This struck both the Duke and the Inspector as queer, since the man had nothing to gain by keeping silent. He was fair-haired, dressed in a decent summer-weight suit of gabardine and had not the appearance of a common thug. His face was smeared with blood from cuts on the head and the gaps of the three teeth that had been struck from his mouth, and he stood, now hand-cuffed, with his eyes cast down; but that would not have prevented the police from recognizing him had he been a known local criminal.
In exasperation the Inspector turned to de Richleau and said, 'Your Excellency, I mean to get to the bottom of this. We'll find a way to make him talk. Wait here, please, for a few minutes.' Then he signed to two of his men to take the prisoner into the next room, went in after them, and closed the door behind him.
The Duke knew very well the sort of thing that was about to happen behind the closed door; but he had no power to intervene, even if he had wished to do so. It was common practice in the countries in which he had spent the past few years and, with only a slightly lesser degree of brutality, in most European countries as well. Besides, the man had, after all, tried to knife him, yet was not a known criminal; so he was now curious to know who he was and why he had made the attempt.
After about five minutes the door opened again. The prisoner, blubbering once more, his head hanging slack and supported between the two policemen, was dragged out. The Inspector followed and, giving the Duke a puzzled look, said:
'We haven't got out of him yet why he attacked Your Excellency, but perhaps you can enlighten us. He is a Spaniard and his name is Benigno Ferrer.'
17
Vendetta
De richleau could hardly believe his ears, but at the sound of his name being pronounced the prisoner slowly raised his head and stared sullenly at him. In spite of the blood-smeared face and swollen lips the Duke recognized him now. The man was undoubtedly Benigno Ferrer.
In Spanish, the Duke asked him, 'How do you come to be in Yalta?'
Benigno did not reply, but again let his chin fall on his chest. The two policemen who were holding his arms gave him a violent shake and one of them kicked him on the ankle. With a word de Richleau checked them and said to the Inspector:
'You were right. I know this man and I wish to talk to him in private. But it is past three o'clock; so I want to get back to my hotel and to bed. What time will he be brought before the magistrate in the morning?'
'Ten o'clock, Your Excellency.'
'Very well, then.' De Richleau stood up. 'I will be here at half past nine.' Taking from his pocket the twenty rouble piece that he had intended to leave in Benigno's hand before he knew his identity, he gave it to the policeman who had made the arrest, congratulating him on his alertness; then he said good night to the Inspector and left the Station.
On the short walk to his hotel he ruminated on the surprising encounter with a Spanish anarchist in Russia; but, realizing that speculation was futile and that he would learn more about it in a few hours' time, he dismissed the matter from his thoughts. However, it had recalled to him many memories of the months he had spent in Spain and, while he was undressing, a series of pictures flickered through his mind: Angela lying dead, Gerault exposing him as a spy in the Escuela Moderna, La Torcera spitting in his face, and the back of Sanchez's head falling limp when his neck was broken - but the most vivid of all was the unforgettable beauty of Gulia de Cordoba when, that last night in San Sebastian, she had walked round the foot of his bed and thrown off her dressing-gown.
It was a long time since he had thought of her and he wondered whether she had become resigned to her position as a neglected wife, or if she had taken a lover. He hoped that she had, for otherwise it seemed certain that she would become embittered and old before her time from having been robbed by convention during the best years of her life of that joy to which every human being was entitled. He felt, too, that for her not to have done so would be a sinful waste, since she had so much to offer and could have brought a period of great happiness to at least one man, and perhaps several.
Not for the first time he cursed his luck that she should have been the wife of a close friend, and that on that account he had felt compelled to deny her and himself the consummation of their mutual passion. Had she been only the wife of an acquaintance for whom he had no affection or respect, he would at least have had the glowing memory of a night in her arms before he had set off after Sanchez; or, had he had no scruples about her husband, they might even have decided to let Sanchez do his damnedest and, had exposure of their affaire resulted, gone off together.
