“I’m going back,” he said curtly, and turned to stride off up the hill.
“Hi!” Rex stretched out a long arm and caught him by the elbow. “You can’t go chucking your life away like that!”
“I’ve got to go back,” insisted the Duke wildly. “Do you think I’d leave Lucretia to be shot without lifting a hand to try to save her?”
“All right, all right!” Rex tried to soothe him. “I got her into this so I’m game to come too, but just wait a moment.”
De Richleau shook his head. “No, no! I—she’s my—my responsibility. You three are out of it now. It’ll comfort me a lot to know that you’re all safe on the yacht.”
“The thought of you getting yourself killed won’t comfort us, though,” said Richard quickly. “I’d rather risk my neck again with you and Rex. But for God’s sake let’s make some sort of plan before we go butting into that hornets’ nest.”
“The devil of it is we haven’t even got a gun between us, unless Simon’s got one,” Rex muttered anxiously.
“Ner.” Simon shivered. “Never carry a gun. Not so fond of firearms as some of you people.”
They stood silent for a moment. De Richleau, that master-spinner of plots, found that his brain had gone absolutely numb. Richard racked his wits in vain, and the exasperated Rex suddenly exclaimed, “It’s a hopeless proposition to go in unarmed. We wouldn’t stand an earthly!”
“I’ve got it!” cried Richard. “The yacht. There’re plenty of arms on board if only we can get to her.”
Moving swiftly to a gap in the rocks, they looked out across the dark waters of the bay. Far away in the distance the lights of the yacht could be seen but nearer, below, only about fifty yards out from the shore, there were also lights, and these were slowly moving as though they were those of a night party out spearing fish.
“Harbour people from Malaga. Evidently started on the gold already,” Simon commented. “Spaniards usually take a month to answer a letter, but I threatened them yesterday with every penalty Valencia could impose if there were any delay about this business. Wish to God I hadn’t now. Try going down if you like. They’re certain to question us, but I’ve got a Government pass on me. Satisfy them with that, providing they haven’t heard about—about Picón.”
“Yes, all four of us are hunted men now,” the Duke agreed soberly.
“I wonder how long they’ve been there,” Richard said. “If an orderly went to rouse Picón with a message soon after you left, half Malaga knows you did him in by now. These birds would have heard the glad tidings if they’ve only just arrived, and if you show your face you’ll be for the high jump.”
Simon shook his head. “That’s unlikely. They must have left before or very soon after I did. Point is, though, what can we four do, even with guns, against Mudra’s troops? He’s got half a company up there and Cristoval’s Militiamen as well. Getting on for a hundred and fifty all told.”
“See here,” Rex angrily kicked away a stone. “In my view, the yacht’s out of it anyway. There’s no disguising the fact we’re foreigners and my height gives me away. Those guys will sure have heard the whole story of how we were pinched earlier on this evening. They’ll hold us for questioning for certain. Then where’ll we be?”
“You’re right, Rex,” Richard sighed, “and I’m game to try anything once, but even with arms I doubt if the four of us could force our way into the place, let alone get Lucretia out.”
“I’m not leaving here without her,” the Duke declared.
“Sure,” Rex agreed, “and I’m in on any game you can think up to free her.”
“Besides,” said Richard, “there’s Bernal de Monteleone and the others. They risked their necks for us. Now we’re free it’s impossible just to chuck our hands in and abandon them all like this.”
De Richleau moistened his lips. “That’s true, and apart from any question of what we ought to do I—well, Richard may have guessed it but you others wouldn’t know. Lucretia’s more precious to me than I can say. I—I love her.”
Richard nodded. “I thought so, and that means we’ve got to get her out. How to set about it with any chance of success is the question.”
For a moment they stood there in silent dejection. It was still drizzling and very cold. The night was black and cheerless. Their hearts were as heavy as the thick clouds that now loomed overhead.
Simon had been thinking: ‘I’m in this with the rest of them now. I’ve killed a man to get them out, yet they want to risk their necks again to save this Nationalist spy, and the Duke’s gone nuts about her. I was trying to trick Mudra into releasing her myself half an hour ago. I’ve betrayed all my friends on the other side already. What will happen if I tell the Duke how to do this job? The whole front here may cave in. Well, these are the only people I really care about. I may as well go the whole hog now I’ve burnt my boats. God! This is awful. But it’s the only way to save these three from chucking their lives away.’
He gulped hard, and said, “Only one thing we can do. Nationalist line’s barely an hour’s march beyond the monastery. I’ll take you through the Government pickets if you’ve got enough pull to...”
“God bless you, Simon!” De Richleau burst out. “Oh, God bless you! We could get arms there and troops to help us.”
“How’ll we find our way through these damn mountains, though?” Rex objected.
“Can’t miss it if we stick to the cart-track,” Simon rejoined glumly. “Studied the map of this bit of coast yesterday in Malaga. For miles along it there’s only the one road leading inland. That’s what makes it so easy to defend.”
“How did you get here, Simon?” asked the Duke quickly.
“Car. But I smashed the damn thing up at the bottom of the hill unfortunately. She’d take hours to repair.”
