“When did you get this letter off?” Richard asked.
Rex told him of his midnight expedition and they both agreed that apart from the consignment of mail in which it was having been blown up, there was really no reason why the letter should have gone astray.
“I don’t like it,” Richard said. “If Simon believes the Duke’s safe out of it he’ll almost certainly have arranged some trap to catch the others.”
Five minutes later they were alongside the Golden Gull. Richard knew how worried Marie-Lou would be if she heard what had happened, so he decided not to tell her; but he was anxious that if there were any trouble in the bay she should keep out of it. He told his mechanic and the other man to go aboard with a message that Rex and he had to go back and might be away some little time. She was not to worry, and on no account was she to leave the yacht or bring her nearer in.
The two men had guessed that something had gone wrong and both volunteered to remain. Richard thanked them warmly, but assured them that he and Rex would be able to manage the matter they had to attend to on their own.
The second the men were out of the launch Rex turned her nose towards the shore. After a few moments he picked up the tug and crane-barge, stationary now, right in the middle of the bay. As they drew nearer a faint hail came over the water. De Richleau and Lucretia-José, standing in the bows of the tender, could see the outline of the yacht and her riding lights. On spotting the launch which was racing from it they knew it must contain their friends.
As Richard returned the hail he had a moment’s awful uncertainty. It occurred to him that these might be Simon’s people come out to pick up the gold, but the next second his fears were stilled as the Duke’s voice came clearly to him.
“Ahoy! there, Richard. Well done, my friend. Well done!”
As Rex brought the launch round, Richard grabbed the low gunwale of the tug and swung himself on board. “There’s been an awful mix-up,” he gasped. “The Reds may be here any minute!”
“But Richard...” the Duke began and Lucretia-José gave a sharp cry of disappointment. Richard cut them short:
“No time to explain. Rex found me out. Gave our game away to Simon. We daren’t stay and risk them catching us here. Get your tug going and we’ll pick you all up out at sea.”
“One moment,” De Richleau said curtly. “There’s no need to panic. Where’s Rex?”
“Here,” Rex cried. He had made the launch fast and came clambering over the side. “I’m that sick I could shoot myself. I hadn’t got the faintest notion you’d be along. I...”
The Duke waved aside his protestations with an impatient hand. “I know! I know! Don’t waste time. Tell me as quickly as you possibly can what happened.” Before Rex had a chance to speak he turned to a tall man who was standing behind Lucretia.
“Best run out to sea, Comandante. If it’s possible, we’ll return later. Now, Rex?”
As the tender went about Rex poured out his story; Richard helping him out with a few swift interjections.
“I see,” said De Richleau, when they had done. “It’s damnably unfortunate but quite understandable. However, you don’t know if Simon got this letter, so there’s still a chance that he’s quite unaware of our present operations.”
Richard shook his head. “I’d hate to gamble on that. Of course, like Rex, I didn’t think for a moment you’d turn up here, until I got your wire. How did you manage it?”
“In the character of a Russian military expert. I speak Russian fluently, as you know. Our good friend Talbot procured me a change of clothes and Lucretia provided the necessary papers. For the last three days I’ve been living in the crane-barge we’re towing behind us now.” He turned to Lucretia.
“Condesa, you know Richard; but I don’t think you’ve met my old friend, Rex Van Ryn. Allow me to present him.”
Lucretia nodded. She was positively trembling with rage at the thought that Rex had wrecked all her carefully laid plans at the very last moment like this, but she endeavoured to control her anger for the sake of the others, and said coldly, “Mr. Van Ryn and I have met before in happier circumstances.”
An awkward situation was averted by the return of the Comandante whom De Richleau introduced as Bemal de Monteleone, a Royalist naval officer, who had been on leave in Malaga when the Civil War started and in hiding there ever since.
