Slightly easier in his mind owing to these latest speculations, but still highly apprehensive, he waited anxiously for Benigno’s return. He had been gone no more than five minutes, yet it seemed far longer; and the others, as keyed up as the Count, were openly showing their impatience, none of them spoke, yet the silence was not complete. Even as they listened with tense expectancy to catch Benigno’s footfalls as he clattered down the back stairs, one or other of them made some restless movement, easing their position or giving a little nervous cough.
At last the sound of the expected footfalls reached them. Next moment Benigno threw open the door. Two swift paces brought him into the room. In his hand he held a glossy magazine. Waving it he exclaimed excitedly:
‘It’s him! It’s him without a doubt!’
Dolores ran forward crying ‘Let me see’ and almost snatched the magazine from him. Jovellenos followed her. Sanchez closed in on Benigno from the other side. Zapatro, also anxious to get a look, brushed past the Count, and even Gérault turned his head in Benigno’s direction.
It was de Quesnoy’s opportunity. They were all crowded round Benigno with, for the moment, one thought only in their minds—to see what this notorious conspirator, monarchist and spy looked like in the photograph. The group were between the Count and the door, but that could not be helped. Between it and the wall there were a few feet of space and by swerving round them in a violent dash he might get through the door before they realised that he was making a dash for it. Whether he would be able to reach the front door, get it open and leap out into the street before they were upon him lay in the lap of the gods. Such a chance to get clean away was most unlikely to occur again. He took it.
In one bound he reached Jovellenos, between whose back and the wall he meant to pass. But as he landed he felt a violent tug upon his armpits and shoulders. It jerked him upright and almost pulled him over backwards. A the same moment there came a tearing sound. He had forgotten that Herr Schmidt was still standing behind him. The German had seen him tense his muscles for his spring and, as he made it, grabbed the skirt of his jacket with both hands.
Instantly the group about Benigno fell apart and turned upon the escaping imposter. Schmidt was left holding a long strip of the Count’s cheap cotton jacket that had torn away, but the pull on it had halted him in his tracks. As Jovellenos swung round and tried to grab him he struck the tall maths master under the chin and sent him reeling back against Dolores. But Zapatro, a middle-aged but bull-like little man, threw himself forward. De Quesnoy side-stepped the anarchist’s rush to find himself facing Gérault. With savage pleasure he smashed his fist into the Frenchman’s face. The blow broke his nose, it spurted blood and with a wail of agony he flopped to his knees.
His collapse brought down Benigno too, as in the act of springing into the fray Gérault’s falling body knocked him off balance. For a moment their forms, writhing on the floor, left a clear space in front of the Count. He used it to pull out his little revolver. As Zapatro charged him again he fired. The bullet hit the architect in the left shoulder. Halting, he gave a cry and clapped his right hand to the wounded place.
De Quesnoy swivelled round and aimed again, this time at Sanchez, who at the moment the fight started had jumped sideways to block the doorway. Feet spread wide apart, hands on hips, head thrust forward, he stood there now a bulky human barrier, seemingly impassable. Yet a shot could move him.
It was never fired. Flinging herself forward Dolores grasped de Quesnoy’s arm with both her hands. Throwing her whole weight upon it, she bore it down. In vain he strove to shake her off. Next moment Schmidt had collared him round the neck and dragged him backwards. Stooping his head he bit into the German’s wrist. With a yelp and an oath Schmidt let go.
Dolores had transferred her hold to the Count’s hand and was clawing at it in an attempt to get the revolver from him. Suddenly it went off. She screamed; the bullet had lodged in the calf of her right leg. Momentarily free once more, de Quesnoy again jerked up the little weapon and turned towards the door. Sanchez still stood framed in it, and now he had a long thin knife in his hand. As the Count swung round to face him he threw it.
