Vendetta in Spain

by Dennis Wheatley

  He might have saved his breath for she would not listen to him. In vain he argued that no limit of time was set upon their happiness, and that when she returned to Madrid there was no reason why he should not also go to live in the capital. She replied that there it would not be possible to set a ladder up against her bedroom window, and there would be no bathing or tennis parties; so it would be much more difficult for them to be together frequently, therefore they must make the very utmost of the present.

  It was during one of these discussions that, for the only time, they touched on the subject of marriage. Angela had, for him, been the perfect wife, and his memories of her made him wonder if Gulia, who had such an utterly different personality, could bring him the same contentment. Yet, on the other hand, he realised that if he did mean to marry again he might never find another woman who combined such a wealth of attractions, and she left nothing undone to show that she adored him. So without actually proposing he had asked her if she liked the idea of retaining her freedom as a rich widow or would prefer to settle down and have children.

  She had taken the question as he meant it—as a feeler about themselves—but had shrugged it off with a laugh, declaring that, delighted as she was to think that he might be contemplating making her his Duchess, nothing could be done about it until José’s death had been publicly announced, and it would be time enough then for her to decide if she would risk her figure in order to present him with a little Count de Quesnoy.

  In the meantime she continued to insist that they should grasp their present happiness with both hands, regardless of what people might be saying about them; and, taking consolation from the thought that the announcement in the autumn of de Cordoba’s death would do much to restore her reputation, he gave way to her.

  That people were talking about them was made very evident to him one night towards the end of August when they were both bidden again to dine at the Palace. For a few minutes after dinner he was alone with Don Alfonso, who asked him, ‘Are you still as eager as ever to go hunting that wretch Ferrer in Barcelona?’

  In view of the wonderful time the Duke was having with Gulia, he was now by no means anxious to leave San Sebastian, and he wished that he had never heard of Ferrer. But he felt in duty bound to reply:

  ‘Indeed I am, Sir.’

  The King cocked an amused eyebrow. ‘You surprise me, Duke. They tell me that you are far more successful in hunting butterflies than is poor de Cordoba on his expedition up the Amazon. Or at least that you have captured such a beautiful one that you are the envy of every naturalist in San Sebastian.’

  De Richleau felt his colour rising, but he bowed and said, ‘I fear I am but a poor naturalist, Sir. I have a rooted objection to sticking pins into such lovely creatures; so I am doing no more than provide a most delightful specimen with lettuce leaves until de Cordoba returns and can claim it.’

  ‘Dear me. Then you are not the man I thought you,’ smiled the King. ‘And you shall go to Barcelona. But still not for another week or two. The city has not settled down sufficiently for me to allow you yet to risk your neck in it.’

  It was on the 6th of September that de Richleau next talked with Don Alfonso, having been summoned to wait upon him at the Palace at nine-thirty in the morning. After receiving the Duke in his working room, the King sat back at his desk and, without preamble, said in a business-like way:

  ‘The time has come for you to attempt to run Ferrer to earth and, if you can catch him, render me another considerable service. La Cierva tells me that Barcelona is now quiet. In fact, owing to the many arrests that have taken place and the repressive measures that were rendered necessary by the revolt, it is quieter than it has been for a long time. Only one thing still troubles him: that is the police. I suppose you could not manage without police assistance?’

  The Duke shook his head. ‘No, Sir. This mission will be very different from that which I undertook three years ago. Then, being totally unknown in Spanish anarchist circles I was able to pose as a political refugee from Russia and get in among them. To attempt to do so again is out of the question. This time my intention is to play the part of a police agent and either bribe or threaten all those I can find who knew Ferrer until one of them cracks and gives me a line on his whereabouts. To do that I must be in possession of police papers, and have the authority to call on the police to pull in anyone I wish for questioning.’

