Vendetta in Spain ddr-2

by Dennis Wheatley

  'Silence! Silence! Silence!' shouted the President; and then, 'If you do not stop this minute, I'll have you gagged.'

  Breathless and sweating, de Richleau subsided. Ferrer was glancing nervously from side to side; but the Prosecutor nodded to him and he scurried swiftly back into the room from which he had come.

  After a moment's hush the President said, 'Proceed,' and, standing up, the Prosecutor again addressed the Court.

  T am confident,' he said, 'that the Court will disregard these wild accusations. It is obvious that they are no more than a bluff by which the Prisoner hopes to gain a few hours of life by beguiling the Court into an adjournment. But that he is guilty the Court can hardly doubt.' He then gave a very brief summing-up, ended by demanding the death penalty, and sat down.

  The President made a sign to the Prisoner's Friend. Navarez stood up, bowed, fingered his little moustache, and said:

  'May it please the Court, although I have been nominated as the Prisoner's Friend, I fear I can make only a poor showing in that role. When I interviewed the prisoner earlier this morning he would say little about himself except to make assertions impossible of belief, such as that he was a foreign Duke, a personal friend of His Majesty the King, had been staying in Barcelona as the guest of His Excellency the Captain-General, and so on. It is obvious that he suffers from delusions of grandeur. That would indicate that his mind is unbalanced, and the Court may wish to take his mental state into consideration. Apart from that I can only submit to you the statement he made to me, that he killed Veragua in self-defence; but, unfortunately, of that I can give the Court no proof.'

  Had de Richleau not been so frantically anxious about the fate that might overtake him in the next quarter of an hour, he would have felt outraged by this travesty of a defence; but he had been prepared for something like it and his whole mind was concentrated on wondering if there was even a chance that the Court would agree on a verdict of 'Guilty, but with extenuating circumstances'. That would have meant imprisonment in the fortress and, given even a few hours, he might yet save his life.

  In accordance with practice at courts-martial, the President put the question to the junior member of the Court first. 'Lieutenant Herrera, do you find the Prisoner guilty or not guilty?'

  'Guilty,' replied the youth with the monocle.

  The Duke's pulses raced. In his mind he saw again the courtyard outside and the lounging soldiers in it. On many occasions in Central America he had seen firing squads execute rebels, saboteurs and spies, and he knew that such executions could vary greatly. If the men ordered to do the job had never carried out an execution before, most of them hated it. They were either filled with pity for the condemned man, or reluctant to accept the guilt of having been a party to killing a fellow-human in cold blood; so they either fired over his head, or shut their eyes before pulling the trigger. That meant that the poor wretch up against the wall was rarely killed by the volley. Instead he dropped wounded and screaming, and the officer supervising the execution had to finish him off by putting his pistol to his jerking head and blowing out his brains. But if the men in the squad had had previous experience the majority of them aimed to kill. De Richleau thanked his gods that the men outside must have had ample practice at such work, so at least he could hope for a quick, clean death.

  The President turned to the second senior member of the Court and said, 'Captain Escalante. Do you find the Prisoner guilty or not guilty?'

  'Guilty,' replied the handsome Captain without a shadow of hesitation.

  The word was hardly out of his mouth before de Richleau exclaimed, 'Captain Escalante! Is your name Juan?'

  The astonished Captain looked at him and nodded.

  'You are, then, making your addresses to the Senorita Mercedes, General Quiroga's daughter.'

  The Captain frowned, but again he nodded.

  'Then,' gasped the Duke, 'I will tell you something about her that you do not know.'

  In an instant the Captain was on his feet. 'If you dare . . .' he began angrily; but de Richleau cut him short.

  'It is nothing to the young lady's discredit. She is embroidering a pair of velvet bedroom slippers with your initials as a New Year present for you.'

  Urgoiti jumped to his feet and shouted, 'I protest! This is irrelevant! Yet another pack of lies by the Prisoner in the hope of gaining a respite.'