De Quesnoy had never been nearer death. Thrown with practised skill the glittering blade should have pierced his throat just below his adam’s apple. But at the very instant it was thrown Schmidt struck him a violent blow on the back of the head with a thick, round eighteen-inch long ebony ruler. His head was knocked forward and slightly sideways. The knife streaked over his shoulder, nicked the German’s left ear and sped on to bury its point in a wooden cupboard.
With stars and circles flashing in blackness before his eyes de Quesnoy reeled forward. Dropping his revolver, he crashed into Zapatro. They fell to the floor together. Although the small bullet had penetrated the architect’s shoulder it had done him no serious injury. Next moment he had both his hands round the Count’s throat. De Quesnoy was half stunned but instinctively brought up his right knee. Zapatro gave a gasp as it caught him in the stomach. He released his grasp; but now the Count was down, Schmidt, Jovellenos and Benigno all flung themselves upon him. In vain he kicked and twisted, they grabbed his arms, forced him over on his face and pulled them behind him. Jovellenos quickly took off a stringy black tie he was wearing and with it they tied his wrists. Schmidt then hauled him to his feet and Zapatro struck him in the face. He staggered back, tottered, and collapsed with a crash into one of the hardwood elbow-chairs.
Breathless, exhausted, aching from a dozen bruises and still bemused from the blow on the head, for the next few minutes he was only vaguely conscious of what was going on around him. Gérault crouched moaning on the sofa, his smashed face buried in his hands, blood trickling through his fingers. Dolores had pulled down her stocking and with a stream of muttered swear-words was examining the tiny wound in the calf of her leg. The others stood in a semicircle glowering down at the Count while they strove to get their breath back. As their panting eased it was Jovellenos who asked:
‘What shall we do with him?’
‘Put an end to him, of course,’ Zapatro replied hoarsely. ‘He has invited it. Not only is he dangerous to our organisation; the swine tried to kill me.’
‘You’re right,’ Sanchez supported him. ‘He would have killed me too had not Dolores seized his arm.’
For a moment she stopped her cursing to put in. ‘The bullets are only pellets. With that little pea-shooter he could not have killed anyone, except by a freak shot. But that’s not the point. He is a monarchist spy and may have ferreted out all sorts of things about us. We have no alternative but to eliminate him.’
Sanchez had pulled his long knife from the cupboard. Giving it a flourish he cried, Dios! That is obvious. Why do we wait? Bring him along the passage, some of you, and hold his head over the basin. I’ll do the rest.’
De Quesnoy’s wits were gradually coming back. Dully it impinged on his mind that Sanchez meant to have him dragged to the lavatory and there cut his throat. A tremor of horror ran through him as he had a vivid mental picture of himself with his head in the cracked, dirty basin and his blood gurgling down the waste. With an effort he struggled into a more upright position, but Zapatro gave him a kick on the shin and snarled at him to stay still.
So far Benigno had taken no part in these swift exchanges; now he spoke in his precise voice. ‘All that Dolores said is true, but we cannot deal with him out of hand like this.’
‘Why not?’ asked Sanchez truculently.
‘Because all decisions in matters concerning a death sentence are always taken by our father.’
‘Since he is not here we must act for him.’
‘Benigno is right,’ said Jovellenos. ‘We ought to wait until Señor Ferrer returns.’
‘But he will not be back until tomorrow,’ Zapatro objected. ‘The committee that is planning the attempt on Quiroga will be sitting till the small hours, and he told me that he meant to spend the rest of the night with Pedro Conesa.’
Do
lores tittered. ‘You mean with Conesa’s daughter. Teresa? She’s a hot little piece if ever there was one, and our vert galant never misses the chance of a tumble with her whenever he has to go out to the mill.’
‘Anyway he will not be back before first school is due to start; so we must deal with this man ourselves,’ Zapatro gestured towards the Count. ‘We dare not let him go, even temporarily; and there is nowhere here where we could hold him prisoner without risk that he would either escape or be found by one of the students.’
