‘Here I return to the indiscretions of spring!’ he said mournfully. ‘There would be no need but for the fact that he must needs remind me. You accuse me of remaining silent,’ he went on magnificently. ‘You ask me why I did not fly to the alcalde and denounce the monster. You cry shame upon me – but, excellency, remember who I am, what I am – Spain’s greatest builder, a cavalier of Isabel the Catholic. I sank with shame at the thought of the exposure of my early childish error; it was a trifle,’ he added airily, and he really believed it was at the moment.
‘What is all this to me?’ she asked petulantly.
Don Emanuel held up a warning hand.
‘Wait!’ he said impressively, ‘I have yet to finish. This morning, riding, as is my practice, in the cool of the morning – an English thoroughbred, excellency, that cost two thousand pesetas, though I fear I was robbed in the transaction – I saw a cavalcade on the road that leads from the city. Something induced me to conceal my presence in a little wood, some instinct with which I am fortunately endowed. The cavalcade passed. A coach drawn by eight mules, a señor driving, two others riding on either side of the carriage. He who drove the coach was – Señor Don Leon!’
He stepped back to notice the effect of his words upon the woman.
It was singularly disappointing, for she displayed no other emotion than a pardonable weariness.
‘Listen!’ he exclaimed, ‘within that coach were two men! The blinds were drawn, but the wind lifted them a little, and I, Don Emanuel de Silva, saw them – bound hand and foot!’
This time his recital was rewarded. She looked interested. Indeed, if he might judge from her narrowing eyes, and the long breaths she drew, his description had roused her to an extraordinary extent.
‘They were going in the direction of the house in the hill – to kill, as Don Leon had said – though he told me nothing of two men, particularly specifying one only.’
‘These men,’ she said rapidly, ‘how do they look?’
‘Don Leon is a man without a heart,’ he began in his oracular vein; ‘he has the face like a priest – ’
‘The others?’ she said. ‘Come – tell me quickly.’
‘He was on the other side of the coach I could not see, but I do not doubt but that he has the face of a villain. The man nearest me was bearded.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said eagerly.
‘Short and pointed, and he rode using only one hand, the other being thrust in his coat.’
‘So! – wait!’ she flung open the desk and produced pen and paper.
‘You are used to the drawing of plans,’ she said quickly; ‘sketch me the position of this house in the hill, the road I must take, the villages I must pass, and where I may secure horses – I will return.’
She almost thrust him into a chair, then swept out of the room.
To do justice to the honest Don Emanuel, it may be said that, ignorant of the character of the Woman of Gratz, and crediting her as the secret agent of a government, he had approached her in the hope that a man, who alive must always be a source of danger, might be effectively and legally removed from all possibility of contact.
Astounded and flattered at the stir his narrative had made, he was none the less puzzled. But he resolved to ask no questions, an inquisitive mind had been his undoing. When she came back, dressed in a riding-habit, she found him still busy with the plan.
‘But, señora,’ he said in astonishment, ‘you will not ride – it is fifty kilometres and the road is bad – and alone!’
‘Come with me,’ she said a little maliciously, and smiled as he turned pale at the very suggestion.
She studied the plan.
‘You may get horses here ’ – he pointed out the village of Granja de la Flores – ‘but it is doubtful; but, señora, these hill people are bad – suppose you are attacked?’
Her hard laugh was a revelation.
She bent over her desk to scribble a note.
‘If you would deliver this, you will serve me,’ she said. Then, without a word of thanks, she was gone, and through the window he saw her, with Madrid looking on in astonishment, canter across the streaming asphalt of the Puerta del Sol and take the road that led to the hills.
* * *
The difficulties of the road were greater than she had expected. Sometimes it was little more than a track across a boulder-strewn hillside. What advantage she had in the chase lay in keeping to this track, for the carriage must go the longer way round, keeping to the road. She found food at wayside houses, food of the roughest and wine with a resinous bite to it, but it served. Every hour or so the short cuts brought her to the road again, and the marks of the coach wheels on the white dust of the road were recent.
