Mattie recognized the voice and his heart jumped. It might be that someone wanted him after all. Mattie was twenty-three years old and hungry with all the health of those twenty-three years. But he was prudent and he dared not break into his solitary peseta. He turned, however, without haste.
“Senor Fontana,” he said easily. “Your duties are over?”
Fontana, a semi-youthful, clean-shaven man in dingy striped flannel trousers and more or less white canvas shoes with patent leather tips, flourished a straw hat and sat down by Mattie’s side.
“For the moment — yes. It is the hour of luncheon.”
Fontana was one of those curious nondescripts to be found at Spanish ports, half of him a Marine and an Official, the other half ship’s agent, trader, speculator, a kind of waterside odd-job man. Mattie when he had landed at Alicante from the little Almeria steamer at seven o’clock that morning had remarked him at once; and his knowledge of the world, helped by a facility quite Spanish to engage the most complete of strangers at once in intimate conversation, had led him to expose his distressful case and ask for any job of work which might offer. Here already was the reply.
“Senor Driver, I have a friend who would esteem your help,” said Fontana. “He invites you to lunch with him so that you may talk over this little affair quietly.”
Mattie Driver looked at the Club-house.
“No, not there,” said Fontana, “nor at the Reina Christina Hotel. You would not be quiet there. The little affair is not, it is true, of great importance, but it is — curious.”
Fontana dwelt a little on that adjective and, as it were, underlined it by his smile. It was an intriguing word and Fontana’s smile was a promising smile. Mattie rose to it eagerly.
“Shall I lead the way?” Fontana asked.
“I shall be obliged,” said Mattie.
The two men walked beneath the palmettos past the Yacht Club and reached a corner where a road joined the esplanade. At this corner a small restaurant stood in a garden.
“The food here is excellent,” said Fontana, and at this moment Mattie received his first impression that his little affair was certainly curious and might not be so unimportant as his genial friend was pretending. Fontana’s friendliness did not surprise him in that friendly country. Any Spaniard will go out of his way to do a stranger a good turn, so long as it actually does not cost him money. But just as they stepped out from the avenue to cross the garden restaurant Fontana laid a hand upon Mattie’s arm and glanced swiftly up and down the road.
“He has no doubt already arrived,” said Fontana, but Mattie was not at all deceived by that explanation. The glance of apprehension, the swift grip of his arm, now as swiftly relaxed, meant a fear lest they were being watched. Mattie was a man of an adventurous spirit and had he needed any other persuasion than his poverty, he would have found it in Fontana’s fear. He was still more thrilled when in a corner of the empty garden he was set face to face with a small, slender, elderly gentleman, scrupulously dressed, who wore a little white pointed beard and a white moustache, and appraised him with eyes of steel.
“Let me present you to each other,” said Fontana, all pleasure and smiles. “This is my friend Senor Juan Gomez, a merchant of Cordoba.”
“Retired,” Gomez added.
“It must be pleasant to be able to retire,” said Mattie Driver, without a hint of disbelief in the truth of Fontana’s description.
“On the other hand, it must be still more pleasant to have your youth,” replied Senor Gomez, and upon this small change of compliments, Fontana took his leave.
“You will do me the honour to lunch with me, I hope,” said the older man; and though the hors-d’oeuvres of black olives, and sardines, and radishes in thin little white dishes arranged on a tablecloth scrupulously clean, invited him overwhelmingly, Mattie sat down to the meal in extreme discomfort. His clothes were not to blame. It was a rule of Mattie Driver’s simple philosophy that once your clothes were disreputable the game was up, but that until then hope lurks round every corner. He had been careful to snatch the best of his wardrobe from the holocaust of his fortunes, and he sat here in a blue suit as neat as Don Juan’s. No, it was the actual personality of his host which sent little thrills of warning tinkling along all his nerves.
Juan Gomez, however, did not approach his business until the luncheon was finished. Up till then, he was the cultured host talking easily of the great cities to which his business had carried him.
“Cordoba, of course, you know like the palm of your hand,” said Mattie Driver.
