Vendetta in Spain

De Quesnoy was well aware that there were plenty of dock-rats in Barcelona who, with no questions asked, would prove ready enough to play a similar part for a few hundred pesetas. Whether these people of Ferrer's were militant anarchists or only abettors, unless he could convince them that Gerault was mistaken, he thought it more than probable that they would decide to arrange matters so that next morning his corpse would be found floating in the harbour. His heart was beating quickly now but he realized that his best hope lay in maintaining a calm appearance. He said more quietly:

'Really, this is fantastic. All of you here have known me for quite a while. Have you ever heard me say anything which might lead you to suppose that I am this French Count of whom Monsieur Gerault speaks?'

'If you are, you would not be such a fool as to do so,' said Benigno in a non-committal voice.

'But I am not a Frenchman, and I have never been to France,' lied the Count.

'Yet I am told you speak French like a native, although you say you are a Russian,' Gerault put in. 'Colonel de Quesnoy also spoke French fluently, while pretending to be a Russian refugee.'

'Perhaps, but what of it? There are thousands of Russians who have fled from Tzarist persecution and are now scattered over western Europe. French is the second language of all educated Russians, and unless they spoke it fairly well few people outside Russia would understand them.'

'Yes, yes; but that is only a minor point. I recognize you. Those eyes of yours are unmistakable. Your face and figure too all tally with those of the man who called himself Petrovitch. If we were in Paris I could easily turn up a photograph . . .'

'This is absurd,' the Count broke in. 'A mere resemblance. How can you possibly be certain when it is close on two years since you saw this man Petrovitch?'

The words were no sooner out of de Quesnoy's mouth than he knew that he had blundered. Drawing back his lips in a snarl Gerault spat at him, 'So you are aware how long ago it is since Petrovitch - or to give him his real name, the Comte de Quesnoy -escaped from France? Yet when I spoke of him a minute ago you asserted that you had no idea what I was talking about.'

'That's true!' exclaimed Sanchez, his dark eyes narrowing still further.

'He is a spy all right,' Dolores cried with sudden venom. 'I suspected that he might not be quite what he seemed when he took me out to dinner and tried to pump me. This makes it certain.'

Zapatro spoke from behind de Quesnoy's left shoulder. 'If he is, although we have been cautious at times when he has been with us, he could have picked up quite a lot from our conversation; so we must look on him as dangerous.'

In an effort to restore the situation the Count rounded on him and said sharply, 'All this is no more than speculation, and most unjust to me. The very first day I came to this house, on entering the laboratory I found Sanchez and Benigno busy putting together an infernal machine. If I had come here as a spy that would have been evidence enough for me to have had the place raided and them arrested. But I did nothing of the kind. Instead I suggested a method by which they could make the bomb more efficient.'

'That is certainly the truth,' Benigno agreed. 'But I think I may be able to provide an indisputable answer to this riddle. For years past Father has taken the best illustrated papers of France, England and Germany; and he keeps the back numbers up in his study. I feel sure I remember reading an article about the Vendome conspiracy and it is bound to have had photographs of the principal participants.' Turning to Gerault, he added, 'Tell me the dates to look for; then I'll go upstairs and see if I can find the article.'

'He was last hunted by the police in Paris in November, 1904,' replied the Frenchman quickly. 'But the conspiracy was unmasked in December, 1903. Round about either time you should find articles about him.'

As Benigno hurried from the room, slamming the door behind him, de Quesnoy found himself faced with a dilemma that might spell life or death for him. As Petrovitch, he had worn a beard and shaved off the upper points of his 'devil's' eyebrows. But no photographs had ever been taken of him like that. All those used by the Press had been of him as a Chief Instructor at St. Cyr and, except that he had then had a cavalry moustache, they differed very little from his appearance as it was at present. Therefore if Benigno found an illustrated article it would prove conclusive evidence against him.

But Benigno might fail to find any proof of his identity. If so, de Quesnoy wondered, what then? It would be his word against Gerault's. In that case they could hardly do otherwise than let him go. But either way this meant an end to 'Nicolai Chirikov's' activities in Barcelona. It was certain that having come under such grave suspicion Ferrer and Co. would not trust him an inch further. They would, too, send out a warning about him to all their associates. To clinch matters Gerault would, no doubt, go hurrying off to the City Library and there turn up illustrated articles about the

Vendome conspiracy to prove himself right. After, or even before, that happened, the Count now realized, the sooner he was out of Barcelona the better for his health.

With a jerk his mind came back to the present, and the disturbing knowledge that he had first to get out of that room alive.

As had been his custom since arriving in Barcelona he had on him a small pearl-handled revolver. He carried it thrust into his trouser top just above his left hip. It was scarcely more than a toy affair, for had he carried a larger weapon the bulge under his coat would have been noticeable; but its bullets were big enough to kill a man if fired at close range.

All the same, he felt distinctly dubious about the prospects of his suddenly whipping out such a miniature firearm and with it terrifying the group about him into allowing him to walk unmolested out of the house. Even with Benigno absent he would still be up against five men and Dolores; and, unless he made use of the weapon immediately, three of the men were near enough to snatch it from him.

Swiftly he decided that he had only one chance of getting clear away. That was to shoot Gerault, who was standing right in front of him. And not merely to wound him in the arm or leg, but shoot him in the face so that he at once collapsed, then spring over his body to the door while the others were still too paralysed by shock to intervene.

Yet such a move could have most disastrous consequences. At the best of times it was difficult to take accurate aim with a very small revolver, and in this case there would be no time to take proper aim at all. The bullet might pierce one of Gerault's eyes and enter his brain, or pass through his mouth and sever his spinal cord.

The Count had killed too many North African tribesmen, fighting gallantly for what they believed to be their rights, to feel any qualms about taking life; and since Gerault had evidently been chosen by Ferrer as a master at the Escuela Moderna because he was an anarchist, de Quesnoy would have felt no compunction at all about shooting him down as the price of his own liberty. But if he did, how long would he keep that liberty?

Even if it could be proved that Gerault had taken part in militant anarchist activities, which was doubtful, to have killed him in such circumstances would, under the criminal law of Spain, be murder just the same. The Ferrer brothers would start a hue and cry and at once inform the police. Once that happened, de Quesnoy knew the odds were that he would be arrested before morning. Had he had an official status he might have got away with it on a plea of self-defence; but he had not, and honour demanded that he should not disclose that Don Alfonso had sent him on this mission while deliberately concealing it from his own police.

Gerault's death would be regarded as the result of a private quarrel between two of Ferrer's associates, and the Government authorities in Barcelona would welcome the opportunity of ridding themselves of another of his group; so it was certain that they would demand the death penalty for Nicolai Chirikov. Don Alfonso would, of course, hear of the affair and it would cause him the gravest possible embarrassment. To save the Count's life he might privately disclose to his Minister of Justice that de Quesnoy had been acting for him, but it was too much to expect that he would court the resentment of his whole police force by admitting publicly that he had gone behind their backs. So de Quesnoy would still have to stand his trial for murder, and the best he could hope for was a backstairs instruction to the judge that he should be let off with a term of imprisonment.

These thoughts rushed pell-mell through the Count's brain, and decided him that the long-term risks of shooting his way out considerably outweighed his present danger. There was still a chance that Benigno might fail to find an article with his photograph, and that with the case against him unproven he might be allowed to go.

Even supposing he was definitely identified, that might not mean the worst. That they would set upon and kill him themselves seemed unlikely, or that they would send for some thug to play the part of executioner there and then. It was more probable that he would escape for the moment with a beating-up and then being thrown out.

Later that night, no doubt, they would offer the leader of some criminal gang a handsome sum to make away with him. Gerault would certainly urge them to do that. But given even an hour's grace he should be able to save himself. He had nothing at his lodgings that he valued, so he need not risk returning to it. Providing that he was not seriously injured in the beating they might give him before they let him go, he could go to earth for the night in one of the suburbs of the city, or be in a train well away from it long before any gang could get on his track.

Slightly easier in his mind owing to these latest speculations, but still highly apprehensive, he waited anxiously for Benigno's return. He had been gone no more than five minutes, yet it seemed far longer; and the others, as keyed up as the Count, were openly showing their impatience. None of them spoke, yet the silence was not complete. Even as they listened with tense expectancy to catch Benigno's footfalls as he clattered down the back stairs, one or other of them made some restless movement, easing their position or giving a little nervous cough.

At last the sound of the expected footfalls reached them. Next moment Benigno threw open the door. Two swift paces brought him into the room. In his hand he held a glossy magazine. Waving it he exclaimed excitedly:

'It's him! It's him without a doubt!'

Dolores ran forward crying 'Let me see' and almost snatched the magazine from him. Jovellenos followed her. Sanchez closed in on Benigno from the other side. Zapatro, also anxious to get a look, brushed past the Count, and even Gerault turned his head in Benigno's direction.

It was de Quesnoy's opportunity. They were all crowded round Benigno with, for the moment, one thought only in their minds - to see what this notorious conspirator, monarchist and spy looked like in the photograph. The group were between the Count and the door, but that could not be helped. Between it and the wall there were a few feet of space and by swerving round them in a violent dash he might get through the door before they realized that he was making a dash for it. Whether he would be able to reach the front door, get it open and leap out into the street before they were upon him lay in the lap of the gods. Such a chance to get clean away was most unlikely to occur again. He took it.

In one bound he reached Jovellenos, between whose back and the wall he meant to pass. But as he landed he felt a violent tug upon his armpits and shoulders. It jerked him upright and almost pulled him over backwards. At the same moment there came a tearing sound. He had forgotten that Herr Schmidt was still standing behind him. The German had seen him tense his muscles for his spring and, as he made it, grabbed the skirt of his jacket with both hands.

Instantly the group about Benigno fell apart and turned upon the escaping imposter. Schmidt was left holding a long strip of the Count's cheap cotton jacket that had torn away, but the pull on it had halted him in his tracks. As Jovellenos swung round and tried to grab him he struck the tall maths master under the chin and sent him reeling back against Dolores. But Zapatro, a middle-aged but bull-like little man, threw himself forward. De Quesnoy sidestepped the anarchist's rush to find himself facing Gerault. With savage pleasure he smashed his fist into the Frenchman's face. The blow broke his nose, it spurted blood, and with a wail of agony he flopped to his knees.

His collapse brought down Benigno too, as in the act of springing into the fray Gerault's falling body knocked him off balance. For a moment their forms, writhing on the floor, left a clear space in front of the Count. He used it to pull out his little revolver. As Zapatro charged him again he fired. The bullet hit the architect in the left shoulder. Halting, he gave a cry and clapped his right hand to the wounded place.

De Quesnoy swivelled round and aimed again, this time at Sanchez, who at the moment the fight started had jumped sideways to block the doorway. Feet spread wide apart, hands on hips, head thrust forward, he stood there now a bulky human barrier, seemingly impassable. Yet a shot could move him.

It was never fired. Flinging herself forward Dolores grasped de Quesnoy's arm with both her hands. Throwing her whole weight upon it, she bore it down. In vain he strove to shake her off. Next moment Schmidt had collared him round the neck and dragged him backwards. Stooping his head he bit into the German's wrist. With a yelp and an oath Schmidt let go.

Dolores had transferred her hold to the Count's hand and was clawing at it in an attempt to get the revolver from him. Suddenly it went off. She screamed; the bullet had lodged in the calf of her right leg. Momentarily free once more, de Quesnoy again jerked up the little weapon and turned towards the door. Sanchez still stood framed in it, and now he had a long thin knife in his hand. As the Count swung round to face him he threw it.

De Quesnoy had never been nearer death. Thrown with practised skill the glittering blade should have pierced his throat just below his Adam's apple. But at the very instant it was thrown Schmidt struck him a violent blow on the back of the head with a thick, round, eighteen-inch-long ebony ruler. His head was knocked forward and slightly sideways. The knife streaked over his shoulder, nicked the German's left ear and sped on to bury its point in a wooden cupboard.

With stars and circles flashing in blackness before his eyes de Quesnoy reeled forward. Dropping his revolver, he crashed into Zapatro. They fell to the floor together. Although the small bullet had penetrated the architect's shoulder it had done him no serious injury. Next moment he had both his hands round the Count's throat. De Quesnoy was half stunned but instinctively brought up his right knee. Zapatro gave a gasp as it caught him in the stomach. He released his grasp; but now the Count was down, Schmidt, Jovellenos and Benigno all flung themselves upon him. In vain he kicked and twisted, they grabbed his arms, forced him over on his face and pulled them behind him. Jovellenos quickly took off a stringy black tie he was wearing and with it they tied his wrists.

Schmidt then hauled him to his feet and Zapatro struck him in the face. He staggered back, tottered, and collapsed with a crash into one of the hardwood elbow-chairs.

Breathless, exhausted, aching from a dozen bruises and still bemused from the blow on the head, for the next few minutes he was only vaguely conscious of what was going on around him. Gerault crouched moaning on the sofa, his smashed face buried in his hands, blood trickling through his fingers. Dolores had pulled down her stocking and with a stream of muttered swear-words was examining the tiny wound in the calf of her leg. The others stood in a semicircle glowering down at the Count while they strove to get their breath back. As their panting eased it was Jovellenos who asked:

'What shall we do with him?'

'Put an end to him, of course,' Zapatro replied hoarsely. 'He has invited it. Not only is he dangerous to our organization; the swine tried to kill me.'

'You're right,' Sanchez supported him. 'He would have killed me too had not Dolores seized his arm.'

For a moment she stopped her cursing to put in, 'The bullets are only pellets. With that little pea-shooter he could not have killed anyone, except by a freak shot. But that's not the point. He is a monarchist spy and may have ferreted out all sorts of things about us. We have no alternative but to eliminate him.'

Sanchez had pulled his long knife from the cupboard. Giving it a flourish he cried, 'Dios! That is obvious. Why do we wait? Bring him along the passage, some of you, and hold his head over the basin. I'll do the rest.'

De Quesnoy's wits were gradually coming back. Dully it impinged on his mind that Sanchez meant to have him dragged to the lavatory and there cut his throat. A tremor of horror ran through him as he had a vivid mental picture of himself with his head in the cracked, dirty basin and his blood gurgling down the waste. With an effort he struggled into a more upright position, but Zapatro gave him a kick on the shin and snarled at him to stay still.

So far Benigno had taken no part in these swift exchanges; now he spoke in his precise voice. 'All that Dolores said is true, but we cannot deal with him out of hand like this.'

'Why not?' asked Sanchez truculently.

'Because all decisions in matters concerning a death sentence are always taken by our father.'

'Since he is not here we must act for him.'

'Benigno is right,' said Jovellenos. 'We ought to wait until Senor Ferrer returns.'

'But he will not be back until tomorrow,' Zapatro objected. 'The committee that is planning the attempt on Quiroga will be sitting till the small hours, and he told me that he meant to spend the rest of the night with Pedro Conesa.'

Dolores tittered. 'You mean with Conesa's daughter, Teresa? She's a hot little piece if ever there was one, and our vert galant never misses the chance of a tumble with her whenever he has to go out to the mill.'

'Anyway, he will not be back before first school is due to start; so we must deal with this man'ourselves,' Zapatro gestured towards the Count. 'We dare not let him go, even temporarily; and there is nowhere here where we could hold him prisoner without risk that he would either escape or be found by one of the students.'

'I am averse to taking any irrevocable step until it has received Senor Ferrer's approval,' Jovellenos declared. 'Why should we not take our prisoner up to the private apartment? We could get the Senora Ferrer to turn out a cupboard and lock him into it. She could keep an eye on him and no one would discover him there.'

'No one except the police!' Dolores rounded on her recent chess opponent with a sudden sneer. 'You are talking like a fool, Enriquez. You forget that he is a spy. The odds are that after every evening he spends here he reports to the police all that we have said. He must know that he has been walking on a razor's edge, and probably has some arrangement with them that, should he fail to make his report by a given hour, they are to assume that we have caught him out, and raid the place in the hope of rescuing him.'