The sun was going down when she reached Granja de la Flores. Its grandiloquent title served to designate a wretched little village in a fold of the hills, a collection of whitewashed hovels, cowering about a big dominating church. Before the dilapidated fonda she pulled up and called for the landlord. Two or three unshaven men, sitting in the shade of a tattered sunblind, rose and swept off their hats mechanically, regarding her with suspicion. The landlord came at his leisure, rolling a cigarette and pausing at the door to cry a string of instructions over his shoulder.
‘Can you supply me with a horse?’ she asked.
The man looked up at her with a familiar grin.
‘Beautiful lady, there is nothing in the world I cannot supply you with at the fonda of Granja – but a horse, no.’
He devoted his attention to the cigarette in making.
She made as though to dismount.
‘Permit me, excellency,’ he said quickly, and helped her down.
Her horse needed rest and food – she must spare a precious hour.
‘Find me a room,’ she said imperiously, and the man grinned again. There were two rooms beside the public room, and all three were unsavoury enough, but she found a dubious-looking sofa, and passed the hour dozing. She had no need to ask how long since the carriage had passed. Evidently her arrival had interrupted a discussion between the idlers before the fonda as to the exact hour the coach had left the village. This argument was now resumed. By their talk she gathered that she was less than two hours behind them, and they must halt as well as she. Her horse did not show signs of distress, the rest and food would help him.
At the end of the hour she rose and called for the horse. At their leisure the servants of the house brought it and she chafed under the delay. Also the landlord was unnecessarily familiar. It is not usual for beautiful young ladies to ride unattended in Spain.
His imprudence reached its culmination when she asked for assistance to mount.
‘Better remain here, bello mio,’ he sighed heavily; ‘the roads are unsafe for such pretty birds as you.’
Then when she would have mounted unassisted, he held her arm gently but firmly, and she took a grip of her steel-ribbed riding-whip, and lashed him twice across the face. He went back shrieking with his hands to his eyes, and she sprang into the saddle. Then, as she turned her horse to the mountain road, he recovered and came at her bellowing with a knife in his hand. Perhaps he did not intend using it; it may be he expected to frighten her. I advance this excuse for the innkeeper’s indiscretion, as the merest speculation. The solution of this little problem does not lie with us.
The Woman of Gratz, galloping along the mountain path, came suddenly face to face with a brown-faced member of the Guardia Civile. He reined back his horse into the undergrowth to allow her to pass and greeted her respectfully.
She checked her horse to exchange the customary civilities.
‘I thought, señora, I heard a shot,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘a man has been shot in the village.’
‘If you will permit me I will leave you,’ he said, and s
he heard the loose stones flying under the hoofs of his galloping charger.
The villagers gathered about the man, who lay full length in the white dust of the road, explained the circumstances, and the philosophical policeman looked grave.
‘A reputation for Granja de la Flores!’ he said with heavy sarcasm; ‘that a foreign lady cannot come to your village without undergoing insult. Is this swine dead?’
‘No,’ said an apologetic bystander.
‘Then take him into the house whilst I write a report,’ said the magnificent custodian of the peace.
He met the innkeeper’s wife at the doorway, arms akimbo, and very voluble. She defamed the Woman of Gratz, beginning with the probability of her irregular morals and ending with forecasting the destination of her immortal soul.
‘And,’ she added to clinch the matter, ‘she has not paid for her room or for the fodder of the horse!’
‘That,’ said the policeman wisely, ‘is a matter for the civil courts.’
Chapter 12
The house in the hill
In the cool of the evening the five men came to the house in the hill. They had left the coach in a little wood that marked the Castilian road. Two breakdowns had delayed them, and they were later than they had thought to be. It was difficult to find the door of the house, for Don Emanuel had carried out his orders to the letter. But Leon, making a rough calculation, fumbled amidst the drooping vines that covered the face of a small bluff and found what he sought.