“Since I lived there for so many years,” answered the merchant with a shrug of the shoulders. “It is for that reason, no doubt, that I have not talked of its wonders. You know Corboda?”
“No;” and Senor Gomez began to discourse upon Cordoba until the coffee was on the table and Mattie sat with a big Gener cigar between his lips and a glass of Fundador at his elbow. Then Gomez changed his note. They had the garden to themselves. Gomez did not lower his voice, but he spoke abruptly and with an air of relief that all the preliminary banalities were at last at an end.
“Fontana tells me, Senor Driver, that some reverse of fortune, such as may happen to any of us, has for the moment embarrassed you.”
“Yes. Raisuli was my friend. With his surrender I lost everything.”
Mattie had been born at Larache on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, of English parents long established there. He had never once been in England, though he had crossed many times to Spain. He was in many respects more like a Moor than an Englishman; he had a Moor’s cunning, a Moor’s good humour, and at the age of twenty, when he found himself with a little money and no parents, he knew his world and its opportunities. He knew it from the Atlas Mountains to the Straits of Gibraltar. He established himself at Alkasar, became Raisuli’s agent, acquired flocks which were tended for him by Raisuli’s chiefs, and was well on the way to a fortune when Abd-el-Krim from the Riff country upset Raisuli altogether and captured with him all his treasure and belongings. Mattie found himself in a day reduced to penury. A few weeks of vain effort to re-establish himself under the new rigid arrangements of the Spanish consumed the little store of actual money which he possessed. He had fled across the water to Spain, had travelled from Algeciras to Malaga, from Malaga to Almeria, from Almeria to Alicante in search of a fresh opportunity and had come now to his last peseta.
The merchant from Cordoba listened to the story in silence. Then leaning forward a little he said with a smile:
“Romance still lives then, though we poor drab stay-at-homes see little of its colour. So swift a rise to fortune!”
“So still more swift a decline,” added Mattie ruefully.
“What you have once done you can do again. Let us think of the swift rise, my friend,” and Gomez’s voice became silky. “To achieve that your methods must have been a little — shall we say? — informal.”
“I had only one method,” answered Mattie, “ — to keep my given word to the minute and in its uttermost detail.”
“Claro,” Juan Gomez agreed. “That is what I mean. For to keep your word thus with Senor B. the landed Sheikh, Senor X. the Jew trader might perhaps suffer?”
Mattie thought over the problem.
“Yes,” he confessed, “I suppose I was never much troubled by the woes of the X’s.”
Gomez smiled and showed the strong white teeth of a young man.
“We cannot afford to be. I asked you that question, because in this little affair which I shall put before you, I propose to be Senor B. and not Senor X.”
Mattie nodded his head.
“That is understood, of course.”
“Good!” Gomez knocked the ash from the end of his cigar. “I shall ask you to return to Morocco but to a safer district. You know, perhaps, the Kasbah of Taugirt?”
Mattie was a little startled.
“In the Atlas Mountains?”
“Yes,” said Gomez.
“I know it.”
“Per
haps then you know the Kaid of Taugirt himself?”
“I do.”
Juan Gomez laughed cheerfully, a curious little tittering laugh.
“I am lucky, my young friend. I had not hoped for such good fortune.”
Mattie, on the other hand, frowned dismally.
“Wait a moment, Senor Gomez!” he said abruptly. “I am not so sure of your good fortune. For I gather that the Kaid of Taugirt is to be our Senor X.”
“That may be,” said Gomez simply.
Mattie was torn in two. It was true that in the ordinary way of business he was not greatly troubled by minute scruples. But he liked Moors better than Spaniards, anyway, and the Kaid of Taugirt infinitely more than this wicked old scoundrel from Cordoba. He had a picture of the kindly old gentleman keeping guard in his great Kasbah with its turrets and its crenellated walls over one of the high passes of the Atlas like some great Baron of old days on the Marches. On the other hand, he had one peseta in his pocket only and it would not turn into two.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked sullenly.
Gomez leaned forward and clapped him on the shoulder.
“It is not so serious, my young friend! No harm will be done to anyone — not even to Senor X. Listen! There is a great key in the Kasbah of Taugirt, a great key with many complicated wards. It hangs on a nail, I think, in the big patio.”
