‘Thought you’d got away with it, didn’t you? Well, Monsieur clever Count, you haven’t, see? Know what I’m going to do with you? I mean to break your neck then let you drop down on to the cobbles. I’ve already put it in the minds of my chaps that you’ve gone barmy. If I tell them you struggled with me and I lost my hold on you, they’ll swallow it all right.’
As he spoke he was dragging de Quesnoy towards him. In vain the Count endeavoured to cling to the window sill. He had no purchase for his feet or back from which he could exert his own strength, and the great brute who was pulling him out of the window was far stronger.
The tussle lasted no more than a minute. De Quesnoy’s knees, then his feet, came over the sill, and he swung out into space supported only by Pedro’s grip on his wrist. But the grip took the strain of his weight until he crashed sideways into the ladder and got a foot on to one of its rungs. He was below Pedro, his face on a level with the backs of the giant’s knees. For a moment they remained almost still while recovering a little from their efforts. Then Pedro turned sideways on the ladder and gave the Count’s arm a series of jerks so violent that they threatened to pull it from its socket. The pain was so excruciating that de Quesnoy was forced to stumble up the ladder rung by rung until his head was on a level with Pedro’s waist.
But now, in order to do de Quesnoy any vital injury, Pedro had to change his grip and with one of his hands he was hanging on to the ladder. In that lay the Count’s one advantage, for although Pedro had him by one of his wrists his other hand was free.
When a youth in Russia, he had often participated in the national sport of wrestling, and later he had for a while studied the art of Judo. One of its secrets he had learned was that by a certain grip on the shoulder with the thumb inclined downwards towards the collar bone a muscle can be pressed which causes exquisite pain. In desperation he now stretched up his free hand as far as it would go and exerted this grip on Pedro.
The anarchist gave a scream of agony, his eyes bulged and his body jerked forward. The result was that he lost his grip on the ladder. De Quesnoy snatched at it to save himself, but the weight of Pedro’s big body falling outwards against him broke his hold before he could grasp it firmly. Next moment, with arms and legs still entangled, they went hurtling down on to the cobbles. They hit them with such force that, almost instantly, both of them were rendered unconscious.
As semi-consciousness returned to de Quesnoy he gradually became aware that he was in hospital. He was in no great pain but knew himself to be extremely ill. The vaguely-seen coifs of nuns came into his vision from time to time and a doctor coming to give him an injection confirmed his impression that he was being kept under morphia. A little later he was propped up to be sick and wondered to find himself in a common ward, for as yet no memory had returned which would have explained to him how he came to be there. He assumed that he must have been brought in from a street accident, but he did not realise that he was in Barcelona and from Spanish being spoken by the people about him he gained the impression that he was in Madrid.
For what seemed to him a very long time he lay comatose, only rousing a little now and then when they bathed his head or gave him another injection; and all the while he knew that he was hovering between life and death.
At length a time came when, having lapsed into complete unconsciousness, he found himself outside his body and looking down on to it. His head was swathed in bandages, his left shoulder was strapped up, and a mound over his left leg showed that it was in splints.
Now, his mind cleared as suddenly as if a curtain had been drawn back. He knew that most of his injuries were the result of his fall from the ladder and was again fully aware of all the events which had led up to it.
As he regarded himself, two nuns came to his bedside followed by a priest carrying the Host. The nuns knelt and for a few moments there came the mutter of prayers while the priest administered Extreme Unction. Then the Count noticed that screens had already been drawn round the bed.
‘So,’ he thought, ‘they expect me to die tonight. In fact, in their eyes I am already as good as dead. I must show them that I am not. I must return to my body at once, and next time anyone comes to the bedside make some movement. Otherwise they’ll put me in the mortuary, then bury me.’
He willed himself downward towards his nostrils, but his act of will brought him little nearer to them. Its failure revealed to him how weak and attenuated his Silver Cord had become. In sudden panic he realised that it might break at any moment. If it did he would never be able to get back into his body, and would be really dead.
9
A ghost in the night
No one can be positive about what happens after death. Like the very beginning of all things and the meaning of eternity, it is one of the great mysteries and not meant for man to know. But throughout the ages a limited number of people have had experiences upon which they are at least justified in basing almost unanswerable arguments for the survival of the spirit and a belief that they have succeeded in lifting a corner of the veil.
In every period and country there have been people who, after profound meditation and long training, have acquired the ability to will the spirit that animates them out of their bodies while those bodies are still living. That they have actually done so has been proved by their remaining in a state of suspended animation for many days without any form of sustenance and, while in a state of trance, appearing in spirit form to convey messages and warnings to persons at a great distance. From this it is logical to conclude that when the body dies its ego does not die with it, but passes on to some new form of activity; and that those who have been able to leave their bodies while alive and return to them have brought back a certain degree of knowledge about the laws that govern life and so-called death.
