The Complete Four Just Men Page 24

  ‘Now,’ she whispered huskily, ‘you may kill me.’

  He shook his head, and she saw the pain in his eyes.

  ‘No,’ he said shortly, and released her.

  He stooped and picked up the dagger, looked at it curiously, and replaced it on the bureau.

  Then he turned to her again.

  ‘There is to be no truce?’ he asked.

  She made no reply.

  ‘So be it,’ he said, and turned to go.

  He took two steps and reeled a little, steadying himself with his hand on the wall.

  She was at his side in a moment, this extraordinary Woman of Gratz.

  ‘You are hurt,’ she cried, in a frenzy of alarm, and held his arm. ‘Let me – !’

  Manfred looked down at her from his height, and over his face came a strange shadow.

  ‘Is there a truce?’ he asked again. She drew back sharply, the fire rekindled in her eyes.

  ‘Never!’ she cried and stamped her foot.

  Manfred bowed and left the room, walking slowly.

  * * *

  ‘Not a very serious wound,’ said Gonsalez critically. ‘The Woman of Gratz, of course – what did you do?’

  ‘I left her unrepentant,’ said Manfred with a grim smile.

  Which may or may not have been true – for who shall say what induced the tears that the Woman of Gratz shed that night?

  * * *

  Carlos of the Escorial had conducted his courtship in that hurricane manner that was peculiarly his. With every chancellory of Europe making agitated search for precedent, with the Vatican ominously antagonistic, with the Grand Duchess of Sofia moving heaven and earth in a disinterested endeavour to break off the engagement – her daughter, the Princess Marie Teresa, will be thirty in March – the path of true love was made anything but smooth. But the young Prince held on his way untroubled by the succession of autographed letters that came to hand by special envoys. Father Mathias, his confessor, unwisely overstepped the bounds of discretion in lending gratuitous counsel, and was promptly dismissed. He came back in triumph with the support of Supreme Authority and was refused admittance. Then came a mission from Rome headed by a Prince of the Church, and Carlos listened courteously, and replied in brief.

  ‘If you worry me I will turn Protestant.’

  Because he was quite capable of carrying out this outrageous plan, they left him in peace. Then unexpected support came for him, from Central Europe, and most powerful of all, from the King of the Northern Islands. Such a combination was too tremendous for the quibblers, and they subsided, the Grand Duchess of Sofia talking to the last.

  Of the high-born lady upon whom his choice fell, there is no need to tell here. That she was, and is, very beautiful, with wondrous blue eyes and hair of spun gold, all the world knows. That the young prince was head over heels in love with her goes without saying; for the rest, her life, her ancestral homes and illustrious progenitors, scenes of her early childhood, her dresses and such-like, I refer you to the picture postcards that sold by the million on the day of her marriage.

  At three o’clock in the morning hawkers were crying their wares – pictures and favours, and bannerettes of the Royal colours. The streets were thronged when the first white rays of the sun flooded the Puerta del Sol – thronged with officers of every service, resplendent in gala dress, with their ladies, and peasantry from the outlying districts, their coats slung over their shoulders and their flat round caps a-tilt. The cafés were crowded, and as the sun rose higher, with brazen bugles waking the echoes, regiment after regiment passed to its station.

  Almost barbaric was the splendour of the scene; such a feast of colour as Spain alone of the nations can spread for the eye grown weary of northern greys and drabs. The nobility vied one with the other to do honour to the Prince. From every balcony full lengths of priceless tapestry, from every window hung festoons of flowers, and the palaces of the nobility were all but hidden by a prodigality of decorations. As the morning wore on the heat became almost oppressive.

  The two men who occupied the artist’s room in the Calle Mayor felt it the more since it was necessary for their work to keep door and windows closed.

  An open bottle of wine and a little fruit on the table, with a big bunch of flowers, lent them the appearance of holiday-makers, but the two polished steel cylinders and the loaded Browning pistols that stood amidst the flowers and fruit and wine gave a more sinister interpretation to their presence.

  Now they lay stretched in deck chairs waiting.

  They had heard the blare of music that signified the passing of the Royal party on the way to the church, and half an hour had slipped past.

  One of them roused himself to reach for a glass.

  ‘The way out – you are sure it is clear?’ he asked.

  The other yawned.

  ‘There are three ways,’ he said lazily. ‘I have told you a dozen times, Manuel – are you nervous?’

  The man grinned. He felt the broad belt about his waist, where, piece by piece, the gold had been carefully stored.

  ‘It will create a sensation,’ he said complacently.

  ‘The more excitement the greater chance of escape,’ said the first speaker, and lit a cigarette.

  Manuel opened the window and looked down into the narrow street, then he came back into the room.

  ‘The balconies below are crowded,’ he reported, ‘and the people are packed like oranges in a box in the street below – look!’

  The other rose grumbling, and the two men stepped on to the balcony; then they turned back to the apartment . . .

  A change had been effected in their few minutes of absence. Manuel, looking carelessly at the table, missed the pistols, and he observed, too, that the steel cylinders had been moved to the farther end of the table. He had not time to notice anything else.

