Part 29

“No. I suppose the others had got into a carriage; he was lingering behind to give a valet directions about luggage. And then there was a scene. Pilar told me all about it. Carmona bowed; and before the Cherub could pull the little girl away, as he tried, seeing danger in her eye, she gave the Duke a piece of her mind. Said he was a villain, or some kind words of that sort. He retorted by saying to her father that he could make a lot of trouble for Cristóbal if they didn’t take care. Pilar said they could accuse him of worse things than he could them; and somehow or other, in an evil moment, the subject of Corcito, a grey bull Carmona was once nasty about, came up. Then, before she knew what she was doing, Pilar flashed out the name of Vivillo, the beast she wanted to buy, you know. And from that minute the fat was in the fire as far as she was concerned. But about that later. What with you and the bull, she was in a dreadful state of mind when she got here, poor child. However, she put on her thinking cap, and said she, ‘Try the gypsies. See if they don’t know something.’

“That was enough for me. I took a sudden fancy to Captain Pepe, the chief of the gypsies, and went every night to see a dance in his cave. But I soon saw he was straight; and they weren’t a bad lot of people in the colony. The nasty ones he kicked out, and they had to hustle for themselves. Captain Pepe told me about one fellow, Juan Castello, who’d got himself disliked, though he was a nailer with the guitar; and when he said the chap had a sister who had a fine position in the house of a titled person, because she was the best seamstress in the country, I pricked up my ears. You can bet, after I’d heard the titled person was Carmona, I turned my attention to Mr. Castello, dropped in on him one day, named a big price, and asked him to give me lessons on the guitar. He didn’t mind if he did, and we got quite friendly. I spent several evenings in his cave, where one night I heard a dog howling, as if it was mighty sick, behind a red curtain.”

“That red curtain!” I exclaimed. “I shouldn’t be where I am now, or have a scar on the back of my head, if I’d looked behind it.”

“By Jove! Well, I got some idea of that sort. Castello said the dog belonged to a gentleman in Granada, who lived all alone in the Albaicín, and kept this beast as a watch-dog; but he was afraid it was going mad, and told Castello to shoot it. However, it was a valuable animal, and Castello was undertaking to cure it for his own benefit. Already it was better, and the owner talked of buying it back if it recovered. The old gentleman was coming up to see the dog that very evening, perhaps, Castello said; and being evidently proud of a respectable acquaintance, he went on talking about him, I encouraging him all I could, because any friend of his might prove interesting to me.

“The minute I heard the chap was a kind of herb doctor, and sometimes treated grand people, I nearly jumped off my seat; for you know why Carmona was supposed to come to Granada?”

I nodded.

“Well, Castello was in with this doctor in a way, for he was engaged by him to fetch herbs and flowers from the mountains—like the Manzanilla, for instance, which only begins to grow at an elevation of twelve thousand feet. Castello believed that the old fellow could make poisons too, as well as antidotes; and said I to myself, ’Maybe that little dagger in the cathedral was specially prepared, eh?’ Which would account for Carmona hurrying off to Granada after it had found the wrong billet.

“Anyhow, I said I’d like to see the dog, so I was taken behind the red curtain into Mr. Castello’s bedroom, and on a shelf lay a revolver which might have been twin to the one you bought in Madrid.”

“It was still more nearly related,” said I.

“Well, I thought so, but wasn’t sure enough to call on the police. I went away when I’d said nice things about the sick dog; but I didn’t go far. I hung around till Castello’s visitor had been and gone, and then followed him to the door of this house. Such a mild, intelligent looking, well-dressed old gentleman, the herb doctor was; but I guess I needn’t describe him to you!

“Next day I bought some things at a baker’s not far from here, and buttered up the shopkeeper, saying his store was too good for the neighbourhood. Of course he told me he had rich customers, and it was jolly lucky I’d been fagging up Spanish for Pilar’s sake, or I should have missed a lot, right there. I soon got him on the subject of the herb doctor, his best client, who, though supposed to be well-off, and living in a good house, did all his shopping himself and kept no servants. Nobody knew much about him, except what he said of himself; that he could set bones, and was able to make as much money as he liked, selling his herb medicines to great personages. Who were the great personages? The baker couldn’t tell; but the doctor had lived in his present house for years, after taking it when in a bad state of repair, and having it done up inside by workmen he brought from Madrid. From that day on, no one the baker knew had ever been invited in, though he’d heard stories of veiled ladies, and sounds of music at night.

“At that, the thought jumped into my mind that maybe the house was Carmona’s, a little secret plaything of his. And I remembered reading about a famous old palace in the Albaicín with an underground way to the Alhambra. Why shouldn’t there be such a way from Carmona’s palace to the doctor’s house? And what a convenient place it would be to keep a troublesome person.”

