‘But we cannot let him go. That is out of the question.’
The tall Jovellenos eyed the architect dubiously. ‘I suppose you are right, but I have a feeling that he may prove more dangerous to us dead than alive. After all, there is no certainty that the police will raid the house just because he has failed to report to them on a single occasion. Anyway, I am still in favour of locking him up until Señor Ferrer returns and gives us a ruling on what is to be done with him.’
For some minutes Gérault had ceased moaning. Now, he took his hands from his battered face and, his throat still half-chocked by blood from his broken nose, gulped out, ‘He must die … In the name of the Grand Lodge of the Orient, I demand it … You do not know this man as I do … He is resolute, resourceful and cunning as a serpent … Unless you kill him while you have the chance he will find some means to escape … Then he will get us all arrested … He is the arch-enemy of us all … Kill him, I say … Kill him or you will have cause to regret it.’
Dolores nodded. ‘You are right, Monsieur. But we come back to the question of how to set about it without leaving any traces.’
‘In the poison cupboard of the laboratory prussic acid I have seen,’ volunteered Schmidt. ‘A dose we could give him and all is over very quickly.’
‘Escobedo always locks the cupboard up before he goes home, and takes the key with him,’ said Jovellnos. ‘We would have to break it open, and it is a stout one. We would also have to provide Escobedo with some explanation to give his class in the morning; otherwise it is certain that on finding the lock of the cupboard broken they would start asking awkward questions.’
‘Why waste time and go to so much trouble?’ Gérault’s thick half-chocked voice came again. With a gesture towards Sanchez, he went on. ‘Look at those great hands of yours … Are they not strong enough to strangle him?’
Once more Benigno intervened. ‘You are all talking like fools. However we killed him we would still be left with his body, and in disposing of it have to run a considerable risk. We dare not bury it in the cellar or the yard. If the poice do come they would find …’
‘We are not such fools as to do that,’ Zapatro interrupted him.
‘I did not suppose you were,’ Benigno retorted icily. ‘But the only alternative is to carry it out of the house. A body is not an easy thing to disguise. We might run into the police on the doorstep.’
‘If we don’t waste endless time arguing there is little chance of that,’ Dolores shrugged. ‘It is most unlikely that they will come to find what has happened to him for hours yet.’
‘I agree. But, as I was about to add, other people are certain to see us. Say we put the body into a big trunk and loaded it on to our covered cart, you can be sure that when the police started to make enquiries they would learn about it, and want to know what was in the trunk and where we took it. Another thing: where do you suggest that we should dump his body?’
‘On some rubbish heap on the outskirts of the city,’ Sanchez suggested. ‘Or in a dark alley down by the docks.’
‘In either place it would be found within twenty-four hours and identified by the police as that of the spy they know to have got in among us. People who had seen us load a trunk on to our cart at this hour would testify, and in no time we would find ourselves in the dock.’
‘Then what the devil are we to do?’ exclaimed Sanchez impatiently.
‘He must appear to have died as the result of an accident, or disappear altogether,’ Benigno replied in a firm voice. ‘It is in arranging such matters in similar cases that our father has shown such ingenuity. Our only safe course is to take our prisoner out to the mill and leave it to father to decide what is to be done with him.’
‘I disagree … I disagree …’ spluttered Gérault. ‘You should kill him now … If I felt stronger I would do it myself … We’ll get rid of the body somehow … We could bury it in the woods and it would not be found for months.’
The others now impressed by Benigno’s arguments and not wanting to run any unnecessary risk, ignored the Frenchman. But Zapatro raised the objection, ‘We would still have to get him out of the house and, as you said yourself just now, there is always the possibility that the police might come upon us while we are at it, or of some nosey parker of a patrolman wanting to know that we were up to.’
Benigno shrugged. ‘The cases are entirely different. In the first we should be caught with a corpse on our hands, in the second only a live man that we had trussed up; so we could not be charged with murder.’
‘Our friend Benigno is right,’ said Jovellenos. ‘From the beginning I have been all in favour of leaving this dangerous business to Señor Ferrer’s judgment.’
