by A. J. Cronin
With sudden decision he rose to his feet.
“Come with me, both of you.”
He led the others upstairs, entered his bedroom. The round morocco leather box stood in the centre of the dressing-table, flanked by yellowing ivory brushes and the heavy crystal flasks which held the Consul’s bay rum and cologne. Without hesitation, Brande threw back the lid. The box was empty.
“My God!” he gasped. Seldom, if ever, was the Consul guilty of that exclamation, but now his whole body shook with an emotion so sudden and unearthly it could not otherwise be expressed.
“Rather careless of you, surely, not to lock it,” Halevy murmured behind him.
Brande spun round with a congested face.
“I trust my people. Never before, in my experience.… All my jewellery. The intrinsic … the sentimental value … irreplaceable.… Garcia, my good fellow, who has done this?”
The butler’s lip curled slightly. He did not answer, but his gaze, travelling imperceptibly beyond the Consul, directed itself through the open window, and came to rest upon the garden.
“Yes,” cried Brande with a strange lifting of his voice, a note almost of exaltation. “ Remain here, Garcia. Will you come with me, Halevy? I should be glad of your support.”
Accompanied by his friend, the Consul quitted the house and strode down the gravel path towards the tool-shed. José was not there. Checked, Brande was about to swing out towards the shrubbery, when his inflamed eye was arrested by the gardener’s jacket drooping, shapelessly, from the rusted nail behind the door. A stifled exclamation broke from the Consul’s lips. Always he prided himself upon his punctilious sense of honour. But now, borne forward by this fever of anger and resentment, he stepped without hesitation to the door and began to search the pockets of the coat, throwing recklessly upon the earth floor the useless objects which came to light—a ball of twine, some fish hooks stuck into a piece of cork, the dry heel of a loaf wrapped in newspaper, a lump of beeswax, an old horn spoon. There were many pockets in the patched and weather-stained garment and a double lining as well, where perhaps a lad trained in country ways might hide and carry home a snared rabbit or a hare. Yet it seemed as though the exploration must prove fruitless when, suddenly, with a hoarse cry of triumph, the Consul brought out, yellow and glittering, from the innermost recess, a pair of heavy cuff-links.
“Mine!” he stuttered. “Unquestionably mine. And don’t you see”—in his excitement he clutched Halevy’s arm—” these are only gilt … the only imitation set I possess. He’s got rid of all the rest … but these … because they have no real value … were left on his hands.”
The Professor, with an air of justification, tilted his narrow head and murmured:
“Did I not tell you … only, my dear friend … for your own sake … for the sake of your health … be calm.”
“I refuse to be calm!” Brande exclaimed in a kind of apocalyptic frenzy. “After all I have endured from him, the damage he has inflicted upon me and mine, at last he has been delivered up to me.” He raised his voice and shouted: “José! Come here … immediately.”
He had gathered himself to shout again when the sound of running footsteps became audible, and an instant later José broke into the little shed, pulled off his linen cap, and, between his quick breaths, exclaimed:
“You wanted me, señor.”
“I do want you,” Brande said thickly, in a voice which seemed choked with hate. He exposed the gilt cuff-links in his quivering palm. “Where did you get these?”
José looked at the yellow discs, bound by tiny chains, then his dark eyes passed from Halevy to the Consul.
“I do not understand you, señor. I have never seen these things before.”
“Then explain how they got into your jacket.”
“Impossible, señor.” José’s bewildered gaze darted towards the draggled poncho on the back of the door as though it too were the victim of some supernatural spite. “They were never there.”
“They were there.” The power which he now possessed of throwing back José’s own words sent the blood mounting higher in the Consul’s head. “ I found them in your pocket a moment ago.”
“No, señor.” By contrast with Brande’s overtones, the words came halting and confused.
“Professor Halevy can swear to it.”
A bar of silence throbbed within the hut. José had turned quite white, his stare, as though fascinated, could not leave the glittering links.
“Someone must have put them there,” he muttered at last.
