At that moment the Duke called across to Cristoval, “Is Simon Aron anywhere here or is he out there in the destroyer?”
“No,” Cristoval called back harshly. “He’s in bed ill, in Malaga. And a good thing too. I’m not sending for him, either. You foreign conspirators are as guilty as the rest. More guilty. None of the others would be here at all if it weren’t for your dirty plotting.”
The ambush had consisted of about fifty men; Cristoval’s party which he had brought from Valencia and a half-platoon of troops loaned from the force at the monastery to assist them in covering the whole long beach so that pickets could drive the Nationalists into its centre wherever they were forced ashore.
A Militia sergeant had already fallen in his half-platoon and was marching them off. The prisoners followed, surrounded by Cristoval’s old guard of Militiamen, all of whom were armed with rifles. Among themselves they were still muttering excitedly, not at the success of their venture but at the amazing fact that the Condesa they had been sent to catch should have turned out to be the famous ‘Golden Spaniard’.
Many of them, including Gustavo Sandoval, were well aware of Cristoval’s passion for her. They were strongly sympathetic towards their leader and distressed for him that he should find himself in such a terrible situation, but curiosity as to what would be the outcome of this dramatic encounter was their chief preoccupation.
As the column crossed the coast road and entered the shaly track which rose steeply upward, curving in hair-pin bends towards the monastery, Cristoval took Lucretia’s arm and pulled her roughly from among the bunch of prisoners.
“I want a word with you before we go any farther,” he snapped.
She stood quiet and passive, regarding him quite steadily but with a look of tragic sorrow in her eyes, as the remainder of the column moved on ahead, leaving them alone there.
At the first turn of the road several men looked back. In the faint starlight they could see the two figures standing tense and silent twenty feet below them. Sandoval, who was bringing up the rear of the column, halted. He knew quite well the agony of mind which must now be clouding his friend’s judgment, and was desperately anxious that he should not make a fool of himself. “Come on, Cristoval!” he called sharply. “If you want to talk to her—well, talk! But keep in touch with the column.”
“Don’t worry, Gustavo,” Cristoval shouted back; but as Sandoval remained there, waiting, he moved on still holding Lucretia by the arm.
When they were within fifteen paces of Sandoval he turned to follow the column as he had no wish to overhear what his friend had to say to the girl in this painful last interview.
For some moments Lucretia and Cristoval trudged slowly up the steep track, side by side, without speaking. At last Cristoval said, “How long has this been going on?”
“Five years,” she replied tonelessly.
“And you’ve been living a double life all that time; betraying our secrets to the enemy?”
“Yes.”
“Even—even since you’ve known me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my dear! How could you?” The cry was wrung from his heart.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Not sorry that I’ve done the work I have. I’m proud of that. I was born a Royalist. I’ve lived as a Royalist and I shall die as a Royalist. If I’d been a man I could have fought for my cause, but as I’m a woman I’ve served my King in the best way that was open to me. But I’m sorry about you—about us.…” Her voice trailed off into a husky whisper.
“You have loved me, then?” Cristoval murmured. “Since I saw you there on the beach I’ve doubted that. I—I thought I’d been just one more pawn in your game.”
She turned shining eyes towards him. “How could you doubt after … after all we’ve been to each other?”
“I know,” he moaned. “I know! This thing is so terrible that I can hardly realise it yet.”
“You know now why I wouldn’t marry you,” she said simply. “My work had to go on, but I could never have married you with that between us.”
“You realise what’ll happen now you’re caught?” He swallowed quickly. “There’ll be a trial, of course, but.…”
“Oh, my dear!” she laid her free hand quickly on his arm. “There’s no need to go on. I feel frightful about all these poor friends of mine who are going to die because they tried to save my wretched money. But for myself there’s no defence now that I’ve been found out. I’ve lived in the shadow of death for years. All these long, weary months that I’ve played the part of the ‘Golden Spaniard’ discovery was always lurking round the corner. I’ve been lucky, really. I’ve had a long run and I’ve done a great deal for my cause. Above all, God spared me long enough to have you. I’m not afraid to die.”