  ‘Yes, I thought that would be the case,’ Don Alfonso fiddled with a pencil. ‘I asked only because we know that the Barcelona police are not one hundred per cent to be relied upon. Nearly all Catalans of whatever class are Separatists and many are imbued with the principles of anarchism. Had that not been so we could have put an end to the epidemic of bomb outrages there long ago. La Cuerva is now carrying out a very thorough investigation into the police organisation with a view drastically to reforming it; but to purge it entirely of its doubtful elements is bound to take time. I mention this only because I think it would be unwise for you to rely too much on police co-operation. They will, of course, all do ostensibly as they are ordered, and the majority are loyal to the Government; but here and there you may find a man who will turn a blind eye to your requirments at a critical moment.’

  ‘I understand, Sir, and will watch out for that sort of thing.’

  Producing a letter from a drawer in his desk, the King passed it over, and went on. ‘This you are to hand to General Quiroga. You are to live with him in the fortress of Montjuich. He will introduce you to the Chief-of-Police, who will give you all the assistance you may require from him. He will also provide you with a detective who will act as your bodyguard and constant companion. In no circumstances are you to leave the fortress without him. Is that understood?’

  De Richleau gave a rueful smile. ‘I cannot help regarding with regret these restrictions Your Majesty is placing on my liberty; but I have no alternative other than to bow to your wishes.’

  The King stood up. ‘I have insisted on them only because I refuse to allow a valued friend to jeopardise his life further than is strictly necessary. Besides,’ he added with a sudden boyish smile, ‘think how angry your beautiful butterfly would be with me if, knowing that you had undertaken a mission in my service, she was permanently deprived of her supply of lettuce.’

  The Duke smiled back. ‘I will inform her, Sir, of your gracious concern for her welfare.’

  An hour and a half later, while swimming with Gulia in the bay, de Richleau broke the news to her of his impending departure. As there were other people nearby, for the time being she gamely concealed her distress, but that night, when he joined her in her bedroom, she gave way to it. Impartially she cursed Ferrer and the King for being the cause of her lover leaving her, and pleaded with him to put off this mission to Barcelona at least until the end of the month, when she would be returning to Madrid.

  He agreed that it was hard that they should have to sacrifice a part, and perhaps all, of the precious time that remained to them in San Sebastian, where they were able to spend most of each night together with little risk of discovery; but he told her that in his interview that morning with Don Alfonso he had received what amounted to orders that could not be disregarded. He could only promise that he would work night and day to lay Ferrer speedily by his heels so that he might not lose a moment longer in getting back to her.

  It proved a night in which tears were mingled with passion, and in a final effort to console her he remained with her longer than he had ever done before. He left her only when, from fear of discovery by the waking servants, it became dangerous to stay longer. Even then he had to break the clasp of her arms from about his neck and put her from him still weeping bitterly.

  Much shaken by this emotional parting, he found it a relief to steal through the dawn-lit garden to the orchard. He was always a little anxious that he might find that some prowler had stolen his mount in the night, but he found the horse quietly grazing as usual.

  Half an hour later he was back at his
hotel and, as he had packed the previous evening, soon after eight he was on his way to Barcelona. He realised that by now Ferrer might well have taken refuge over the frontier. But if that vile poisoner of minds was still in Catalonia, de Richleau had determined that he would not rest content until he looked down on his dead body.

  20

  Death claims three more

  When de Richleau arrived in Barcelona the following afternoon he was met at the station by one of the Captain-General’s A.D.C.’s and taken by him straight out to the grim old fortress of Montjuich. As he shook hands with Quiroga in his office he thought that the past three years, in which the General had been in constant danger of his life, seemed to have had remarkably little effect upon him. He was still the same square, red-faced forceful man with a cheerful decisive manner. When the Duke congratulated him on still being alive, he said with a laugh:

  ‘They may get me yet; but they’ll have to show more originality than they have in the past. Nearly all their attempts run to a pattern: some miserable youth lurking in the crowd with a pistol or a bomb. But nine times out of ten their nerves betray them. I’m too old a hand to leave my quarters here except when I have to on official occasions, and then I always go surrounded by a bodyguard with loaded carbines at the ready. My fellows are crack shots and specially trained to spot fanatics intending mischief. Before they can aim or have a chance to throw anything they get a bullet through the head. The tragedy is that we can’t possibly manage to give that sort of protection to all our people, and those poisonous vermin have murdered scores of good, honest officials here since last we met.’