  Somebody’s arm went round his neck – the thing was done in a flash, he was garrotted and helpless. He was luckier than his companion, because the practical Poiccart used a life-preserver.

  The pressure on Manuel’s throat relaxed, but with returning consciousness he realized the discomfort of his position. His hands were strapped, there was a stick in his mouth, and his legs were bound tightly to the chair. There was a strange roaring in his ears as he recovered consciousness, and after a little while he identified the noise with the people in the street. The Royal procession was passing, and he was sitting there helpless. The money had been paid and the work had not been accomplished. He looked round.

  His friend was groaning noisily in much the same plight as himself.

  The three men who had captured him were in consultation. He could not understand what they said, for they were speaking English.

  ‘We can get them out of here – now,’ said Manfred. He had his arm in a sling and looked tired.

  ‘Not like this?’ said Poiccart, and he pointed to the bonds.

  ‘Then Leon must make them sleep – we can reach the yard below and the carriage,’ said Manfred. ‘When the streets are cleared we can take them away – but out of this room at once. Listen!’

  The cheers in the street below had reached a frenzy.

  ‘The Prince,’ said Manfred . . . ‘now . . . ’

  In the meantime the Woman of Gratz sat at the window of her room in the Hôtel de la Paix tearing her lace handkerchief into little shreds and listening for the explosion that did not come.

  Chapter 11

  The judgment

  It was a commonplace table at which the three men sat, and the room, so far as Manuel could see in the light the smoky lamp gave, was ordinary enough. Perhaps a disused schoolroom, for it looked as if maps had been taken from the wall, and recently.

  He was fettered with an unfamiliar handcuff; it looked clumsy enough, he thought, but after a furtive
attempt to take advantage of its imperfections, he came to hold it in respect. He had observed earlier that the leader of these men had been wounded, and that he carried his arm stiffly; this leader did most of the talking.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘I refuse to answer.’

  ‘Is it not Manuel Zaragoza?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Are you an anarchist?’

  ‘I am what it pays me to be.’

  ‘And you,’ to the second man, ‘is your name Lomondo?’

  ‘I do not answer,’ snarled the other and spat on the floor.

  ‘You are from Barcelona, both of you, and you are notorious characters,’ Manfred went on, then turned to Gonsalez.

  ‘What is known of Zaragoza?’

  All that Leon recited as to these men was bad enough. It was a sordid record of assassination and outrage, of terrorized judges, of petitions for reprieve, and so on, in a cycle.’

  ‘We have taken from you both five thousand francs in gold – who paid you this?’

  No reply.

  ‘Was this your only interest in the assassination you contemplated?’

  ‘What other?’ sneered the second man. ‘Do I look the sort of fool who would kill profitlessly? What have you done with that money?’ he demanded suddenly. ‘Restore it and hand us to the judges.’

  ‘In good time,’ said Manfred calmly, ‘the money shall come back to you – and we are your judges.’

  Then the door behind the table opened and a fourth man came in. He was masked and bis form was hidden by a long Spanish cloak. The three men made no sign as he took his seat at the table.

  ‘Did the Woman of Gratz pay you?’ asked Manfred again.

  ‘That I will tell the judge,’ said the dogged prisoner.

  It was the masked man who asked the next question.

  ‘What have you against the Prince of the Escorial that you should seek his life?’ he asked quietly.

  The man shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I have no quarrel with the pig I kill for dinner,’ he said roughly; ‘prince or priest or water-seller, it is all one to me.’

  ‘Years ago,’ said the mask in his clear tone, ‘you were tried.’

  ‘Many times,’ said the man with cheerful insolence.

  ‘But this also was for murder – a bomb thrown at a religious procession.’

  The man seemed amused.

  ‘That Prince whose life you sought today pardoned you; he was a child then, but had power of life and death in your province.’

  ‘I gave evidence,’ said the man resentfully.

  ‘And I,’ said the other.

  ‘You betrayed your employers – yes. But that was not sufficient to save your neck from the iron collar. It was that boy’s mistaken belief that you were men maddened by persecution – was not that your defence? – that gave you your life.’

  The more taciturn of the two shuffled his fettered feet impatiently.

  ‘Have done with this talk,’ he growled; ‘hand us to the judge, if you will – restore the money you took from us, señor, we shall have need of that.’

  ‘In good time,’ said Manfred again; then to him who called himself Emanuel he said, ‘You have some experience with bombs?’

  ‘A little,’ smiled the man.

  ‘With chemistry generally?’

  ‘I have dabbled,’ with a deprecating shrug.

  ‘A man, too, of some education.’ Gonsalez interjected this.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said the prisoner coolly.

  ‘My question,’ said Manfred, picking his words carefully, ‘had some significance. I have said you shall have your gold again. Since it has left your possession it has undergone a slight change. My friend here is a chemist also.’ He lifted from the table very carefully a glass phial half filled with a green powder.

  ‘You see this?’ he asked, and the man nodded pleasantly, as though all this was being done for his express amusement.

  ‘Have you ever seen gold in this form?’ asked Manfred, and the prisoner’s brows contracted thoughtfully.