'She's talking sense,' cried Sanchez. 'It's not often that we disperse before midnight, so we've no need to fear a raid for some hours yet; but the sooner we get this job done the better.'

Benigno laid a hand on his arm. 'Calm yourself, brother, I beg. Remember the rule our father has laid down. It is that in this house no act of violence should be permitted. I agree that this man must die. He actually saw us manufacturing a bomb. Little more would be needed for us to find ourselves facing a firing squad. But he must not be executed yet, and not here.'

'What reason can you possibly advance for postponing the death of this louse?'

'Only that such matters have always been left to our father's judgment. It is just possible that he may be making use of this man.'

'Nonsense! Is it likely that he would be doing so without having warned us about him? No. He is a spy; and in such cases our father has only one verdict. In the past few years we have had several through our hands. You know as well as I do that in every case he has ordered their execution.'

'True. I know it,' admitted Benigno. 'But not here. Not in this house. After what Dolores has just said how can you fail to realize the danger? Should the police raid us in the early hours as she suggests, think what they might find - blood all over the place, and perhaps even his body if we had not had time to get it out of the house. It is just that sort of ill chance that our father has always so wisely guarded against.'

Sanchez laughed and slapped his thigh. 'You need have no fears on that score, brother. I've just thought of a better plan than to cut his throat. We can dispose of him without leaving a trace by burning him up a limb at a time in the furnace in my foundry.'

7

To be Disposed of Without Trace

For the past few minutes de Quesnoy had been conscious of a warm wetness at the back of his neck. It was the blood that had trickled down from the nasty cut on his head made by the heavy ruler with which Schmidt had struck him down. He had no idea of the size or shape of the wound, for the whole back of his head felt as though it had been bashed in. The pain was agonizing and the pulses in his skull throbbed as though it was about to burst. Yet he was just capable of taking in what was said by the group clustered about him.

At Sanchez's proposal to kill him in a way that would also dispose of his body, the saliva ran hot in his mouth and his flesh crept. Courageous as he was, the idea of being burnt alive filled him with fear and horror. When Ferrer had taken him over the Escuela Moderna he had been shown the foundry in which Sanchez gave classes in metal-work. The furnace in it was a fair-sized one but certainly not large enough to take a body, and Sanchez had spoken of burning him in it a limb at a time. To kill and cut him up first would mean spilling quarts of his blood - the very thing they wanted to avoid - so the intention must be to thrust him in head or feet first, then reverse the process, until the white-hot interior of the furnace had baked his limbs dry of blood, and only then cut up the charred remains for final cremation.

It was possible that they might first strangle or knock him on the head, but he had a ghastly conviction that they would not show him even that much mercy. It was based on his knowledge of the extraordinary contradiction that was a salient feature of the Spanish character. Normally they were sensitive and generous and would go out of their way to avoid hurting another person's feelings. They adored their children, lavishing on them pretty clothes and toys that they could often ill-afford, and in Spain there were fewer cases of cruelty to children than in any other country in Europe. Yet they worked and beat their animals to death, and the favourite national pastime was the bullring.

The Count had been to a number of bullfights, and while he was filled with admiration for the bravery and skill of the Matadors, as they pirouetted within inches of the bull and even allowed it to tear with its horns the gold lace from the breast of their costumes, he had been baffled and sickened by the part that horses were forced to play in this cruel sport.

It had been explained to him that the whole object of the elaborate playing of the bull was to wear down its strength, so that the great muscles in its neck tired until, when facing the Matador, it could no longer hold up its head, thus enabling him to plunge his sword between its horns and through its shoulder straight down into its heart; and that for the mounted men to rear their horses right on to the bull, so that it had to take the whole weight of horse and man on its horns, was simply a part of the wearing-down process. Even so, it shocked and amazed him that thousands of women as well as men could burst into excited applause at the sight of a screaming horse falling with its guts torn out by the horns of a bull.

Their cruelty, too, was not confined to animals. In the Carlist wars few prisoners had been taken, and both sides had committed unmentionable barbarities on hundreds of the enemy they had captured. Worse still, if possible, had been their treatment of nuns and priests during the frequent revolts and revolutions of the past century. It had been common practice to rape the younger nuns to death, and burning priests had become a favourite sport.

But de Quesnoy was not now thinking of either bullfights or the devilish cruelties of the civil wars - only that hatred could turn Spaniards from delightful companions into merciless fiends in less time than it took to eat a meal; and if there was any conceivable way in which he could save himself from the ghastly death proposed for him.

During the years he had been exiled to dreary garrison duty in Madagascar he had occupied his mind almost exclusively by an intensive study of the occult. It was an English missionary who had first interested him in it, by telling him that as the people of the huge island were a mixture of negro stock and Polynesians, who had arrived there on fleets of rafts during a great migration, the present witch-doctors had inherited a knowledge of both African and Pacific magic, so were probably more skilled in practising it than any others in the world. His prolonged study of the secret art had taught him many things; among them how to hypnotize, and how, by methods similar to Yoga, to render his body almost impervious to normal cold or heat.

Any attempt to hypnotize the hostile group now staring at him, in a few moments and in his present condition, he knew to be hopeless; and that to prevent oneself from being burnt when thrust into a white-hot furnace was beyond the powers of even the greatest Mage. But there remained the possibility that he might succeed in throwing himself into a self-induced trance.

If he could succeed in that he would, for all practical purposes, be temporarily dead, and so not feel the searing of the flames. Yet he had no sooner thought of the idea than he abandoned it. To achieve complete immunity such a trance would have to be of extreme depth, and to bring about such a state required time, solitude and complete quiet; all of which, in his present circumstances, would be denied him. By a great effort, he might force his spirit out of his body, but only on to the lowest astral plane; and the intense pain as his nerves began to scorch would bring it back to his body almost instantly.

These thoughts flashed through his mind within a few seconds of Sanchez having spoken. Then another swiftly took their place. The question of disposing of his body quickly and without trace had arisen only because Dolores had put into the heads of the others that he was in league with the police and that, if he failed to make his nightly report to them, some time before morning they would raid the house to find out what had happened to him. He must tell them that he was acting on his own, had no connection whatever with the police then they might adopt Jovel-lenos's suggestion of locking him up in a cupboard upstairs until Ferrer returned in the morning. Anything was better than being roasted in the furnace. But would they believe him? No; not even if he swore by everything he held holy that they had nothing to fear from the police. Why should they?

Yet it was their fear of a police raid that decided matters. For a few moments they had all stood silent, considering Sanchez's proposal. Then Schmidt spoke, in awkward Spanish with a heavy accent.

'To burn him is no good. The fat of human corpses makes a smell most horrible. It would the house stink out. Also in a short time to destroy all traces is not possible. Pieces of calcined bones would be found, buttons from his clothes, other things. If we had twenty-four hours, yes, perhaps. But if the house raided before morning is, enough evidence they will find to prove him murdered by us.'

De Quesnoy's heart gave a bound of relief, for he knew that the German's argument was unchallengeable; but he also knew that, even if he had escaped burning, his life was not worth an hour's purchase, and Zapatro confirmed him in that belief by saying angrily:

'But we cannot let him go. That is out of the question.'

The tall Jovellenos eyed the architect dubiously. T suppose you are right, but I have a feeling that he may prove more dangerous to us dead than alive. After all, there is no certainty that the police will raid the house just because he has failed to report to them on a single occasion. Anyway, I am still in favour of locking him up until Senor Ferrer returns and gives us a ruling on what is to be done with him.'

For some minutes Gerault had ceased moaning. Now, he took his hands from his battered face and, his throat still half-choked by blood from his broken nose, gulped out, 'He must die . . . In the name of the Grand Lodge of the Orient, I demand it .. . You do not know this man as I do ... He is resolute, resourceful and cunning as a serpent . . . Unless you kill him while you have the chance he will find some means to escape . . . Then he will get us all arrested ... He is the arch-enemy of us all . . . Kill him, I say . . . Kill him or you will have cause to regret it.'

Dolores nodded. 'You are right, Monsieur. But we come back to the question of how to set about it without leaving any traces.'

'In the poison cupboard of the laboratory prussic acid I have seen,' volunteered Schmidt. 'A dose we could give him and all is over very quickly.'

'Escobedo always locks the cupboard up before he goes home, and takes the key with him,' said Jovellenos. 'We would have to break it open, and it is a stout one. We would also have to provide Escobedo with some explanation to give his class in the morning; otherwise it is certain that on finding the lock of the cupboard broken they would start asking awkward questions.'

'Why waste time and go to so much trouble?' Gerault's thick, half-choked voice came again. With a gesture towards Sanchez, he went on. 'Look at those great hands of yours . . . Are they not strong enough to strangle him?'

Once more Benigno intervened. 'You are all talking like fools. However we killed him we would still be left with his body, and in disposing of it have to run a considerable risk. We dare not bury it in the cellar or the yard. If the police do come they would find . . .'

'We are not such fools as to do that,' Zapatro interrupted him.

'I did not suppose you were,' Benigno retorted icily. 'But the only alternative is to carry it out of the house. A body is not an easy thing to disguise. We might run into the police on the doorstep.'

'If we don't waste endless time arguing there is little chance of that,' Dolores shrugged. 'It is most unlikely that they will come to find out what has happened to him for hours yet.'

'I agree. But, as I was about to add, other people are certain to see us. Say we put the body into a big trunk and loaded it on to our covered cart, you can be sure that when the police started to make inquiries they would learn about it, and want to know what was in the trunk and where we took it. Another thing: where do you suggest that we should dump his body?'

'On some rubbish heap on the outskirts of the city,' Sanchez suggested. 'Or in a dark alley down by the docks.'

'In either place it would be found within twenty-four hours and identified by the police as that of the spy they know to have got in among us. People who had seen us load a trunk on to our cart at this hour would testify, and in no time we would find ourselves in the dock.'

'Then what the devil are we to do?' exclaimed Sanchez impatiently.

'He must appear to have died as the result of an accident, or disappear altogether,' Benigno replied in a firm voice. 'It is in arranging such matters in similar cases that our father has shown such ingenuity. Our only safe course is to take our prisoner out to the mill and leave it to father to decide what is to be done with him.'

'I disagree ... I disagree . . .' spluttered G6rault. 'You should kill him now ... If I felt stronger I would do it myself . . . We'll get rid of the body somehow . . . We could bury it in the woods and it would not be found for months.'

The others, now impressed by Benigno's arguments and not wanting to run any unnecessary risk, ignored the Frenchman. But Zapatro raised the objection, 'We would still have to get him out of the house and, as you said yourself just now, there is always the possibility that the police might come upon us while we are at it, or of some nosy parker of a patrolman wanting to know what we were up to.'

Benigno shrugged. 'The cases are entirely different. In the first we should be caught with a corpse on our hands, in the second only a live man that we had trussed up; so we could not be charged with murder.'

'Our friend Benigno is right,' said Jovellenos. 'From the beginning I have been all in favour 'of leaving this dangerous business to Senor Ferrer's judgment.'

Sanchez gave a grudging assent. 'I'd have liked to slit his throat. But you are the cleverest among us, brother; so let it be as you say.'

The others nodded agreement, except for Gerault, who continued to clamour nasally for the prisoner's death. Instead of listening to him they began to discuss ways and means of getting the Count out to the mill.

With his nerves as taut as piano wires de Quesnoy had listened to every word of the heated argument on how, with the least risk, to terminate his earthly existence. Now, he could at least breathe again. Even this respite of an hour or two might provide him with some chance to escape from the clutches of his enemies. Yet he was not even remotely sanguine. It seemed certain that he could not expect Ferrer to aid him in any way, and the others, with the possible exception of Jovellenos, were set upon his death. Their only concern was to avoid committing any act which might later be cited to show that they had taken a hand in murdering him. Benigno's caution had resulted in a very temporary postponement of sentence, but it could not be counted as more than that.

It was Dolores who suggested rolling the Count up in a carpet, and Benigno who improved upon this ruse for camouflaging his being got out of the house by the idea of also loading on to the cart some chairs and packing cases; so that passers-by should get the impression that they were engaged in moving some odds and ends of furniture.

Sanchez went off to get the horse and cart from a mews a little way down the street. Schmidt produced a somewhat grubby handkerchief and gagged de Quesnoy with it, while the others pushed back the furniture. When the Count was hauled to his feet he made no attempt to struggle. He knew that to do so would be futile, and he was still weak and in great pain. He could only hope that the ride in the cart would be a long one; so that by the time they reached the mill he would have got enough strength back to stand some chance in a bid to regain his freedom.

Zapatro gave him a push from behind and hooked one of his legs from under him, so that he fell on his face. Gerault then gave him a vicious kick on the side of the head that again rendered him nearly unconscious, and he was only vaguely aware through a mist of pain that he was being rolled up in the threadbare carpet that had long done duty in the masters' common-room.

Presently he felt himself lifted and carried some distance, then down the front steps. A minute later he was heaved up and thrown down with a bump on the floor of the covered cart. The sickening jolt to his injured head sent such a spasm of agony through it that he fainted.

When he came to, his heart was pounding heavily from its effort to draw enough air down into his lungs. His head was some way from the nearest open end of the carpet and, in addition, a corner of the handkerchief gagging his mouth had flapped up in front of his nostrils, so for a moment he feared that he was about to suffocate. But by exerting his will he managed to change his breathing from desperate gasps to slow regular intakes, so that the corner of the handkerchief was no longer drawn with each breath tight up against his nose.

Inside the tube that encased him it was black as pitch. His hands were still bound behind him and he could make no movement, except slight ones with his feet. The Escuela Moderna was not distinguished by its cleanliness, so the old carpet was gritty with dust and stank of the tobacco ash and wine that had been spilt upon it. For how long he had been unconscious he did not know, but now he hoped desperately that the journey would soon be over and so bring him relief from his agonizing imprisonment.

Actually he had been out only for a few minutes. The cart was moving up-hill and at a walking pace. As it jogged on he was given ample opportunity to think over the events of the evening and the terrible plight in which G6rault's arrival had landed him. Even while waging his fight for sufficient air and striving to ease his cramped muscles, he was bitterly aware of the irony of the situation. He had set out to secure evidence that Ferrer was the brain behind the militant anarchists of Spain, and he had got it.

Zapatro had said that Ferrer was attending a meeting that was planning the attempt on Quiroga, and the Quiroga referred to could hardly be anyone other than the Captain-General of Barcelona. The others, too, evidently feeling it no longer necessary to exercise caution about what they said in front of a man they had already condemned to death, had made several mentions of Ferrer's care to divert suspicion from himself and his ingenuity in eliminating without trace spies and traitors. In de Quesnoy's mind there was no longer a shadow of doubt that the whole staff of the Escuela Moderna were militant anarchists and that Ferrer was the king-pin of the movement. But now there seemed little hope of his being able to use the information, let alone warn General Quiroga that a plot was on foot to assassinate him.

At last the nightmare journey came to an end. The covered cart rumbled to a halt, but de Quesnoy was not taken out of it. For a further ten minutes he lay half stifled and sweating profusely in his smelly cocoon while, as he rightly supposed, those who had come with the cart were making a full report about him to Ferrer. Then he heard the back-board of the cart smack down, was drawn out of it, carried some way and dropped with a bump that again sent spasms of agony shooting through his wounds. Next moment he was rolled over and over till free of the carpet, then pulled to his feet.

Temporarily dazzled by the light, he at first registered only that he was in a low-ceilinged room with a number of people staring at him. After a few blinks his sight cleared and he saw that he was in the sort of parlour to be found by the thousand in the suburbs of any big city. At a small table in its centre Ferrer was sitting; on his right there was a giant of a man with a bushy upturned moustache, on his left was a bald man of about fifty, and beside him a youth with the wide-spaced eyes of a fanatic. Behind Ferrer, Benigno was standing. Schmidt and Sanchez, as the Count saw by a swift glance to left and right, were the two men who had dragged him up on to his feet.