  De Richleau handed over the King’s letter. The General read it through, nodded, and said, ‘This confirms the instructions I have already received from His Majesty. Naturally I shall be delighted to have you as my personal guest, and this morning I spoke to Comandante Urgoiti about you. He is the head of the Security Bureau, and will supply the man who is to accompany you on your investigations. I will have them both up here tomorrow morning.’

  ‘If you could arrange for me to meet them this evening I would be grateful,’ replied the Duke, ‘because I would like to start on my job as soon as possible.’

  ‘Just as you wish.’ Quiroga glanced at his watch. ‘It is not yet six o’clock; so I will have Urgoiti here between seven and seven-thirty. If you will come with me now, I will show you your quarters.’

  ‘Thank you. There is just one other point. For the purposes of this investigation I feel it would be best to drop my title and call myself by some simple name. I thought of Carlos Gomá.’

  The General nodded. ‘I think that’s wise, and Carlos Gomá would do very well.’

  As they left the General’s office and crossed a big interior courtyard, de Richleau asked, ‘What do you think my chances are of running Ferrer to earth?’

  The General shrugged. ‘You should be a better judge of that than I. His Majesty informed me in his letter that you have lines of enquiry that the police are unlikely yet to have tried. I know no more than that.’

  ‘I have. What I really meant to ask was, do you think it likely that Ferrer is still in Barcelona?’

  ‘I would say the odds are that he is; or if not in the city, not far from it. You see, here he is accounted a hero, not only by his fanatical followers but also by thousands of misguided people; so he can move from one to another of scores of different hiding places without much fear of being betrayed. And that does not apply to any other part of Spain.’

  ‘My fear was that after the suppression of the riots he might have fled over the border into France.’

  ‘No; the chances are a hundred to one against him having succeeded in doing that. On the last day of the revolt he was known to be still in the city. Several of our prisoners who have turned King’s Evidence have sworn to that and, if you can catch him, are prepared to swear at his trial that he was one of the principal instigators of the outbreak. And on the first day of the riots I closed the frontier. I did more. Within twenty-four hours I had replaced all Catalan frontier police, Guardia Civil and port police by non-Catalans on whose loyalty I could depend. We issued to them hundreds of photographs and descriptions of Ferrer and half-a-dozen other ringleaders. Three of them were caught, and I don’t believe for a moment that any of the others slipped through. The frontier has remained closed ever since, and only people with special papers are allowed to cross it.’

  ‘That is excellent news,’ smiled the Duke. ‘It makes my chances of ferreting him out look better than I had hoped.’

  By then they had reached the Captain-General’s residence, which consisted of a fine old mansion forming one side of the courtyard. Quiroga showed him first a pleasant sitting-room where he could make himself comfortable until Comandante Urgoiti arrived, then took him up to a bedroom that had been prepared for him. A soldier servant was already unpacking his luggage, and the General left him there to have a wash after his journey.

  When he came downstairs to the sitting-room he found there a plump but pretty girl of about seventeen, who introduced herself as Mercedes, the General’s daughter. She was busily engaged stitching some gold thread on to a canvas-backed piece of blue velvet, and after some small-talk the Duke asked her what she was making.

  With a shy smile, she replied, ‘They are to be a pair of bedroom slippers with gold monograms on the toes. I’m making them as a New Year’s present. Of course it’s a long time yet to the New Year, but I don’t work very fast so I thought it just as well to begin early.’