As things had turned out, Sanchez's photograph having been ruined, he could not, after all, have attempted to blackmail them, and it was by going after him that de Richleau had got himself shanghaied to South America. Still thinking of the scurvy trick Fate had played him, and of what he had missed to keep face with himself, he drifted off to sleep.
At nine-thirty punctually he arrived at the Police Station. The Inspector was still on duty and made no difficulty about having Benigno brought from his cell to a bare little office room so that the Duke could interview him privately.
As soon as the guards withdrew, they seated themselves on either side of a small table and de Richleau said, 'Now, Ferrer, you will be good enough to tell me what you are doing in Yalta?'
Benigno shook his head. 'It is useless to question me. I have been caught, and that is that. But I shall say nothing.'
'In that case,' replied the Duke, 'you will be acting like a fool. And you certainly are not one. I well remember that during our association in Barcelona I came to the conclusion that you had a much better balanced mind than most of your colleagues. Listen carefully now to what I have to say. I am regarded here as a person of considerable importance. That is why I am allowed to see you alone like this. Shortly you will be put into the dock and charged. Upon whether or not you answer my questions your life now hangs. To see you executed would give me considerable pleasure. But it so happens that one of my besetting sins is curiosity. If you are prepared to give me what I feel that I can accept as a reasonably truthful account of yourself I shall simply state in court that I knew you in Spain as a dangerous political, and that you attacked me because you had an old grudge against me. That will result in you being treated as all political criminals are in Russia these days, and exiled to Siberia. On the other hand, if you refuse to talk I shall state that I knew you to be involved in the bomb plot aimed at killing S.M. el Rey y la Reina on their wedding day. That may not be strictly true, but no matter. In your present circumstances, my word will be accepted and under the emergency laws against terrorists which are in force here they will take you away and have you shot. Now, which is it to be?'
'You fiend!' Benigno whispered, lifting his red-rimmed eyes to the Duke's. 'You fiend!'
De Richleau gave a grim little laugh. 'On the contrary, you should look on me as an angel. Not many men whose wife you had helped to murder would forgo this chance to see you dead.'
'I had no hand in that. It is you who are a murderer. You murdered my poor brother.'
'Poor brother indeed!' The Duke's 'devil's' eyebrows shot up. 'That filthy blackmailing young swine! He got off too easily with the quick death that my situation compelled me to give him. But that is beside the point. In twenty minutes you will be taken into court. The life line I have thrown you is running out as we sit here. You had better snatch at it unless you wish to die.'
For a long minute Benigno wrung his thin hands in silence, then he burst out, 'You're right! Even Siberia would be better than a firing squad. What do you wish to know?'
'Why did you come to Russia?'
'To kill you.'
Again de Richleau's eyebrows lifted. 'You astound me. Since you felt the urge to kill I should have thought there were plenty of people in Spain whom you count your enemies and wish dead. What in the world induced you to undertake such a long and expensive journey and choose as your intended victim a man that for years you had not even seen?'
&
nbsp; Benigno's eyes suddenly blazed with hate. 'It was you who killed Sanchez. According to your standards he may have had no morals; but he lived as he wished to live and that is how an anarchist should live. I didn't approve of all his actions but he had the right to do as he liked, and I loved him. I loved him more than anything in the world.'
'Then I am sorry for you,' said the Duke, and there was no trace of sarcasm in his tone. 'Love goes a long way to excusing most things. But tell me; how did you discover my whereabouts?'