Benigno had laid the illustrated magazine, opened at the page carrying the damning photograph, on the table in front of his father. As they looked first at it and then at him, the bald man said, 'It's him right enough. But I am amazed, Francesco, that you did not vet him before taking him into your employ, even temporarily.'

Ferrer gave an angry shrug. T did, Manuel, as far as was possible, soon after I first met him. I sent Ruben Pineda, a young student, to take Russian lessons from him, and later Pineda returned to search his room after he had gone out. There were all sorts of things in it that only a Russian would normally have possessed, and the branch of the Somaten he joined confirmed that he had come from Constantinople via Greece and Valencia.'

'Gerault told us that he is a past-master at such tricks,' Benigno put in. 'Apparently he really is half-Russian and succeeded in passing himself off in Paris for several months as a refugee from Tsarist persecution.'

The giant on Ferrer's right poured himself another glass of wine from a carafe that stood on the table, and said, 'To rake up the past is only waste of time. All we have to do is to make certain that after tonight he never again has a chance to play stool-pigeon to the police.'

'Of course,' Ferrer agreed, 'but remember, Pedro, that he has been employed at the school and I don't want the police descending on it and carting us all off to be grilled, as they certainly would if there is the least suspicion that his life had been taken because he had found out too much about us.'

'Why not put him on a railway line near a level crossing,' suggested the young man with the widely-spaced eyes. 'It would be assumed that, finding the gates shut, he became impatient, thought he could cross in time, but just failed to do so.'

Ferrer shook his head. 'No, Alvaro. Since the police must be aware that he has got in amongst us his death, even apparently by accident, would arouse their suspicions and lead to an exhaustive investigation. He must disappear, so that there is no body for them to examine and no point at which to start their inquiry.'

'Gerault suggested that we should bury him in the woods,' remarked Sanchez.

'I don't like that idea,' announced the bald-headed Manuel. 'It is a dark night. We'd need lanterns to select a suitable spot for a grave, to dig it and then clear up afterwards so that it wouldn't be obvious that the ground had been recently disturbed. We might easily be caught red-handed while at the job, or seen and spied on by a couple of lovers, then followed back here and afterwards denounced to the police.'

'There is also the danger of dogs or wild-pigs rooting up a newly buried body,' put in Benigno. 'It would not be the first time that has happened.'

'It is a pity that we no longer have access to Garcia's lime kiln,' Ferrer murmured. 'We could have got rid of him there as we did that traitor Zorrilla.'

'We might get rid of him in the mill,' said the giant Pedro thoughtfully.

De Quesnoy did his best to suppress a shudder. The thought of being crushed and slowly ground to death between two great millstones was very nearly as bad as that of being burnt alive. But that was not what Pedro had in mind and, after a short pause he went on:

Tf we threw him down the shaft into the flour he couldn't possibly get out, and the odds are that within ten minutes he'll be dead from suffocation. Anyhow, when we start to grind that would finish him.'

With his recent experience of stifling in the roll of carpet still vivid in his thoughts, this proposal struck the Count as even grimmer than being crushed to death. The night was hot and he was sweating already, but he broke out into a new sweat as his captors gave Pedro's suggestion serious fconsideration and discussed its possibilities in detail.

It transpired that some years before a workman, unseen by his companions, had fallen from a gallery that ran high up round the interior of the mill-shaft. It had been supposed that he had disappeared for some reason of his own, and the truth had come to light only some months later, as the flour chamber was completely emptied and cleaned out only two or three times a year. Between cleanings, two big doors in the base of the shaft were opened every few days and whatever quantity of flour required to fill orders was shovelled out into sacks. But Conesa, as resident foreman of the mill, could enter the chamber at any time. He would see to it that the Count's body lay buried well away from the doors and undiscovered until the next cleaning, which would not take place until a little before Christmas. When the body came to light its features would be unrecognizable and the face would have grown hair, so it could be suggested to the local authorities that the corpse was that of a tramp, and probably a drunken one, who had broken in to steal, but by a door that led only up to the top of the building, and there had the ill-luck to fall from the gallery. In any case, the chances of the body being identified as that of the monarchist spy who had disappeared in the late summer would be so remote as to be negligible.

While de Quesnoy listened, his blood chilled again. As he had no connection with the police no search would be made for him anyway. In due course de Vendome, the Cordobas and, perhaps, Don Alfonso, would become puzzled at not hearing from him and set inquiries on foot about him; but long before that was likely to happen he would be a desiccated corpse buried under several feet of flour, or in a pauper's grave as an unidentified tramp.

Having decided that Pedro's suggestion met their requirements, Ferrer said to him, 'Very well. You go with Sanchez and Schmidt. Take him away and make certain that he does not survive. I can settle the final details for the attempt on Quiroga with the others.'

De Quesnoy was still suffering from blinding pains in the head, and his breathing continued to be painful from the dust he had drawn down into his lungs during the three-quarters of an hour that he had lain rolled up in the carpet. As the grip of Sanchez and Schmidt tightened on his arms to drag him from the room he kicked out, began to struggle violently and to gurgle pleas and protests through the gag that was still tied over his mouth. Yet he knew that neither the little strength that was left in him, nor prayers if he could have made them coherently, would avail to save him.

When they had pushed and pulled him out of the house he glimpsed the covered cart in which they had brought him there, and realized that it was a dark night with no moon; but a myriad stars were shining overhead and gave enough light for him to get some idea of his surroundings. The small house stood in a corner of a big walled yard, next to it was a building that might be used as offices in the daytime, and beyond that a lofty warehouse. Opposite them the mill towered up into the darkness with, to one side of it, the long upward-sloping tunnel through which the buckets of grain were hoisted on an endless chain up to the grinders. The mill itself formed a square stack about forty feet in height, and before he had had time to take in more his captors had hustled him over to it.

Pedro produced a key and unlocked a door in its base which gave on to a dark stairway. The Count's struggles had become feeble now, and the three of them half-dragged, half-carried him up several flights of stairs to its top. There they came out on a small landing, and while they paused there to get their breath back Pedro shone a torch round.

Its beam, first levelled straight ahead, lit up the grinders, then, as he flashed it about, showed a catwalk which ran round all four sides of the building and was obviously used by workmen to reach the machinery when it needed oiling or repairs. The grinders formed a circular mass, which at that level filled the whole chamber except for the width of the catwalk and in each corner a triangular space. De Quesnoy was pushed along the narrow gallery till he was standing opposite the corner space to the left of the door by which they had entered. Pedro directed his torch downward and its beam was reflected on the white sea of milled flour that lay twenty feet below them.

Sanchez untied the Count's wrists. Pedro held his arms while Schmidt removed the gag from his mouth. Futile as he knew it to be, he began to shout for help with all his remaining strength;

but Pedro gave him a sharp jab under the chin. It made his teeth rattle, sent another blinding pain through his head, and temporarily silenced him.

Next moment the giant foreman picked him up bodily, lifted him over the rail of the catwalk and let him drop. With arms and legs splayed out in all directions, he hurtled head downwards into the deep suffocating bed of flour.

8

The Ordeal in the Mill

Had de Quesnoy fallen from that height on to a harder substance his neck must have been broken, but the powder-fine flour was not even packed tightly, as would have been the case had it been shovelled from one place to another; it was just as it had floated down from the grinders so almost as aerated as if it had been a vast cushion of feathers.

Head first, he plunged into it and seconds later was immersed up to the hips, with even his outstretched arms buried a foot or more deep; yet the impact had been sufficient to drive the breath out of his body.

Instinctively, he gasped for air. As his mouth opened the flour fell into it and more flour trickled down, filling his nostrils. He knew then that he was on the very brink of death. Unless he could free his head in the next few minutes he would suffocate. Already, with little air left in his lungs, there was a terrible constriction in his chest. It felt as though iron bands had been passed round it and were swiftly being screwed tighter.

Summoning up his will-power he forced himself to remain still for a moment, then with his remaining breath he blew down his nostrils. As it cleared them he made a desperate effort with his hands and forearms to force himself upward. It was only partially successful, but it brought him temporary relief. The pressure he had exerted had forced the flour beneath him into a solid mass and so created what amounted to an air bubble about his head and shoulders. He was able to draw in a breath of air before more flour fell in from above and filled the gap.

Now, although still half buried, to his unutterable relief it flashed upon him that there was a way in which he could save himself.

The whole bed of flour was so highly aerated that he only had to keep pressing it down in front of his face to get more air. Yet he was still not out of the wood. The mouthful of flour that he had gulped in now threatened to choke him. In vain he tried to spit it out. It had formed into a paste cloying all round his teeth and such of it as he had tried to swallow had stuck in his gullet.

In great pain and with failing strength, but no lessening of endeavour, he continued his fight for life. Several more seemingly endless minutes passed while he writhed and struggled in the darkness. At last, his resolution was rewarded. Somehow he had freed his head and shoulders and pulled himself out of the morass of flour. Now, lying spreadeagled on his back, he gradually recovered from his exertions.

A good twenty minutes passed before he made any attempt to explore his surroundings, then he sat up and looked about him. Already it had dawned on him that although when Pedro had shone his torch downward the flour chamber had appeared to be a pit of utter blackness, it was not so in fact. It was very faintly lit by starlight percolating through two dirt-encrusted windows set high up in opposite walls.

The chamber itself was about twenty feet square and, judging by the glimpse that de Quesnoy had caught of it from outside, he believed it to be about forty feet high. As the grinding machinery must occupy the upper ten feet, and he was lying some twenty feet below it, it could be assumed that the bed of flour was about ten feet deep. If that were so, the doors that Pedro had mentioned, by which the flour was shovelled out as required into sacks, must be well below the surface; so even if he could find them, it would be impossible to force them open.

Assuming that the flour was ten feet deep, the windows were a good bit more than half-way up the walls so could not be reached, and the walls, being sheer, and without protrusions of any kind, were completely unscaleable. However, it occurred to him that if he could make a solid mound of flour under one of the windows, he might be able to jump up to it.

Getting to his feet he ploughed his way over towards the nearest. With each step he took his foot sank knee-deep into the flour, as though it was the lightest form of snow, and at every movement he made, a big puff of it rose up filling the air with a little cloud of particles. Standing beneath the window he found that its sill was a good seven feet above the level of the flour and, as his feet were sunk nearly a foot deep in the flour, when he stretched his hands up as far as they would go his finger-tips were still some eighteen inches short of the sill.

Desperately tired and still racked by a blinding headache as he was, he began a laborious attempt to erect a solid platform below the window. Had he had a spade he might have accomplished the job by an hour's steady work, but he had no instrument of any kind, so was reduced to using his hands and feet. Going down on his knees he swept armfuls of flour forward, stood up to trample them flat, then repeated the process.

It proved a labour of Hercules. All the time he was moving the flour it billowed up in clouds about him, powdering his hair and eyebrows white, and stifling and blinding him so that every few minutes he was compelled to cease until the clouds had settled and he could get back his breath. For over two hours he stuck to this terrible task. By the end of that time he had succeeded in raising a short ramp a little over a foot, but it needed another six or eight inches for him to get a firm grasp on the window sill.

By then he was utterly exhausted and knew that even though his life depended on it he could do no more. His only hope now was that in the morning a workman to whom he could shout for help would come up on to the catwalk to do something to the machinery, or that by throwing something through the window he might attract attention to himself. Slumping down on the soft flour he fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke he knew from the brighter light that filled the chamber that it was morning. The horrors of the past night flooded back into his mind, and it was only then he realized that someone was shouting at him. Staring up from where he lay he saw the figure of a man leaning over the rail of the catwalk. The mass of machinery filling most of the space in the top of the chamber made it semi-dark up there. Yet, even as a surge of hope that he was about to be rescued ran through him, that hope was killed. He could now make out the form of the man more clearly, and it was the giant Pedro.

'So you're still alive,' Pedro shouted down to him. 'Well, you won't be for long.'

Staggering to his feet, de Quesnoy shouted back. 'Get me out! I'll pay you anything you ask. I'm rich. The others needn't know. For God's sake get me out. What does it matter to you if I live or die? Don't throw away this chance never to have to work again. Save me and I'll hand over to you a fortune.'

But Pedro only gave a bellow of laughter, then walked back along the catwalk. Like the knell of doom for de Quesnoy, the door slammed behind him.

At the threat that he would not now remain alive for long, the Count recalled what had been said the night before about his being dead from suffocation within ten minutes, but that, should he not be, when they started to grind that would finish him. With renewed fears he stared upward. A moment later there came the sound of turning wheels and clanking machinery. The grinders had been set in motion.

From them a white mist floated down. It was composed of millions of tiny particles finer than any snow. Hastily de Quesnoy ploughed his way to the nearest corner where, not being directly under the grinder, the mist was slightly less dense. Pulling out his handkerchief, he tied it over his mouth and nose then, tearing off his jacket, he put that over his head and drew its skirts close about his shoulders. But even with such protection he knew that a soft-footed death was about to steal relentlessly upon him.

Unlike a sand-storm there was no rushing wind and sharp whipping of grains against everything they encountered. The flour descended in an even, semi-transparent cascade and in utter silence. But like sand raised by a desert whirlwind the particles penetrated every nook and cranny. Within a quarter of an hour at the most the handkerchief across the lower part of his face would become so thickly coated that it would no longer serve as a filter. Then, every breath he was forced to draw would be laden with those death-dealing particles. Another quarter of an hour of mounting agony and his lungs would cease to function. At last complete despair seized him.

But not for long. Suddenly a thought recurred to him that had crossed his mind the previous evening, when Sanchez had proposed to burn him alive in the furnace. If he could throw himself into a deep trance he might survive. Once he had succeeded in suspending his animation he would no longer need to breathe; so his lungs would remain static and uncloyed by the flour. Here, he had two of the requirements for such an operation - solitude and complete quiet in which to concentrate. The trance, too, need not be so deep as would have been required to render the body impervious to the pain of burning. Time was the third requirement; but if he concentrated to the utmost of his power, allowing no other thought to distract him even for a second, he should be able to get out of his body within ten minutes.

Lying down, with his coat still wrapped about his head, he tensed all his muscles three times, then relaxed completely. Breathing with the rhythm he had been taught, and not even flickering an eyelid, he remained absolutely still. Gradually his breathing grew fainter and at length it ceased. His spirit was now upon the astral plane and his body only an inanimate figure to which it could still give life by returning, but was for the time being attached only by a form of spiritual telephone wire known to occultists as the Silver Cord.

To the step he had taken there was a minor benefit attached in addition to the saving of his life. The body is like a battery that can be recharged with the electricity that gives it vitality only when the spirit is absent from it during a trance or sleep. Denied all sleep indefinitely it runs down and peters out. The deeper the sleep the more beneficial, and a trance being deeper than any sleep it was certain that his physical condition would be greatly improved on his return.

For several hours he remained scarcely conscious of his body; then he began to feel a growing urge to go back into it. Soon after he had done so he became aware that all his limbs were being pressed down by a quite considerable weight; then he realized that he must have been buried by the falling flour. His handkerchief was still over the lower part of his face and his jacket covering his head. Without removing them, he kicked out with hands and feet until he was sitting up with his head and shoulders well above the new flour level. A moment of listening assured him that the mill machinery was no longer working. Pulling off the jacket and handkerchief he looked around him.

Judging by the light that came from the windows he thought it to be late afternoon or early evening. He judged, too, that the day's grinding of flour had raised the level by well over a foot. His heart gave a bound of hope. It looked now as if he should be able to reach the window. Getting to his feet, he began to plough his way towards it.