“Or to kill one,” I amended.

“I thought of that; but I hoped. People don’t commit murder when their blood is cool if they can get what they want cheaper. I went again to the police, said I believed that my friend was detained against his will in the house of Doctor Molina. But when they wanted my reasons I couldn’t give any to convince them. They thought I was mad, and refused to search. I was afraid they’d warn the old chap to look out for a crazy American, so I hurried up and took matters into my own hands.

“I wasn’t sure enough of anything to jump on the man outside his own door and do the burglar act openly, lest the police should jump on _me_, and I should be laid by before I’d found you. But about that time I began to have water on the brain; or rather, I got possessed with the idea of sneaking into houses by means of conduits; and no wonder, when the whole Albaicín is honeycombed with watercourses, gluddering and gurgling from morning till night.

“In the next street to this, there’s a Moorish house of much the same sort, being torn down. They were selling old tiles to curiosity dealers one day, so I strolled into the _patio_. The pavement was up, and I saw how the conduit ran underneath and supplied the fountain. That was instructive. Opposite this place of Molina’s is a mill. I found out how the miller got his water, and that after it turned his wheel, it poured in this direction, being turned off every night about nine. At the miller’s the conduit is open, only guarded by a rail; and I developed a taste for making sketches and taking photographs—tourist in search of the picturesque; miller got used to seeing me about, while I made myself familiar with the landscape. Then I bought a crowbar and a little electric lamp. The bar I hid under my coat; and when I was ready to shed the garment, Ropes put it on. I guess it was a looser fit for him than that conduit was for me, and there were twelve feet of conduit; good long strait-jacket, but I’ve been in it a lot of times now, and feel quite at home. You see, the job couldn’t be done in one go, for I had to make the hole under the fountain bigger, and I’ve been tinkering away for nearly a week, o’ nights when the water was stopped. And if I’d come up at last, like a demon in a pantomime, to find I’d had my trouble for my pains, I can’t say what I should have turned my wits to next.”

“Does Pilar know?” I asked.

“She and the Colonel went off in a hurry to Madrid just before I took the job on. They thought they could influence the police at headquarters, which was their principal reason for going; though they had one or two others besides. But see here, you’ve got the story pat now, and you’re looking a thousand per cent. more healthy than when you sat down at this table ten minutes ago. Poor old Ropes, who always hangs about keeping guard, will be mighty glad to see you; but before we open the door and walk out as if we owned the house, let’s have a look round. There may be something which will give me a chance to say ‘I told you so!’ to the police.”

Refreshed with wine, and such scanty rations as Dick had allowed, I walked steadily enough into the adjoining room, while Dick carried a lamp. There were no such gorgeous decorations here, as in the suite I had reluctantly occupied. A modern bed stood in one corner. There were shelves on the wall, fitted with glass doors which protected jars and bottles. On a large table lay an outfit for chemical experiments, and on another some yellow flowers half buried in green leaves. In the window was a modern desk, and Dick at once began to rummage among the few papers in the pigeon-holes. There was nothing, however, which seemed to bear upon our affairs, with the exception of a telegraph form, which I seized upon. It was dated June first, and had been sent from a Madrid office. There was no signature, but there was a hint of something secret in the three words it contained. “Day after to-morrow.”

Dick and I stared at the paper, as if we expected the meaning of the message to spring up to our eyes.

“My name’s not Richard D. Waring if Carmona’s signature oughtn’t to be tacked on to that,” he said. “Now, we’ve something to go upon, for a beginning. This telegram will be traced to the sender before I’m many hours older; we can trust our dear old Cherub for that.”

“Day after to-morrow,” I repeated. “What’s going to happen day after to-morrow, that Carmona should have wired to this man?”

“I should say it was his way of letting Molina know that the cage door could open.”

“But why day after to-morrow? He—” I broke off suddenly, and it seemed that my heart would stop beating. “Dick,” I began again, in a queer voice that did not sound like my own, “is Monica—” I could not finish the sentence. But Dick understood.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I saw you weren’t strong enough to bear it at first. I wanted you to eat, and then—I’d have kept it back a bit longer if I could, just till I got you to the hotel. She’s going to marry him—on the third of June, Heaven knows why, though Pilar vows the girl can’t be to blame, and that they’ve made her believe somehow she’s sacrificing herself for your sake.”

“What day is this?” I asked.

“The first. The Royal Wedding was yesterday, and a terrible bomb explosion, in which the King and Queen had a narrow escape, and—but come, Ramón, I want to get you to the hotel.”