Sanchez gave a grudging assent. ‘I’d have liked to slit his throat. But you are the cleverest among us, brother; so let it be as you say.’
The others nodded agreement, except for Gérault, who continued to clamour nasally for the prisoner’s death. Instead of listening to him they began to discuss ways and means of getting the Count out to the mill.
With his nerves as taut as piano wires de Quesnoy had listened to every word of the heated argument on how, with the least risk, to terminate his earthly existence. Now, he could at least breathe again. Even this respite of an hour or two might provide him with some chance to escape from the clutches of his enemies. Yet he was not even remotely sanguine. It seemed certain that he could not expect Ferrer to aid him in any way, and the others, with the possible exception of Jovellenos, were set upon his death. Their only concern was to avoid committing any act which might later be cited to show that they had taken a hand in murdering him. Benigno’s caution had resulted in a very temporary postponement of sentence, but it could not be counted as more than that.
It was Dolores who suggested rolling the Count up in a carpet, and Benigno who improved upon this ruse for camouflaging his being got out of the house by the idea of also loading on to the cart some chairs and packing cases; so that passers-by should get the impression that they were engaged in moving some odds and ends of furniture.
Sanchez went off to get the horse and cart from a mews a little way down the street. Schmidt produced a somewhat grubby handkerchief and gagged de Quesnoy with it, while the others pushed back the furniture. When the Count was hauled to his feet he made no attempt to struggle. He knew that to do so would be futile, and he was still weak and in great pain. He could only hope that the ride in the cart would be a long one; so that by the time they reached the mill he would have got enough strength back to stand some chance in a bid to regain his freedom.
Zapatro gave him a push from behind and hooked one of his legs from under him, so that he fell on his face. Gérault then gave him a vicious kick on the side of the head that again rendered him nearly unconscious, and he was only vaguely aware through a mist of pain that he was being rolled up in the threadbare carpet that had long done duty in the masters’ common-room.
Presently he felt himself lifted and carried some distance, then down the front steps. A minute later he was heaved up and thrown down with a bump on the floor of the covered cart. The sickening jolt to his injured head sent such a spasm of agony through it that he fainted.
When he came to, his heart was pounding heavily from its effort to draw enough air down into his lungs. His head was some way from the nearest open end of the carpet and, in addition, a corner of the handkerchief gagging his mouth had flapped up in front of his nostrils, so for a moment he feared that he was about to suffocate. But by exerting his will he managed to change his breathing from desperate gasps to slow regular intakes, so that the corner of the handkerchief was no longer drawn with each breath tight up against his nose.
Inside the tube that encased him it was black as pitch. His hands were still bound behind him and he could make no movement, except slight ones with his feet. The Escuela Moderna was not distinguished by its cleanliness, so the old carpet was gritty with dust and stank of the tobacco ash and wine that had been spilt upon it. For h
ow long he had been unconscious he did not know, but now he hoped desperately that the journey would soon be over and so bring him relief from his agonising imprisonment.
Actually he had been out only for a few minutes. The cart was moving up hill and at a walking pace. As it jogged on he was given ample opportunity to think over the events of the evening and the terrible plight in which Gerault’s arrival had landed him. Even while waging his fight for sufficient air and striving to ease his cramped muscles, he was bitterly aware of the irony of the situation. He had set out to secure evidence that Ferrer was the brain behind the militant anarchists of Spain, and he had got it.
Zapatro had said that Ferrer was attending a meeting that was planning the attempt on Quiroga, and the Quiroga referred to could hardly be anyone other than the Captain-General of Barcelona. The others, too, evidently feeling it no longer necessary to exercise caution about what they said in front of a man they had already condemned to death, had made several mentions of Ferrer’s care to divert suspicion from himself and his ingenuity in eliminating without trace spies and traitors. In de Quesnoy’s mind there was no longer a shadow of doubt that the whole staff of the Escuela Moderna were militant anarchists and that Ferrer was the king-pin of the movement. But now there seemed little hope of his being able to use the information, let alone warn General Quiroga that a plot was on foot to assassinate him.