As he did so it was borne in on him that, although he felt better in himself and much stronger, he was far from recovered from his injuries. He had been hit on the head by Schmidt, kicked on it by Gerault, kicked on the shin by Zapatro and struck under the jaw by Pedro; in addition to which he had been so roughly handled, particularly by Sanchez, that he had a score of minor cuts and bruises. Although his hours of trance had restored his energy they had done little to ease his afflictions and very soon his head was again throbbing painfully.

Nevertheless he set to at once to heighten the mound he had made with further layers of firmly pressed-down flour. Again its particles half-stifled him and covered him from head to foot with a coat of white, but after half an hour he had raised the mound sufficiently to get his hands well above the window sill.

The next thing was to break the window so that he could climb out. It had four panes, each about one foot six wide by two foot six high. Wrapping his fist in his handkerchief he smashed the two lower ones and several large pieces of glass fell outward from each. He then had to prise out the smaller jagged pieces that had been left round their lower edges; those at the top he could not reach.

Crouching down, he made a spring and caught at the central bar with the object of drawing himself up by it. The wood was old and partly rotten. It could not take his weight, and snapped. He went over backwards to fall half buried in the soft flour behind him. Picking himself up he saw that at least the bar had brought away with it two of the larger remaining triangles of glass, and there was now an opening big enough for him to get through easily.

On his second jump he grasped the sill, got his elbows on it, thrust his head and shoulders through the opening, then wriggled forward until he had the sill under his middle and was half hanging out. But one glance downwards confirmed what he had feared. The sill of the window was over twenty feet above the cobbles of the yard outside.

He had hoped that he might get away without help; so that while Pedro, Ferrer and the rest believed him to be safely dead and buried beneath the flour, he could lodge with the police a charge of attempted murder against them. But that was obviously impossible. A drop of twenty feet on to cobbles was easily enough to kill a man. He might break his neck, or anyhow a leg, and perhaps as a result of such an impact sustain some serious internal injury.

To call for help might bring Pedro on the scene; but as it was still daylight there must be other people about, so it seemed unlikely that the giant foreman would dare to risk another attempt on his life. Anyhow, he could not hang indefinitely half out of the window with its sill pressing up painfully into his stomach; so the chance must be taken that it would be Pedro who answered his shouts. In any case he would be bound to hear that his intended victim had been rescued, so would warn the others and they would all go into hiding. But that, de Quesnoy decided grimly, was of no great moment as he would spare no pains to have them hunted down.

At the very moment he had made up his mind to shout, two workmen emerged from the warehouse on the opposite side of the yard. He called to them loudly; they looked up, saw him, and with exclamations of surprise came running towards the window.

'Help me down,' he cried. 'Quickly, I beg you. Help me down.'

They both stared up at him in amazement, then the elder, who was a bearded man, said to his companion, 'Quick, Antoine. Run and fetch Senor Conesa.'

As the other turned and started off across the yard, the bearded man called up to de QuesncJy, 'How the devil did you get there?'

'Never mind that,' the Count called back. 'Get a ladder. Help me down.'

After glancing uncertainly about him, the man said, 'We'll need a tall one; bigger than I could carry on my own. But we'll get one in a minute.'

The younger fellow had reached the little house beside the office block and was hammering on its door. A minute later it opened and the giant form of Pedro stood framed in it. Only then de Quesnoy remembered that the name Conesa had been mentioned in connection with the mill while Benigno was urging on his companions that their captive should be taken to it. Obviously, it was Pedro's surname.

Pedro and the man who had gone to fetch him came hurrying over. The former looked up with a scowl, then turned to the other two and said, 'Go get a ladder: the tall one out of the warehouse.'

When they were out of earshot he said angrily to the Count, 'To have lived through today you must have nine lives, like a cat.'

'I have,' replied de Quesnoy, 'but you have only one; and if you wish to keep it you would be wise to lose not a moment in going into hiding.'

But, as the Count feared would be the case, the implied threat failed to stampede Pedro into running off and leaving the others to rescue him. The burly foreman remained standing there, his great arms akimbo, until the other two returned with the ladder.

Having had them set it up alongside the window, Pedro said to them, 'The fellow must be a tramp who broke in for a night's shelter, then fell off the gallery. He is obviously a down-and-out, and was probably drunk.'

'That's a lie,' cried de Quesnoy. 'I'm no tramp. One of you run and fetch the police. Then you shall know how I came to be here.'

Ignoring him, Pedro went on. 'The poor chap must have near died of suffocation and it looks as if the terror of it drove him potty. Anyhow, he is in a pretty bad way and will need attention. Go and fetch the first aid kit from the office, Luis, and you, Antoine, run across to my house and tell my girl to put water on to boil. I'm quite strong enough to get him down on my own.'

'Stop!' called the Count. 'Stop! For God's sake don't leave me with him.' But the two men took no notice of him and ran off to do the jobs they had been given.

With a grim smile Pedro began to ascend the ladder.

De Quesnoy broke out into a cold sweat. Pedro could only have sent the other two away in order to make another attempt on his life while no one was watching. But what form would it take? To push him back into the flour chamber would not kill him, and how could his disappearance be explained when the others returned - as they were certain to within a matter of minutes?

Pedro had now reached the level of the window. The Count felt so certain that his intentions were evil that he decided to drop back into the flour chamber of his own accord. His decision was taken a second too late. As he moved Pedro shot out a huge hand, grabbed him by the wrist and snarled:

'Thought you'd got away with it, didn't you? Well, Monsieur clever Count, you haven't, see? Know what I'm going to do with you? I mean to break your neck then let you drop down on to the cobbles. I've already put it in the minds of my chaps that you've gone barmy. If I tell them you struggled with me and I lost my hold on you, they'll swallow it all right.'

As he spoke he was dragging de Quesnoy towards him. In vain the Count endeavoured to cling to the window sill. He had no purchase for his feet or back from which he could exert his own strength, and the great brute who was pulling him out of the window was far stronger.

The tussle lasted no more than a minute. De Quesnoy's knees, then his feet, came over the sill, and he swung out into space supported only by Pedro's grip on his wrist. But the grip took the strain of his weight until he crashed sideways into the ladder and got a foot on to one of its rungs. He was below Pedro, his face on a level with the backs of the giant's knees. For a moment they remained almost still while recovering a little from their efforts. Then Pedro turned sideways on the ladder and gave the Count's arm a series of jerks so violent that they threatened to pull it from its socket. The pain was so excruciating that de Quesnoy was forced to stumble up the ladder rung by rung until his head was on a level with Pedro's waist.

But now, in order to do de Quesnoy any vital injury, Pedro had to change his grip and with one of his hands he was hanging on to the ladder. In that lay the Count's one advantage, for although Pedro had him by one of his wrists his other hand was free.

When a youth in Russia, he had often participated in the national sport of wrestling, and later he had for a while studied the art of judo. One of its secrets he had learned was that by a certain grip on the shoulder with the thumb inclined downwards towards the collar-bone a muscle Can be pressed which causes exquisite pain. In desperation he now stretched up his free hand as far as it would go and exerted this grip on Pedro.

The anarchist gave a scream of agony, his eyes bulged and his body jerked forward. The result was that he lost his grip on the ladder. De Quesnoy snatched at it to save himself, but the weight of Pedro's big body falling outwards against him broke his hold before he could grasp it firmly. Next moment, with arms and legs still entangled, they went hurtling down on to the cobbles. They hit them with such force that, almost instantly, both of them were rendered unconscious.

As semi-consciousness returned to de Quesnoy he gradually became aware that he was in hospital. He was in no great pain but knew himself to be extremely ill. The vaguely-seen coifs of nuns came into his vision from time to time and a doctor coming to give him an injection confirmed his impression that he was being kept under morphia. A little later he was propped up to be sick and wondered to find himself in a common ward, for as yet no memory had returned which would have explained to him how he came to be there. He assumed that he must have been brought in from a street accident, but he did not realize that he was in Barcelona and from Spanish being spoken by the people about him he gained the impression that he was in Madrid.

For what seemed to him a very long time he lay comatose, only rousing a little now and then when they bathed his head or gave him another injection; and all the while he knew that he was hovering between life and death.

At length a time came when, having lapsed into complete unconsciousness, he found himself outside his body and looking down on to it. His head was swathed in bandages, his left shoulder was strapped up, and a mound over his left leg showed that it was in splints.

Now, his mind cleared as suddenly as if a curtain had been drawn back. He knew that most of his injuries were the result of his fall from the ladder and was again fully aware of all the events which had led up to it.

As he regarded himself, two nuns came to his bedside followed by a priest carrying the Host. The nuns knelt and for a few moments there came the mutter of prayers while the priest administered Extreme Unction. Then the Count noticed that screens had already been drawn round the bed.

'So,' he thought, 'they expect me to die tonight. In fact, in their eyes I am already as good as dead. I must show them that I am not. I must return to my body at once, and next time anyone comes to the bedside make some movement. Otherwise they'll put me in the mortuary, then bury me.'

He willed himself downward towards his nostrils, but his act of will brought him little nearer to them. Its failure revealed to him how weak and attenuated his Silver Cord had become. In sudden panic he realized that it might break at any moment. If it did he would never be able to get back into his body, and would be really dead.

9

A Ghost in the Night

No one can be positive about what happens after death. Like the very beginning of all things and the meaning of eternity, it is one of the great mysteries and not meant for man to know. But throughout the ages a limited number of people have had experiences upon which they are at least justified in basing almost unanswerable arguments for the survival of the spirit and a belief that they have succeeded in lifting a corner of the veil.

In every period and country there have been people who, after profound meditation and long training, have acquired the ability to will the spirit that animates them out of their bodies while those bodies are still living. That they have actually done so has been proved by their remaining in a state of suspended animation for many days without any form of sustenance and, while in a state of trance, appearing in spirit form to convey messages and warnings to persons at a great distance. From this it is logical to conclude that when the body dies its ego does not die with it, but passes on to some new form of activity; and that those who have been able to leave their bodies while alive and return to them have brought back a certain degree of knowledge about the laws that govern life and so-called death.

That knowledge has been judged by wise men to be unfitting for mortals who have not yet achieved a certain state of advancement, and so in every age had become the jealously-guarded secret of a few enlightened individuals who have mostly been members of an inner circle of some priestly caste. Yet such enlightened ones have always been willing to share that knowledge with those whom they recognize as sufficiently advanced not to abuse it. And de Quesnoy had been chosen as one of those fitted to receive instruction in these great mysteries.

He knew one of the fundamental laws to be that while a person can shorten his life by taking it, no one can add one second to the span of life on earth allotted to him on each incarnation. And he recognized that it might be that his time had come to leave his present body for good.

To do so would now be easy, and in many ways it held out a tempting prospect. While away from earth he would again be with numerous long-time friends who were also out of incarnation for the time being, and some of whom he could not have had the joy of seeing for many generations. He would also see others who had died before him in his present life - Angela among them.

But it would not be the same as living with her on earth. He knew too that never again would they be reincarnated in the same period with similar bodies. Sooner or later the bond between them, as with his other long-time friends, would ensure their coming together again on earth in some relationship, but until that happened they would be no more to one another than companions in the Fields of Asphodel, the Land of Sekhet-Aaru, the Gardens beneath which Rivers Flow - as various peoples had termed the enchanted country in which spirits out of incarnation awaited their return to earth. It was this knowledge which, after his first weeks of grief, had enabled him to put thoughts of Angela, all but occasionally, out of his mind. Since arriving in Barcelona he had accepted their love as a closed chapter in one of his many lives.

Each life on earth he knew to be like a term in school, during which one must learn the new lessons set for one and strive to overcome some weakness of character, whereas to be out of incarnation meant a long and joyous holiday with no tests to pass, no ailments or accidents and no cares of any kind; so the thought of that alone was a big inducement to make no further effort and allow his Silver Cord to disintegrate.

Yet there was also the thought that after that glorious holiday there was no escaping the law which would send him back to earth again in a new incarnation. What form would it take?

He knew the widely-spread Indian belief, that an ill-spent life on earth might result in one's being reincarnated as an animal, or even an insect, to be a heresy. No soul that had once achieved human status was ever sent back as a part of one of the group souls that animated the lower species of creation. Those, too, who had advanced as far as he had always returned with some part of the knowledge they had acquired in previous lives lying dormant within them; so, except in cases where they still had to learn some special lesson, such as humility, they were given an opportunity to become in some degree members of some governing class.

But in this incarnation he had been born the heir to a Duke, and given a fine body, a handsome face and plenty of money. He could hardly expect such good fortune and so easy a path next time. He was, too, still only in his early thirties; so he might yet do great things.

It was then it occurred to him that he might no longer have a fine body. Obviously it had received a most savage battering and, as a result of the fall of twenty feet, might have some internal injury that would make him a cripple for the rest of his life. His astral vision having an X-ray quality not granted with ordinary-human sight, he began to examine it thoroughly and assess the full amount of the damage it had sustained.

His scalp was cut at the back of his head and his skull slightly cracked at the side some way above the right ear; more serious, there were broken skin and a huge bruise across the centre of his forehead and it was this which had caused his temporary loss of memory. His left collar-bone was broken, two of his ribs were cracked, and his left leg was broken about six inches above the ankle; but it was a clean break, not a compound fracture, and he could see no sign of internal haemorrhage. His lungs, however, were severely inflamed, which might lead to pneumonia.

Summing matters up he decided that, once over the initial shock to the system caused by such multiple injuries, there was none among them that should prevent him within a few weeks, or at worst months, from riding, fighting and loving again. So it would still be a fine body, and a sad waste to leave it - and all the other good things that went with it - for an unknown future. But he greatly doubted now if he had any choice.

On that another thought came to him. Perhaps the choice had been left to him in order to test his will-power. If so, he must not shirk the test. It was the law that as long as one had the power to keep life in one's body one should do so. Even those who died under torture were expected to stick it out to the limit of their endurance. They were paying off a debt for some evil they had done to another in the past, and were not given more pain than with extreme fortitude they could bear; so to give up the ghost prematurely left part of the debt unpaid, and was a minor form of suicide. It was possible - no, certain - that if he lived on there were numerous debts that it had been decreed that he should pay during his incarnation as Armand de Quesnoy. The thought decided him. He must make an all-out attempt to get back.

He had hardly taken the decision when a doctor appeared with a lay sister behind him. Taking the wrist of the body, the doctor felt for a pulse, dropped the wrist, then turned up one of the eyelids, glanced at the eye, and shut it. Turning to the lay sister he said, 'He's gone. You can start washing the body and preparing it for burial whenever you like.'

Swiftly now de Quesnoy began to concentrate. No relaxation of muscles was first required, but the employment of a thought rhythm, then the creation of a mental image of the body breathing to that rhythm. Had his Silver Cord had its normal strength the lungs would have responded at once, but now they seemed impenetrable. Yet very slowly the outline of the bed and body on which he was looking down began to blur. For two more long minutes of concentration, so intense that his mind became an agony in the void, he could still see them faintly. Then they disappeared. At the same instant his Silver Cord thickened, he felt a pull upon it that carried him downwards as though borne by a wind of hurricane strength. Two great tunnels - his nostrils magnified a hundred times - opened in front of him and within a matter of seconds he became conscious again of the weight of his limbs.

For several minutes, utterly exhausted by his effort, he made attempt to move. The lay sister emerged from behind one of the screens wheeling a small table with a bowl of water and some bandages on it. She stripped down the bed-clothes but still he made no sign. He knew that his hold on life remained most precarious, and that even an effort to sit up might prove so great a strain that it would drive his spirit out of his body again, and this time once and for all.

It was not until she put her hands flat on his stomach to press it empty that he summoned what little strength he had to show that he was still alive. For one awful moment he feared it was too little even to make his vocal cords work; but as she threw her weight upon him he succeeded in letting out a deep groan.

Exclaiming 'Saints defend us; he's not yet gone after all!' she ran off and next minute returned with the doctor.