A faint ironic snicker, instantly suppressed, escaped from the Professor’s indrawn lips.
“The classic answer,” he murmured to his friend.
But the Consul did not hear. The singing in his ears grew louder. He felt, again, that hot flame within his chest. He said, slowly, as savouring each word:
“I am going to summon the guardia. Meantime, you will come with us to the house. It is useless for you to try to escape.”
A pause. José was paler than ever, deeply serious, with a strange distress in his pained eyes. Yet his lip drew back with a kind of trembling pride.
“I shall not run away, señor. The guardia is my friend. He knows I am not a thief.”
The procession started towards the house, the Consul first, then José, Halevy bringing up the rear. Within, José was shut up in the dining-room and Brande himself telephoned the San Jorge Police barracks. They had not long to wait. Less than half an hour later a sergeant of the civil guardia, young and well-set-up in his dark green uniform and black, shiny hat, arrived at the front door. Garcia showed him to the Consul, who was at once impressed by the man’s smart and soldierly appearance.
“I regret troubling you, sergeant,” he began directly, “but it appears I have a thief in my employ.”
Succinctly—for he had now fully recovered his self-possession—he outlined the facts, a damning case. It seemed that when José’s name was mentioned the guardia lost for a moment his look of calm alertness. And when Brande concluded he stood, studying his boots, in puzzled indecision.
“It sounds extremely bad, señor,” he said at length. “Yet are you sure there is no mistake. I know this José Santero. He is perhaps a trifle wild … but a thief …?”
The Consul drew himself up, his expression turning stern and official.
“Do you propose to allow your personal feelings to interfere with your duty?”
“No, no, señor,” the sergeant answered hastily. “ Let us see him at once.”
They went into the dining-room, where José stood alone, in fixed and pained perplexity, awaiting them.
Chapter Seventeen
For Nicholas it was like sunshine after rain, to be allowed to dress and come downstairs, to have breakfast in the dining-room with his father and Professor Halevy, to be spared that utter solitude where, with the chilly tray rim pressed against his chest, he chewed without taste, his ears continually on the alert for new and formidable occurrences below. And although he was conscious of something hidden, a sense of conspiracy between them, that disturbing tension of the past few days seemed eased, as by some peculiar and unexpected intermission, and they were pleasant to him, in a distant sort of way. The Professor, nibbling at buttered toast, spoke down to him a good deal, in a smiling, non-committal fashion, as though the inquisition of the day before had never occurred. His father, from behind the pages of the Echo de Paris, bent one or two covert glances towards him which, although still aloof, held a hint of reconciliation. And when the meal was over, and Nicholas sat very straight, waiting for his orders, the Consul actually declared, with only a pretence of stiffness:
“You may wish to go into the garden this morning … you have been rather confined lately.” He turned to Halevy in that same measured, rather studied manner. “ I shall not go to the office until noon. If it does not altogether bore you, perhaps you might run through the final section of my manuscript.”
“Delighted, my friend,” Halevy replied, p
atting his lips delicately with his napkin.
They stood up. Nervous thrills were running all over Nicholas—these sessions upstairs had left him strangely shaken, and his legs, especially, did not perform too steadily. But with an effort he subdued his agitation, moved quietly to the front door and the next minute was standing on the portico.
Oh, how good it was to be outside again, to be free after the miseries of his detention—he sniffed the fresh, scented breeze with expanding nostrils. It would never do, of course, to rush at once towards José. With his hands by his sides, he strolled, very slowly and inconspicuously, down the herbaceous border, pausing every few steps to bend forward and smell the flowers. One of the pink curly rolls which edged the path had been displaced—carefully he put it back. Then he stood to study a snail as, with horns extended, it bore forward the domed burden of its castle, leaving behind a silvered trail. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Professor Halevy emerge from the villa, carrying a plaid rug and the precious bundle of the Malbranche manuscript. When the psychologist had settled himself comfortably in a long chair by the arbour, Nicholas edged off towards the cobbled stable-yard, whither, for some time now, the sound of wood-chopping had enticed him.
