‘One line that may be worth following. But this affair has been pretty shattering to the nerves, so I think we will take it easy for what remains of the afternoon. You can collect me again from the fortress at nine o’clock. That should give me just time to have a quick dinner.’
Since de Richleau was entirely lacking in nerves of that kind, he was prevaricating. But he had decided not to make his attempt to catch Ferrer until night had fallen and, in the meantime, he had no intention of letting even Veragua know the high hopes he now had for that evening.
When they arrived at Montjuich he carried little Francisco into the Captain-General’s residence and gave him temporarily into the charge of one of the woman servants. Then he went upstairs and lay down on his bed.
At seven o’clock he came down to the drawing-room to find Mercedes there alone stitching away at her bedroom slippers. It then occurred to him that she would make a much more responsible protectress for his small thumb-sucker than would her socially-obsessed mother. So he told her Teresa’s story and about the tragedy that had occurred that afternoon, and asked if she could find a suitable family among the married N.C.O.s of the garrison in which the boy could be boarded and brought up; adding that he would make over to her a capital sum sufficient to provide a small income for the child’s keep.
Mercedes listened with wide eyes, then willingly agreed to his request. Little Francisco was produced from the servants’ quarters, his cheerfulness now restored from having been regaled with a surfeit of sugar plums, and Mercedes, delighted with her new charge, carried him off to make arrangements for him to be bathed and put to bed.
De Richleau then telephoned Urgoiti and asked how late he would be remaining at his office, adding that he hoped to bring in a very special prisoner round about eleven o’clock. The Comandante replied that he had plenty of work to occupy him, so he would return to his office after dinner and remain there till midnight.
When the General and his wife came in the Duke again gave the story of the attempt that had been made upon his life that afternoon, and praised their daughter for the willingness she had shown to take charge of the little orphan. He then asked to be excused from changing for dinner, as he had to go out again at nine o’clock, and for the loan of a key to the house as he might not get back until very late. Quiroga provided the key and his wife had dinner put forward by half an hour; so when Veragua arrived in the motor to collect de Richleau they were able to set off without delay.
The village of San Cugat de Vallés lay about seven miles to the north of Barcelona behind the great mountain of Tibidabo. As they had to drive right through the city it was nearly half past nine when they reached it. De Richleau had contemplated a much later raid, with the idea of catching Ferrer in bed. But he had still to find out where the ‘Señor Olozaga’ lived, and to have made enquiries in the village at a late hour of the night might have resulted in Ferrer’s being sent a warning that somebody was after him.
Having halted Veragua well before they came to the village square, the Duke left the car and continued on foot. There was only one café there, and it was somewhat dimly lit, with only a few people sitting at its tables. Seating himself at a vacant one, he ordered a Fundador with water. When the waiter brought it the Duke said casually that he had recently made a contact in San Cugat which would bring him out there on business fairly frequently, and he had been told that some old friends of his named Olozaga had moved into the neighbourhood. Perhaps the waiter could tell him whereabouts they lived, then next time he came out he would look them up.
The waiter replied that a couple of that name lived in a small villa out on the road to Sabadell. It was on the left and easy to recognise as it had a little turret; but they kept themselves very much to themselves and came into the village only to do their shopping.
De Richleau tipped the man, but not too lavishly, took plenty of time about finishing his brandy, then rejoined Veragua. They drove out along the Sabadell road until they sighted the villa with a turret, then backed the car up a side turning on to a patch of grass and left it.
Only then did the Duke tell his eager young companion that he had reason to believe that Ferrer was living in the villa. Walking forward, they reconnoitred it. There was no other building within five hundred yards. On either side of its porch it had a bay window. In that on the right a light showed through drawn curtains. The rest of the house was in darkness.
To his companion de Richleau said in a low voice, ‘Either at the back, or more probably at one side, there will be a kitchen entrance. I want you to find and cover it. Should anyone come out, hold them up. If they refuse to surrender or attempt to run for it you are to shoot them down without further warning. For that I accept full responsibility. I’ll give you ten minutes to take up your station, then I am going in.’
With a happy grin Veragua produced his automatic, snapped its breech back and forth to make sure that it was in perfect working order, then moved off into the semi-darkness.
Ten minutes can be a very long time when waiting to go into action. More than once de Richleau gave an impatient look at his wrist watch. Now and again, he gave an uneasy glance up and down the road. In spite of the precautions he had taken to keep his investigation secret, the many enquiries he had made about Ferrer must inevitably have led to the anarchists learning about his activities, and the attempt on his life that had been made that afternoon led him to believe that they were doing their utmost to keep constant track of his movements.
But the country road was deserted. No movement of shadow suggested a lurking figure in the hedgerows. At last the ten minutes were up. The villa was some way from the road. With an even step he advanced up the fifty-yard-long garden path and pressed the front doorbell.
He stood there, his heart pounding in his chest at the thought of the encounter to come. The peal of the bell shrilled through the silent house, but no one came to answer it. Holding his breath, he listened intently. Muffled sounds of movement came faintly from inside the villa. With a grim smile he rang again.
