Vendetta in Spain

by Dennis Wheatley

  It was obvious that had any of these assassins been directed by some central committee, they would have been furnished with proper weapons and ample money to aid them in carrying out their murderous intent.

  However, it did seem to de Quesnoy that there were grounds for believing that the Barcelona anarchists differed from others in this respect. This he believed to be because they were strongly influenced by the Syndicalists who, while accepting anarchist principles, held somewhat more practical views about the establishment of a new social order after the present one had been destroyed. There was also the fact that the bombs used by the Spanish anarchists were no home-made toys, as witness the terrible devastation caused by the one that Morral had hurled at the Royal coach, and this implied that either they were supplied by some central headquarters or that there was such a centre where potential assassins received instruction in making them.

  That no international world-headquarters of anarchism existed was a sad blow to the Count, since he had hoped that through the Barcelona anarchists he might eventually learn its whereabouts, in due course penetrate it and, sooner or later, find means to blow skyhigh the brains directing the movement. But it had proved to be a nebulous creature that could not be brought to grief by any single act. He could only console himself with the thought that he might still deal a crippling blow against the Spanish anarchists if he could secure evidence that it was Ferrer to whom they looked for support and direction.

  On the Sunday he wrote a long letter to de Cordoba, giving an account of his doings since his arrival in Barcelona, reporting on the situation as he saw it, and stating his hopes of securing evidence which would show that Ferrer and some of his associates had known in advance of Morral’s intentions; all of which he asked should be passed on to Don Alfonso.

  When Monday came de Quesnoy decided that as it would be his last chance to share the common-room with the other masters, he would spend the evening there. After he had had dinner he went in to find Dolores Mendoza playing chess with Jovellenos, who took the higher maths class, and three other men sitting talking politics as usual. They were Zapatro, who taught architecture, Herr Schmidt, the German master, and Benigno. De Quesnoy settled down with those three and the interminable discussion went on according to custom. Spaniards by habit sit up late so these sessions often went on until past midnight, and it was about eleven o’clock when Benigno remarked:

  ‘Sanchez should be here soon now. My father gave him the job of meeting this new man, Gérault, at the station and bringing him here. His train was due in at a little after ten.’

  He had hardly finished speaking when the door opened and Sanchez came in with a small, weedy little middle-aged man. Dolores and Jovellonos glanced up but did not break off their game; the other four came to their feet to greet the newcomer. Sanchez introduced them in turn and coming last to the Count said:

  ‘This is Señor Chirikov. He is a Russian but speaks French like a native, and owing to the retirement through illness of your predecessor he has been deputising for you as French master until your arrival.’

  De Quesnoy murmured a conventional greeting and put out his hand, but the other did not take it. He was staring at the Count with murder in his eyes. Suddenly he cried:

  ‘He is no Russian! He is a Frenchman! I know this man. He can have come among you only as a spy. Two years ago in Paris he penetrated the secrets of the Freemasons and brought about the fall of the Combes government. He is that notorious monarchist, Colonel the Count de Quesnoy.’

  6

  Unmasked

  For a moment utter silence descended on the small room. Every one of the eight people in it remained perfectly still, as though temporarily paralysed by the waving of a magician’s wand. Even their breathing was not perceptible, and the smoke from their cigarettes and pipes hung unmoving in faint blue strata. Although they made no movement the pulses of all of them had quickened. Their thoughts were racing and the atmosphere was tense with the invisible radiations those thoughts made upon it.

  De Quesnoy needed no telling that, for him, the silence was pregnant with menace. The men about him were declared enemies of society. He had every reason to believe them either actively concerned in carrying out assassinations or, at least, helping to plan them. Since they felt no scruples during attempts to murder their chose victims, about innocent people often being killed or maimed, it was certain that, should they be convinced he was a spy, they would show no mercy to him.

  Taken completely off his guard, during those seconds of explosive quiet, he stared at the weedy little Frenchman who had denounced him. Then, rallying his wits in an attempt to save himself, his face suddenly took on an expression of angry amazement. His ‘devil’s eyebrows’ shot up into his forehead and in a voice sharp with indignation, he cried:

  ‘Monsieur! How dare you make such an accusation. You are entirely mistaken.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind!’ Gérault snapped back. ‘You were the leader of the conspiracy to put the Duc de Vendôme on the throne, and later you passed yourself off under the name of Vasili Petrovitch. It was you who bribed that absinthe-besotted traitor, Bidegain, to steal the fiches from the files of the Grand Lodge, and letters from the War Minister to our Secretary General, Vadecard. I would know you again anywhere.’

  ‘I haven’t an idea what you are talking about,’ stormed the Count. I’ve never seen you before in my life.’

  As he made the latter statement he would have been prepared to swear to it. The lined face, beady brown eyes and thin drooping moustache of the Frenchman were entirely strange to him; but during the months he had lived in a Montparnasse boarding-house as Petrovitch he had been introduced to scores of Freemasons and attended a dozen or more Lodge meetings, so he could not have remembered the faces of a tenth of those he had met or rubbed shoulders with.

