were in for a bit of a blow; so realising that no more could be done for the present, as soon as they were back on board Richard ordered the ship to sea.
That night Richard spoke to his Captain and explained what he wanted done. Captain Sanderson gave instructions to the bo’sun and some of the men were set to work on splicing wire hawsers of varying lengths, while others cut a cork bathing float into twenty equal portions. Each hawser had a large loop at one end to take the hook of a crane and a small loop at the other to which was attached a length of chain for hitching round the fish-tails of the bombs.
On Sunday it was black and stormy; Monday was still dull but the sea was calmer and the sky had cleared a little. As the hawsers were now ready, Richard decided to run back to the bay. That evening they had their first swimming-party. The water was much colder than they expected at the southern end of the Mediterranean, but with four of his men who were good swimmers and Rex, who volunteered to help, Richard succeeded in attaching hawsers to eight of the bombs. They put to sea again until the following evening when they returned and fixed up the remaining twelve. Each hawser now had a lump of cork attached to it which floated about a foot under water, thereby making it easy to locate the bombs even in indifferent light.
The monastery was some way from the shore and only its blank wall directly overlooked the scene of their operations. Nobody came down from it to inquire what was going on and the greater part of the job was carried out in twilight. If anyone up there noticed them at all it was almost certainly assumed that the party from the yacht were only mad English whose harmless insanity impelled them to go swimming during the first days of December. Rex gladly gave his help. Somebody had to prepare the bombs for Simon to salvage, and it struck him as supremely funny to be on hand while Richard was puffing, blowing and shivering at the work.
On the Tuesday night as they put to sea once more, not to return now until the fateful following Sunday when Richard had planned for Lucretia-José to collect her gold, Rex was wondering just when Simon would appear on the scene. His second letter, written purely to bluff Richard and posted in Valencia the previous Friday, would have reached Simon, he thought, on Saturday night or at the latest on Monday. By that time the matter of the dud bombs dropped near Hortaleza would be five-days-old news, although Simon could not have known before that Rex had any hand in dropping them or that they were in fact the Corarles millions. His first letter containing the real story of the flight would, he knew, have to go from Malaga by sea to Valencia and so on to Madrid, but that would have got there most probably on Monday too. Simon would need two days to get down to Makga and, say, another day to make his arrangements there. The chances were that Simon would be chuckling over those hawsers Richard had so carefully prepared for him and salvaging the bullion by Thursday.
Richard had been making some calculations on much the same lines about the Duke. He reckoned that de Richleau would have received his letter via Arthur Talbot on the Saturday night and contacted Lucretia-José on Sunday or anyhow by Monday. That would give her a clear six days to get down to Malaga and make plans with secret Nationalist sympathisers there, as suggested, to recover the gold and load it on the yacht on the coming Sunday night. Then ‘Ho!’ for England, home and beauty.
Actually Rex proved wrong in his calculations and Richard right. De Richleau got his letter on Saturday and arranged, through Arthur Talbot, a meeting with Lucretia-José on the Sunday evening. It was as well that he did because she was preparing to leave the grim and tragic capital.
Franco’s Legionaries had forced their way into the University city which was no great distance from Rios Rosas. On two occasions the block of apartments in which she lived had been shelled, and Cristoval had repeatedly urged her to quit Madrid for Valencia. As the Government had now been established there for close on three weeks she would normally have moved there already, since the seat of Government would naturally offer her the best opportunities for continuing her secret work; but there was enough to occupy her in Madrid and she could not bear the thought of tearing herself away from Cristoval. Now, however, that everything was being centralised in Valencia he had been ordered to move there himself on the coming Wednesday, and Lucretia had made arrangements with the F.A.I, for her permanent transfer so that she could go with him.
Immensely relieved at the discovery of the lost gold and delighted beyond measure at the success of Richard’s brilliant operation, the Duke and Lucretia discussed the next move. They decided that Richard’s plan was perfectly feasible and that the coming week would be ample time in which to prepare for it, but that Lucretia ought to leave for Malaga without delay in order to contact one of the secret Monarchist groups there as soon as possible.