‘Here,’ he said, and wrenched open the heavy door.
Into the dark interior the prisoners were pushed, and the door closed upon them.
The man called Zaragoza sniffed the newly planed pinewood and felt with his fingers the thickness of the lining of his strange prison.
Outside his captors lit a fire, and, from a ‘thermos’ bottle, Manfred poured out boiling hot coffee. He looked at his watch; it was seven o’clock.
‘In two hours,’ he said; ‘in the meantime, let us prepare for our visitors.’
Leon rose and went down the hill to the little wood. He came back shortly with what looked like a bundle of sticks. These he carefully deposited beyond the reach of the fire.
They sat talking in low tones until a few minutes before eight, then Poiccart, seeking a soft piece of ground, bored, with a thick steel rod, a hole two feet deep. Into this he inserted one of the sticks, twisting it to make sure that it had full play.
He stood waiting, whilst Manfred sat, watch in hand, by the fire; then he nodded, and Poiccart stooped and applied a light.
With a roar like the roar of a mill-race the rocket swept up into the night. Higher and higher it soared, then slowly it described a curve and burst into a great mass of white stars, so brilliant that the plain beneath was for a few seconds illuminated, as with the light of a bright moon.
The people of the little village of Anmincio, seven miles away, saw it and wondered, crossing themselves reverently at the celestial token. Other people saw it also.
Von Dunop, on his fat mule, sweating in the darkness; Elbrecht, the German anarchist, jolting over the rough road in his one-horsed cart; Saromides, the Greek, riding down from the north, and Menshikoff, riding with the Judge of the First Court of Madrid. The Woman of Gratz saw it also, for she was nearest the hill, and tightened her rein.
Manfred heard the clatter of hoofs coming up the path, and smiled. She came into the circle of lights, and Gonsalez went toward her.
‘Will you dismount?’ he asked, and it seemed to her that her coming had been expected. She declined his help with a gesture and sprang lightly to the ground. The pistol she had used with effect in the village of Granja de la Flores was in her gloved hand; but they gave no sign that they had seen it.
‘Will you sit down?’ asked Gonsalez politely.
‘I prefer to stand,’ she said. It seemed ridiculous that she could think of no opening for her attack. That her presence had been anticipated seemed monstrously unfair somehow. Manfred, who had not spoken, read her thoughts.
‘We expected you,’ he said, speaking across the fire, ‘but not quite so soon – and there are others.’
‘I would rather think that you have invented your expectation on the spur of the moment,’ she replied, and let the pistol swing pendulum fashion from her finger.
‘And there are others,’ he repeated coolly, ‘else why did we fire the rocket save to guide our guests?’
He stirred the fire with his foot, and sent a shower of sparks flying. He looked reflectively into the red heart of it, and steadfastly refused to see the weapon in her hand.
‘It was Leon who caused a message to be sent to the builder Don Emanuel,’ he went on. ‘The story he told you was carefully prepared for him. The bait was effective, and you are here.’
‘Later – ’ she began fiercely.
‘Later will come your friends,’ he finished complacently; ‘that also I know. They will find – er – obstacles.’
‘So it was a trap?’ she breathed.
‘An open trap,’ he corrected. ‘I shall not prevent your going – when we have finished with your mercenaries.’
‘You will release them also,’ she said steadily, and gathered the black blunt pistol in her hand so that it covered him. If he saw the action, he made no sign, nor did either of the men who were with him.
‘Wait awhile,’ he continued, still looking into the fire as though there the centre of interest lay. ‘In a few minutes Von Dunop will be here, and Elbrecht – we have brought him a long journey from Hamburg – and Saromides, the Greek. He represents the Red Hundred effectively in the City of the Hills, does he not?’
From the foot of the hill came a wheezing cough, and Manfred seemed pleased.
Then with groans and curses and the thud of a falling stick, Von Dunop rode fearfully to the fireside.