“But I can’t stand it!” he burst out. “To think of you dead and cold is something too horrible to visualise.”
She nodded. “Yes. Yours is the harder part. Their bullets will free me very quickly, but you have to live on. I’m selfish enough to be glad that it is not the other way.”
After a moment she went on slowly, “Richard Eaton has a wife. She’s out there now in the yacht, waiting and wondering if he’ll return. She, too, will be alone from tomorrow—just like you. Unless you can find some way to spare him out of pity for her.”
“It’s these damned interfering foreigners who’ve brought this on us,” Cristoval burst out furiously.
“That is not true. It was I who begged them to give me their help.”
“I don’t care. They’ve all been doing their best to stab the Government in the back and in the process they’ve been responsible for the deaths of a score of our people. I’ve no pity to waste on them.”
“Then you can have none for me.”
“I haven’t—for the Royalist Condesa who has played the part of a traitor and a spy. But I can’t think of you like that.”
They had dropped behind a little as they were talking and Sandoval was some thirty paces ahead of them again. The stars now only showed in patches as scudding clouds obscured three quarters of the sky.
A silence fell, but Cristoval broke it after they had trudged another fifty yards. Torn between rage and misery, he was almost crying as he said, “You’re the only woman I’ve ever really loved.”
She covered her eyes and tried to keep her voice steady. ‘Thank you—my darling. Our time together was very wonderful; more wonderful than I ever thought anything could be. But oh, so tragically short. And you must steel yourself to forget it now. Take me on, please, to mingle with the others. I—I can’t bear being alone with you like this any more.”
“No,” he said suddenly. “I’ve earned a life and more than a life by all the work I’ve done. I can’t claim it because they’d never give me such an implacable enemy as you, but I can take it—and I mean to. When we reach the next bend you will turn and run. I shall shoot after you—over your head. The others may shoot too. You’ll have to risk that, but I shall be in their way and they’re almost certain to miss you in the darkness.”
“But, Cristoval! They’ll hold you responsible. Now they know the truth about me they’d never let you get away with it.”
“I’m in command here. They take their orders from me. There may be a little trouble about my having let you escape when I get back to Valencia, but my record’s too fine for them to do anything to me. It’ll only be a nine days’ wonder and they won’t even be able to prove that I let you go deliberately.”
She hesitated only for a moment. Cristoval was a big man in his Party. It was unthinkable that any serious action would be taken against him.
“Here comes your chance,” he murmured, as they came opposite a rocky hairpin bend behind which the rest of the column had disappeared into the blackness above. “Quick! Take it.”
Cristoval felt the swift pressure of her hand on his arm and next second she was gone, swift, light-footed, down the steep slope. He drew his gun, released the safety-catch and wait
ed until he had counted ten. The clinking of the stones beneath her feet was drowned in the rising wind and the tramp of the column higher up the road. She was only a rapidly decreasing flicker of greyness when he fired into the unrelieved blackness of the crags above her head.
A chorus of shouts came from the upper road. Cristoval fired again and again until the last sign of Lucretia’s retreating figure had entirely disappeared among the shadows. Sandoval came pounding down the road, cursing lustily.
“You fool!” he yelled, firing to the right of Cristoval as he ran. “You utter fool! I was afraid of this. You let her go on purpose.”
“Shut up!” shouted Cristoval. He kept up his fire until he had emptied his automatic and their words were almost drowned by the rapid crack of the shots echoing again and again from the black rocks all round them.
Half a dozen Militiamen came pelting down the road. With them Cristoval and Sandoval began to run, leaping and sliding along the uneven track. They had not reached the nearest lower bend when a piercing scream, a hundred feet above their heads, caused them to check their headlong descent. A burst of shouting and a single rifle shot followed.