“I’m not going to the hotel,” I said. “I’m going to Madrid, to stop Carmona’s marriage.”

XL

THROUGH THE NIGHT

Dick looked at me with indulgent sympathy, as if I were a child.

“It’s after eleven o’clock at night,” he said. “The train for Madrid went two hours ago, and—”

“Did you say Ropes was waiting for you outside?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And my car’s still in the garage where I put it?”

“Yes; but you’re not in a fit state for a journey. If you could see yourself—”

“Oh, I know I’m a nightmare apparition,” I cut in; “but when I’m shaved and—”

“The trip would kill you.”

“It would kill me not to take it.”

We looked at each other for a moment, then Dick said—

“All right. Come on. I know what you feel. But what about that old reprobate upstairs?”

“I’ll wait for you here while you take up some food and leave it in the room. We can’t waste time in Granada on his account. I’ll tell my story, and you can tell yours to the police in Madrid, after I—after I’ve done what I’m going there to do.”

“How long a drive is it?” Dick asked resignedly.

“It’s about two hundred and seventy miles. If we can start by one or two, bar accidents we ought to be in Madrid by noon.”

“The royal bull-fight’s to-morrow,” answered Dick. “Although the wedding’s next day, and the invitations have been out a fortnight, Carmona and Lady Monica are bound to be there, as it’s a royal invitation show; that means a command.”

“Very well,” said I. “Since it may be as difficult to reach her in Madrid as in Seville and Granada, I shall wait outside the entrance to the bull-ring, and as she’s about to go in, she shall see me and hear the whole truth. Don’t look as if you thought it would do no good, Dick; if she’s promised to marry Carmona in spite of all, it’s because he has made her think he can ruin me if she refuses. Pilar’s instinct is right, I know; and now for the first time I understand why Carmona didn’t denounce me to the police as Casa Triana, when Monica refused to keep her engagement with him, as I’m sure she did. No doubt he told her lies—that I could be imprisoned—for years, perhaps. And his wounded hand—what an opportunity for him! Ah! he wouldn’t waste it. He’d make her believe I stabbed him in the cathedral that night. How plausible! And as he’s been very ill, can’t you imagine what her fears for me must have been? Dick, I regard her coming marriage as a proof of love, not of indifference.”

“I’m ready to agree with you,” said Dick. “But you’re risking your life to prove it.”

“Nonsense,” I answered. “The thought that I’m free, that I’m going to her, and that at last I have Carmona in my hand, will give me strength enough to get through.”

Dick raised his eyebrows, but did not answer. He was collecting bread and meat on a plate, to leave for the man upstairs.

Five minutes later we were out of the house and in the street. In front of the miller’s premises Ropes was walking up and down. He did not say much when he saw that Dick had a companion; but as he wrung the hand I held out to him, I heard him breathing hard, and he swore under his breath when he saw my face by the light of a street lamp.

It was the look on his which made me realize, as Dick’s persuasions had not, that I must delay long enough to be made again into some semblance of a sane man. An hour more before getting on the road would not endanger success, though it would try my patience. A quarter of a mile’s walk to the garage was a sharper test of my strength than I would confess; but when Ropes had roused the watchman, filled the good old Gloria with petrol, and started her up the hill, the rush of pure night air gave me life.

At the hotel, we walked in without waking the dozing _concièrge_. Dick made me free of his things; and when, between us, we had finished my toilet, he admitted that I was not as appalling an object as he had thought. He changed his wet clothes, left a note for the landlord, and it was not yet two o’clock when we started, Ropes driving, Dick with me in the tonneau.

“To Madrid, top speed, quickest way,” was the word; and I hoped for a non-stop run, or as near it as possible.

The quickest way was by Jaen, a road which none of us knew, and the starlit sky was obscured by dark clouds which heralded a summer thunder-storm. As Ropes steered across the Vega towards that gap in the mountains which is the door of the north, there came a waterspout of rain on the roof. Thunder drowned the purr of the motor, and a flash of lightning every other moment dimmed the flying circle of our acetylenes. There had been rain more than once of late, and this deluge made the road, already bad, soft and greasy as an outworn sponge. The Gloria waltzed and slipped in a mass of brown porridge, but Ropes knew that we were to drive against time, and, throwing caution to the wind, tore through the treacherous mud as if to win the cup in a great race.

We flung Granada behind us, dashing in among the foothills of the mountains, mounting a slippery defile, with the rain like whips lashing our faces. Orchards flashed by; there was a rock tunnel, where the lights shone fiercely on rough-hewn stone, and the thrum of the motor became a roar.