Mattie looked swiftly up.
“It is treasured?”
“It certainly will not be given to you.”
“Therefore I must steal it?”
“Let us say that you must not ask for it. Yet I want that key.”
“Why?”
Juan Gomez raised his hands in amusement.
“My young friend, consider! If I were prepared to give explanations, I should not have sought for a complete stranger down to his last peseta to help me. Nor should I offer for this little service the high reward which I am willing to pay.”
“Yes?” said Mattie, looking quickly up. “How much is that?”
“Twenty thousand pesetas. Five thousand now for your expenses, fifteen thousand when you hand me the key.”
It was certainly a handsome sum for a little villainy. But Mattie had a very strong conviction that the villainy was really colossal. And not only colossal, but very devious and subtle. He was much better informed than the merchant from Cordoba imagined; yet he was as a child in the dark. He contemplated Senor Juan Gomez with respect — and with an inward reservation that he might have to tread a measure with him requiring considerable dexterity.
Gomez took a note-case from his pocket and counted out on the table four notes of a thousand pesetas each and ten notes of one hundred.
“Senor B. keeps his word,” he said with a laugh, as he pushed the notes across the table. Mattie could not resist them.
“I have to go from here to Casablanca, from Casablanca to Marrakesh, from Marrakesh up into the Atlas. It will be four weeks before I bring back the — tribute from Senor X. How shall I find you again?”
“You will announce your arrival to Fontana,” said Gomez. He paid the bill, ordered another Fundador for Mattie Driver, and rose from his chair.
“You will give me ten minutes, if you please,” and there was a note of authority in his voice now as though he spoke to a servant. Mattie was not offended. He was suddenly afraid. It seemed to him that his whole body was just a house ringing with alarm-bells. More than the ten minutes had elapsed before he realized that he was smoking a very good cigar in a very pleasant garden and that June in Alicante was the nearest thing to the Heavenly Choirs which earth could provide.
Mattie, however, had eaten of the Cordoba merchant’s salt and had taken the Cordoba merchant’s money. He travelled by the air-service the next morning from Alicante to Casablanca and a week later climbed one morning with his little mule train up to the great Kasbah of the Kaid of Taugirt. The Kaid rode forward to meet him seated on a high red saddle on a white mule. From afar he cried out in a voice of welcome:
“Mattee!” and he led Mattie Driver through his great courtyard into the hall. It was a place of tiles, and pillars painted and decorated, and a fountain playing in a marble basin.
“I saw you from afar with the glasses you gave to me,” said the old gentleman, to whom in more prosperous days Mattie had presented a Ross binocular. “Now how can I serve you?”
“I was in Marrakesh,” replied Mattie, “and I had a wish to see you again, and I had some days to spare from my affairs.”
The Kaid’s eyes narrowed a little and his face became a mask. But he asked no further questions and busied himself with brews of tea. Four years had passed since Mattie had come to these lonely regions and the Kaid discoursed warmly of the French and their friendship. Meanwhile Mattie’s eyes wandered around the court and in a little while he saw it, a great shining key like silver, hanging from a nail against a pillar where all eyes might see it.
“You will stay with me for a week? I will have a hunt for the third day. It may be that we shall find a moufflon.”
But Mattie shook his head.
“Sid Mohammed-el-Hati, on the morning of the third day I must be on my way back to Marrakesh.”
“It shall be as you wish,” said the Kaid. “Meanwhile my house is yours, Mattee — and all that it holds.”
Mattie slept in a room of honour with a window opening upon the south and a door leading on to the balcony above the patio. And at one o’clock in the morning on the second night of his visit, when the whole Kasbah slept, he crept down into the patio. Through the open roof the moonlight poured down upon the tiles. Even in the darkness under the balcony the great key gleamed upon the pillar like a jewel. Mattie lifted his hand to it, and a light suddenly shone behind him. Mattie turned silently and swiftly. An electric torch exposed him from head to foot, and concealed the man who held the torch. Then the light went out and from the mouth of an alcove the old Kaid spoke very gently.