That knowledge has been judged by wise men to be unfitting for mortals who have not yet achieved a certain state of advancement, and so in every age had become the jealously guarded secret of a few enlightened individuals who have mostly been members of an inner circle of some priestly caste. Yet such enlightened ones have always been willing to share that knowledge with those whom they recognise as sufficiently advanced not to abuse it. And de Quesnoy had been chosen as one of those fitted to receive instruction in these great mysteries.
He knew one of the fundamental laws to be that while a person can shorten his life by taking it, no one can add one second to the span of life on earth allotted to him on each incarnation. And he recognised that it might be that his time had come to leave his present body for good.
To do so would now be easy, and in many ways it held out a tempting prospect. While away from earth he would again be with numerous long-time friends who were also out of incarnation for the time being, and some of whom he could not have had the joy of seeing for many generations. He would also see others who had died before him in his present life—Angela among them.
But it would not be the same as living with her on earth. He knew too that never again would they be reincarnated in the same period with similar bodies. Sooner or later the bond between them, as with his other long-time friends, would ensure their coming together again on earth in some relationship, but until that happened they would be no more to one another than companions in the Fields of Asphodel, the Land of Sekhet-Aaru, the Gardens beneath which Rivers Flow—as various peoples had termed the enchanted country in which spirits out of incarnation awaited their return to earth. It was this knowledge which, after his first weeks of grief, had enabled him to put thoughts of Angela, all but occasionally, out of his mind. Since arriving in Barcelona he had accepted their love as a closed chapter in one of his many lives.
Each life on earth he knew to be like a term in school, during which one must learn the new lessons set for one and strive to overcome some weakness of character, whereas to be out of incarnation meant a long and joyous holiday with no tests to pass, no ailments or accidents and no cares of any kind; so the thought of that alone was a big inducement
to make no further effort and allow his Silver Cord to disintegrate.
Yet there was also the thought that after that glorious holiday there was no escaping the law which would send him back to earth again in a new incarnation. What form would it take?
He knew the widely-spread Indian belief, that an ill-spent life on earth might result in ones being reincarnated as an animal, or even an insect, to be a heresy. No soul that had once achieved human status was ever sent back as a part of one of the group souls that animated the lower species of creation. Those, too, who had advanced as far as he had always returned with some part of the knowledge they had acquired in previous lives lying dormant within them; so, except in cases where they still had to learn some special lesson, such as humility, they were given an opportunity to become in some degree members of some governing class.
But in this incarnation he had been born the heir to a Duke, and given a fine body, a handsome face and plenty of money. He could hardly expect such good fortune and so easy a path next time. He was, too, still only in his early thirties; so he might yet do great things.
It was then it occurred to him that he might no longer have a fine body. Obviously it had received a most savage battering and, as a result of the fall of twenty feet, might have some internal injury that would make him a cripple for the rest of his life. His astral vision having an X-ray quality not granted with ordinary human sight, he began to examine it thoroughly and assess the full amount of the damage it had sustained.
His scalp was cut at the back of his head and his skull slightly cracked at the side some way above the right ear; more serious, there were broken skin and a huge bruise across the centre of his forehead and it was this which had caused his temporary loss of memory. His left collar-bone was broken, two of his ribs were cracked, and his left leg was broken about six inches above the ankle; but it was a clean break, not a compound fracture, and he could see no sign of internal haemorrhage. His lungs, however, were severely inflamed, which might lead to pneumonia.
Summing matters up he decided that, once over the initial shock to the system caused by such multiple injuries, there was none among them that should prevent him within a few weeks, or at worst months, from riding, fighting and loving again. So it would still be a fine body, and a sad waste to leave it—and all the other good things that went with it—for an unknown future. But he greatly doubted now if he had any choice.
On that another thought came to him. Perhaps the choice had been left to him in order to test his will-power. If so, he must not shirk the test. It was the law that as long as one had the power to keep life in one’s body one should do so. Even those who died under torture were expected to stick it out to the limit of their endurance. They were paying off a debt for some evil they had done to another in the past, and were not given more pain than with extreme fortitude they could bear; so to give up the ghost prematurely left part of the debt unpaid, and was a minor form of suicide. It was possible—no, certain—that if he lived on there were numerous debts that it had been decreed that he should pay during his incarnation as Armand de Quesnoy. The thought decided him. He must make an all-out attempt to get back.
He had hardly taken the decision when a doctor appeared with a lay sister behind him. Taking the wrist of the body, the doctor felt for a pulse, dropped the wrist, then turned up one of the eyelids, glanced at the eye, and shut it. Turning to the lay sister he said, ‘He’s gone. You can start washing the body and preparing it for burial whenever you like.’
Swiftly now de Quesnoy began to concentrate. No relaxation of muscles was first required, but the employment of a thought rhythm, then the creation of a mental image of the body breathing to that rhythm. Had his Silver Cord had its normal strength the lungs would have responded at once, but now they seemed impenetrable. Yet very slowly the outline of the bed and body on which he was looking down began to blur. For two more long minutes of concentration, so intense that his mind became an agony in the void, he could still see them faintly. Then they disappeared. At the same instant his Silver Cord thickened, he felt a pull upon it that carried him downwards as though borne by a wind of hurricane strength. Two great tunnels—his nostrils magnified a hundred times—opened in front of him and within a matter of seconds he became conscious again of the weight of his limbs.