For a moment they stood there undecided whether to continue their chase after the escaped Condesa or go to the assistance of their comrades farther up the hill.
The shouting died almost at once and Cristoval signed to one of his men. “You go, Alejandro. Find out what’s happened up there. Return quickly and report to me.” With the rest he ran on again until, two bends lower down, Sandoval called on them to halt and listen.
In the ensuing silence not the faintest patter of flying feet was audible, and Cristoval’s heart lightened immeasurably as he guessed that Lucretia was now crouching, hidden, in one of the dozens of gullies which flanked the roadside. They might hunt among the rocks all night and still not find her.
“She was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?” said one of the Militiamen suspiciously. “Did you let her go, Comrade?”
“Of course not,” Cristoval snapped. “Lots of us liked her when we thought she was an Anarchist, but you ought to know me better than to suggest that I’d free a Nationalist spy.”
“Well, she’s got clean away,” said another Militiaman. “It’s no good standing here. Let’s get going and catch up with the others.”
“What about putting a few men on the beach?” suggested the first, but Sandoval deliberately vetoed the proposal.
He knew the truth but he was very fond of Cristoval. As his friend had let the girl go and would have to take the blame for her escape in any case, whether she were recaptured or not, he wanted to leave him the comfort of knowing that his rash action had not been useless.
“Not worth it,” he said abruptly. “She couldn’t launch that tug or the motor-boat on her own and there’s nothing else to take her off. Besides, there’re miles of deserted coast along here where she could hide in some cave or peasant’s hovel until she has the chance to get through the lines to her friends on the other side of the mountains. Come on! We’ve got to climb this blasted hill again.”
Running footsteps sounded from farther up the road and Alejandro came racing down to them. “Attempted escape,” he panted out. “Hearing your shots the big Americano tried to make a break for it. The great swine gave Tomas a push that sent him over the precipice; but Alfonso knocked him senseless with the barrel of his gun before the others had a chance to give trouble.”
“Hell!” exclaimed Cristoval. “Where’s Tomas? Have they found him?”
“Yes. He fell only twelve feet; on to a ledge below. But he went down head-first and broke his neck.”
There was an angry outcry from the listening group and they all turned to retrace their steps. Under cover of the darkness Cristoval pressed Sandoval’s hand in silent gratitude for his assistance in rendering certain Lucretia’s escape.
Lucretia was hidden behind a pile of rocks no more than twenty feet from the place where they had been talking. In the stillness of the dark, deserted coast she had heard every word of their conversation and knew that she was now safe. She gave them a good quarter of an hour to climb the hill, then, creeping from her hiding-place, completed the rest of her journey down to the shore. With anxious eyes she scanned it for some sign of life but the road wound away in the starlight on either hand and the silence of the beach was only broken by the monotonous lapping of the waves.
During the time Lucretia had been in hiding the destroyer had left the bay; her work completed, she was now on her way back to harbour. In the distance the riding lights of the yacht still showed, and down near the beach the tug and barge lay motionless, about fifty feet out, where they had been abandoned.
Lucretia’s one thought was to get to Malaga. Fifteen miles lay between her and the town. Now that it was cut off from the rest of Government Spain no traffic passed along the coast road, so she could not hope for a lift. Every moment was precious and it would take her over four hours to walk there. Four hours of anguished, desperate plodding—but it had to be done. Bracing herself to the effort she left the track and turned east along the road.
She had nearly reached the eastern headland behind which the road disappeared into a rocky gorge when, turning to cast a last look at the bay where she had been overtaken by such grievous misfortune, she suddenly noticed a black splodge on the water about two hundred yards from the tug.
Halting, she stared at it for a moment until she saw that it was a small boat slowly moving from west to east as someone lazily plied the oars. Leaving the road she scrambled over the rocks and ran across the yielding sand to the water’s edge.
She did not dare to hail the boat for fear guards should have been set to watch the beach from the track up to the Monastery, so she waded out into the shallow water, determined to swim for it.