While he was making a quick examination, de Quesnoy succeeded in slightly fluttering his eyelashes to confirm that the woman had not raised a false alarm. The doctor sent for his hypodermic and hot-water bottles, other nuns came to busy themselves about the bedside, and a quarter of an hour later the Count, now carefully tucked up again, had responded satisfactorily to their treatment.

During the forty-eight hours that followed, it continued to be touch and go; but by the Friday night he felt himself to be out of danger, and after a good night's sleep he woke on Saturday morning feeling much stronger. The nun who had charge of him, seeing that for the first time since being brought in he appeared sufficiently recovered to answer a few questions, asked him his name and the address of his nearest relative. But he shook his head as though he had lost his memory, because he wanted time to think matters over before giving an account of himself.

That day during his waking periods he considered his situation. Pedro Conesa could not possibly have escaped with only bruises. He must either have been killed or severely injured, and if he was alive the odds were that he was occupying a bed in the same ward. If that was so, de Quesnoy reasoned, and Pedro was in much the same state as himself, he had little cause to worry; but if within the next few days Pedro became capable of leaving his bed, he must not delay long in taking special precautions. The anarchist must know that as soon as his intended victim had sufficiently recovered he would bring a charge of attempted murder against him and, in view of his declared intention when on top of the ladder to break the Count's neck, it was highly probable that in a bid to save himself he would, one night when all was quiet, make a final attempt to murder him.

Next, what about Ferrer? Pedro's daughter would certainly have informed him of all that had occurred at the mill. He, too, his sons and all those who had played a part in Monday evening's events must fear that the Count's recovery would lead to their arrest. Perhaps, however, they believed that as it would be only his word against that of all of them they would be able to bluff the matter out. They might quite well succeed in that as they must have many fellow-anarchists who would certainly not stick at committing perjury to provide them with alibis for the night in question.

At first the Count thought the chances were that they would get away with it, but later in the day he revised his opinion. The bearded Luis and young Antoine could be called as independent witnesses that he had been trapped in the flour chamber. How could he have got there unless his account of what had happened was the truth? In Barcelona'midnight was not regarded as a late hour, so quite a number of passing people must have seen the Ferrer brothers and their companions loading the carpet and some pieces of furniture on to the covered cart. If they could be found that would be strong supporting evidence. Lastly, Zapatro had received a bullet in his shoulder and Dolores one in the calf of her leg. Even if the pellets had been abstracted by a trusted friend it would be several weeks before the marks of the wounds disappeared entirely; and the same applied to Gerault's broken nose. No, taken together all this should prove ample to convict them.

That meant then, de Quesnoy reasoned, that Ferrer and Co. must at the moment be exceedingly anxious that he should die. It could be taken for granted that among the medical students who came round the wards of the hospital they would have a spy who was keeping them informed of his condition. Once they learned that it looked as if he would soon be well enough to make a statement to the police the odds were that they would do their utmost to kill him off.

How, he wondered, would they make the attempt? In hospital an overdose of a drug offered the simplest means, and one in which there was a big possibility that no one would suspect that murder had been committed. At the thought, he thanked God that he was in the care of nuns, since their religion made anarchists anathema to them; so there was no likelihood of one of them being got at.

Perhaps, then, the anarchists would use their favourite weapon, the bomb. If there was a student of their persuasion spying for them, they might induce him to bring in a deadly little packet and secret it somewhere in or near the bed during the round of the ward that the students made each morning with the house surgeon. It would not be easy to do so unnoticed while a little crowd was standing round the bed; but he might, perhaps, drop his notebook and while stooping to recover it push the bomb under the bed.

Still under the influence of the secrecy about his real self which had become second nature to him during the past six weeks, the Count had at first intended to say 'Nicolai Chirikov' when the time came that he had to answer the question about his name. But on consideration he decided that it was pointless to do so. The mission on which he had come to Barcelona had been abruptly terminated by Gerault's having identified him as de Quesnoy. Even if he were in a state to do so he could carry it no further under the name of Chirikov, or any other.

Moreover, he realized now that if he wanted to get out of the hospital alive he must secure police protection. If he sent for the police he was still much too weak to give them a full account of himself, and they might not be inclined to pay very much attention to the fears of a Russian refugee; whereas the name de Quesnoy would ring a bell with them. Angela's having been assassinated during the wedding-day attempt on the King and Queen, and his having come to Barcelona with the idea of avenging her death on the anarchists made obvious sense: they provided an adequate reason for his now needing protection from them. He would, of course, maintain that it had been an entirely private venture, so Don Alfonso's interest in it would continue to remain secret.

That evening he spoke coherently for the first time and asked the nun in whose care he was what had happened to the man who had fallen off the ladder with him. Crossing herself, she said, 'He is dead; God rest his soul. He fell on his head, and they say that his great weight caused it to smash like an eggshell; so he could have known little about it.'

This news was a great relief to the Count, as it removed his most immediate danger. When she asked his name he gave it simply as de Quesnoy, then added weakly that in the morning he wished to make a statement to the police.

When morning came the house surgeon arrived early at his bedside, congratulated him on the improvement he had made, and said: 'I understand you wish to make a statement to the police about how the accident occurred, but I don't think it in the least necessary, particularly as the inquest on the man who fell with you is now over. In any case I couldn't possibly allow you to strain yourself by talking for any length of time. It will be some days yet before you are fit to do that.'

For a minute the Count considered this unexpected hitch in his plans. He was not strong enough to enter into a full explanation, or argue; yet if he failed to get police protection fairly soon now he might pay for it with his life. So also, if a bomb was used, might many other unfortunate people in the ward, as the anarchists were completely ruthless about killing the innocent if in a general massacre there was a fair chance of including the person they wished to assassinate.

At length he said, 'Send a telegram . . . please.'

Producing a pencil from the pocket of his jacket, the doctor lifted his note-pad and, expecting that his patient wanted to notify some relative of his whereabouts, smiled amiably.

'His Highness the Duke de Vendome,' the Count began slowly.

Lowering his note-pad the doctor frowned. 'When you were brought in they said you were a tramp. You cannot be serious in wishing to send a telegram to a member of the Royal Family.'

'I am a Knight of the Golden Fleece,' de Quesnoy said with a faint smile.

The doctor almost dropped his note-pad, then wondered if he was being made a fool of, but decided that his patient was too ill to play practical jokes. Meanwhile the Count went on. 'Banco de Coralles, Madrid . . . Am helpless . . . and in great danger . . . require police protection urgently . . . General Quiroga also in danger . . . Armand de Quesnoy.'

Having taken down the message the doctor looked up quickly and said, 'Are you . . . surely you must be the Conde de Quesnoy whose Condesa was among . . .'

De Quesnoy nodded; then, exhausted by his effort, he closed his eyes. He had no idea of Francois's present whereabouts and thought it unlikely that he was in Madrid, but the Bank would be certain to know where he was and forward the telegram to him immediately.

Late that evening his action took effect. The Captain-General of the City himself came striding into the ward followed by the Superintendent of the Hospital, the doctor who had been looking after de Quesnoy, and numerous other people.

General Quiroga had met the Count at a pre-wedding reception at the Royal Palace in Madrid. Halting at his bedside he peered for a moment at the bandaged head, then turning to the others he said, 'Yes. It is no hoax. This is the Conde de Quesnoy.'

Turning back to the Count, he went on, 'I am indeed sorry to find you in such a bad way, Senor Conde. But be assured that from this moment you may set your mind at rest with regard to your safety. Can you tell me what danger it is that threatens you and, it seems, also myself?'

'Anarchists,' replied the Count. 'I got in among them . . . but was found out . . . They are plotting to kill you . . . Don't know any details . . . Mustn't talk much yet . . . either.'

The broad-shouldered General gave a grim smile. The attempt on me was made on Wednesday, by a young man named Alvaro Barbestro. We caught him, but I escaped, as I have several times before. I expect they'll get me one day, though; so thanks for the intended warning. Are there any particular precautions you would like me to take in your own case?'

'Ferrer,' de Quesnoy murmured. 'Whole staff of Escuela Moderna nest of murderers . . . Good thing if you could . . . could hold them on some pretext ... till I ... I .. . well enough to bring charge.'

'That's enough,' announced the doctor. 'He really must not talk any more for the present, Your Excellency.'

The General nodded. 'Of course; of course. Anyhow, that is all I want to know for the moment. Please see that he has every possible attention; and have him moved to a private ward - that is, if being moved would not be too great a strain on him.'

'I'd prefer not to move him yet,' the doctor replied, 'but you may rely on us to make him as comfortable as we can.'

To the Count, the General said, 'Senor Conde, my compliments and best wishes for your speedy recovery. Should you desire anything you have only to command me.' Then he touched his gold-braided kepi in salute, gave some swift instructions to a member of his staff, and strode away.

The patients in the beds on either side of de Quesnoy were moved and the beds taken away to be replaced by screens, which had the effect of creating a private ward for him. Two Guardia Civil then sat down on chairs where one of the beds had been. They were armed with pistols and under orders that one or other of them should remain with him night and day. Considerably relieved by these precautions for his safety, he drifted off to sleep and had his first really good night.

Monday passed without incident but on Tuesday morning de Vendome appeared. He had received the Count's telegram, relayed from Madrid, at San Sebastian, where he was staying with his step-uncle and aunt at their villa. The train service across country was so bad that he had decided that it would be quicker to take the express down to Madrid, then come up from there to Barcelona on the night train. Owing to his devotion to de Quesnoy he had suffered acute anxiety about him for the past thirty-six hours; so he was greatly relieved to find him safe and over the crisis that had threatened his life.

The guards temporarily withdrew and, as the Count could now talk for a while without exhausting himself, he gave his young friend an outline of his misadventure. Having assured himself that the invalid lacked for nothing the Prince went off to see General Quiroga.

Later in the morning he returned to report that the General had had Ferrer and a number of masters at the Escuela Moderna arrested, and produced a list of their names. Benigno, Gerault, Zapatro, and Jovellenos were among them, but not those of Sanchez or Schmidt, and there was no mention of Dolores Mendoza. De Quesnoy asked that the last three should be picked up if possible. With the same object he also* gave descriptions of the bald-headed Manuel, who had been with Ferrer when he was brought to Pedro's house. The young man with the widely-spaced eyes who had been with them was obviously Alvaro Barbestro, and he had already been caught after making his attempt on General Quiroga.

After telephoning this message to the Captain-General, de Vendome again returned to the Count and said, 'Since several of the assassins who have reason to fear you are still at large, General Quiroga feels that the sooner you are out of Barcelona the better. The anarchist movement is so strong here that they can call on innumerable people to help them, and by killing you they could still save Ferrer and the rest, because there would then be no one to bring a case against them. In spite of the guard at your bedside, as these people are desperate they may take any risk to get you, or perhaps chuck a bomb through the window on the off-chance that you might be among its victims. There is no doubt that you would be much safer somewhere outside Catalonia.'

'But I can't leave Barcelona before I've given evidence against Ferrer and these other devils that the General has laid by the heels,' the Count protested.

De Vendome smiled. 'There is no reason why you shouldn't. Owing to there having been so many anarchist outrages here many civil rights have for a long time been suspended. Under his powers as Captain-General of the City Quiroga can hold them on suspicion for as long as he likes. You won't be fit to go into court for several weeks yet and you can convalesce just as well elsewhere—better in fact. In any case it is my intention to move you as soon as you are up to it, and take you back to San Sebastian with me. When you are fully recovered you can return here for the trial.'

'In that case,' murmured de Quesnoy, 'by all means speak to my doctor and make whatever arrangements you like.'

That afternoon two doctors made a thorough examination of the Count. Their verdict was that they would not normally have allowed his removal for another week; but in view of the danger to himself and, possibly, other patients in the hospital as long as he remained there, providing he did not have a relapse he could be moved after a further forty-eight hours.

On the Thursday morning de Vendome told him the latest news from General Quiroga. It was that Dolores had been arrested at Port-Bou while attempting to get over the frontier into France; but the other two had evidently decided to take no chances and left the Escuela Moderna the day after the attempt on de Quesnoy. A man answering Sanchez's description was said by a booking clerk at the railway station to have taken a ticket for Granada, where he was now being hunted, and the German was known to have left Spain via Puigcerda.

It had been decided that the invalid was less likely to suffer a set-back if moved by slow trains than expresses; so instead of going down to Madrid they were to travel via Lerida, Huesca and Pamplona. In the late afternoon, having thanked all those who had looked after him, de Quesnoy was carried on a stretcher down to an ambulance and, accompanied by de Vendome and two nurses the Prince had hired, started on the first stage of his journey.

Normally they would have had to change trains three times, but to save his friend from unnecessary jolting and exposure on station platforms de Vendome had arranged for a special coach in which they could all eat, sleep and remain permanently until reaching San Sebastian. That this meant the coach having to be shunted into sidings and remaining there for several hours was a good rather than a bad thing, as it enabled the Count to get three long periods of complete rest during the journey. Even so, when the trains were moving, the rhythmic thudding of their turning wheels jarred the newly-set breaks in his bones and gave him the worst headache he had had for some days.

By the second day he was running a high temperature and, when in the afternoon they reached San Sebastian, de Vendome was acutely worried about him. At the station they were met by de Cordoba, a doctor, two more nurses and one of the new motor ambulances. With it moving at little more than fifteen miles an hour, the sick man was taken the last three miles to the Conde's villa outside the town.

There Dona Gulia was waiting to welcome her invalid-guest, but he did not even recognize her, as his relapse had brought on a period of delirium. She had had one of the ground-floor rooms with french windows looking out on the garden turned into a bedroom for him, because de Vendome had telegraphed particulars of his injuries and she had realized that with a game leg stairs would be awkward for him for some time to come. He was put to bed and everything that the doctor and nurses could do for him was done.

For a few hours he lay in a drug-induced sleep, then late in the evening became conscious for the first time since he had left the train. At the sight of the comfortably furnished room and the face of a strange nurse at his bedside he realized that the nightmare journey was over. She took his temperature, noted with relief that though still high it had gone down a point, gave him a cooling drink, then began to bathe his forehead with eau-de-Cologne. The gentle massage soothed his pain and soon he dropped off to sleep again.

Sometime during the night he had a dream. He was still in the same room and a figure was standing at his bedside. He knew instinctively that it was not that of the nurse, and as he raised his eyes to the face now bent above him he saw that it was Gulia.

The night-light on the table on the far side of his bed lit up her pale face against the frame of her Titian hair, which was parted Madonna fashion in the centre and fell in two thick plaits on either side of her matt-white cheeks. The flame of the night-light was reflected in her great dark eyes and bright enough to show the colour of her full, rich red lips. Behind her all was darkness.

As he gazed up at her he was thinking, 'How dazzling her beauty is. She is like some superb marble statue, yet it is easy to guess that in the arms of a lover she would take fire and melt in soul-shaking passion.' Then he rebuked himself. 'She is Jose's wife so I must not allow myself to think of her like that, even in a dream.'

The figure moved, turned a little and extended two hands. Gently they took his pillowed head between them. Their palms felt as cool as alabaster against his cheeks. Slowly the lovely head came down and for a full minute the soft, warm lips were pressed on his.

He closed his eyes, drawing in the fragrance that was now all about him. The lips and hands were gently withdrawn. When he opened his eyes the ghostly figure had disappeared. It was only a dream. It could have been only a dream. Yet he distinctly heard a click, and could have sworn that it had been made by the latch on the closing of his bedroom door.

The Beautiful Anarchist

It took another thirty-six hours for de Quesnoy to make up the ground lost through his set-back; but after that he began to recover rapidly, and on the 10th of September he was allowed to get up in his room for an hour in the late afternoon. Sixteen days had elapsed since his fall, all his bruises had disappeared, the cuts on his head had healed, his ribs and collar-bone had mended and, owing to his excellent health, his body had made good the blood it had lost. At times he still suffered from severe headaches, but it was now only his broken leg that kept him a prisoner. When the plaster cast was removed from it the doctor had pronounced the mend to be satisfactory and it was a great relief to exchange the rigid casing for a much more comfortable supporting bandage, but he was not allowed until some days after that to put his foot to the ground.