‘I am averse to taking any irrevocable step until it has received Señor Ferrer’s approval,’ Jovellenos declared. ‘Why should we not take our prisoner up to the private apartment? We could get the Señora Ferrer to turn out a cupboard and lock him into it. She could keep an eye on him and no one would discover him there.’
‘No one except the police!’ Dolores rounded on her recent chess opponent with a sudden sneer. ‘You are talking like a fool, Enriquez. You forget that he is a spy. The odds are that after every evening he spends here he reports to the police all that we have said. He must know that he has been walking on a razor’s edge, and probably has some arrangement with them that, should he fail to make his report by a given hour, they are to assume that we have caught him out, and raid the place in the hope of rescuing him.’
She’s talking sense,’ cried Sanchez. ‘It’s not often that we disperse before midnight, so we’ve no need to fear a raid for some hours yet; but the sooner we get this job done the better.’
Benigno laid a hand on his arm. ‘Calm yourself, brother, I beg. Remember the rule our father has laid down. It is that in this house no act of violence should be permitted. I agree that this man must die. He actually saw us manufacturing a bomb. Little more would be needed for us to find ourselves facing a firing squad. But he must not be executed yet, and not here.’
‘What reason can you possibly advance for postponing the death of this louse?’
‘Only that such matters have always been left to our father’s judgment. It is just possible that he may be making use of this man.’
‘Nonsense! Is it likely that he would be doing so without having warned us about him? No. He is a spy; and in such cases our father has only one verdict. In the past few years we have had several through our hands. You know as well as I do that in every case he has ordered their execution.’
‘True. I know it,’ admitted Benigno. ‘But not here. Not in this house. After what Dolores has just said how can you fail to realise the danger? Should the police raid us in the early hours as she suggests, think what they might find—blood all over the place, and perhaps even his body if we had not had time to get it out of the house. It is just that sort of ill chance that our father has always so wisely guarded against.’
Sanchez laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘You need have no fears on that score, brother. I’ve just thought of a better plan than to cut his throat. We can dispose of him without leaving a trace by burning him up a limb at a time in the furnace in my foundry.’
7
To be disposed of without trace
For the past few minutes de Quesnoy had been conscious of a warm wetness at the back of his neck. It was the blood that had trickled down from the nasty cut on his head made by the heavy ruler with which Schmidt had struck him down. He had no idea of the size or shape of the wound, for the whole back of his head felt as though it had been bashed in. The pain was agonising and the pulses in his skull throbbed as though it was about to burst. Yet he was just capable of taking in what was said by the group clustered about him.
At Sanchez’ proposal to kill him in a way that would also dispose of his body, the saliva ran hot in his mouth and his flesh crept. Courageous as he was, the idea of being burnt alive filled him with fear and horror. When Ferrer had taken him over the Escuela Moderna he had been shown the foundry in which Sanchez gave classes in metal-work. The furnace in it was a fair-sized one but certainly not large enough to take a body, and Sanchez had spoken of burning him in it a limb at a time. To kill and cut him up first would mean spilling quarts of his blood—the very thing they wanted to avoid—so the intention must be to thrust him in head or feet first, then reverse the process, until the white-hot interior of the furnace had baked his limbs dry of blood, and only then cut up the charred remains for final cremation.
It was possible that they might first strangle or knock him on the head, but he had a ghastly conviction that they would not show him even that much mercy. It was based on his knowledge of the extraordinary contradiction that was a salient feature of the Spanish character. Normally they were sensitive and generous and would go out of their way to avoid hurting another person’s feelings. They adored their children, lavishing on them pretty clothes and toys that they could often ill-afford, and in Spain there were fewer cases of cruelty to children than in any other country in Europe. Yet they worked and beat their animals to death, and the favourite national pastime was the bullring.
The Count had been to a number of bullfights, and while he was filled with admiration for the bravery and skill of the Matadors, as they pirouetted within inches of the bull and even allowed it to tear with its horns the gold lace from the breast of their costumes, he had been baffled and sickened by the part that horses were forced to play in this cruel sport.