“What about time?” demanded Richard. “We’ll have our work cut out to make it—won’t we?”
Simon peered at the luminous dial of his watch. “It’s twenty to four. Sunrise about 6.30 down here at this time of the year. We’ve got just under three hours to get there, make our arrangements and get back. Got to palaver with the pickets on both fronts, too.”
“Hell! We’ll never do it,” groaned Rex.
“We’ve got to,” declared the Duke. He was now his own man again; as resolute, as self-confident and determined as ever. The sands of Lucretia’s life were due to run out in one hundred and seventy minutes. Without the loss of a further second they set off at a brisk walk up the hill.
It was heavy going with the stones slithering about under their feet but beyond the monastery the slope was easier where it entered the mountain pass. The black shadows of the rocks on either hand engulfed them, but within half an hour of their start the rain had ceased and a fitful light came at intervals through the rifts in the clouds. No sound broke the silence of the night except their laboured breathing and the echoes of their footfalls.
After forty minutes’ hard trudging they came to a small village. Every house was in darkness, and the only sign of military occupation was a dump of ammunition boxes on the roadside which they could just make out in the faint starlight.
“The main detachment’s stationed here, I expect,” said the Duke softly. “Thank God they’re all sleeping their heads off. The outpost picket can’t be far off now.”
Five minutes later they came upon it. The road twisted suddenly, flattened out, and ran on through a narrow gorge with beetling crags on either side.
They were brought up short by a sharp challenge.
Simon produced his special Government pass, but the sentry queried it and called his corporal who was crouching over a glowing brazier in a small lean-to built against the rock at the side of the road.
The corporal made a pretence of examining the pass but, as he held it upside down, they knew he could not read. He called a third man; the only other occupant of the shelter. The last comer seemed to think that the pass was all in order, but wanted to know what they meant to do in no-
man’s-land.
Simon said they were Russian engineers sent from Malaga to make an inspection of the road ahead and assess its possibilities for an advance that was being planned. To support this statement the Duke began talking in Russian to Rex, who could not understand him but made appropriate grimaces.
The three men seemed satisfied, and De Richleau’s brain was ticking over again. Reverting to Spanish, he said conversationally to the picket, “Responsible job, this, with only three of you to guard the road if it were attacked.”
The corporal shrugged. “The blighters opposite haven’t fired a shot for weeks. There’s nothing doing in this sector and both sides are starved of ammunition. We command a mile of road from here with our machine-gun, and at the sound of a shot the boys in the village would soon come tumbling out.”
That was just the thing that De Richleau had in mind. He noted with a sudden brightening of his eye that both the corporal and his friend who could read had left their rifles in the shelter; only the sentry was fully armed.
Without a second’s warning the Duke’s fist shot out and caught the sentry a vicious blow on the side of the jaw. As the man fell De Richleau tore his rifle from his grasp and whirling it aloft struck him over the head with its butt.
The corporal’s hand flew to the automatic at his belt. Rex was just a fraction quicker and dropped him like a log with one smash of his mighty fist. The third man turned to run but Richard tripped him and, in less than five minutes, all three members of the picket lay bound, gagged and relieved of their arms, which consisted of three rifles and three automatics.
“Good work,” muttered the Duke. “What luck that there were only three of them. If I hadn’t taken a chance by hitting the sentry they’d have alarmed the village on our return with the Nationalists, and we would have had to fight our way through it coming back.”
“Sure,” Rex nodded. “If you hadn’t socked him he had it coming to him from me. Any shooting up here would rouse out Mudra’s bunch at the monastery, and if that happened our whole scheme ’ud be washed up.”
Up in the pass it was intensely cold. They were not far below the snow line and in the light from the lean-to they could see each other’s breaths like little puffs of steam in the frosty air.
Richard was staring at Simon. He was leaning up against the wall of rock, pale and ghastly in the moonlight. He had said nothing of his illness, and the haste of their forced march had prevented any of the others noticing his wretched state till now.
“What’s wrong, old chap?” Richard asked quickly. “You look all-in.”
“Fish poisoning,” whispered Simon. “In bed with a temperature when Marie-Lou’s message reached me. Feeling like hell.”
“Of course,” De Richleau said with quick sympathy. “Cristoval told us you were ill. You’d better stay here. We’ll pick you up on our way back. You can keep an eye on these fellows. In the meantime look round their shack—they’re almost certain to have some brandy or spirits of sorts. You’ll be out of the cold in the shack and the rest will revive you a bit for our march back.”
Simon nodded. “That’ll be best. Having got you to the picket, I can’t help you on the other side.”
The road sloped downwards now and, leaving Simon, they set off at a steady trot. Another mile and they were challenged by the Nationalist outpost. Here the Duke tackled the N.C.O. and demanded to be taken to his officer immediately.
The man was slow-witted but obviously overawed by the Duke’s imperious bearing. He said he could not leave his post, but sent one of his men with them to another village which lay only ten minutes farther along the road. When they reached it eighty-five minutes, exactly half the time-limit upon which Lucretia’s life hung, had gone.
Once arrived at the cottage where the officer was billeted, De Richleau thrust the man aside and pushed his way in. On being roused from his sleep, the young Fascist captain was first indignant, then astonished, and finally extremely interested in what his midnight visitor had to say.