At last the nightmare journey came to an end. The covered cart rumbled to a halt, but de Quesnoy was not taken out of it. For a further ten minutes he lay half stifled and sweating profusely in his smelly cocoon while, as he rightly supposed, those who had come with the cart were making a full report about him to Ferrer. Then he heard the back-board of the cart smack down, was drawn out of it, carried some way and dropped with a bump that again sent spasms of agony shooting through his wounds. Next moment he was rolled over and over till free of the carpet, then pulled to his feet.
Temporarily dazzled by the light, he at first registered only that he was in a low-ceilinged room with a number of people staring at him. After a few blinks his sight cleared and he saw that he was in the sort of parlour to be found by the thousand in the suburbs of any big city. At a small table in its centre Ferrer was sitting; on his right there was a giant of a man with a bushy upturned moustache, on his left was a bald man of about fifty, and beside him a youth with the wide-spaced eyes of a fanatic. Behind Ferrer, Benigno was standing. Schmidt and Sanchez, as the Count saw by a swift glance to left and right, were the two men who had dragged him up on to his feet.
Benigno had laid the illustrated magazine, opened at the page carrying the damning photograph, on the table in front of his father. As they looked first at it and then at him, the bald man said, ‘It’s him right enough. But I am amazed, Francesco, that you did not vet him before taking him into your employ, even temporarily.’
Ferrer gave an angry shrug. ‘I did, Manuel, as far as was possible, soon after I first met him. I sent Rubén Pineda, a young student, to take Russian lessons from him, and later Pineda returned to search his room after he had gone out. There were all sorts of things in it that only a Russian would normally have possessed, and the branch of the Somaten he joined confirmed that he had come from Constantinople via Greece and Valencia.’
‘Gérault told us that he is a past-master at such tricks,’ Benigno put in. ‘Apparently he really is half-Russian and succeeded in passing himself off in Paris for several months as a refugee from Czarist persecution.’
The giant on Ferrer’s right poured himself another glass of wine from a carafe that stood on the table, and said: ‘To rake up the past is only waste of time. All we have to do is to make certain that after tonight he never again has a chance to play stool-pigeon to the police.’
‘Of course,’ Ferrer agreed, ‘but remember, Pedro, that he has been employed at the school and I don’t want the police descending on it and carting us all off to be grilled, as they certainly would if there is the least suspicion that his life had been taken because he had found out too much about us.’
‘Why not put him on a railway line near a level crossing,’ suggested the young man with the widely-spaced eyes. ‘It would be assumed that, finding the gates shut, he became impatient, thought he could cross in time, but just failed to do so.’
Ferrer shook his head. ‘No, Alvaro. Since the police must be aware that he has got in amongst us his death, even apparently by accident, would arouse their suspicions and lead to an exhaustive investigation. He must disappear, so that there is no body for them to examine and no point at which to start their enquiry.’
‘Gérault suggested that we should bury him in the woods,’ remarked Sanchez.
‘I don’t like that idea,’ announced the bald-headed Manuel. ‘It is a dark night. We’d need lanterns to select a suitable spot for a grave, to dig it and then clear up afterwards so that it wouldn’t be obvious that the ground had been recently disturbed. We might easily be caught red-handed while at the job, or seen and spied on by a couple of lovers, then followed back here and afterwards denounced to the police.’
‘There is also the danger of dogs or wild-pigs rooting up a newly buried body,’ put in Benigno. ‘It would not be the first time that has happened.’
‘It is a pity that we no longer have access to Garcia’s lime kiln,’ Ferrer murmured. ‘We could have got rid of him there as we did that traitor Zorrilla.’
‘We might get rid of him in the mill,’ said the giant Pedro thoughtfully.