Out again, and still up, the beams from our lamps shooting across vineyards, plantations of figs and pomegranates, and striking silver from the curves of the Guadalbullon River. A glimpse of an old castle commanding a dark gorge, and we were at Jaen; then, presently, the road became familiar, for we had travelled it before. At this very corner we had stopped to ask the way of men who carried strange implements like fire-extinguishers, for this was Bailen; but now, instead of receiving our first glimpse of Andalucía, we were leaving it behind.

Eighty miles out of two hundred and seventy we had come, though the pace had not been good. Still the rain was ceasing, and we could make up for lost time, as country traffic had not begun yet.

La Carolina, Santa Elena; the road was mounting for the well-remembered defile of Despeñaperros. Hoot! went the siren, screaming along the face of tremendous cliffs, and a louder shriek rang as if an echo. A line of fire down in the gorge meant the train from Madrid to Seville. It glittered like a string of stars drawn across a spider’s-web viaduct, then vanished into a tunnel, while we swept on towards the plains of La Mancha, Ropes crouched like a goblin over his wheel.

Rain again, blurring villages, and sweeping through the stone streets of a town: fields once more, and at last Manzanares. There Dick insisted that we should stop for food, lest strength fail me when I should need it most; but I could not bear to go back to the _fonda_ I knew, to see the pretty girls there look at my pale face with shocked eyes, perhaps to have them question me about the “white and gold angel.”

It was eight o’clock when we got away from the café, where we had spent some twenty minutes; and the road was no longer clear. We were obliged to moderate our speed, and lost more time than we could afford getting on to Aranjuez.

“Do your best now, Ropes,” I was saying, when the Gloria—for once perverse—burst a tyre with a loud explosion. Ropes threw me a rueful look.

“I’d hoped to get through without trouble, sir,” he said, “but the car’s lain up for more than five weeks, and there was no time last night to look her over.”

“You’ve done splendidly,” I assured him. “I’ll get out with Mr. Waring and stretch my legs.”

I was glad to walk, and still more glad to feel that instead of being exhausted as Dick had prophesied, strength seemed coming back. As we strolled up and down, so sure was I of Dick’s sympathy that I began to talk about my hopes and fears. He did not disappoint me, but once or twice he answered absent-mindedly, with a far-off look in his eyes, and suddenly, with a pang of remorse, I remembered that I had not once referred to the progress of his love affairs. My own had preoccupied me to the exclusion of everything outside, and I had spoken of Pilar’s only in connection with Monica.

Anathematizing myself aloud as an ungrateful and ungracious brute, I asked if Pilar had made up her mind.

“You needn’t blame yourself,” he said. “All this time she’s kept me on tenter-hooks, because, though she admitted liking me, she couldn’t reconcile her heart with her conscience. I got the dear old Cherub’s blessing, and flaunted it in her face; but that wasn’t enough. I also argued that it was her duty to marry me and try to make me as good as herself, but she seemed to think it might work out the other way. Then you disappeared, and the last word she said was that if I found you, she’d take it as a sign that San Cristóbal wanted the match; seems he’s a matchmaking saint, when he’s in Spain, as well as a motoring one. So, you see, she’ll have to keep her promise now; and I’ll owe my happiness to you.”

“I haven’t come back to life in vain, then,” I said. “It will be a good moment for me, whatever happens, when I see my little sister Pilar again.”

“She’ll be at the royal bull-fight,” Dick sighed.

“I thought she hated bull-fights—for Vivillo’s sake.”

“It’s for Vivillo’s sake she’s going. She’s moved heaven and earth to get invitations.”

“And she’s succeeded.”

“Thereby hangs a tale. But I’m not going to bother you with it.”

I insisted, urging him the more to atone for past carelessness.

“Well, then,” he said with another sigh, “Vivillo’s fifth bull in the royal fight to-day.”

I was shocked, knowing how Pilar loved the noble brown beast, and how she had counted on possessing him. But, if I had had my wits about me, I might have guessed last night how matters stood. Dick had told me then that, in the impromptu scene between Carmona and the O’Donnels, with Seville railway station for the stage, “the name of Vivillo had unfortunately come up.” Now, Dick explained that Carmona had caught at the girl’s hasty words, had written his agent at the _ganadería_ instructing him not to part with the bull at any price, no matter how far negotiations had gone with Colonel O’Donnel. A day or two later the agent was directed by telegram to send Vivillo immediately to Madrid, as the Duke had offered him as a gift for the great show of the royal bull-fight. This news had come to Pilar at Granada in an ill-spelled, but well-meaning letter from Mateo, the _ganadero_.