As soon as he had been in a condition to do so he had dictated to de Cordoba a full account of all that had befallen him in Barcelona, for transmission to the King, who was in residence at San Sebastian. From then onward the Conde and de Vendome came in three or four times a day to sit with him for a while, but he knew that on many of these occasions de Cordoba would normally have been immersed in his banking affairs and that the Prince, in addition to certain duties he had to perform, would, while at this seaside resort, normally be amusing himself playing tennis or polo or bathing with parties of other young people; so as de Quesnoy grew stronger he told them that he would soon be about again and urged them to resume their usual activities.

After some pressing they agreed to look in on him after breakfast each morning and not make any long visits till the evenings. It was then he learned, too, that normally the Conde's business necessitated his spending one or two nights a week in Madrid. But by his thought for his friends the Count penalized himself considerably, as he was left with no one to talk to all day and he found that reading soon brought on his headaches. Dona Gulia often accompanied her husband or de Vendome on visits to him, and when she learnt that he could not read for any length of time she volunteered to read to him. In consequence, by the time he was well enough to leave his bed it was already an established

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custom that Gulia and her duenna, Dona Eulalia, should sit with him for an hour or more in the mornings and again after the siesta.

On his second time up he was allowed to try out his crutches and, although he felt rather shaky, he managed to walk with them round the small flower-bordered patio on to which his room faced. After that he took his meals at an iron table out there and received his visitors at it.

Three days later the doctor agreed to Gulia's suggestion that it would do the patient goocf to have a dip in the sea, providing someone was close at hand all the time to support him should he lose his balance. A private bay lay on the far side of the house. It was a quarter-mile-wide half-moon of lovely golden sand screened at either end by pine-covered headlands. At one side of it there stood a row of gaily painted wooden huts with a group of chairs, tables and striped sun umbrellas in front of them.

A footman named Ricardo, who had been allotted to the Count as his valet, and another footman, carried him in a chair with two poles lashed to it down to one of the huts. Ricardo helped him to undress and change into a borrowed bathing dress then, acting as a human crutch, escorted him out to the surf line. As they reached it he looked back and saw Gulia emerge from one of the other huts. Her burnished hair was now hidden under a big white macintosh cap, which made her face look unusually small, and she was wearing an elaborate dark blue costume piped with white. It was of thickish material with a yoke from the shoulders and a full, short skirt; so actually much less could be seen of the upper part of her person than when she was in evening dress; but her legs, normally hidden on all occasions by long skirts, were now bare from just below the knee, and he noted that they were slender and shapely.

On the Biscay coast the sea is nearly always rough and some way out great white combers were breaking over a submerged sand-spit, but nearer inshore it was moderately calm. Even so, neither of them went far out, and on this first day the Count contented himself with paddling and sitting down in the shallows to let the waves wash over him.

Next day he found that when waist deep in the water its buoyancy enabled him to keep his balance while putting only a very little weight on his injured leg; so he was able for the first time to exercise it. The following day he went for a short swim and after his fourth bathe he limped back up the beach to the bathing hut without Richard's help.

From then onward Ricardo and Gulia's maid came down to the shore only to help them change into and out of their bathing things; but Dona Eulalia continued to be their constant companion. However, this plump and indolent ageing lady, whose function it was in the Spanish tradition to protect her beautiful young mistress from unwelcome - or welcome - attempts on her virtue, knew her place as well as her duties. From their first meeting, the strong-willed Gulia had made it plain that she did not consider it part of those duties for a duenna to participate in every conversation she might hold with her husband's men friends, and that at such times Dona Eulalia would be expected to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. Anxious to secure the comforts and good food that went with such a post in a rich household, Dona Eulalia had made no bones about agreeing.

In consequence, while she had had perforce to remain in their immediate proximity when in the bedroom or sitting out in the patio, here on the beach when after bathing they sunned themselves in deck-chairs, she sat under one of the striped umbrellas sewing or dozing a good fifty yards away from them.

As the weather continued calm and warm they now spent a good part of each day down in the bay, usually having a picnic lunch brought out to them there. Sometimes de Vendome joined them, either alone or with a party of young friends, but for long periods they were on their own and, during them, enjoyed listening to one another's views on a great variety of subjects.

While de Quesnoy swam or limped up and down the golden sands Gulia watched him with covert glances from under her long curling eyelashes. She decided that she had never seen a more beautifully made and supple male body, and that the premature greyness that, as the result of the ordeals he had been through, now streaked his slightly wavy dark hair, added the final touch of distinction to his aquiline features. Disguising her passionate personal interest in him under the guise of normal feminine curiosity, she asked him innumerable questions about himself and these often led to political discussions.

Owing to the time de Quesnoy had spent at the Escuela Moderna he was now much better equipped to argue with her upon anarchism and the range of means suggested for bringing about its triumph -from the utter ruthlessness of Bakunin and Stirner, through violent insurrections as envisaged by Kropotkin, to the peaceful propaganda advocated by Proudhon, the passive resistance of Benjamin Tucker and finally the spread of universal love hoped for by Count Tolstoi.

That she was serious in her belief in anarchism he soon had no lingering doubts; but she was not of the category that would have made even a temporary marriage of convenience with Communism. Neither did she approve of violence. It was simply that she believed that complete anarchism could eliminate poverty and that every individual had the right to live as he pleased.

To find out more about his life with Angela she frequently turned the conversation to England. Although she had never been to that country she had a great admiration for the British and on one occasion she spolte glowingly of the way in which, strong in their own freedom, they refused to be bullied by all the other great nations into refusing to give asylum to political refugees.

He said that he personally had the best of reasons to be grateful to the British on that account, but that soon such refugees might find Switzerland the only country left open to them for, although he was convinced it was not so, there had been accusations from many quarters that the attempt to assassinate King Alfonso and his Queen had been planned in London; and the British were becoming tired of being labelled accessories to murder.

'Had the attempt taken place a year ago they might have altered their law, but they won't now,' she asserted quickly. 'Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman having ousted the Conservatives from office last December makes that a certainty. No Liberal Government would ever introduce a measure aimed at curtailing the march of humanity towards freedom.'

De Quesnoy gave her an amused glance, and said, 'I fear you are not quite so well up in British politics as you are in many other subjects. As I lived until recently for a good while in England allow me to enlighten you. Liberalism does not mean the same thing there as it does in Spain, Russia and most other Continental countries. The British Liberal party is descended from the Whigs - the great nobles of the eighteenth century who banded together to curb the powers of the Crown. Today it is true that in theory the Liberals represent the interests of the working classes, but whether that is so in fact is highly debatable.'

Having paused to light a cigarette, he went on. 'The main plank in the Liberal platform has for long been Free Trade, and with it they have won the votes of the masses in the towns because, on the face of it, their policy means cheap living. But go a little deeper into the matter and you will find that it has another altogether different aspect. The great strength of the Liberal party lies in the industrial north, and the money to finance industry comes from the rich manufacturers and the old Whig families who have invested their wealth in commerce. They are very shrewd people, and they know that if they can bring the cost of living down they will then be able to force down wages and derive bigger profits from their factories.'

'Do you suggest, then, that the Liberal policy is nothing but an infamous plot?' she asked indignantly.

'Not altogether,' he smiled, 'and the Liberals have introduced many excellent reforms. But if you go deeply into the matter you will find that Tory governments have proved better protectors of the interests of the ordinary people. It was they who first introduced free education, it was they who put a stop to women working in the mines, it was they who passed the first factory acts and legislated to prevent little children being forced to labour as though they were slaves. But to revert to the question of Britain continuing to give asylum to political firebrands from all over Europe, the last thing the Liberals must want is for such people to spread discontent in the industrial areas; so they are just as likely to put up a bar to their entering the country as would be the Tories, who in your sense of the word are more genuinely Liberal-minded.'

On another occasion they were talking about his early years spent in Russia when she said, 'The condition of the peasants and the poorer people must be quite appalling. One cannot wonder that last year Father Gapon led a revolution there. I know it was put down with ferocious brutality by the Tsar's Cossacks; but now that the people have shown their teeth it seems unlikely that will be the end of the matter. What do you think of their prospects of gaining their freedom?'

'It all depends what you mean by freedom,' he smiled. 'If they succeed in overthrowing the monarchy they certainly would not get it. That could only lead to a blood-bath, after which they would soon find themselves at the mercy of a committee of mob-leaders. All revolutions develop in much the same way, and you have only to recall how in the French Revolution the whole nation was held in subjection by Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety.'

'But it worked out in the end,' she objected. 'The Terror did not last for very long, and after it was over new laws secured to every Frenchman his rights as an individual.'

He shrugged. 'Perhaps; but at what a price to the nation. A million people died in the French Revolution, and that million represented nearly all that was best in integrity, brains and leadership that had been built up through many generations.'

'Some of the nobles may have been clever, but many were stupid, and the great majority of them were parasites battening on the labour of the people.'

'I was not referring to the nobility. Most of them escaped abroad. The people who were murdered were the solid bourgeoisie, who had made the cities of France richer than any others, the lawyers, doctors, scientists, philosophers and the best of the junior officers in the old Army and Navy.'

'Nevertheless there was plenty of leadership shown by Frenchmen in the Napoleonic wars.'

'You mean that there were plenty of brave men prepared blindly to give their lives in battle, because when the wars started they believed their country about to be invaded and overrun. Napoleon everyone admits to have been a genius; but he was an evil one and, remember, a product of the revolution. As a dictator he forced a tyranny on the people far worse than they had suffered under their Kings, and he bled France white in wars with no other object than to achieve his own ambition to become the arbiter of Europe. It was he who took such a terrible toll of the male youth of France that he undermined the stamina of the race for generations. But it was during the Revolution that the worst damage was done. Except for self-seekers and the irresponsible the upper middle-class was virtually wiped out, and France has never recovered. She has since had two Emperors, a Directory, a Bourbon restoration, a Commune, a Constitutional Monarchy and three Republics: all within a hundred years. The strength given to a people by continuity and tradition has been lost, and for a long time now she has been at the mercy of governments formed from little groups of unscrupulous intriguers who barter the votes they control for a share of power.'

'You know too much about France for me to challenge you on what you say,' she shrugged. 'But unless the Russian people dethrone the Tsar, how can they ever hope to better their lot?'

'It is being bettered, although that is probably not apparent to people who don't know very much about Russia. In recent years a lot more power has been given to the Zemstovs - that is, the provincial assemblies. They are local parliaments that have authority to pass laws for their own areas; and after the uprising last year they combined to press the Tsar to give Russia a National Assembly as well. His Imperial Majesty consented and the first Duma met in the autumn. Nearly all its members are men of high principles and broad views; so given a little time many sound reforms should emerge from it.'

Gulia nodded. 'Yes, I read about that. But the Zemstovs can legislate only on matters concerning their own Provinces; and this new National Parliament has been given no power at all. It is only a consultative body.'

'That is more or less true,' de Quesnoy admitted. 'At the root of the trouble are, of course, the Tsar and Tsarina. They shut themselves away with a little clique of hangers-on; so they are hopelessly ill-informed and hear only opinions which lead them to believe that they are still beloved by the great majority of their subjects. Unfortunately the Tsar is ill-educated, stupid and as weak as water; while the Tsarina, who dominates him, is a convinced autocrat, both bigoted and superstitious. It is a tragedy that the throne is not occupied by the Grand Duke Nicholas, or some other Prince who is more in touch with realities.'

'About that you must be right. Anyhow, if they can keep the lid on the pot only by continuing to send thousands of people every year to exile in Siberia, sooner or later it is bound to blow off.'

He gave her a smile. 'In that, my dear Dona Gulia, you are arguing from false premises. It is only when governments show weakness that revolutions succeed. That in France might easily have been held in check had it not been that Louis XVI was too great a fool and sentimentalist to accept the advice of his courageous Queen, and would not allow his loyal troops to suppress the first revolts against his authority. What happened in England during the same period is a fair example of the results of the opposite policy.'

She shook her head. 'I fear I am not sufficiently well up in English history to know to what you are referring.'

'To the effect of the French Revolution on England. At first all classes there welcomed the changes that were taking place on the other side of the Channel, because they believed in constitutional government. It was only when the moderates were overthrown and the Royal Family imprisoned that they began to realize the mfenace to life, property, justice and true freedom that the revolution had become. By then the virus had spread among their own masses. Agitators started riots in all their principal cities, a mob of fifteen thousand people gathered in north London and at a great mass meeting voted for a Republic. King George III was stoned in his coach on the way to open Parliament. Fortunately for England, in the younger Pitt he had a Minister who would not allow his humanity to deter him from his duty. Pitt brought the garrisons from outlying towns into the suburbs of London, suspended Habeas Corpus, forbade gatherings of more than five persons, and made it a transportable offence to talk treason. A number of hot-heads and would-be demagogues suffered, of course; but by his firmness he saved England from a similar Terror to that which took place in France, and the great bulk of her people from years of misery.'

'Am I to understand, then, that you consider the Tsar's Government is justified in sending all those poor people to slave for life in the salt mines of Siberia, simply because they demand better conditions for the masses?'

Gulia's voice held an angry note, and de Quesnoy sought to calm her by saying quietly, 'Let us get this straight. Persons found guilty of political agitation are never sent to the salt mines. They are exiled only to some city on the far side of the Urals, to keep them from making further mischief in St. Petersburg or Moscow. While living in exile few restraints are placed upon them; they can send for their families, choose their own residence, own property, practise their trade or profession, and enjoy all reasonable freedom. It is only real criminals and people convicted of having participated in nihilist plots who are sent to the salt mines. By ridding European Russia, as far as possible, of agitators, the Government is at least keeping control of the situation. The longer it can continue to do that the better chance there is of the leaders of the Zemstovs, and of the Liberal nobility, persuading the Tsar to agree to allow the new Duma a real voice in the Government. Better conditions for the masses can only be secured by reforms brought about by legal means. I am convinced of that. We can only pray that those already advocated by the best men in Russia will be adopted in time. If they are not I fear you will prove right, and the lid will be blown off the pot. But if it is, just as happened in France, it will mean the massacre not only of the rich, but also of the Liberal-minded intellectuals who are striving to better the lot of the poor, and for the Russian masses a long period of civil war, anarchy, and a far worse tyranny than that under which they live at present.'

It was on the morning after this conversation that a telephone message was received to say that the King intended to come out to the villa. The Conde and de Vendome had already gone into San Sebastian, so it was Gulia and de Quesnoy who received Don Alfonso. At the far end of the villa from the Count's bedroom there was another patio. Beyond both, and also between them, there extended a delightful garden, with a fountain in its centre faced by a long curved stone seat and a semi-circle of fluted columns carrying busts of Roman Emperors. There, after doing the honours with refreshments, Gulia left the two men.

'Well, my dear Count,* said the young King, 'it seems that you are extremely lucky to be alive; and I am delighted to find that the only ill-effect you now show from your terrible ordeal is a game leg. I read with the greatest interest the report that you dictated for me to Jos6 de Cordoba.'

De Quesnoy smiled. 'I thank your Majesty; and I am most grateful, too, for the gracious messages you sent me during the bad time I went through. For some days it was touch and go, but in a week or two I should be completely recovered. My only regret is that I was found out before I could secure conclusive evidence against Ferrer and his fellow assassins.'

'Yes, that was bad luck. But as things turned out their attempt to murder you has given us enough to get all those involved a life-sentence and, perhaps, linked to other charges, sufficient to justify the death penalty.' The King lit a cigarette and went on. 'In any case Alvaro Barbestro's goose is cooked because he was actually seen shooting at General Quiroga; and, I think, Ferrer's too, because you can give evidence that the plot against Quiroga was mentioned before you when they had you in the foreman miller's house, and Ferrer was present.'