Still no one came, and he could no longer hear sounds from within. He rang a third time, keeping his finger pressed on the bell push for a full half minute. Footsteps sounded on the far side of the door. There came the noise of bolts being shot back then the door opened a few inches and a female face peered out at him.
With a swift thrust of his knee and shoulder he forced the door further open. Then he jabbed the muzzle of his pistol into the woman’s stomach and said:
‘Open your mouth and I’ll fill you full of lead.’
She gave a gasp and stood back. In the dim light from the single lamp in the hall he now saw that she was his old acquaintance, Dolores Mendoza. Recognising her brought him a new elation. It meant that Teresa’s information had been up-to-date, and that it was unlikely now that he had come out there on a wild goose chase only to find that his quarry had moved on to another hiding place.
Forcing Dolores back a few paces he closed the door, felt behind him with his free hand till he found the key, turned it in the lock, pulled it out and pocketed it. Then he asked Dolores, ‘Where is the lavatory?’
Giving him a surprised look, she made a gesture towards the end of the passage. So far it seemed that, after the lapse of years, she had not recognised him. Under the threat of the pistol she obediently turned and led the way down the narrow hall. At its end there was a door in front of which she halted.
‘Open it and go inside,’ he ordered her. She did as she was bid. He saw that it had a window through which she might squeeze herself. But, even if she did, the villa was so far out in the country that there seemed no possibility of her bringing help on the scene before he had accomplished what he had come to do.
Under the brighter light of the oil lamp burning there his features stood out more clearly. Suddenly her pale blue eyes widened, and she exclaimed, ‘Chirikov! No; the French spy—de Quesnoy.’
He nodded. Returning her angry stare with a calm scrutiny he saw that her sal
low face had grown much older; but that was not to be wondered at as she had spent a year in the dungeons of Montjuich. With an ironical bow, he remarked:
‘I recall that we once talked of spending a weekend together on the Costa Brava. As I would cheerfully have murdered you rather than make love to you, you may consider yourself lucky that you have had three more years of life than you deserve. Sit down now and remain quiet. If you start shouting I shall come back and you will die in this place so well suited to the life you have led.’
Taking the key from the inside of the door he transferred it to the outside, shut the door and locked her in. With his pistol at the ready, he opened and threw back the door on the right hand side of the passage. No sound broke the stillness indicating any reaction to his swift movement. Having listened intently for a moment he stepped inside.
The room was square and evidently used as a study. Opposite the door there was a large desk. As he stood there, facing him on its front was a solid row of thick reference books, and to its right there was a standard lamp that lit it, making a pool of brightness in the otherwise dim room.
De Richleau had little doubt that up to ten minutes ago Ferrer had been working there. At the ring of the doorbell he would have gone into some prepared hiding place. Had it been in England it might have been a priest’s hole; but in Spain there had never been any necessity for such secret rooms. In any case, the house was not old enough to have that sort of thing. Therefore, he would be either in the cellars or up in an attic.
Before going in search of him the Duke decided to take a quick look round. Walking forward to the left hand side of the desk, he glanced at the paper that lay spread out on it. Somewhat to his surprise he saw that it was a Russian newspaper about two weeks old. He then remembered Ferrer’s passion for obtaining first hand news from all parts of Europe. Beside the paper lay a Russian-Spanish dictionary that Ferrer had evidently been using to look up the meaning of words he did not understand.
As de Richleau’s eyes fell upon the dictionary his heart suddenly stood still. The sight of it had rung a terrible bell that summoned up past memories. The last time he had seen a Russian-Spanish dictionary had been three years ago in his lodgings down by Barcelona’s commercial harbour. He had then been using one to tutor a student that Ferrer had sent him, named Rubén Pineda. The young man had been one of Ferrer’s brightest pupils. Later, on the night that de Richleau had so nearly lost his life, it had emerged that it was Pineda who, on Ferrer’s instructions, had searched his lodging and been fooled into believing that he really was a Russian refugee.
But now it was he who had been fooled. Pineda had pulled a very clever bluff. Trusting in the beard he had grown, that three years had elapsed since they had met, and that he had since changed his name, he had said that they had become acquainted at the Somaten Club. That had seemed natural enough. But it was not the truth. Pineda had become Veragua.
The Duke stood beside Ferrer’s desk, his mind working like a dynamo. He had left Veragua to guard the back entrance. Instead, by now he might have entered the house with the intention of helping his old master to escape. At that moment he heard a faint sound. Swinging round he saw Veragua standing in the open doorway. The young man had a smile on his face and was pointing a pistol at him.
21
The twice-turned tables
As de Richleau stared at the tall, smiling anarchist who now threatened his life, the truth about the afternoon’s events flashed upon him. It was not, as he had supposed, that some of Ferrer’s friends had learned of the investigation he was making and had been trailing him, waiting for some opportunity to murder him in a place where there would be a good chance of their escaping capture.
He had told no one that he was going to endeavour to trace Teresa—no one except Veragua. And he had not even mentioned her to him until after they had left the mill. But he had then confided to the young man that the woman he was going to see had been Ferrer’s mistress, so he had good hopes of getting something out of her.