  The President banged the table with his gavel. 'Silence! You have no right to address the Court unless asked for your opinion.'

  The Captain, still staring at de Richleau with a puzzled look, muttered, 'If this is true, how could you possibly know of it?'

  'That is my point,' the Duke was trembling with excitement and new hope. 'How could I know it? Only because I have told the Court the truth. For the nights of the 8th and 9th I was a guest in General Quiroga's home and lived as one of his family. You have only to ask the General and he will tell you that I was that Count de Quesnoy whose wife was killed by the bomb thrown at His Majesty's wedding procession, and that I have been seeking revenge against the anarchists ever since. You need not even bother the General. Send for the Senora Quiroga, for the Senorita Mercedes, for their butler, for the soldier servant who valeted me while I was a guest in their house. Any or all of them will tell you that I speak the truth.'

  As he paused, breathless, the three officers constituting the Court exchanged a few quick words. Then the President announced:

  'I suspend the Court until further investigations have been made.'

  At that moment there came a loud report. The windows of the room rattled. A spiral of smoke eddied up from just behind the table at which the Prosecutor was sitting. Comandante Urgoiti, realizing that it must now emerge that he had known the facts from the beginning, and that ruin, disgrace and death awaited him, had pulled his pistol from its holster and blown out his brains.

  His act gave immediate confirmation of de Richleau's innocence. The officers present escorted him in a body through the long corridors of the fortress to the General's office. Quiroga berated them for a set of fools; but the Duke could now afford to be generous. He spoke up for them, saying that they had only been carrying out their duty and had been entirely misled by Urgoiti's skilful plot. The General then assumed his jovial aspect and invited them all over to his residence, where he ordered up champagne for them to drink a toast to his guest's eleventh-hour escape.

  Senora Quiroga and Mercedes had joined them, and de Richleau asked his host and hostess to do him a great favour. He said that since the bedroom slippers Mercedes was making for Captain Escalante had been the means of saving his life, he begged that they would there and then give their consent to the young couple becoming engaged. Mercedes's mother hesitated for a moment, but the old General declared heartily that it would make a happy ending to what might so easily have been a terrible tragedy; so consent was given.

  Yet it was not quite the end. After the little celebration was over and the officers had returned to their duties, de Richleau, not having eaten since the previous evening, asked for a light meal. When he had finished it he felt so utterly exhausted from his ghastly ordeal that he went upstairs and threw himself upon his bed. Ten minutes later he was sound asleep.

  At five o'clock the General went up and roused him, to tell him that at midday he had given fresh instructions to the police, who had been busy collecting witnesses all the afternoon, and that he had convened a court-martial to try Ferrer that evening. Together they walked over to the Courtroom. Evidence was given that Ferrer had played a leading part in fomenting the July revolt, and de Richleau gave evidence about the anarchist's past activities,

  He was condemned to death and an order given that the sentence was to be carried out at dawn the following morning.

  As the Duke and Quiroga walked away from the Courtroom, the General said, 'You know, that Engineer Officer who acted as Prisoner's Friend did a better job for him than, from all accounts, young Navarez did for you this morning. Even now we haven't succeeded in fastening on
him any act of violence carried out by himself. And those woolly-minded Liberals love him. They maintain that he stands for free speech and a broader form of education. There is going to be hell to pay when they hear that we've shot him. Radical bodies all over Europe are going to raise a tremendous outcry. I wouldn't be in the Prime Minister's shoes after Ferrer's execution has been announced for any decoration His Majesty could give me.'1

  De Richleau shrugged. T don't give a damn what they say about my part in the matter. I know him for the cold-blooded viper that he is. By having him shot we are preventing him from plotting further outrages that would mean the death of hundreds more innocent people. That has been the real issue, and it is the duty of men like us to protect people who cannot protect themselves.'

  That night the Senora Quiroga gave a small dinner party for relations and a few intimate friends, at which the engagement of Mercedes to Captain Juan Escalante was unofficially announced. Afterwards the handsome Captain and Mercedes overwhelmed the Duke with their thanks at having played the part of Fairy Godmother to them, and asked him to be Godfather to their first child. To which Mercedes added that she meant to make him, too, a pair of embroidered bedroom slippers for the New Year.