For several minutes, utterly exhausted by his effort, he made not attempt to move. The lay sister emerged from behind one of the screens wheeling a small table with a bowl of water and some bandages on it. She stripped down the bed clothes but still he made no sign. He knew that his hold on life remained most precarious, and that even an effort to sit up might prove so great a strain that it would drive his spirit out of his body again, and this time once and for all.
It was not until she put her hands flat on his stomach to press it empty that he summoned what little strength he had to show that he was still alive. For one awful moment he feared it was too little even to make his vocal chords work; but as she threw her weight upon him he succeeded in letting out a deep groan.
Exclaiming ‘Saints defend us; he’s not yet gone after all!’ she ran off and next minute returned with the doctor.
While he was making a quick examination, de Quesnoy succeeded in slightly fluttering his eyelashes to confirm that the woman had not raised a false alarm. The doctor sent for his hypodermic and hot water bottles, other nuns came to busy themselves about the bedside, and a quarter of an hour later the Count, now carefully tucked up again, had responded satisfactorily to their treatment.
During the forty-eight hours that followed, it continued to be touch and go; but by the Friday night he felt himself to be out of danger, and after a good night’s sleep he woke on Saturday morning feeling much stronger. The nun who had charge of him, seeing that for the first time since being brought in he appeared sufficiently recovered to answer a few questions, asked him his name and the address of his nearest relative. But he shook his head as though he had lost his memory, because he wanted time to think matters over before giving an account of himself.
That day during his waking periods he considered his situation. Pedro Conesa could not possibly have escaped with only bruises. He must either have been killed or severely injured, and if he was alive the odds were that he was occupying a bed in the same ward. If that was so, de Quesnoy reasoned, and Pedro was in much the same state as himself, he had little cause to worry; but if within the next few days Pedro became capable of leaving his bed, he must not delay long in taking special precautions. The anarchists must know that as soon as his intended victim had sufficiently recovered he would bring a charge of attempted murder against him and, in view of his declared intention when on top of the ladder to break the Count’s neck, it was highly probable that in a bid to save himself he would, one night when all was quiet, make a final attempt to murder him.
Next, what about Ferrer? Pedro’s daughter would certainly have informed him of all that had occurred at the mill. He, too, his sons and all those who had played a part in Monday evening’s events must fear that the Count’s recovery would lead to their arrest. Perhaps, however, they believed that as it would be only his word against that of all of them they would be able to bluff the matter out. They might quite well succeed in that as they must have many fellow anarchists who would certainly not stick at committing perjury to provide them with alibis for the night in question.
At first the Count thought the chances were that they would get away with it, but later in the day he revised his opinion. The bearded Luis and young Antoine could be called as independent witnesses that he had been trapped in the flour chamber. How could he have got there unless his account of what had happened was the truth? In Barcelona midnight was not regarded as a late hour, so quite a number of passing people must have seen the Ferrer brothers and their companions loading the carpet and some pieces of furniture on to the covered cart. If they could be found that would be strong supporting evidence. Lastly, Zapatro had received a bullet in his shoulder and Dolores one in t
he calf of her leg. Even if the pellets had been abstracted by a trusted friend it would be several weeks before the marks of the wounds disappeared entirely; and the same applied to Gérault’s broken nose. No, taken together all this should prove ample to convict them.
That meant then, de Quesnoy reasoned, that Ferrer and Co. must at the moment be exceedingly anxious that he should die. It could be taken for granted that among the medical students who came round the wards of the hospital they would have a spy who was keeping them informed of his condition. Once they learned that it looked as if he would soon be well enough to make a statement to the police the odds were that they would do their utmost to kill him off.
How, he wondered, would they make the attempt? In hospital an overdose of a drug offered the simplest means, and one in which there was a big possibility that no one would suspect that murder had been committed. At the thought, he thanked God that he was in the care of nuns, since their religion made anarchists anathema to them; so there was no likelihood of one of them being got at.
Perhaps, then, the anarchists would use their favourite weapon, the bomb. If there was a student of their persuasion spying for them, they might induce him to bring in a deadly little packet and secret it somewhere in or near the bed during the round of the ward that the students made each morning with the house surgeon. It would not be easy to do so unnoticed while a little crowd was standing round the bed; but he might, perhaps, drop his notebook and while stooping to recover it push the bomb under the bed.
Still under the influence of the secrecy about his real self which had become second nature to him during the past six weeks, the Count had at first intended to say ‘Nicolai Chirikov’ when the time came that he had to answer the question about his name. But on consideration he decided that it was pointless to do so. The mission on which he had come to Barcelona had been abruptly terminated by Gérault’s having identified him as de Quesnoy. Even if he were in a state to do so he could carry it no further under the name of Chirikov, or any other.
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