The five of them held a brief conference as to whether they dared attempt to pick up the gold that night. Rex was of the opinion that if there had been an ambush on the shore they would already have been fired at and, in his anxiety to make amends for having brought them all into possible danger, expressed his willingness to help them if they decided to risk turning back. His offer did much to overcome Lucretia’s hostility to him but she was adamant in her determination that the job must be put off until they had managed to ascertain whether Rex’s letter had reached Simon or not. She would not have them gamble their lives unless they were reasonably certain the coast was clear.
As they were talking, the tender had chugged its way about a mile and a half out to sea, but, while they were still arguing, a warning cry went up from the man just above them on the low bridge:
“A ship! A ship’s coming round the headland!”
They all peered into the darkness to the east. The front half of a low hull with a lighted line of ports was just rounding the point. As the ship’s funnels appeared, sparks and a red glow showed at their tips, against the sky.
The Nationalist ex-naval officer rapped out a sharp order and ran up to the tender’s bridge. Her nose swung away to starboard and her engines developed a more rapid beat.
Comandante Bernal de Monteleone had a pair of night glasses glued to his eyes. He swore softly and called down to the others:
“It’s the Libertad—Government destroyer—I’m afraid we’re cornered.”
His words were confirmed in no uncertain manner. A bright flash appeared on the foredeck of the warship. A dull boom sounded and a second later, as the echo rumbled back from the hills, a great column of water spurted up a hundred yards ahead of the tug’s bows.
“The launch!” cried Richard. “She’s much smaller and faster. We’ll all pile into her and run for it to the yacht.” But even as he spoke he realized the futility of his suggestion. The destroyer was steaming right into the middle of the bay. It was half a mile nearer inshore than the yacht and would cut them off from it before they could possibly get through.
“Too late for us to do that,” muttered De Richleau. The gun flashed again and a second report shattered the silence of the night.
This time the column of water sent up by the shell was only fifty feet from their port bow.
“Demonios” De Monteleone exclaimed. “They’ve got a gunner who knows his business.” Swinging round, he bawled to the quartermaster, “Hard astarboard and head her for the beach.”
Relieved of the weight of the barge she was towing the tender slewed right round, her speed almost doubled, as she raced shorewards. Great clouds of black smoke now billowed from her funnel, temporarily obscuring her from her attacker.
The destroyer’s next two shells fell far astern in the white wash of the tug, but as the second of them detonated a shaft of light suddenly cleft the darkness a hundred yards to their right. Now that they could no longer see their target on account of the smoke-screen, the men on the warship’s foredeck had turned on a searchlight.
With a violent jerk the tug took the weight of the barge again. Had the barge been fully loaded the hawser would have snapped, but she had nothing on board except the crane. The tug slowed down a little and Richard shouted, “Let the barge loose! Cut her loose! We’ll never make it with her weight behind us.”
“No, no!” Lucretia shouted back through the din. “Alvarez and Velasco are there. We can’t abandon them.”
The long finger of light from the warship’s foredeck swept backwards and forwards through the murk. A shell came screaming over the tender and burst a hundred yards ahead
of her.
“They’ve bracketed us now,” muttered the Duke. “We’d best take to the launch and try to slip round the coast while they pound this tub to bits.”
“How many are you?” asked Richard as the gun boomed again.
A water-spout shot up fifty yards to port and, caught in the rays of the searchlight, cascaded back into the sea like a great, silvery fountain.
“Bemal de Monteleone has a crew of six, two on the barge, ourselves four—that’s thirteen,” said De Richleau swiftly.
“Right! We’ll manage somehow.”
De Monteleone grabbed the tug’s wheel from his quartermaster and swung it over so that she headed towards the place where the last shell had burst. A spit of sand below the water-line ran out from the shore there. The tug hit it, lifted a little and came to rest. The next shell dropped behind her.
The Duke had already jumped into the launch and was at her controls. The others came piling in. One man slipped and tumbled overboard. While they were hauling him out of the water, De Monteleone and his quartermaster shot down the ladder from the tug’s bridge and flung themselves on to the forepart of the launch.