  Delighted at having brought happiness to the young couple and with blissful thoughts of the happiness he would himself soon find again in Gulia's arms, he went up to bed.

  He had arranged to be called early in the morning and a little before six o'clock he walked through the fortress to the small courtyard where executions were carried out. Soon afterwards, in the grey light of dawn, Ferrer was brought up from the dungeons, blindfolded, and put against the wall. An officer gave the order,

  1 Historical Note. Ferrer was shot on September 12th, 1909. Vigorous protests at his execution appeared in Liberal newspapers all over the world. So great were the demonstrations in Madrid against the Government that Senor Maura, the Conservative Prime Minister, was forced to resign. The Liberal leader Senor Moret stepped into his shoes on October 22nd. Nevertheless there can be no doubt whatever that Francisco Ferrer was morally responsible for the deaths and wounding of many hundreds of people. D.W, a volley shattered the silence, and the anarchist fell riddled with bullets.

  Having personally satisfied himself that no fresh piece of treachery by fanatical Catalans or anarchist sympathizers had enabled his enemy to escape, and that his poor Angela's untimely death had been avenged, de Richleau walked back to the General's house and made a hearty early breakfast. A few hours later he took leave of the Quirogas and left Barcelona on a morning train.

  On the evening of the 14th he arrived back in San Sebastian. It was too late to send a message to Gulia letting her know of his return; but soon after midnight he went to the livery stable and collected the horse, which he had left instructions should be kept at his disposal. In the orchard behind the villa he hobbled it as in the past, then he got out the ladder from the gardener's shed and climbed up to Gulia's window.

  Her relief and delight at his safe return were unbounded. They had been separated for a week so in the hours that followed the ardour of their passion for one another reached new heights and, since between their embraces de Richleau had to tell her the long story of his doings in Barcelona, they did not sleep a wink.

  Next morning the Duke waited on Don Alfonso and was received most kindly by him. After the King had listened to his report, he said that all the parties of the Left would make so much capital out of Ferrer's execution that a very difficult time lay ahead. But he fully agreed that they had done the right thing; adding that if the people desired reforms they must bring them about in a constitutional manner, and that in the meantime it was the duty of the Government to protect the innocent from violence by criminal fanatics such as Ferrer.

  That night de Richleau rode out to the villa again. Once more the two lovers took their joy of one another, but their transports of the preceding night had taken toll even of their seemingly insatiable desire, and during it they had hardly closed their eyes. In consequence, as they had often done before, at about three o'clock in the morning, clasped in each other's arms, they first fell into a blissful doze, then slept.

  With a soldier's trained ability to wake at any hour, a little before dawn the Duke opened his eyes, freed himself from Gulia's embrace and sat up. He had just lit the bedside lamp so that he could see to dress, when he heard the sound of someone coming up the ladder. Next moment a cloaked figure scrambled in through the window.

  As de Richleau stared in that direction it flashed into his mind that, naked as he was, he was at a considerable disadvantage in tackling a burglar. But at that moment the intruder turned towards the bed and the light from the lamp shone full on his face.

  The Duke drew a sharp breath. For a few seconds he thought he must be seeing a ghost. But it was no wraith from the dead that stood scowling at him. It was a man of flesh and blood; and he was Gulia's husband, Jos6 de Cordoba.

  23

  Sunrise in the Bay

  During the course of his thirty-odd years de Richleau had found himself in many dangerous situations and a certain number of embarrassing ones, but none more embarrassing than the present. Occasional contretemps with the husbands of lovely ladies were the hazards which had to be accepted by a virile man who had spent nearly all his life as a bachelor and was so fastidious in his choice of mistresses that he had never kept a demi-mondaine. But never before had he been caught naked in bed with a woman; much less the wife of a friend whom he had believed to be dead.