By the time she was up to her thighs and a hundred yards out the people in the rowing boat caught sight of her. There came a shout in bad Spanish. “Hello, there! Who are you? What was that firing? Can you tell us?”
Lucretia’s heart leapt with relief and excitement. That foreign voice could only come from somebody off Richard Eaton’s yacht. “Be quiet,” she called back softly “Come in and pick me up—quickly!”
The boat turned and a few rapid strokes of the oars brought it to her. Three men were in it and a small woman who sat at the tiller in the stern. As Lucretia was helped aboard, the woman bombarded her with anxious questions. Lucretia guessed immediately that she must be Richard’s wife, and in semi-coherent gasps began to pour out the story of their surprise and capture.
Marie-Lou no sooner realised that it was Lucretia-José than she ordered the boat back to the Golden Gull. By the time they reached the yacht she knew every detail of the disaster which had arisen from Rex’s and Richard’s desire to get the better of one another.
Steam was already up to carry the adventurers home after their triumph; instead, the Golden Gull now raced at full speed towards Malaga. That Lucretia had seen Simon lunching that day in the town was the only straw the two women had left to clutch at. If they failed to find him there was no one else to whom they could turn; but, if he were staying at the Hotel Colon, where Lucretia had seen him, they could at least count on his bringing all his influence to bear in a last-minute effort to save his three friends.
Marie-Lou could speak no Spanish, and a knowledge of the language was absolutely essential for making inquiries about Simon when minutes that spelt life or death might be lost if there were the least delay. On the other hand, although Lucretia was willing to go ashore, for her to do so now was to risk immediate arrest, as it was virtually certain that the escape of the ‘Golden Spaniard’ together with her identity as the Condesa would have been telephoned from the Monastery in order that the police and military patrols might keep a sharp look-out for her.
Desperate with anxiety, Marie-Lou called in Captain Sanderson and asked for his advice and help. The grey-haired captain proved a rock of comfort and good sense. None of the crew, he said, could
speak enough Spanish to be of much assistance, as only one other man besides the chief steward knew Spanish at all, and both these could do no more than give greetings and make purchases. However, he was certain that he could easily secure the loan of a passport from one of the men for the Condesa to make a trip ashore and he himself would undertake to disguise her, beyond reasonable possibility of recognition, as a sailor.
During the last half-hour of the run to Malaga the transformation of Lucretia-José was effected. Her face and hands were stained to a deep mahogany by Marie-Lou, while the Captain provided a pair of trousers with enormous bell-bottoms which entirely hid her small feet, a blue woollen jumper with the yacht’s name across it in red letters, and a striped blue and white stocking-cap, bought by one of the men on a trip ashore, which could be pulled right over her golden hair.
Marie-Lou was just completing the difficult business of straightening Lucretia’s figure with padding and bandages when the Captain came down again with an oilskin cape and sou’wester. “It’s not actually raining yet,” he said, “but it looks as if we might have a spatter in the next hour or two; anyhow sufficient to justify the lady wearing these.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” cried Marie-Lou. “The sou’wester will be much better than the woollen cap because it shades her face more. How soon shall we be in, Captain Sanderson?”
“Another five minutes and about two to get out a boat. I’ll report the second we’re ready to take you off.”
“No, no. We’ll be up there,” Marie-Lou said quickly and, by the time the boat splashed into the water, the two girls were standing on the bottom of the gangway.
Captain Sanderson politely, but firmly, overruled Marie-Lou and insisted on accompanying them ashore. It was still before eleven and they passed the night staff at the passport office without difficulty. Immediately they were outside the dock gates Lucretia went straight across the road to an estanco and rang up the Hotel Colon.
“Yes,” said the hotel operator, to Lucretia’s immense relief, “Señor Aron is staying in the hotel.” But it was five minutes before she got through to Simon and when she did, he was by no means pleased to be disturbed.
The Golden Spaniard Page 50