First he saw the Woman of Gratz standing idly with her back to a young sapling, and he gave a satisfied grunt.
‘Ach, so it is all well,’ he said, and his obvious terror evaporated rapidly. ‘I had feared that it was a trap, but the telegram gave the password, and I could not disobey.’
He saw Manfred and saluted him.
‘I do not know these comrades,’ he said, ponderously affable, and looked inquiringly at the woman.
He was not prepared for the introduction.
‘These are they who call themselves the Four Just Men,’ she said, and Von Dunop reeled back like a man stricken with vertigo.
‘Hey!’ he said loudly and put his hand to his hip.
Manfred did not move, nor the other men.
‘A trap!’ bellowed Von Dunop, with a great display of firearms.
‘Yes,’ Manfred permitted himself with sarcasm, ‘a splendid trap’; he looked at their weapons meaningly.
One by one, guided by the fire, came the others, the Greek and the German, and, coming, they stayed, weapon in hand, muttering threats, puzzled, the lives of the three in their hands, yet withal a terror that lay on them like a weight, crushing their initiative. They took council in whispers, but the Woman of Gratz said neither yea nor nay to the hurried proposals they put before her. Then came the sound of two men upon the path, and the three men bent their heads, listening, and each had his hand to his face. When they raised their hands, the Woman of Gratz saw that they were masked. She took a step forward.
‘This comedy ends,’ she said sternly. ‘Have you brought my friends here, from distant parts of Europe, to see a play? Are you mad that you think we can be held with words?’ She pointed at Manfred. A splendidly tragic figure she made in her sombre close-fitting habit. The hand that gathered her dress held the pistol, and her finger was curled about the trigger.
‘You!’ she said, raising her voice, ‘you! to add the humiliation of this farce to the slight you have already put upon
me! Did you think the Red Hundred was so impotent, its powers so shattered, that you could call its leaders together to laugh at their weakness?’
So far she got when the men who were treading the path came into the light.
One of these, like the men at the fire, was masked and cloaked; the other was a man advanced in years, plainly dressed, but authority written in every line of his face.
He strode forward, bowing slightly to the woman and to the masked men by the fire.
Then something attracted the attention of the Woman of Gratz, and she involuntarily clutched Von Dunop’s arm.
On the hills around and above, in the distant valley below, little fires were twinkling at regular intervals and through the trees that fringed the path she caught the glint of steel. Manfred saw also.
‘Since we have promised you freedom – when we have finished – and since you have nothing to gain by resistance, for the hills above and the road below are held by the Pavia Hussars, you will listen and wait,’ he said, and the old man came forward to the light of the fire.
They were puzzled and alarmed, these shining lights of the Red Hundred. To their strained hearing came the far-away jingle of steel, and once a trumpet-call woke the echoes of the hills.
Except for the Woman of Gratz, I am willing to believe, that the men who condemned their fellows to cruel and merciless deaths, and that without compunction, had a wholesome regard for their own lives, upon which they placed a value out of all proportion to their real worth.
‘I must see the prisoners,’ said the old man quietly, and Leon led them, blinking and frowning, into the light. The face of him who saw the Woman of Gratz first lit with hope, but the other, staring straight ahead at the grey-haired figure by the fire, shivered and dropped his eyes.
Then the old man called their names and they answered respectfully. Then he took a scroll from the hand of his masked companion, and read, with a curious old-world dignity, a document that began with a recital of the reader’s style.
‘Don Alberto de Mandeges y Carrilla y Ramundo, officer of the Order of Charles the Third . . . ’ – there were a string of subsidiary dignitaries to be read – ‘ . . . a judge of the High Court, learned in the law . . . by these presents and in the name of His Most Catholic Highness, the Prince of the Escorial, confirm the sentence passed upon . . . ’ – he read the names and aliases of each prisoner – ‘ . . . therefore it is right and proper in the manner arranged that these men should die . . . ’
The Complete Four Just Men Page 25