  ‘No,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Yet,’ Manfred went on, ‘if you obtain the protoxide, which is known by the symbol AuO3, and treat that with – ’

  ‘Caustic ammonia,’ anticipated the other, a little pale.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Manfred; ‘in that form we propose returning to yourself and to your friend the gold you accepted to wilfully slay in cold blood two young people against whom you had no grievance.’

  ‘I demand justice,’ cried the man Lomondo, ‘trial by judge, and judgment according to evidence.’

  ‘Justice you shall have,’ said the masked man coldly. ‘What man will deny me the right to judge you, or question the evidence on which you stand convicted? How say you?’ He turned abruptly to the three who sat at the board.

  Manfred nodded.

  ‘It would be better,’ he said quietly.

  The masked man rose and walked to where the two men sat.

  ‘Because you are what you are,’ he said, ‘it is fitting that you should die. Therefore I declare you outside the law and the protection of the law. The death you planned for others shall be yours, the brutal strength of the weapon you employ shall be turned upon you. The death that came swift from your hand to the helpless and the innocent shall come as surely to you.’

  The face of Manuel was grey and his lips quivered.

  ‘Señor, for God’s sake, for the Blessed Virgin’s sake, not that way!’ he whimpered. ‘Give me a chance, let me appeal to His Highness; he will be merciful.’

  His judge towered above him, and for a moment slipped the mask from his face.

  The man looked; then his eyes opened wide in terror, glared back at the three men seated at the table, and he fell whimpering to the floor. As for the man Lomondo, he looked down contemptuously at the grovelling figure and spat again. But he was not so well educated as Emanuel Zaragoza, and his imaginative faculties were more restricted.

  * * *

  The party that rode out in the early morning of the next day, and passed beyond the city’s bounds, taking the road to the mountains, had to regulate its pace according to the speed of the lumbering coach.

  But they had some eight hours’ start of the woman who followed alone on the big lathering bay; she came swiftly in their wake. A motor-car might have taken her best part of the road, and an hour’s search would have secured her an escort strong enough to deal with all possible contingencies. But she could not spare that hour. A spy had brought to her room one who had much to say – yet with many reservations. You can picture her walking this dingy apartment of hers, baffled, aglow with smouldering rage, a prey to a thousand conflicting doubts, bewildered by her helplessness – she with such potentialities at her command.

  Complete this picture with the coming of the stout man, half pompous, half fearful, terror of the consequences of his act, fear for the dignity slipping so quickly away, awe for the beautiful creature before him, and superimposed upon the fabric of these emotions, the furbishing up of a tarnished manner which in the year ’72 had been so effective with the women of Andalusia.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she interrupted impatiently. ‘You built a house in the hills; but what is this to me?’

  ‘Excellency,’ said the flowery Don Emanuel, employing his more ornate diction, ‘life is given to us for – ’

  ‘If you have anything to tell me, señor, I beg you to proceed.’

  ‘Often it happens,’ said the little man with dignity, ‘that in the summer of life we regret the indiscretions of spring. Sometimes an unworthy wretch, knowing of these follies, will remind us, taunt us, upbraid us – such a man was this Don Leon Gonsalez – a man with pitiless prying eyes.’

  She
saw that she must let him tell his story his own way; that he had, for his vanity’s sake, to gloss over a few of his own sins before he came to the object of his visit. She did not imagine that he had much to say that would interest her, but in a way he was a distraction, and her agent would not have sent him if the story was entirely without personal interest to her.

  ‘Understanding, excellent señorita, that, by my discretion, my wealth of experience, by the patronage of the noble and discriminating aristocracy – induced by my very apparent qualities – I have raised myself so that today I am accounted rich, a member of the Ayuntimiento, a cavalier of Isabel the Catholic, and the Cortes before me: understanding all this, judge my sorrow, my despair, when there comes this man, this Señor Don Leon – may the devil eat salt with him this night, Amen! – to remind me of – a wild youth.’

  His despair exaggerated, energetic, was graphically illustrated.

  ‘ “Build me a house,” says he, “that shall be a hole in the solid hill, with such a thickness of plank, and such a foundation. With a hook there and an iron-cased door here. Let it be built by workmen who will not recognise the spot again, who will not talk or lead neighbours to see and speculate upon the purpose of this building.” ’

  He paused and mopped his brow.

  ‘Later I came with the house in my hand! It was finished; to the time prompt; every instruction noted and heeded! That is my way. Thus have I established myself in the hearts of my fellow-citizens: because of such qualities as these I secured the building of the Credit España on a tender ten thousand pesetas higher than any other; thus I secured also – ’

  She arrested the digression with a gesture.

  ‘The Señor Don Leon – if that is indeed his name – paid me. In the whole history of this devilish business that one fact alone stands to his credit. Then he asked: “Are you discreet?”

  ‘ “As death!” said I. “Then,” said he, “I am building this house to kill a man,” just that and no more!’

  Emanuel paused dramatically. Since his interpretation of the interview left something to the imagination, he hastened to fill it in.