But it was Garcia who, with rolled-up sleeves, wielded the whirling machete, and in a flurry of disappointment and alarm the boy scurried round the gable of the coach-house towards the new rockery. The rockery looked well; the hart’s-tongue ferns were already spreading their tender green fronds over the mica-scaled stones. Yet José was not here. Hastening his steps, Nicholas passed beyond the oleanders, through the old myrtle patch, then back by the empty tool-shed and the catalpa tree until, finally, having completed the tour, he drew up, disconsolately, beside the arbour.
The Professor, comfortably enwrapped, balancing the heavy pile of sheets neatly clasped by metal strips, seemed too engrossed to be disturbed. But after some hesitation Nicholas ventured to approach. Halevy looked up, over the rim of his pince-nez.
“Excuse me, sir … have you seen the large watering-can?”
“No,” said the Professor agreeably. “Have you?”
“I haven’t,” Nicholas answered. “And all the petunias want watering, very badly.”
“Do they? … then perhaps you will find it.”
“I don’t know where it has been put … and even if I did, it’s too heavy for me to lift.”
“Then you had better dismiss it from your mind.”
“But the petunias … someone should attend to them.”
“I dare say they will survive.”
There was a pause. Nicholas gazed about him dismally. The Professor’s eyes were now fixed upon the priceless manuscript. Without raising his head, he replied:
“Dear child, I suggest you continue your stroll. I propose to have a conversation with you this evening. Meantime, I should be glad not to be disturbed.”
Dashed, the little boy moved off. As the hatchet strokes still rang out he decided he might reach the back premises unobserved. Despite her unbelievable behaviour on the day before, which in any case seemed unreal and remote, he believed that Magdalena was still, more or less, his friend.
Yes, there she was, seated on the step of the open kitchen door, plucking the feathers from a chicken that lay across her knees. In the dark interior of the kitchen copper pans glinted on the shelves and a bunch of rosemary twigs crackled on the hearth. With his hands in his pockets, he stood watching her through the little snowstorm which enveloped her. From her abrupt, violent movements, he knew she was in a bad humour, yet after a moment, in a low, coaxing voice, he said:
“Magdalena … where is José?”
She gave her head an angry shake and slapped the limp fowl over on its back so that its breast showed blue and tense.
“Go away. I don’t know anything. I do not wish to know anything. I only work hard morning, noon, and night … work hard like a slave.” Her voice rose suddenly to a high note and almost broke. “Do you hear me? Go away.”
Nicholas went away. He went through the faded mimosa hedge, his feet pressing into the carpet of spent blossoms which lay beneath the bushes, and came out at the cliff wall. Here, on a flat stone, he seated himself and, with drooping lip, stared out at the empty bay. It was nothing, he told himself … perfectly all right … José would turn up in the afternoon, probably he had been sent somewhere on an errand.
A whiff of cigarette smoke made him turn his head, then, with a start, he almost toppled over. Garcia had come down from the stable yard, noiseless in his rope-soled sandals, and was now standing beside him, a burning stub between yellow fingers, sharing his admiration of the view.
“The sea,” he remarked. “ Is it not superb? Lying there, like a great beast, licking its paws?”
Nicholas, after an involuntary shiver, sat, contracted, on the stone. Yet he perceived that Garcia was in a mood of unusual content, suffused, it seemed, by some strange, unnatural felicity. The man’s long slanting eyes were drowsy and his pin-point pupils sparkled with a sort of inner pleasure as he inhaled deeply from the cigarette.
“It is good to get away from people … mediocre, ridiculous people … and be at one with the eternal. I know the sea. I have sailed the oceans of the world. I have been becalmed in the blazing Sargasso. Weeds, weeds … green weeds clinging under the surface scum, clinging like the tentacles of octopi.” He threw away the spent cigarette and, pulling from his hip pocket a librillo of papers and a canvas bag, he tugged at the string with his sharp teeth, and began, with one hand, to roll himself another.