'My father keeps a book in which he writes a brief account of all anarchist triumphs, wherever they may occur. He told me that your father had been killed in the attempt on General Count Plackoff last February. We felt sure that would bring you back to Europe, and we have correspondents in most of the big cities, so we asked for some of those in the ports to keep a look-out for you. Your arrival in Hamburg was reported to us, then that you were in Vienna and said to be on your way to claim your estate on the far side of the Carpathians. I would have gone there at once, but I didn't know a word of Russian; and having been told that in this vile country the police don't even need a warrant to seize on anyone, I didn't dare risk being picked up and questioned by them until I could speak enough Russian to pass myself off as a Spanish commercial traveller. For six weeks I swotted at your filthy language with a towel round my head; then I travelled to Jvanets. But I missed you by two days. I learned that you had gone down to Odessa, and there that you had gone on to Yalta. I followed you and for over a week I have been hoping for a chance to kill you; but until last night you have always been with other people or driving in a carriage.'
'Your persistence in making such a journey deserves a better reward than that you should now have to continue it for another few thousand miles to Siberia,' de Richleau remarked, this time with a cynical smile. 'But why, since you were prepared to go to such lengths to avenge your brother's death on me, did you not follow me to South America, instead of waiting until I returned to Europe?'
Tf I could have, I would,' Benigno scowled. 'But at the time Captain Robles shipped you off there I was in prison. It was over a year before I got out. As soon as I had learned the full details of Sanchez's death and what had happened to you, I wrote to correspondents in Rio. They informed me that you had left Brazil months before and were somewhere in Central America, but no one knew for certain where. I wanted to go out to search for you; but I had very little money and my father wouldn't help me. He said it would be better to wait until . . .'
'Your father!' exclaimed the Duke. 'Did he then escape too?'
'Escape!' repeated Benigno, giving him a blank look. 'Why, no; neither of us escaped. After a year in prison all of us who had been arrested at the time the Escuela Moderna was raided were released.'
De Richleau stared at him in astonishment. 'D'you mean to tell me that when you were tried not even your father received more than a twelve months' sentence?'
'We were never brought to trial. Evidently the police decided that they had not enough evidence to convict us; and many influential bodies in Spain who hold Liberal views agitated for us to be given our freedom.'
'And where is your father now?'
For the first time Benigno's face showed the flicker of a smile and his reply was tinged with malice. 'That is no secret. Soon after we were released he started his Escuela Moderna again. Not in the city because, the tyrants having confiscated our property, we could not afford to set up in another big house. The school now occupies an old building in a village just outside Barcelona. But, for having been unjustly imprisoned for a year, as was proved when the police had to let him go without preferring a charge against him, he is now looked on by all the Liberals in Spain as a martyr. No one would dare to lay a finger on him.'
At this revelation, de Richleau's thoughts began to race with furious intensity. That Francisco Ferrer, the evil genius who inspired the Spanish anarchists, the man who was basically responsible for the death of Angela and the deaths of scores of other innocent people, should again be at large, filled him with amazement. Why Ferrer and his associates had never been brought to trial seemed to him inexplicable; and that, owing to Liberal pressure, they should have been allowed to go free after only a year in prison shocked him profoundly.
He was quick to realize that, had he not been shanghaied to South America, that could not possibly have happened. They would undoubtedly have been tried and, on his evidence, convicted. Instead, it now emerged that the dreary weeks he had spent in Barcelona, the sufferings he had endured there, and the near loss of his life, had all gone for nothing. He had not, after all, as he had long believed, succeeded in avenging Angela's death. For well over a year and a half, Ferrer had been a free man, and not only free but left at liberty to incite again his admiring disciples to murder.
Benigno's last statement - that no one would now dare to lay a finger on his father - still echoed in the Duke's brain, but it needed only an instant's thought for him to realize that about that the young anarchist was wrong. He, de Richleau, had only to return to Spain and tell what he knew of Francisco Ferrer on oath before a magistrate for a warrant to be issued and a policeman to place a heavy hand on Ferrer's shoulder.