Had he spent only a few minutes with Teresa it seemed probable that, as with the many other enquiries he had made, Veragua would have taken no action, assuming that he had drawn another blank. But he had remained talking to her for the best part of a quarter of an hour.
Evidently that had led Veragua to assume that Teresa was giving away information that might lead to Ferrer’s capture; so the time had come to put an abrupt end to ‘Senor Gomá’s’ activities. Out there in that quiet suburb he stood much less risk of being seen making his attempt and being captured than he would have in the city. It must have seemed to him now not only urgent to eliminate the Duke, but too good a chance to miss. He had left the automobile, walked up the almost deserted street and lobbed his bomb through the window.
The whole sequence of events was grasped by the Duke’s mind in a matter of seconds. He knew now that he probably had only a few more moments to live. Veragua had only to squeeze the trigger of his pistol and he would be dead. To show that he realised the situation would prove fatal. Instead, he gave a quick frown and exclaimed:
‘Why the hell are you pointing that thing at me?’
As he spoke he took an unhurried pace sideways and sat down in the chair behind Ferrer’s desk.
The smile on the bearded features of the young man deepened, and he said, ‘Can’t you guess?’
‘As a matter of fact I can,’ de Richleau replied calmly. ‘You are thinking of putting a bullet through me. But I wouldn’t, if I were you. Of course, you think you could get away with it by putting in a report that Ferrer shot me while I was trying to arrest him. But you won’t. If I die General Quiroga will have you shot.’
‘Why should he? There would be no reason whatever for him to suppose that it was I who had killed you.’
‘My dear boy. Had you been longer engaged in the sort of game we have been playing you would be aware that it is less dangerous to have close to you an enemy you know than to eliminate him, so that his work is taken over by another that you don’t know. And from the beginning I have known you to be Pineda.’
Veragua’s bearded mouth dropped open in surprise. The point of his gun also dropped a little. His eyes wide with astonishment, he exclaimed, ‘What! You knew all the time and gave me the chance …’
He got no further. Under cover of the desk behind which he was sitting, de Richleau had eased out his pistol. Suddenly he jerked it up so that its barrel came just above the line of reference books. It spat flame. Four staccato reports shattered the silence of the house. The first three were from the Duke’s automatic. Its bullets ripped into Veragua’s stomach. The last was from Veragua’s gun as a spasm closed his finger on its trigger. The bullet chipped a splinter low down off the left hand corner of the desk, then ricocheted off to land in the far wall. With a long-drawn howl the young anarchist collapsed upon the floor.
De Richleau jumped up from the desk. Now that the back entrance of the house was unguarded Ferrer might slip out of it; so he had no time to lose. Veragua, clutching his stomach with both hands, lay writhing in agony in the doorway. The Duke paused only to snatch up the gun that had fallen from Veragua’s hand. As he did so he snapped:
‘You won’t kill any more little children with your bombs, my friend. And I gave it you in the stomach so you should know just how much that poor woman Teresa suffered by your act this afternoon.’
A moment later he had crossed the passage and thrown open a door that seemed the most likely one to lead to the kitchen. It did. No one was there. Beyond it was a small scullery. Entering it, he saw on its far side a door that was evidently the back entrance to the house. The door was bolted and the key was in the lock. Having made certain that it had been turned, he took it out and put it in his pocket. It was certain that Ferrer had not had time to get out of the house since the shooting; so unless Veragua had come upon him lurking in the kitchen quarters and urged him to escape by the back entrance, he was now trapped in it.
De Richleau decided that his bes
t plan would be to search the house from the bottom up, otherwise while he was on the upper floor Ferrer might slip out of a downstairs window. The villa was fairly modern; but most Spanish houses that are larger than a cottage have a cellar, so he swiftly cast round for the entrance to one. He expected to find it somewhere in the back of the premises but a swift scrutiny of the floors convinced him that in none of them was a camouflaged trap-door.
Going out into the hall he paused to listen intently for a moment. He feared now that Ferrer might be making the best of the time he was being given to tie sheets together into a rope; so that he could get away by lowering himself from one of the windows. Not for the first time, the Duke cursed the dubious loyalty of the Catalan police. Had it not been for that he would have brought a score of policemen with him and had the house surrounded; but a leak could have ruined this chance, the like of which might not come again, to catch Ferrer; so he had decided against it.
Dolores had evidently wriggled out of the lavatory window or was sitting quietly there. The only sound that broke the stillness was Veragua’s moaning. Reassured, de Richleau moved a few paces down the hall towards the door opposite that beside which Veragua lay, expecting it to lead to a sitting-room. As he did so he brushed past a red velvet curtain that hung on the side of the hall formed by a straight staircase that ran up from it. Wondering why there should be a curtain in such a pointless place, he pulled it back. The reason became plain. It concealed a door under the stairs. With grim satisfaction he wrenched it open.
The result was a bitter disappointment. Instead of the flight of steps leading downward that he had expected, it was full of coats, mackintoshes and a variety of junk. Pushing the door to, he listened again. There was still no sound from upstairs but strange noises were now coming from the lavatory. Dolores was not battering upon its door but seemed to be kicking one of its walls and uttering muffled cries. What she was up to he had no idea, and he did not care.
Vendetta in Spain Page 37