“The thing’s absurdly easy,” urged the Duke. “We’ve already laid out the Red picket up the road for you. Their main detachment is asleep in the village, and if you bring a couple of ladders with you it will be child’s play to get in over the east wall of the monastery before Mudra’s men are about.
“Think of it, man! The Condesa is related to half the Grandees in Spain. If you can save her from these murderers General Franco will make you a colonel. On my faith as a nobleman, I’ll see to it that he does.”
The captain had already begun to dress himself, but he paused suddenly when reaching for a boot. “What guarantee have I got that this is not a clever plot to lead me into an ambush?”
“God’s Death! Since when have I looked like a Bolshevik?” stormed the Duke. “But if you want proof of my identity here it is.”
He seized the Captain’s jack-knife from a near-by table and slit open the sole of his boot. From it he extracted the two pages of his passport which held his photograph and description, both stamped by the British Foreign Office.
“That’s good enough,” agreed the Captain, “but don’t you see that the moment we open fire at the monastery, the force in the village will tumble out and cut me off?”
“How many men can you muster?” asked the Duke.
“About fifty. The rest of my company’s spread out in detachments along the mountains.”
“Where’s your main body?”
“In Olollda, over an hour’s march away.”
“Have they got any mechanical transport?”
“Yes, a certain number of lorries.”
“Are you on the telephone to them?”
“Yes.”
“Right, then. Except for the first mile the road to the monastery is all downhill. It took us about seventy minutes, not counting delays, to get here. If we trot on the downward slope we ought to do it in fifty on the way back, —we must—but we can’t do it under. If you telephone your battalion headquarters at once, they can get reinforcements out here in ample time to be ready to surprise the village and hold the pass immediately they hear us attack the monastery.”
“That’s sound,” agreed the Captain. He was thinking now of the magnificent opportunity offered him to secure the pass, which would enable the Nationalists to cut off another small chunk of the Malaga sector, rather than of a simple raid to rescue prisoners. His enthusiasm had just been really fired when another snag struck him.
“But what if they telephone for reinforcements from the monastery?” he asked. “I may get cut off there.”
“It’s they who are cut off,” Richard interjected. “Our friend who’s guarding the picket severed their line himself.”
“In that case, I’m your man!” cried the Captain, flinging open the cottage door and shouting an order to rouse his men.
It took twenty minutes to get the men together and make the necessary arrangements over the telephone with battalion headquarters. The rescue party was a motley crowd clad in all sorts of garments, topcoats, leather jerkins, sheepskin jackets, forage caps, berets, breeches, trousers and army uniforms. There were a few regulars among them but most of the men were volunteers who had joined the Nationalist Army from the mountain villages of the district and, once they set off they made good going.
Yet as they passed the Government picket they had only thirty-five minutes to go, and De Richleau’s heart was sinking. The three men still lay trussed and gagged in the lean-to at the roadside. Simon had just taken the last of his aspirins. His head seemed to be alternatively swelling and contracting, but his hour’s rest had considerably revived him and he fell in beside them.
Breaking step, they tiptoed through the village where the platoon which constituted the main guard of the pass was still sleeping, but the crowing of a cock warned them that dawn was near.
Once past the village they began to run. Sweating and stumbling, they raced on down the steep, winding track. As they came round a bend in the road which, in daylight, would have
given a marvellous view to the east over the sea, they saw that the stars were paling in the sky and that, almost imperceptibly, it was lightening to a paler sapphire.
For Simon this new effort undid all the good that his rest had done. His teeth were chattering while he ran as though he had a fit of ague. The poison in him had had no proper antidote for hours, and the fever from it had permeated his whole system. Rex had him by the arm, supporting him as they plunged forward down slope after slope. De Richleau, with Richard beside him, was a hundred yards ahead of the main body, desperately anxious now that the last moments of their time were so relentlessly running out, and terrified that their hope of rescuing Lucretia might fail for the lack of a bare five minutes.
At last the black bulk of the monastery came in sight, silhouetted against the paling sky. Sweating and panting they pressed on; the Captain put on a spurt, the rest of his men surged after him and they caught up the Duke, but the leaders of the rescue party were still a quarter of a mile from the monastery when a bugle-call shattered the morning silence with the reveille.
“Halt!” cried the Captain pulling up. “It’s no good. We’re too late.”
“To hell with that!” snapped the Duke. “We’re too late to surprise them, but not too late to attack.”
Seizing the end of one of the scaling-ladders, he dragged it forward with the men who were carrying it. His friends flung themselves upon it as well, and together they plunged on towards the monastery. For a second the Captain hesitated; then, with a wave to his men, he followed.
The stars had gone, the sky was grey and streaky. On the eastern horizon it was barred with black and orange, but none of them had a thought for the beauties of the coming sunrise. Leaving the road which ran west of the monastery down to the shore they passed inland of its main block on the north and slipped round the corner to its east wall. While the ladders were being put up De Richleau held a hurried, whispered consultation with the Captain, who agreed to let him give the signal for a general attack by firing the first shot, and passed the order on to his men.
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