  Temporarily bereft of speech, he stared at the stalwart, bearded figure. Then, finding his tongue, he exclaimed, 'I thought. . .'

  T can very well guess what you thought,' de Cordoba burst out, his face convulsed with rage. 'You thought that I was not returning from South America until the end of October. You would have been right, and free to continue to practise your vile treachery, but for the threat to the peseta brought about by the war in Morocco. Ruiz cabled me three weeks ago asking me to return and resume control here. I was three hundred miles up the Amazon when his cable reached me, but I started for home at once.'

  As the Conde paused for breath de Richleau began again. 'But I thought . . .' then he checked himself. It had suddenly dawned upon him that if Ruiz had sent that cable towards the end of August he could not possibly have received news at the beginning of the month that his brother was dead. Therefore Gulia had lied. She must have invented the whole story about her husband's death.

  Turning his head he shot a swift glance at her. She was sitting up in bed beside him, with the top of the sheet held up in front of her to hide her superb breasts. Her long Titian gold hair hung about her in disorder, her big eyes were wide and shining, her breath was coming fast; but on her beautiful face there was an expression of defiance as she looked straight before her at her husband.

  Swiftly the Duke grasped the fact that he was in a cleft stick. Either he must reveal the deception she had practised on him, or allow de Cordoba to believe that he had deliberately seduced his wife during his absence. De Richleau had never been a man to kiss and tell. Within seconds he decided that, wicked as Gulia's trickery had been, he could not give her away. Feeling that his only course now was to carry the war into the enemy's camp, he began again, more firmly than before.

  'Very well. I understand. But you might have spared yourself this unpleasant discovery if you had not returned like a thief in the night. It seems you must have been spying on us to. arrive here at this hour and by way of the ladder.'

  'I've done nothing of the kind,' de Cordoba retorted harshly. 'And it is you who are the thief. My ship docked at Bilboa yesterday evening. I thought that by hiring an automobile I could easily get home by midnight. But the cursed thing broke down and it was six hours before I reached a town where I could hire another. When I did get here, not wishing to wake the whole household I went round to the back of the villa to see if I could find a way to get in. I found one. Yes, I found a ladder leading up to my wife's bedroom. And what th
en? What a welcome home! I found a man whom I regarded with affection and respect in my wife's bed.'

  'I sympathize with you in the shock you sustained,' replied the Duke calmly. 'What more can I say? That which is done is done. In such a situation an apology would only sound insincere.'

  'Apology be damned!' the Conde exploded. 'By God, you're going to give me satisfaction, and that before you are much older.'

  De Richleau sighed. 'Since you demand it, I am entirely at your service.'

  'Demand it! Of course. What else would you expect? Now collect your clothes and get out of here. You can dress in the bathroom.'

  'No,' the Duke shook his head, and his jaw became aggressive. 'That I will not do. I refuse to be humiliated by getting naked out of bed in front of you. And unless you wish to lower yourself by entering on an unseemly brawl you cannot make me. It is you who will leave this room while I dress at my leisure.'

  For a moment de Cordoba glowered at him, then he sneered, 'One would hardly expect to find such delicacy in a man base enough to seduce the wife of a friend. But let it be as you say.

  You'll find me down in the hall. Be quick about it. I'll stand for no delay in making our arrangements.' Turning, he marched from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  As his footsteps faded away down the corridor, Gulia and de Richleau took their eyes from the door and looked at one another. 'Well,' he asked coldly. 'What have you to say?'

  Two great tears had welled up into her eyes and were running down her magnolia-petal cheeks. Sadly she shook her head. 'Oh Armand, my dear love, I never dreamed that things would end for us like this.'

  'Nor I; which is less surprising since I believed him dead,' de Richleau replied bitterly. 'But you; you lied to me. You made up that story about his having been mauled by a puma, and that Ruiz had asked you to keep his death secret because if it became known there would be a run on the bank. It's obvious now that you knew him to be alive all the time, but did not expect him back until the end of October.'