'True,' murmured the Count. 'And he is the one above ail others that we must endeavour to put out of the way for good. I am convinced that he is their ring-leader. He could even continue to be dangerous in prison. May I ask how matters stand at the moment?'

'Ferrer, his mistress, all his family with the exception of his younger son, and the whole staff of the Escuela Moderna are under arrest. The school, of course, is closed. When it was raided a considerable quantity of papers were seized, among them some letters from Morral. There is enough material, anyway, to justify holding these people on suspicion that some, if not all of them, were privy to the attempt made by Morral to assassinate me on my wedding day. Even without your evidence, Ferrer and his closest associates will have great difficulty in proving their innocence, and your testimony will make certain of their conviction.'

'When, Sir, is their trial to take place?'

'At your convenience, my friend,' smiled the King. 'After what they did to you I see no reason why they should not remain kicking their heels in prison for as long as you require treatment for your leg. Those who were not concerned in your attempted murder are tarred with the same brush as the others. Even if not guilty of active anarchism by openly expressing treasonable views, they stimulate fanatics to commit their abominable crimes.'

'I have massage for my leg every morning to get the muscles back into condition, but I think that in about another fortnight I should be finished with that.*

'Very well, then. The trial can take place towards the middle of October. It is my wish that when you go to Barcelona to attend it you should stay with General Quiroga. He will provide a special guard for your protection and you must promise me not to go out without it. The sooner, too, you can leave the city, the better.'

De Quesnoy nodded. Tt certainly seems probable that they will make another attempt to kill me. I am most grateful for your Majesty's concern for me.'

For a while they talked on; then Don Alfonso told the Count that he would be in San Sebastian until the end of the month* and added that as soon as he could move about without discomfort he must come to lunch or dine at the Palace. A few minutes later he got into a trial six-cylinder car that the new Hispano Suiza Company had just made for him, and drove away at top speed.

De Quesnoy was then carried down to the beach with Gulia walking beside him and, a little belatedly, they had their morning bathe. After it, when they had settled themselves in their deck-chairs, she remarked:

'I would not care to be in Don Alfonso's shoes.'

'Why?' he asked. 'From fear that you might be assassinated?'

'He might be at any time; but it was not of that I was thinking. That poor young man has inherited every sort of trouble. Ever since he assumed power four years ago he has been compelled to change his Government every few months. The priests are constantly at him to maintain them in sucking the people's blood and forcing bigotry upon them; the Army has been the other dominant power in Spain for so long that the Generals show open resentment at every reform proposed for it; and in opposition to the other two the Liberals never cease to press him to introduce more democratic measures. It needs only a really serious clash between the Right and Left to start another of our civil wars. If that happened he would lose his throne.'

'I think you unduly pessimistic,' de Quesnoy replied. 'He is intelligent, courageous and has already won the love of the great mass of his people. He has also shown a tact in handling his Ministers that is quite astonishing in one so young. I should be much surprised if he does not find the means for keeping the Blacks, Whites and Reds from one another's throats.'

'He may as long as he does not feel himself to be personally involved. But he can be very high-handed and is extraordinarily pigheaded on some matters, such as the prerogatives of the Crown. Yet, unless he is prepared to sacrifice some part of what he considers to be his rights, a time is certain to come when he will find a great part of the nation against him. Another thing: now that he is a fully-grown man women will begin to play a part in his life and an evil or arrogant one could have a disastrous influence upon him.'

'He is certainly handsome enough for any number of pretty baggages to throw themselves at his head,' the Count said with a smile, 'and as time goes on they will, of course. At present he is said to be deeply in love with his Queen, but one can hardly expect that to last for ever. After all, it's more or less a tradition that Kings are entitled to amuse themselves with mistresses as a relaxation from the burdens of State; so no one will count him much to blame if his name becomes coupled with that of one or more lovely ladies. But I see no reason why he should allow them to dominate him.'

'Just think of his ancestry,' Gulia exclaimed.

'His father was far from being a bad King, and his mother is a most admirable woman in every way: both wise and saintly.'

'That his father's first wife, Mercedes, happened to be his Queen does not alter the fact that he allowed himself to become so besotted about her that when she died he lost interest in everything. And look at his grandmother, Isabella II. There was a bora whore if ever there was one. She chose the succession of Generals whom she allowed to ruin the country as though they were stallions, and put each through his paces in her bed.'

Unnoticed by Gulia, de Quesnoy gave her a sidelong glance, as she hurried on. 'Then her mother, Maria Cristina. She was so obsessed with her Captain of the Guards that she had nine children by him, and all of them in secret. When the last of them was only a few hours old she had to put on her State robes and read her official speech at an opening of the Cortes. If allowing oneself to be forced into such a position is not enslavement to passion, tell me what is?'

'Poor woman,' the Count commented. 'But you are right, of course, that the Bourbon blood is particularly easily inflamed. We can only hope that Don Alfonso's share of it will not become overheated to the detriment of himself and his country.'

Meanwhile he was thinking how surprising it was that Dona Gulia should have compared Generals to stallions and spoken of the Queen putting them through their paces in her bed. In high society and mixed company only the most oblique references were ever made to such matters, while it was unheard of for a lady even to mention such a subject when conversing alone with one of her husband's men friends. He then remembered that her parents were middle-class intelligentsia, and that such people, while highly respectable, regarded it as hypocrisy to hedge themselves about with unnatural prudery. Not being a hypocrite himself, he decided that it was refreshing to talk to a beautiful and intelligent woman who was not ashamed to speak her thoughts with frankness. And that was precisely the effect that Gulia had intended her words to have upon him.

After a few more days the Count's leg was strong enough for him to walk unaided in the garden or down to the beach, and de Vendome suggested that it would make a change for him to go in to San Sebastian. Gulia and Dona Eulalia accompanied them and after leaving the two ladies to do some shopping the Prince drove on through the old town, then along the coast road which almost encircles Monte Urgull, the great castle-topped hill that dominates the harbour, the bay of La Concha, and the city. Pulling up at the road's extremity they sat for a while, now facing inland, to watch the yachts tacking in the bay with, beyond them, the long curved beach of golden sand swarming with holiday-makers enjoying the September sunshine, and at its furthest extremity Monte Izueldo, on a lower slope of which, set in its lovely garden, stood the Royal Palace of Miramar.

Next day they lunched there with the King and afterwards watched him play polo. Soon after they entered the reserved enclosure a number of Gulia's friends came up to her in turn. All of them asked where she had been for the past three weeks and reproached her for declining invitations they had sent her. She explained that she had been looking after a guest who had been seriously ill, and introduced de Quesnoy to them. This resulted in a dozen invitations to lunches, dinners and bathing parties; but each trip in de Vendome's car had brought on one of the Count's headaches, so he begged to be excused from any social engagements until he had had a further week's convalescence.

Afterwards, while watching the game, his headache wore off, and he wondered a little uneasily if his refusal had been less due to that than a preference for spending long hours on the Cordobas' private beach with Gulia rather than to re-enter the social whirl.

That evening an episode occurred which gave him further cause for some uneasiness. For some time past he had been well enough to change and dine with the family, and at dinner that night de Vendome remarked to Gulia:

'I hear you have put off the Villalobars from coming to stay. Isn't that rather a pity? It was so jolly here in August with the house full of people; but for quite a time now we've had no company at all - not even a dinner party.'

De Cordoba promptly replied for his wife. 'My dear boy, you seem to forget that we have had other things to occupy us. When our friend Armand arrived he was at death's door; so naturally we got rid of the people who were staying here then as soon as we decently could.'

'Naturally,' agreed the Prince. 'I should have been the last to expect you to do otherwise. But he has been well enough to enjoy talking to other people for quite a while now, and I should have thought you might open up the house again.'

'Yes,' de Cordoba nodded, 'I see no reason why we shouldn't.' Then he glanced at his wife and added, 'Why did you put the Villalobars off, Gulia? After all, it was a long-standing engagement.'

She shrugged the superb shoulders that rose from her green chiffon frock and replied, 'Having cancelled our invitations to half a dozen other people during the past three weeks I suppose it has become a habit, and I did it without thinking. But, anyway, the burden of entertaining falls much more heavily on the hostess than you men realize, and I've been very glad of the respite.'

De Quesnoy had been about to express his regret that his presence there should have upset their autumn programme, but in view of Gulia's last remark he felt that it might be a little tactless to do so. As far as the other two were concerned he felt no qualms of conscience. The Conde, when not immersed in big financial deals, was always happy to go off on expeditions to hunt butterflies for his collection, and the young Prince led a very full life. Being deeply religious he spent several hours a day at his devotions, and in the role of an extremely active President on the councils of numerous Church charities; then he was frequently in attendance on the King and for the rest of the time enjoying himself at parties, mostly in Biarritz, since far greater numbers of the Spanish nobility spent this season of the year over the frontier in the smart French watering-place than in San Sebastian.

However, after their bathe next morning he did raise the matter with Gulia by saying, 'In spite of what you said at dinner last night about entertaining meaning a lot of hard work for the hostess, I fear that devoting your time to me, as you have during my convalescence, must have deprived you of a lot of enjoyment. Even if you hadn't had people here to stay, you must have refused many invitations to luncheons and dinners, and could often have driven into Biarritz.'

'No,' she replied. 'I can see most of my friends any time and a great many of the invitations come from acquaintances whom I wouldn't mind if I never saw again. In Spain, as you must know, except over a luncheon or dinner table women of my class are given little opportunity to converse with men. We are expected to be quite happy making small talk with our own sex; and you can have no idea how ill-educated, stupid, narrow-minded and altogether boring most of the women of the best families can be.'

'From having met a number of them I think I can,' he smiled.

'Then you will understand how greatly I have enjoyed escaping from them to be with you.'

'In spite of the fact that if we carried our political beliefs to their logical conclusions we would cut one another's throats?' he twitted her.

She laughed. 'Yes, in spite of that. After all, politics aren't everything in life. There is another side to it, the personal one; and that is much more important.'

'I agree; and we certainly have a great many things in common.'

'We have; but I should never have found that out if you had not been temporarily incapacitated for ordinary activities, which has led to us spending so many hours alone together. You can't think how I shall miss our talks when you have gone.'

'And I shall too.' He spoke with complete honesty. 'There can be few women of your age who have such a good brain - except perhaps for professional blue-stockings - and as far as I am concerned they don't count. To have heard sound argument on a great variety of subjects coming from the lips of a woman of your beauty and distinction has been a wonderful experience, and one that I shall long remember.'

'Thank you for the compliment,' she smiled. Then, with a little sigh, she added: 'I don't get many these days.'

'Then I'm to blame for that. It's because you have given so much of your time to me instead of getting out and about.'

She shook her head impatiently. 'I don't mean the vapid expressions of admiration with which I am bombarded by Jose's friends. I was thinking of the honest compliments that I used to receive before I married, from young professors and women who were making something of their lives.'

'None of us can have everything,' de Quesnoy brought out the old platitude philosophically, 'and surely the acknowledgement of your mental attainments while living in your uncle's circle at the University cannot have meant more to you than being the Condesa de Cordoba.'

'I suppose not,' she murmured a shade uncertainly.

'Oh, come!' he rallied her. 'You have palaces, servants, jewels and beautiful clothes. You bear one of the greatest names in Spain, and that of a charming and intelligent man who adores you.'

Suddenly she turned her head and looked straight at him. Her big dark eyes held his as she asked, 'What grounds have you for assuming that he does?'

For a moment de Quesnoy was nonplussed, then he answered a shade uncertainly, 'Well, it is obvious that Jose has no interests other than his bank, his butterflies and yourself.'

'Ah!' her eyes flashed. 'You would have been nearer the mark, my friend, if you had stopped short at "butterflies". To have a flutter with his favourite specimen is his real reason for going each week to Madrid.'

There was no mistaking her meaning, and the Count felt acutely embarrassed. The very last thing he wished to do was to discuss with her the private relations between her husband and herself, and he thought it in the worst possible taste for her to have let him have even a glimpse of them.

Yet, after a moment he found excuses for her. Although she looked the part of a youthful great lady to perfection, she was not so by birth. She had been brought up in a very different atmosphere: one in which people were guided more by reason than by inherited prejudice, and were courageous enough to say what they thought frankly - even if it meant being sent to prison. She was a clever woman forced to choose her friends from a circle of, mostly, pleasant fools. She was by nature independent, but now shackled even in her home to a duenna. She was an anarchist in theory and a Republican by conviction, who lived surrounded by die-hard Monarchists.

It struck him, too, that she had paid him the rare compliment of confiding to him her views on many matters; views that sfie could not possibly have aired to her husband, much less her sister-in-law, the Infanta, or any of the people with whom she came in frequent contact. For some reason that he did not attempt to fathom she had singled him out from all the others and treated him as a trusted friend. If, then, she now wished to tell him of her private life, and he refused to listen, it would destroy the delightful bond that had been established between them and hurt her grievously. After all her kindness to him he could not possibly do that.

Having swiftly collected his thoughts, he said, 'You mean that Jos6 keeps a mistress?'

She nodded. 'Yes. I found out only by accident. I came upon a letter from her which he had most stupidly left lying among some other papers he gave me to look through. When I charged him with it he did not deny it. I gather that she is an Andalusian dancing girl and quite a star turn with the castanets.'

De Quesnoy was mildly surprised to learn that his staid friend kept a mistress, but it did not even occur to him to doubt Gulia's statement. Although it was no longer considered comme il faut for a noble openly to take pride in being the accepted lover of some leading ballerina or song-bird of the opera, it was still an age in which all over Europe great numbers of rich men, more or less secretly, kept pretty young women in small houses or pleasant apartments; and their wives had been brought up to accept such a situation as nothing to make a great fuss about.

Meanwhile Gulia was going on. 'I feel sure that he conducts his affaire most discreetly, and would not admit to it even among his best friends. But he did not marry until getting on in life, and I suppose having a girl who is outside his own circle with whom he can entirely relax had become a habit with him.'

'How long ago is it since you found out?' the Count inquired.

'Just on fifteen months, but I imagine that it had been going on for a long time before that; or if not with this particular woman, then with others.'

'And how long have you been married to him?'

'A little over three years.'

That was not very long, de Quesnoy reflected. But he knew well enough that a man who for twenty years or so had lived with a succession of pretty women could still tire of one who was exceptionally beautiful in a comparatively short time. Only a mental bond created by true love could hold a couple together for a long period of years, and evidently no such bond had been created between Jos6 and Gulia. It could only be that he had desired her, marriage had been her price, and she had accepted him for the wealth and position she would enjoy as his Condesa. After a moment, de Quesnoy asked:

'Did you not make an effort to persuade Jos6 to break off this

liaison?'

She shook her Titian gold curls which, after taking off her bathing cap, fell like an aureole round her pale face. 'No, I fear I was too proud for that. I told him that I would not share his embraces with any woman, and drove him from my room. I told him that I would not allow him to return to it until he could give me his word that he had decided for good to give up sleeping with harlots. But he never has.'

While she spoke she was looking away from de Quesnoy, and his glance ran over her as she lounged in the deck-chair. She had a face and figure that might even have tempted Saint Ignatius Loyola to rise from his shrine at not far distant Pamplona. 'What a waste,' he thought. 'What a waste, for this divine creature to be leading the life of a nun.'

At that moment Ricardo came over to tell them that their luncheon, which they were having on a table outside the bathing huts, was now ready; so the conversation proceeded no further.

It was Ricardo who, a few days later when helping the Count to dress, told him that an intruder had been seen the previous night in the garden. The old man who planted and tended it with the assistance of two youths had left his cottage to walk across it to his potting shed for the purpose of sowing some seeds in boxes, because he subscribed to the ancient belief that certain plants thrived better if their seed was inserted in earth by moonlight.