  ‘I suppose they are for your father,’ smiled the Duke. ‘I’m sure he will be delighted with them.’

  She blushed and shook her head. Then, after a little gentle twitting by him, she confided, ‘They are for Captain Juan Escalante. He … well, he’s not exactly my fiancé, because my parents say I am too young to marry yet. But we are hoping that they will let us get engaged in the New Year.’

  ‘I wish you luck then,’ smiled the Duke. ‘What branch of the service is your friend in?’

  ‘He is a cavalryman, and he has much the smartest troop in his regiment, the 5th Hussars.’

  ‘Is he?’ said de Richleau with renewed interest. ‘Although I am wearing civilian clothes, I am a cavalryman too.’

  Having found a topic of mutual interest they talked on for half an hour, then an orderly arrived with the request that the Duke would accompany him to the General’s office.

  Over there Quiroga introduced him to Comandante Urgoiti, a short, paunchy, bald man and to Señor Veragua a tall young fellow who had a brown moustache and beard. The Duke had a vague feeling that he had seen the latter somewhere before and was about to question him when he said:

  ‘If your name were not Gomá, señor, I would have sworn that you were a Russian refugee that I knew slightly some years ago. I forget his name but he used to frequent the branch of the Somaten to which I belong.’

  De Richleau smiled. ‘You are right. During the summer of 1906 I lived for some six weeks here in Barcelona, and I often spent an evening at the Somaten Club down by the harbour.’ In pursuance of his policy to conceal as far as possible his true identity, de Richleau refrained from mentioning the secret mission he had then been engaged upon, and its having resulted in the closing of the Escuela Moderna. Instead, he added, ‘I am surprised, though, that you, as a member of the police force, should belong to the Somaten. I was given to understand that during the recent revolt it supported the rioters.’

  Veragua shook his head. ‘It is true that certain Communist elements had worked their way into the Somaten, and got themselves elected as officials at some of its branches. In those where they had secured enough authority they used it to push the members into rash actions; but the majority were against them and after a few days they were thrown out. The Somaten has since been thoroughly purged, and for some while has resumed its ancient function.’

  The General nodded. ‘Yes, indeed. After the fighting had ceased, the Somaten was of the greatest value in supplying squads
of vigilantes to help us restore law and order. They are, of course, all Catalan Separatists; but that is a different matter, as there is nothing illegal about holding such views.’

  Urgoiti said that if the Duke would call at Police Headquarters the following morning he would furnish him with a police card, which would enable him to arrest anyone on suspicion or call for help on uniformed men, then proceeded to question him about his plan of campaign. But, bearing in mind Don Alfonso’s warning, de Richleau did not mean to risk any leaks through junior detectives to whom the Comandante might mention his activities; so he politely replied that to start with he meant only to make a general reconnaissance.

  It was arranged that Veragua should report to ‘Señor Gomá’ at eight o’clock the following morning, and the two detectives took their leave. When they had gone Quiroga unlocked a steel cabinet and took from it one of a number of pistols, with a box of ammunition, and said:

  ‘You had better carry this. It may come in useful.’

  De Richleau had brought his own revolver, but the weapon the General handed him was one of the new German automatics. It carried eight instead of six bullets and, being flat, was easier to conceal about the person than the old-fashioned pistol with its revolving magazine. Having examined its mechanism with interest, he thanked Quiroga, and they then crossed the courtyard to the residential quarters.

  When the Duke had changed he came down to the drawing-room and was presented to the Señora Quiroga. She was considerably younger than her husband and an elegant woman, who obviously had social ambitions; for she remarked with a laugh that had an underlying note of bitterness that, great as was the honour of being one of the three Captains-General who commanded the forces in Spain’s three largest cities, for all the pleasure her husband and his family got out of it they might as well be castaways on an island inhabited by hostile savages. And she did not seek to hide her delight at having as her guest a Grandee of Spain who was on terms of friendship with the King.