“You too, Mattee? I told you that my house was yours and all it holds. Why creep down the stairs, then, like a thief in the middle of the night?”
Mattie stood rooted to the ground in shame, whilst the Kaid lit the candles in a branched silver candelabrum which stood upon the floor of the alcove.
“I wouldn’t have had this happen for worlds,” said Mattie slowly.
“Yet it has happened,” answered Sid Mahommed-el-Hati. “Let us talk.”
He sat down crosslegged upon a long cushion and beckoned to Mattie to sit beside him. Mattie, however, stood in front of his host.
“‘You too,’” he quoted. “Then others have preceded me?”
“One,” replied the Kaid. “He came last year, and at this time. He was a stranger. He had a story that he was travelling to Tafilet. He stayed one night. In the morning my key was gone. I sent after him, not on the road forward to Tafilet but on the road backward to Marrakesh. In his luggage my key was found. He was brought back to me. He was very poor, it seemed. He had been offered much money for my key. I let him go.”
The old Kaid stopped and once more beckoned to Mattie Driver to sit down at his side; and this time Mattie obeyed.
“So you too, Mattee, are now very poor,” continued the old man.
Mattie nodded his head, and in a voice full of shame he explained the pass to which he had come. The extremes of fortune bring no surprises to a Moor who may be a Prime Minister one day and a beggar without his eyes the next.
“And you want my key, Mattee?”
The Kaid did not wait for an answer. He crossed the moonlit patio and lifted the key from its nail. He brought it back into the alcove and he balanced it between his fingers, the light from the candles rippling along its stem and its wards, until it seemed a thing alive which moved.
“Not a speck of rust. Not a flaw in its metal,” the old man continued. “Yet it has hung upon that pillar for three hundred and fifty years. We call it the Key of Paradise. For it opens the door of my house in Spain.”
Mattie Driver had ex
pected just this statement. Here and there about Morocco, in Rabat as in the Atlas, in Fez as in Marrakesh, in the great houses of the Nobles hung similar keys. Their ancestors, driven out by Ferdinand and Isabella, had carried their house keys away with them against the time when they would return to Spain and fit them into the locks again. Even now their descendants keep alive that faith.
“Perhaps even I—” said the old Kaid, and he broke off with a laugh. “But if so, the time must come soon, Mattee, very soon,” and he sat absorbed like a man gazing upon a treasure.
“And where is this house of yours, Sid Mohammed-el-Hati?”
“At Elche.”
Mattie drew a deep breath. He was thinking.
“Yes, this is a bigger piece of villainy than I dreamed of. But I don’t understand it. I think I am afraid.”
Aloud he said:
“Elche is that old Moorish town with its famous date palms thirty kilometres or so from Alicante.”
“Yes,” said the Kaid. “My house stands on the river bank in a great garden. I have never seen it.”
“And who occupies it now?” Mattie asked.
“The Conde de Torrevieja;” and with a cry Mattie sprang to his feet.
“I was sure of it. Listen, Sid Mohammed! A man calling himself Juan Gomez, a merchant of Cordoba, hired me to steal your key. But I had seen his picture in the newspaper El Liberal — an evil little white-bearded rogue, as supple as steel, and not over that name. But over what name I could not remember until now. He is the Conde de Torrevieja.”
He stared down at the lighted candles in perplexity.
“He wants the key which opens the house in which during the summer he lives — a second key — safe in a castle of the Atlas Mountains. Why? He wants it secretly too — so secretly that he sends two men to steal it. Why?”
“That, Mattee, you shall find out,” said the old Kaid slowly. “For I shall lend you my key. I ask you to bring it back to me as clean and bright as it is now.”
He was speaking a parable, as Mattie Driver very well understood, and he held up the key between his two hands for Mattie to take it.
But Mattie’s alarm-bells were all ringing more noisily than ever. He saw the old Kaid sitting in his white robes, as motionless as an image. He saw the shining key, the candles burning steadily in the silver candelabrum at his feet; he was aware of this lonely castle in the hills, and of the shadowy pillared hall. But all these things were as unsubstantial as the visions of a dream through which he saw looming up terrifically a veiled and monstrous enigma.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 822