“I thought you were a soldier.” Nicholas broke the silence in a quavering tone.
“Bah! I have been everything. A sailor too. Shanghaied. Two years before the mast. You do not believe me?” He slipped an arm from his open shirt and with a vehement gesture exposed his back, the smooth bare skin all seamed with whitish scars. “Now you can see where I was flogged … flogged till the blood ran like a red river. Is that a crime? They could not make me yield. Never. When they brought bread and water, I sat like a king on his throne, in my cell.”
“Cell?” gasped Nicholas, sitting there like a little scared bird, yet fascinated, too. “Were you in prison?”
Garcia, suddenly motionless, stared at Nicholas in a hard kind of way. The match he had just struck burned down to his fingers, yet he did not seem to feel it.
“Do not meddle with my affairs,” he threatened. Then, lighting the cigarette, he burst into a fit of laughter. “Prison … do you think it would be nice in prison?”
“No …” stammered Nicholas.
“No?” Garcia laughed. “ My God, you have said something true at last. Do you know the Spanish prisons, where the damp trickles down the walls and the cockroaches, big as rats, run over you at night? Where the stinking darkness is enough to shrivel up your heart? And the wall, the high wall, where men stand with rifles, seems to separate you even from the sky. Don’t let yourself be trapped in there, little master. Be smart, like me, and stay outside.”
“I will. I will,” Nicholas fervently agreed. “No one would want to go to such a place.”
“Ho, ho!” Garcia threw back his head in greater merriment. “You are more amusing than ever, little master. Of course no one wants to go. But sometimes one is made to go. The guardia comes, clicks on the handcuffs, and drags one away.” He paused, and added softly: “Like he did yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” echoed Nicholas in a puzzled voice.
“You did not know?” Garcia, no longer laughing, fixed upon the boy his ironic and inhuman gaze, his pupils shrunk to nothing, quite invisible, the full-flecked irises, bathed in greenish light, shifting and shimmering with a naked rancour, like weed beneath the surface of a muddy pool. “ José was taken yesterday to the cuartel … for stealing from your father.”
As though the man had struck him, Nicholas shrank back, lost his balance, and actually fell from the wall.
“No … no,” he whispered, scrambling to his knees.
�
��It is true,” Garcia declared in an indescribable tone, a whisper almost, yet so sinister it froze the child’s heart. “He is in prison. Five years they will give him, at the least. Your José is a thief.” His voice rose, he flung out his chest and with clenched fist thumped himself fiercely as though beating on a drum. “ Don’t get in Garcia’s way. It is not wise. He will vanquish you. A man amongst men. A king upon his throne. Let all who hear take warning.”
He stood a moment, his head thrown back, outlined against the opalescent sky; then, without further speech, he darted towards Nicholas a furtive glance, shot with a hidden threat, then turned and went off.
As though turned into stone, yet with a fierce throbbing in his chest, Nicholas remained motionless, lost and abandoned to despair. Now, indeed, he could understand his father’s indulgence, the Professor’s arch complaisance, Garcia’s exalted mood … the pattern of the morning was complete. José in prison … a thief … oh, no, never, never, he thought, with a rending of his breast, never would they make him believe it. Small and useless though he might be, at least he would hold fast. They would never make him lose faith in his friend.
The sound of voices disturbed him, caused him to spin round and peer across the wall. Two men were coming down the lane towards the villa. They came slowly, for they were old, both dressed in black with dusty boots, hobbling along like a pair of aged, bedraggled crows. The taller carried a faded black umbrella and wore a long soutane, and Nicholas made out, with a stifled cry of surprise, that he was a priest. Suddenly the little boy jumped up. He saw now, quite plainly, that the second old man was Pedro. Instinctively, he started to run and, skirting the formal garden, taking care not to be observed, he broke through the shrubbery in time to meet the two visitors in the drive.
“Pedro,” he panted. “How are you? How is José? What are you doing here?”
The old man made a gesture, grave and sorrowful, with his hand.