“All clear!” sang out the Comandante, freeing the launch’s painter with a jerk, and De Richleau turned her head towards the barge. The tow-rope had slackened and disappeared below the water; the barge was coming up to them out of the darkness under its own momentum.
The roar of the gun came again. The second they heard it a huge column of water spurted up, rocking the launch violently and half-drowning its occupants.
Wet and gasping they sorted themselves out as she streaked towards the barge. Within a minute they were alongside it. De Richleau did not attempt to stop. The two Nationalists were standing ready on the barge’s afterdeck. They sprang headlong into the crowded launch as it sped by.
The tug had run aground about a quarter of a mile from the shore. The searchlight cleft the smoky murk and was now focused dead on it. The crew of the destroyer were trying to make out if they had wrecked their victim or if the Nationalists had beached her deliberately. The beam of light swept rapidly along the water and came suddenly to rest on the abandoned barge, only twenty yards from the fugitives.
De Richleau would have preferred to head west, as the shore was steeper there and would have given them more cover but having to pick up the two men on the barge had necessitated his turning east. He dared not run closer in for fear of stranding the launch, but as she rushed through the water he kept glancing behind him with a worried eye upon the searchlight. It switched back to the tug, held it in a glare as bright as daylight for half a minute, flickered a moment round it, and streaked west along the tideline.
In trepidation he saw it stop and sweep back the other way. The tug was lit up for an instant—then the barge. Before they had covered another fifty yards it was full on them. For a fraction of time they were caught in its blinding rays. As they shot out of it De Richleau swung over the helm in a last frantic attempt to dodge it by running out to sea.
It picked them up again within ten seconds. The gun boomed. Ahead of them another column of water fountained and hissed as it fell back into the sea. The underwater shell-burst threw the head of the launch violently over to port. Its occupants staggered and clutched at each other for support. De Richleau realized that all hope of escape by sea was futile. Their only chance now was to land and scatter on the shore. He threw his helm hard over and raced towards it.
There was a soft scrape, a sharp jolt that threw them all off their balance. The devilish searchlight was still full on them as they flung themselves over the launch’s side into the shallow water.
Rex had snatched up Lucretia. She was no more than a featherweight in his mighty arms. He had been the first to leap from the launch and with huge strides he waded through the shallow water. Richard was beside him and they were the first to reach dry land. The searchlight behind them now lit the foreshore so that even its scattered pebbles threw long shadows across the sand.
Dripping and gasping, the little crowd of thirteen fugitives collected and automatically turned east. The searchlight followed them as they ran across the soft sand to the nearest cluster of rocks below the coast road that offered shelter. The destroyer had ceased fire.
De Richleau glanced anxiously behind him. At first it had seemed that Simon’s plan was to sink the enemies of the Government in the bay. Yet surely he would not have neglected to have the shore guarded. Next second the Duke’s unspoken question was answered. There came a flash in the darkness ahead beyond the searchlight’s ray. A solitary rifle cracked among the rocks for which they were making. A bullet whistled overhead.
The whole group halted, turned and rushed back the other way. They covered a quarter of a mile with the searchlight still playing on them. The foreshore was blank and empty. There was another group of rocks ahead. When they were within fifty yards of it a spitting light stabbed the blackness and the sudden, explosive bark of a machine-gun shattered the stillness. This time a stream of bullets whipped the air above them.
The machine-gun ceased fire as suddenly as it had opened and a sharp voice cried, “Halt! Those were warning shots. Put your hands up! One movement to escape or fight and it will be the death of all of you.” They had been skilfully driven right into the arms of the main ambush.
Miserable and dejected they obeyed, raising their hands slowly above their heads as they stood in a huddled group still panting from their exertions.
A crowd of black forms emerged from the dark shadow of the rocks. Others appeared to the left and right. Within a few moments it seemed that the foreshore was alive with soldiers and militiamen.