The same night she told Cristoval that she would be leaving Madrid next morning because she had been detailed for a temporary job in Alicante but that she hoped to be through with it quite shortly and would join him in Valencia without fail the following week.
He was greatly relieved to think that she would be out of danger sooner than he had hoped, but none the less loath to part with her even for a few days. It was a bare three weeks since that night she had led him up to her flat, and during that time, in spite of the hell of blood and misery that stained Madrid’s streets, the wretched rations and the incessant fighting, they had been sitting on the top of the world.
Lucretia would almost certainly have given way to him in any case, owing to her compassion for him and the strength of their mutual feelings, but their supreme joy in each other would inevitably have been marred by the reactions natural to her strict upbringing if she had not had that talk with the Duke first. As it was she had no regrets, not a thing wherewith to reproach her short, handsome lover or herself; but had given of her love again and again in fearless ecstasy.
She realised only too well that she was living in a fool’s Paradise, and that unless death touched them with his silver wing while Cristoval was still in ignorance of her true identity, the day must come when the invisible threads that bound them to each other would be severed beyond repair; yet, knowing that whatever price she might have to pay in the future, the memory of his radiant face during those glorious hours could never be taken from her, she was content. When he saw her off from the station on the Monday morning no chill foreboding warned either of the terrible fate that was now so soon to overtake them both.
Rex’s two letters were delayed because Simon had already followed his friends in the Finance Office to Valencia. The one Rex had written solely for Richard’s benefit was redirected from Madrid and reached Simon on the Tuesday, while the one containing the real news did not get to him until two days later. Cristoval, care of whom it was addressed, received it in Madrid on the Monday morning, but as he was leaving for Valencia himself on the Wednesday he decided it would be nearly as quick, and safer, to take this apparently important document with him and deliver it personally.
On the Thursday morning he telephoned Simon asking him to call at the U.G.T. Headquarters in Valencia, and Simon did so. A priva
te office had not yet been fixed up for Cristoval so he was temporarily sharing that of his Chief, Señor Sanchez Balasco, whom Simon knew.
Simon opened his letter immediately it was handed to him and sat down to read it there and then. He read it through twice very carefully and a slow smile spread over his face. Putting it in his pocket he announced quietly:
“If you’d like five hundred new fighting planes I can buy them for you now.”
“The Señor Aron is pleased to jest,” remarked the grey-haired Balasco with a thin smile, and Cristoval laughed.
“Ner,” said Simon. “Got the Coralles fortune at last. You’ll owe it to Rex van Ryn. He’s done a magnificent job of work.”
The two Spaniards had both come slowly to their feet. “You mean it?” gasped Cristoval. “You really mean it?”
Simon nodded and Sanchez Balasco smashed his fist down on his desk with a triumphant cry: “Por Dios! Five hundred planes would win us the war!”
“Where is it?” asked Cristoval, his eyes shining. “When can we get it?”
“Stuff’s lying in shallow water about fifteen miles west of Malaga. Today’s Thursday. We can start salvaging it on Saturday morning or if you like to cable someone in Malaga they could get on with it this afternoon.”
Leaving Richard out of the story, Simon went on to recount how Rex had got away with the gold but he had to disclose the enemy’s plans for picking it up themselves. “It seems,” he said, “that the Condesa who owned the bullion before the law of confiscation against non-claimants made it Government property, is hiding in Malaga—or going there. Scheme is she’s to get in touch with the Nationalist sympathisers on the spot. They’ll beg, borrow or steal a tug from the harbour when things are quiet on Sunday evening, collect one of those flat barges with a crane on it for harbour work and tow it along the coast. Gold bombs will be buoyed all ready. Only thing they have to do is to pick them up and load them on a private yacht that’ll be hanging about off the bay. Now we know what’s happening, we’ll clear it twenty-four hours before they get there and when they do they’ll find it gone.”
The Golden Spaniard Page 47