Had Benigno known better the man to whom he was speaking, he would have had more care for his father's safety than to issue such a challenge. It needed only another moment's thought for the Duke to decide that, while he could have been of little help to the Ocrana in Russia, he could still strike a great blow against the world-wide menace of anarchism by going again to Spain. Those grey eyes of his, flecked with their yellow lights, glinted and with sudden harshness he said to Benigno:
'Whatever your dupes - those guileless, woolly-minded, reform-for-reform's-sake, besotted Liberals - may think of your father, I know him to be a disciple of the Devil - a man who has not only planned murders himself, but has injected his poisonous philosophy of murder into the minds of scores of earnest, misguided young people and, if he could, would bring about unlimited misery by overturning all forms of law and order. You may take it from me, Benigno, that I will either have your father executed or put behind bars for life, if it is the last thing that I ever do.'
At that moment, the Inspector came in and said that he must take over the prisoner, as in a few minutes the Court would be sitting. With a reassuring nod to the white-faced Benigno, the Duke said, 'Don't worry. I am satisfied now that you did not mean to kill me'; then, having thanked the Inspector for letting him talk with the prisoner, he walked back into the outer office.
Benigno's case did not come on for the best part of an hour, while the Magistrates dealt with other prisoners on minor charges. Then the Duke was ushered into the witness-box. He told his story with an air of calm indifference. It was that when in Barcelona nearly three years ago, he had known this man Ferrer as an agitator who openly proclaimed himself an anarchist. Having heard him make threats against the Captain-General of the City, General Quiroga, he, de Richleau, had informed the authorities, upon which Ferrer had been arrested. No doubt Ferrer had realized who was responsible for his arrest and having, by chance, come upon him, de Richleau, again the previous night, he had sought to avenge himself by inflicting a wound.
With an innocent expression, and apparently in ignorance of the fact that he was overstepping the functions of a witness, de Richleau went on to say, 'It* is not for me to suggest to the Court how it should deal with this man. But in view of his past, it seems unlikely that he would have come to this country except at the invitation of the nihilists; or, in any event, having arrived here have not got into touch with them. I feel, therefore, that while the assault on myself might normally be regarded as an ordinary criminal offence, meriting only a few months' imprisonment, having regard to his political background it is quite a possibility that, when freed, he might attack and perhaps murder someone of considerable importance. To send him back to Spain would be a troublesome and costly business, and the Spanish authorities would certainly not thank us; so may I suggest th
at he should be sent to a place where for a long time to come he will be in no position to do harm to anyone.'
The Magistrates listened to the Duke with deference. As he ceased speaking they nodded their approval; then their Chairman pronounced the sentence which, at that time, had become a commonplace in all the cities of European Russia. 'The Court orders that the prisoner be dispatched forthwith to a penal settlement in Siberia, there to remain during His Imperial Majesty's pleasure.'
As de Richleau left the courtroom, he gave a last glance at Benigno. He had secured from him the information he was anxious to obtain, and he had not cheated him. Many hardened criminals survived for years the harsh life in the Siberian penal settlements; some even succeeded in escaping. But to do so needed resource, great courage and, above all, extreme physical fitness. Benigno had none of those, and the Duke would have been prepared to wager heavy odds that he would not last six months in the salt mines. He felt satisfied that this second member of the foul Ferrer brood would make no further contribution to the infliction of agony and grief on innocent people; it now remained to choke the fount from which the poison sprang.
Back in his hotel, he was unhappily aware that he was now committed to another trip to Spain. He would so much rather have remained at Yalta, enjoying his morning and evening bathes in the warm waters of the Black Sea, sunning himself on the beach, lunching in some mimosa-scented garden with friends and going to the Casino to dance, or for a mild gamble, in the evenings.
He recalled his talk with Count Soltikoff, before he had set out for Barcelona, and the old Ambassador's quoting the dictum, 'Vengeance is Mine, saith The Lord', when warning him against taking the law into his own hands. And, as it had turned out, his first encounter with the Ferrers had ended disastrously for himself. Yet at that time he had been dominated by bitterness at his loss of Angela, so was impelled by a strong personal motive to reject the Ambassador's advice. Now, after an interval of years, he was able to regard the ethical side of the question dispassionately.
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