It had been explained to him that the whole object of the elaborate playing of the bull was to wear down its strength, so that the great muscles in its neck tired until, when facing the Matador, it could no longer hold up its head, thus enabling him to plunge his sword between its horns and through its shoulder straight down into its heart; and that for the mounted men to rear their horses right on to the bull, so that it had to take the whole weight of horse and man on its horns, was simply a part of the wearing-down process. Even so, it shocked and amazed him that thousands of women as well as men could burst into excited applause at the sight of a screaming horse falling with its guts torn out by the horns of a bull.
Their cruelty, too, was not confined to animals. In the Carlist wars few prisoners had been taken, and both sides had committed unmentionable barbarities on hundreds of the enemy they had captured. Worse still, if possible, had been their treatment of nuns and priests during the frequent revolts and revolutions of the past century. It had been common practice to rape the younger nuns to death, and burning priests had become a favourite sport.
But de Quesnoy was not now thinking of either bullfights or the devilish cruelties of the civil wars—only that hatred could turn Spaniards from delightful companions into merciless fiends in less time that it took to eat a meal; and if there was any conceivable way in which he could save himself from the ghastly death proposed for him.
During the years he had been exiled to dreary garrison duty in Madagascar he had occupied his mind almost exclusively by an intensive study of the occult. It was an English missionary who had first interested him in it, by telling him that as the people of the huge island were a mixture of Negro stock and Polynesians, who had arrived there on fleets of rafts during a great migration, the present witchdoctors had inherited a knowledge of both African and Pacific magic, so were probably more skilled in practising it than any others in the world. His prolonged study of the secret art had taught him many things; among them how to hypnotise, and how, by methods similar to Yoga, to render his body almost impervious to normal cold or heat.
Any attempt to hypnotise the group now staring at him, in a few moments and in his present condition, he knew to be hopeless; and that to prevent oneself from being burnt when thrust into a white-hot furnace was beyond the powers of even the greatest Mage. But there remained the possibility that he might succeed in throwing himself into a self-induced trance.
If he could succeed in that he would, for all practical purposes, be temporarily dead, and so not feel the searing of the flames. Yet he had no sooner thought of the idea than he abandoned it. To achieve complete immunity such a trance would have to be of extreme depth, and to bring about such a state r
equired time, solitude and complete quiet; all of which, in his present circumstances, would be denied him. By a great effort, he might force his spirit out of his body, but only on to the lowest astral plane; and the intense pain as his nerves began to scorch would bring it back to his body almost instantly.
These thoughts flashed through his mind within a few seconds of Sanchez having spoken. Then another swiftly took their place. The question of disposing of his body quickly and without trace had arisen only because Dolores had put into the heads of the others that he was in league with the police and that, if he failed to make his nightly report to them, some time before morning they would raid the house to find out what had happened to him. He must tell them that he was acting on his own, had no connection whatever with the police then they might adopt Jovellonos’ suggestion of locking him up in a cupboard upstairs until Ferrer returned in the morning. Anything was better than being roasted in the furnace. But would they believe him? No; not even if he swore by everything he held holy that they had nothing to fear from the police. Why should they?
Yet it was their fear of a police raid that decided matters. For a few moments they had all stood silent, considering Sanchez’ proposal. Then Schmidt spoke, in awkward Spanish with a heavy accent.
‘To burn him is no good. The fat of human corpses makes a smell most horrible. It would the house stink out. Also in a short time to destroy all traces is not possible. Pieces of calcined bones would be found, buttons from his clothes, other things. If we had twenty-four hours, yes perhaps. But if the house raided before morning is, enough evidence they will find to prove him murdered by us.’
De Quesnoy’s heart gave a bound of relief, for he knew that the German’s argument was unchallengeable; but he also knew that, even if he had escaped burning, his life was not worth an hour’s purchase, and Zapatro confirmed him in that belief by saying angrily:
Vendetta in Spain Page 12