De Quesnoy did his best to suppress a shudder. The thought of being crushed and slowly ground to death between two great mill-stones was very nearly as bad as that of being burnt alive. But that was not what Pedro had in mind and, after a short pause he went on:
‘If we threw him down the shaft into the flour he couldn’t possibly get out, and the odds are that within ten minutes he’ll be dead from suffocation. Anyhow, when we start to grind that would finish him.’
With his recent experience of stifling in the roll of carpet still vivid in his thoughts, this proposal struck the Count as even grimmer than being crushed to death. The night was hot and he was sweating already, but he broke out into a new sweat as his captors gave Pedro’s suggestion serious consideration and discussed its possibilities in detail.
It transpired that some years before a workman, unseen by his companions, had fallen from a gallery that ran high up round the interior of the mill-shaft. It had been supposed that he had disappeared from some reason of his own, and the truth had come to light only some months later, as the flour chamber was completely emptied and cleaned out only two or three times a year. Between cleanings, two big doors in the base of the shaft were opened every few days and whatever quantity of flour required to fill orders was shovelled out into sacks. But Conesa, as resident foreman of the mill, could enter the chamber at any time. He would see to it that the Count’s body lay buried well away from the doors and undiscovered until the next cleaning, which would not take place until a little before Christmas. When the body came to light its features would be unrecognisable and the face would have grown hair, so it could be suggested to the local authorities that the corpse was that of a tramp, and probably a drunken one, who had broken in to steal, but by a door that led only up to the top of the building, and there had the ill-luck to fall from the gallery. In any case, the chances of the body being identified as that of the monarchist spy who had disppeared in the late summer would be so remote as to be negligible.
While de Quesnoy listened, his blood chilled again. As he had no connection with the police no search would be made for him anyway. In due course de Vendôme, the Cordobas and, perhaps, Don Alfonso, would become puzzled at not hearing from him and set enquiries on foot about him; but long before that was likely to happen he would be a desiccated corpse buried under several feet of flour, or in a pauper’s grave as a unidentified tramp.
Having decided that Pedro’s suggestion met their requirements, Ferrer said to him, ‘Very well. You go with Sanchez an
d Schmidt. Take him away and make certain that he does not survive. I can settle the final details for the attempts on Quiroga with the others.’
De Quesnoy was still suffering from blinding pains in the head, and his breathing continued to be painful from the dust he had drawn down into his lungs during the three-quarters of an hour that he had lain rolled up in the carpet. As the grip of Sanchez and Schmidt tightened on his arms to drag him from the room he kicked out, began to struggle violently and to gurgle pleas and protests through the gag that was still tied over his mouth. Yet he knew that neither the little strength that was left in him, nor prayers if he could have made them coherently, would avail to save him.
When they had pushed and pulled him out of the house he glimpsed the covered cart in which they had brought him there, and realised that it was a dark night with no moon; but a myriad stars were shining overhead and gave enough light for him to get some idea of his surroundings. The small house stood in a corner of a big walled yard, next to it was a building that might be used as offices in the daytime, and beyond that a lofty warehouse. Opposite them the mill towered up into the darkness with, to one side of it, the long upward-sloping tunnel through which the buckets of grain were hoisted on an endless chain up to the grinders. The mill itself formed a square stack about forty feet in height, and before he had had time to take in more his captors had hustled him over to it.
Pedro produced a key and unlocked a door in its base which gave on to a dark stairway. The Count’s struggles had become feeble now, and the three of them half-dragged, half-carried him up several flights of stairs to its top. There they came out on a small landing, and while they paused there to get their breath back Pedro shone a torch round.
Its beam, first levelled straight ahead, lit up the grinders, then, as he flashed it about, showed a catwalk which ran round all four sides of the building and was obviously used by workmen to reach the machinery when it needed oiling or repairs. The grinders formed a circular mass, which at that level filled the whole chamber except for the width of the catwalk and in each corner a triangular space. De Quesnoy was pushed along the narrow gallery till he was standing opposite the corner space to the left of the door by which they had entered. Pedro directed his torch downward and its beam was reflected on the white sea of milled flour that lay twenty feet below them.
Vendetta in Spain Page 13