  On the other hand, as the wrecker of their attempt to sabotage the French army, they had ample cause to remember him; and not just vaguely as a man they had seen a few times, for his description had been circulated by the police and photographs of him had appeared in all the papers. Ten months earlier his participation in the abortive conspiracy to place de Vendôme on the throne had brought him nation-wide publicity, so the Press had seized on his re-appearance in Paris as front-page news, and his features had temporarily become as well known as those of the atheist War Minister whom he had succeeded in hounding out of office.

  It was that which made his return to France, even temporarily and under another name, still almost certain to lead to his arrest; but as he was in Spain and it was getting on for two years since such notoriety had been thrust upon him, he had considered negligible the chances of his being recognised by one of the class of people with whom he intended to mix in Barcelona. He had even regarded the risk as so remote that he had contemplated joining a Masonic Lodge there; so he felt that fate had played him a really scurvy trick in confronting him with an enemy who could swear to his identity.

  Hiding his apprehension that he might fail in his attempt to bluff matters out, he gave a swift glance round at the other occupants of the room. Dolores and Jovellenos had come to their feet. The tall, stoop-shouldered mathematics master was peering through his spectacles at Gérault; but Dolores’ pale-blue eyes now seemed to be protruding slightly and were fixed on him with evident suspicion. Zapatro and Herr Schmidt he could not see, as both of them were standing a little behind him; but Sanchez’ low brow was furrowed and his mouth grim, while Benigno was regarding him with a puzzled frown.

  Meanwhile Gérault had returned to the attack. Wrinkling up his nose he retorted with a vicious sneer, ‘So you have never seen me in your life, eh? No doubt the noble Count considered me too insignificant a person to register in his aristocratic memory. But I have seen him, with Lazare, with Forain and with others whom he deceived with his glib tongue so that he might lie his way into our Brotherhood. I tell you, comrades, he is a traitor; a spy. If we had caught him in Paris we’d have had him garotted by apaches and paid them
handsomely for their trouble.’

  De Quesnoy was well aware that there were plenty of dock-rats in Barcelona who, with no questions asked, would prove ready enough to play a similar part for a few hundred pesetas. Whether these people of Ferrer’s were militant anarchists or only abettors, unless he could convince them that Gérault was mistaken, he thought it more than probable that they would decide to arrange matters so that next morning his corpse would be found floating in the harbour. His heart was beating quickly now but he realised that this best hope lay in maintaining a calm appearance. He said more quietly:

  ‘Really, this is fantastic. All of you here have known me for quite a while. Have you ever heard me say anything which might lead you to suppose that I am this French Count of whom Monsieur Gérault speaks?’

  ‘If you are, you would not be such a fool as to do so,’ said Benigno in a non-committal voice.

  ‘But I am not a Frenchman, and I have never been to France,’ lied the Count.

  ‘Yet I am told you speak French like a native, although you say you are a Russian,’ Gérault put in. ‘Colonel de Quesnoy also spoke French fluently, while pretending to be a Russian refugee.’

  ‘Perhaps, but what of it? There are thousands of Russians who have fled from Czarist persecution and are now scattered over western Europe. French is the second language of all educated Russians, and unless they spoke it fairly well few people outside Russia would understand them.’

  ‘Yes, yes; but that is only a minor point. I recognise you. Those eyes of yours are unmistakable. Your face and figure too all tally with those of the man who called himself Petrovitch. If we were in Paris I could easily turn up a photo graph …’

  ‘This is absurd,’ the Count broke in. ‘A mere resemblance. How can you possibly be certain when it is close on two years since you saw this man Petrovitch?’

  The words were no sooner out of de Quesnoy’s mouth than he knew that he had blundered. Drawing back his lips in a snarl Gérault spat at him, ‘So you are aware how long ago it is since Petrovitch—or to give him his real name, the Comte de Quesnoy—escaped from France? Yet when I spoke of him a minute ago you asserted that you had no idea what I was talking about.’

  ‘That’s true!’ exclaimed Sanchez, his dark eyes narrowing still further.

  ‘He is a spy all right,’ Dolores cried with sudden venom. ‘I suspected that he might not be quite what he seemed when he took me out to dinner and tried to pump me for information. This makes it certain.

  Zapatro spoke from behind de Quesnoy’s left shoulder. ‘If he is, although we have been cautious at times when he has been with us, he could have picked up quite a lot from our conversation; so we must look on him as dangerous.’

  In an effort to restore the situation the Count rounded on him and said sharply, ‘All this is no more than speculation, and most unjust to me. The very first day I came to this house, on entering the laboratory I found Sanchez and Benigno busy putting together an infernal machine. If I had come here as a spy that would have been evidence enough for me to have had the place raided and them arrested. But I did nothing of the kind. Instead I suggested a method by which they could make the bomb more efficient.’

  ‘That is certainly the truth,’ Benigno agreed. ‘But I think I may be able to provide an indisputable answer to this riddle. For years past father has taken the best illustrated papers of France, England and Germany; and he keeps the back numbers up in his study. I feel sure I remember reading an article about the Vendôme conspiracy and it is bound to have had photographs of the principal participants.’ Turning to Gérault, he added, ‘Tell me the dates to look for; then I’ll go upstairs and see if I can find the article.’