Their leader came forward and his short, wiry form immediately caught Lucretia’s eye. Her heart seemed to leap into her throat, and as he stepped into the beam of the searchlight she saw that her intuition had not deceived her. Cristoval could not see her clearly because she was half-hidden in the crowd and he was partly facing the searchlight, but for her its brilliance threw up his every feature.
Halting ten yards from his captives, he cried in a loud voice, “I arrest you all in the name of the Government. Where is the Condesa de Cordoba y Coralles?”
Pale, mentally shattered, utterly miserable, but with her beautiful head held high, Lucretia stepped forward.
“I am the Condesa,” she said clearly.
At the sound of her voice Cristoval’s hands clenched spasmodically. Peering forward, a look of horrified amazement on his face, he was stricken with the full truth of the appalling blow that Fate had dealt him.
Chapter Thirty-three – One Must Die
It—Por Dios, yes! It’s José Levida!” Gustavo Sandoval’s voice cut into the pregnant silence. “Who’d ever have thought of this! The famous ‘Golden Spaniard’ turns out to be the Royalist Condesa. Demonios, what a surprise!”
Many of the other Militiamen had also known Lucretia in her role of Anarchist and they were all agog with excitement at this most unexpected revelation of her true identity.
Cristoval bit his lip as he fought to recover his composure. Turning abruptly away to hide his haggard face, he muttered curtly to Sandoval, “Have them searched. Get their arms.”
While the thirteen wretched prisoners were frisked by the Militiamen, Richard, his hands still held above his head, turned to cast a forlorn glance out to sea. The illuminated line of ports and the long black hull of the destroyer still showed, now apparently at anchor, in the middle of the bay. Beyond it, a little to the left and a mile further out he could see the riding lights of the Golden Gull. There lay peace and safety. Here, imprisonment and death. All day he had been looking forward so tremendously to this evening; the final act of triumph in his long Spanish adventure, and now, through Rex’s ill-calculated counter-plotting, he and his beloved Marie-Lou were to be parted again, most probably for ever.
As soon as the captives had been stripped of their arms the Militiamen formed them into a rough column. The destroyer switched off its searc
hlight and some of Cristoval’s men produced torches.
During the disarming of the captives he had stood aside; too numbed by shock and acute distress to speak, but as they were about to be led away across the beach to the road, he turned to the bearded Sandoval and said, “I’ll take charge of the Condesa myself. She’s a very valuable hostage and needs guarding with special care.”
“Thought they were all to be shot?” said Sandoval gruffly.
Cristoval shrugged. “My orders are that they’re all to be given a formal drum-head court-martial and shot first thing to-morrow, but I want to speak to her alone now.”
“All right. Have it your own way,” growled Sandoval. In a lower voice, that no one but Cristoval could hear, he added, “For God’s sake be careful, man. Remember you’re responsible for her. If you let her try to escape I’ll have to shoot her myself.”
At that moment the Duke called across to Cristoval, “Is Simon Aron anywhere here or is he out there in the destroyer?”
“No,” Cristoval called back harshly. “He’s in bed ill, in Malaga. And a good thing too. I’m not sending for him, either. You foreign conspirators are as guilty as the rest. More guilty. None of the others would be here at all if it weren’t for your dirty plotting.”
The ambush had consisted of about fifty men; Cristoval’s party which he had brought from Valencia and a half-platoon of troops loaned from the force at the monastery to assist them in covering the whole long beach so that pickets could drive the Nationalists into its centre wherever they were forced ashore.
A Militia sergeant had already fallen in his half-platoon and was marching them off. The prisoners followed, surrounded by Cristoval’s old guard of Militiamen, all of whom were armed with rifles. Among themselves they were still muttering excitedly, not at the success of their venture but at the amazing fact that the Condesa they had been sent to catch should have turned out to be the famous ‘Golden Spaniard. ‘
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