  ‘He was last hunted by the police in Paris in November, 1904,’ replied the Frenchman quickly. ‘But the conspiracy was unmasked in December, 1903. Round about either time you should find articles about him.’

  As Benigno hurried from the room, slamming the door behind him, de Quesnoy found himself faced with a dilemma that might spell life or death for him. As Petrovitch, he had worn a beard and shaved off the upper points of his ‘devil’s’ eyebrows. But no photographs had ever been taken of him like that. All those used by the Press had been of him as a Chief Instructor at St. Cyr and, except that he had then had a cavalry moustache, they differed very little from his appearance as it was at present. Therefore if Benigno found an illustrated article it would prove conclusive evidence against him.

  But Benigno might fail to find any proof of his identity. If so, de Quesnoy wondered, what then? It would be his word against Gérault’s. In that case they could hardly do otherwise than let him go. But either way this meant an end to ‘Nicolai Chirikov’s’ activities in Barcelona. It was certain that having come under such grave suspicion Ferrer and Co. would not trust him an inch further. They would, too, send out a warning about him to all their associates. To clinch matters Gérault would, no doubt, go hurrying off to the City Library and there turn up illustrated articles about the Vendôme conspiracy to prove himself right. After, or even before, that happened, the Count now realised, the sooner he was out of Barcelona the better for his health.

  With a jerk his mind came back to the present, and the disturbing knowledge that he had first to get out of that room alive.

  As had been his custom since arriving in Barcelona he had on him a small pearl-handled revolver. He carried it thrust into his trouser top just above his left hip. It was scarcely more than a toy affair, for had he carried a larger weapon the bulge under his coat would have been noticeable; but its bullets were big enough to kill a man if fired at close range.

  All the same, he felt distinctly dubious about the prospects of his suddenly whipping out such a miniature firearm and with it terrifying the group about him into allowing him to walk unmolested out of the house. Even with Benigno absent he would still be up against five men and Dolores; and, unless he made use of the weapon immediately, three of the men were near enough to snatch it from him.

  Swiftly he decided that he had only one chance of getting clear away. That was to shoot Gérault, who was standing right in front of him. And not merely to wound him in the arm or leg, but shoot him in the face so that he at once collapsed, then spring over his body to the door while the others were still too paralysed by shock to intervene.

  Yet such a move could have most disastrous consequences. At the best of times it was difficult to take accurate aim with a very small revolver, and in this case there would be no time to take proper aim at all. The bullet might pierce one of Gérault’s eyes and enter his brain, or pass through his mouth and sever his spinal cord.

  The Count had killed too many North African tribesmen, fighting gallantly for what they believed to be their rights, to feel any qualms about taking life; and since Gérault had evidently been chosen by Ferrer as a master at the Escuela Moderna because he was an anarchist, de Quesnoy would have felt no compunction at all about shooting him down as the price of his own liberty. But if he did, how long would he keep that liberty?

  Even if it could be proved that Gérault had taken part in militant anarchist activities, which was doubtful, to have killed him in such circumstances would, under the criminal law of Spain, be murder just the same. The Ferrer brothers would start a hue and cry and at once inform the police. Once that happened, de Quesnoy knew the odds were that he would be arrested before morning. Had he had an official status he might have got away with it on a plea of self-defence; but he had not, and honour demanded that he should not disclose that Don Alfonso had sent him on this mission while deliberately concealing it from his own police.

  Gérault’s death would be regarded as the result of a private quarrel between two of Ferrer’s associates, and the Government authorities in Barcelona would welcome the opportunity of ridding themselves of another of his group; so it was certain that they would demand the death penalty for Nicolai Chirikov. Don Alfonso would, of course, hear of the affair and it would cause him the gravest possible embarrassment. To sa
ve the Count’s life he might privately disclose to his Minister of Justice that de Quesnoy had been acting for him, but it was too much to expect that he would court the resentment of his whole police force by admitting publicly that he had gone behind their backs. So de Quesnoy would still have to stand his trial for murder, and the best he could hope for was a backstairs instruction to the judge that he should be let off with a term of imprisonment.

  These thoughts rushed pell-mell through the Count’s brain, and decided that the long-term risks of shooting his way out considerably outweighed his present danger. There was still a chance that Benigno might fail to find an article with his photograph, and that with the case against him unproven he might be allowed to go.

  Even supposing he was definitely identified, that might not mean the worst. That they would set upon and kill him themselves seemed unlikely, or that they would send for some thug to play the part of executioner there and then. It was more probable that he would escape for the moment with a beating-up and then being thrown out.

  Later that night, no doubt, they would offer the leader of some criminal gang a handsome sum to make away with him. Gérault would certainly urge them to do that. But given even an hour’s grace he should be able to save himself. He had nothing at his lodgings that he valued, so he need not risk returning to it. Providing that he was not seriously injured in the beating they might give him before they let him go, he could go to earth for the night in one of the suburbs of the city, or be in a train well away from it long before any gang could get on his track.