He had come upon the intruder outside the drawing-room, peering into it through a chink between the curtains. On hearing him approach, the man had turned and run off; but the gardener had seen him well enough to be certain that he was no one employed about the place, and described him as a tall, broad-shouldered dark man in his early twenties.

Later in the day de Cordoba discussed the occurrence with de Quesnoy and they speculated on whether the fellow was a local rogue contemplating burglary, or an anarchist who had learned the Count's whereabouts and had come from Barcelona with the object of endeavouring to put him out of the way.

Fearing that the latter might be the case, the Conde was in favour of asking for police protection for his guest, but de Quesnoy said that to have police constantly about the place would be unpleasant for everybody, and declared that he was again quite strong enough to take care of himself. But he willingly accepted the loan of de Cordoba's revolver to keep handy in his bedside cupboard.

On Monday the 27th the Conde again left for Madrid. That day de Quesnoy motored into San Sebastian with de Vend6me to lunch again with the King, but on this occasion Gulia, not having been included in the command, remained at home. This time the Count found the Queen also present. He had known her as Princess Ena, but it was the first time he had seen her since her wedding, just previous to which, on accepting the Catholic faith, she had taken the name of Victoria Eugenie. He thought that in spite of her youth she looked amazingly regal and, with her mass of golden hair piled high above her milk and roses complexion, indisputably beautiful; so it was no wonder that her husband was in love with hef.

She received him very graciously, condoned with him on his accident and congratulated him on his recovery. Don Alfonso also remarked that with his sun-tanned face he now looked the picture of health, and that his limp was hardly noticeable. The King then took him aside and told him that the trial of the Barcelona anarchists had been fixed to open on Monday, October the 11th.

After lunch de Vendome accompanied the King into Biarritz, where they were to play polo that day, but de Quesnoy excused himself from joining their party because had he crossed the frontier into France he would have risked arrest. Instead he spent the afternoon strolling and sitting in the delightful Miramar gardens with other luncheon guests who had not wished to go to Biarritz. Later he went down into the town, did some shopping for himself, bought a huge box of chocolates for Gulia, and returned to the de Cordoba villa in a hired carriage.

Before changing for dinner, when the weather was fine, the family always had drinks out in the garden by the fountain. Gulia and Dona Eulalia were already seated there when he returned. After presenting the chocolates and receiving Gulia's smiling thanks, he helped himself to a glass of Manzanilla, then gave them an account of the luncheon party. A few minutes later Dona Eulalia tactfully remarked that the light was failing and carried her work and the Moscardo she was drinking off to the back porch of the house, in which a lamp had been lit. De Quesnoy continued to tell Gulia about his afternoon, then for a while they talked of various things.

It was just before they were due to go in to change that she inquired casually, 'Do you ever have dreams?'

'Yes,' he replied. 'Not very often, but occasionally.'

With a smile she asked, 'Have you ever dreamed about me?'

'As a matter of fact I have, once,' he admitted. 'It was on the night that I was brought here.'

She arched her eyebrows. 'Really. I hope it was a nice dream?'

'It was . . . very.' He finished his second glass of sherry. 'I was terribly ill, of course. You appeared at my bedside like a ministering angel from Heaven. After you had gone my fever seemed to abate and I felt much better.'

Rising from the stone seat, she picked up the big box of chocolates and said, ⁴Ah well; perhaps sometime I will make another appearance in your dreams.'

That night he woke out of a sound sleep. The house was very still and the room was faintly lit by moonlight coming through the french windows. He heard a soft rustle and, fearing an attack, turned swiftly on his other side. She was standing by his bed again.

11

Bedroom Scene at Midnight

For a moment de Quesnoy remained absolutely still. This, he knew, was no dream, and the full implication of her midnight visit rushed upon him. Yet his words denied it. Sitting up with a jerk, he exclaimed:

'Gulia! What are you doing here?'

She smiled at him. 'Need you ask?'

The moonlight filtering between the pillars of the patio outside and coming through the french window was sufficient for him to see her quite clearly. Her hair, as on the previous occasion, was parted in the centre, Madonna fashion, and fell in long plaits on either side of her pale face. She was wearing a dressing-gown of dark material, the collar and cuffs of which were trimmed with heavy lace. As she spoke she put out her hands to take his.

'Yes,' he murmured, ignoring her gesture. 'Yes, I know why you've come. But. . .'

'But what? You love me, Armand. I know you do. And I love you.'

'I... After our long days together, I feared it might be so.'

'You feared it. Why? To love and to be loved. What is there in life more glorious than that? You do love me, don't you?'

He drew a deep breath. 'Yes, Gulia. I confess it. I would not be human if being constantly with you all through the past month had not played the very devil with my emotions.'

She smiled again. 'Oh sweet confession. I knew it; but what joy to hear you say it. I will confess, too. I've loved you since the first moment I set eyes on you. How I have managed to control my impatience until you were really well again, I cannot think. But now, at last, I am here. To have your arms about me will be no longer a restless dream but a divine reality.'

'No, Gulia; no!' He gave a violent shake of his head. 'However much we love one another, we can't, we mustn't. There is Jos6.'

'What of him?' Her dark-eyes flashed and a sudden note of anger crept into her voice. 'I have already told you that he is nothing to me. Nothing!'

'My dear, he is your husband, and . . .'

'He is no longer so. He lost that right when I found him out. Since then I have looked on my body as my own, to do as I will with.'

Again he shook his head, but she went on swiftly. 'As things are between him and me what difference does it make that we are still married? If you and I were deeply religious that would be a different matter. For priest-ridden women who five like nuns for the rest of their lives after their husbands have deserted them, I have only contempt. And you, Armand. I cannot believe that you mean to repel me because you fear to be troubled by remorse at having committed adultery.'

'Adultery, no,' he gave a grim little laugh. 'On that score I've already plenty to answer for. Yet in such cases as I have made love to married women, it has proved no burden on my conscience. You speak, though, of my repelling you. How can you use such a word when you must know that I'm aching to embrace you?'

'Oh my darling!' she gave a quick sigh of relief. 'For a moment you really frightened me. I thought that through some foolish scruple you were about to drive me from you.'

Again she put out her arms and now stooped her head towards his.

His pulses were racing and his brain in a turmoil. He was a virile man and had known no woman since Angela's death, now four months ago. And here was this most lovely creature, whose charm and mind and body all combined to make her so utterly desirable, offering herself to him.

With a desperate effort he fought down his desire, brushed her outstretched hands aside, rolled over and slipped out of the far side of the bed.

'Armand!' she cried, her voice sharp with renewed fear that, after all, she was about to lose him.

'No, Gulia! No!' he gasped, now facing her across the bed. 'You did not let me finish just now when I said that Jos6 was your husband. I was about to add that he is also my friend.'

'Your friend. Yes, of course,' she replied impatiently. 'But what of it? You have just admitted that you have several times committed adultery with other women. The husbands of some of them must have been your friends.'

He shook his head. 'You are wrong there. Some were acquaintances, but none my friends. I have never taken the wife of a friend, and never will.'

'Then you shall tonight.' She spoke softly now, but with quiet .determination. 'You have admitted that you want me.'

*Of course I do. I am half mad for you, but. .

"Then I'll not let you rob yourself and me of the bliss we could ?know together.' As she spoke she undid her dressing-gown and let it fall to the floor. With his heart beating like a sledgehammer he watched her walk round the foot of the bed towards him.

She was wearing a nightgown of pale blue chiffon. It was goffered under the breasts to accentuate their outline, but otherwise absolutely plain and transparent. When she came round the end of the bed he saw the full perfection of her body, and his breath caught in his throat.

As she approached he backed a little towards the window, but she took a quick step forward, placed both her hands on his shoulders, and murmured: 'Armand, I beseech you to be sensible. Jose will never know. What difference can it make to him?'

'That's not the point,' he muttered thickly. He was trembling now and made no move to push her hands from his shoulders. 'Not the point. It is that . . . that he trusts me. If he did not he would never have allowed us to spend so much time virtually alone together. I ... I can't betray him.'

'Darling, he left us alone because he does not care. He is happy with his dancing girls, and you know yourself that he is not mean-spirited. Naturally he would be furious if I openly disgraced him by taking a lover, or even getting myself talked about. But what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve over. He wouldn't wish to know that I had been unfaithful to him, but he would not grudge me a little happiness; and less so if it was with a man like yourself whom he respects and admires. It would not surprise me if he half suspects that we have already become lovers. No man who really minds about his wife would have given another the opportunities that he has given you to persuade me to become your mistress.'

It was a point of view that had not occurred to de Quesnoy. Perhaps, he thought, she is right. Jos6 must realize that she is made of flesh and blood, and now, at twenty-three, subject to all the urges of a fully-developed woman. Since he neglects her, how could he expect her to remain chaste. And I suppose most men, if left with her day after day, would have had few scruples about doing their best to persuade her to go to bed with them. Perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill, and throwing away this wonderful thing for a point of honour that, in the circumstances, Jos6 himself would find laughable.

The heady scent she was wearing came like incense to his nostrils. The nearness of her body set his own on fire. Her eyes fixed on his were moist with desire; her red lips were a little parted showing her teeth gleaming white. She slid her arms over his shoulders and held her flower-like face up for his kiss.

Yet from somewhere inside him he almost heard a voice say, This is forbidden. She is my friend's wife. He has trusted me with her. I have no right to assume that he would not mind if I took her. That he will never know makes no difference. I shall still have lost my own self-respect.'

He put up his hands to break her hold and push her from him, determined now that, whatever she might say, he would resist temptation. As he moved, her eyes shifted from his to a point over his left shoulder and she gave a sudden cry.

Turning his head he looked towards the window. From behind the central pillar of the patio a man had emerged. He was standing now within two feet of the right hand panel of the french window with something that looked like a black box held up to his face.

Next second there came a blinding flash. Instantly de Quesnoy's muscles tensed themselves to meet the shock of the explosion. For a moment the room and the portico were as bright as on the brightest day. The light was blinding and for seconds after it went out he could see the outline of the window and the man outside it silhouetted in dead black against a deep orange background. But no explosion followed; the window remained un-shattered. No deadly fragments of glass and iron came whizzing through the air to tear the flesh of Gulia and himself to ribbons.

It was only when the black and orange dissolved into grey, and he could see again the familiar features of that side of the room, that he realized what had happened. It had been no bomb that the man had set off, but a magnesium flare, and the boxlike thing he had been holding up before his face had been a camera.

Thrusting Gulia from him, de Quesnoy cried, 'Back to your room! Don't lose an instant! I'm going after him. The flash and the noise may wake someone. You must not be found here.'

Before he had finished speaking he had the window open. He had not forgotten the revolver in his bedside cupboard, but feared that if he paused to collect it he would lose track of the intruder. Dashing across the little patio, he halted a second to glance right and left. To his right, now thirty yards away, he glimpsed between two groups of palms a dark figure running hard. Launching himself forward he raced down the gravel path. His feet were bare so the stones cut into them but in the emergency of the moment he hardly noticed that.

As the man ahead crossed the open space by the fountain, the Count had a better sight of him. He was taller and had a longer stride so de Quesnoy's hopes of overtaking him dwindled. For a second he thought of rousing the household by shouts of 'Stop thief'; but to do so could not have brought help in time and if Gulia had not at once obeyed him her presence at the end of the house in which his bedroom lay might lead to most unwelcome speculations among the servants.

When he reached the fountain luck came to his aid. His quarry had taken a short cut across some flower-beds to reach a partly open wrought-iron gate between two pillars in a tall yew hedge. Failing to see in the semi-darkness that in the centre of one of the beds there lay a shallow lily pool, the leaves of the plants in which almost covered its surface so that no gleam of moonlight showed on the water, he splashed right into it, tripped and fell.

He scrambled to his feet but had lost a precious minute in which de Quesnoy had thrown all his strength into a spurt. Before the man could j ump clear of the pond the Count was on him and they fell in a tangled heap together.

The pond was one of a pair at that end of the garden. It contained only miniature aquatic plants, so was no more than six feet by four and about eight inches deep. The man's legs and body were half submerged in it but his head and shoulders were on dry ground. He was on his back with de Quesnoy on top of him, and the pale moonlight now revealed his features. He was Sanchez Ferrer.

'I thought it might be you . . .' panted the Count, as he strove to get a grip on Sanchez's throat, \ . . from the description of the man ..

He got no further, but gave a sudden grunt. Sanchez had brought up his right leg with a violent jerk and kneed him in the stomach. The breath was driven from his body. Automatically he let go of Sanchez's neck, doubled up and rolled over gasping with agony. The strapping young anarchist kicked his legs free from the Count's body, struggled up into a sitting position, and whipped out a knife from a sheath under his cummerbund.

Staring upward with bulging eyes, de Quesnoy saw his danger. The twisting muscles of his stomach were still paining him fiercely. He was still incapable of fighting back. His heart missed a beat as Sanchez raised the knife to stab downwards with it. By a superhuman effort he threw himself sideways. The knife, aimed to bury itself beneath his ribs, passed under his arm as he flung himself over, and buried itself in a wire basket containing a lily root.

With a curse, Sanchez jerked upon it to pull it free. At the second tug it came out, but he had had to exert so much strength on it that he went over backwards. In a second he was sitting upright again, but even that brief respite had enabled de Quesnoy to draw a little air down into his tortured lungs. As Sanchez raised the knife to stab with it again, the Count's hand shot up and grasped his wrist.

There ensued a tense, silent struggle that lasted a full minute. But de Quesnoy's slim fingers were as strong as steel. Gradually he twisted and forced back his would-be murderer's wrist. Sanchez let out a blasphemous oath, and the knife tinkled on the stone surround of the lily pool.

Flexing his knees, Sanchez heaved himself upright. Still clutching his wrist, the Count was dragged up on to his knees after him. But now he made a fatal error. Slung from a long strap over the anarchist's shoulder there dangled the black leather box that held the camera. It was that, with the damning photograph it must contain, that de Quesnoy felt it all-important to secure. Leaving go of Sanchez's wrist, he made a grab at the box, but missed it.

In an instant Sanchez had turned and, with head down, was again racing towards the wrought-iron gate. Floundering to his feet de Quesnoy dragged them from the mud of the pool and went pelting after him. Ignoring all obstacles Sanchez plunged into a bed of flowering shrubs. His having to force his way through them enabled de Quesnoy to catch him up. Again, the Count made a snatch at the camera case. He missed it, but his fingers grasped the loose skirt of Sanchez's light cotton jacket. Halting in his tracks he attempted to pull the anarchist back by it. There came a tearing sound but the piece of material that he had clutched was wrenched from his hand, and Sanchez bounded forward on to the path on the far side of the bed.

De Quesnoy burst his way through the bushes in pursuit; but it was now his turn to be brought up in mid-career by the unexpected. His foot caught on an exposed root. He was flung violently forward and came down flat across the path, his chin striking one of the stones that formed its further edge. Again the breath was driven out of his body, and the blow to his chin temporarily knocked him out.

It was some minutes before he was sufficiently recovered to pick himself up, and by then he knew that any further attempt to pursue Sanchez would be futile.

As he scrambled painfully to his feet his eye fell upon a nearly square white object lying in the middle of the path. On touching it he realized that it was a piece of cardboard. It was almost four inches long by three wide. Turning it over, he saw it to be a portrait, and the moonlight was just sufficient for him to make out that it was of a woman. Evidently when he had seized Sanchez's coat and dragged upon it, the tear had also ripped the inside pocket and the photograph had fallen out of it.

Carefully now, a lump rising on his chin, his knees grazed and the soles of his bare feet on the sharp ground causing him to wince with every step he took, he made his way back towards his bedroom.

As he approached the house he saw Gulia leaning out of an upstairs window. She called softly down to him, 'Armand; what happened? I pray God you're not hurt.'

'No,' he called back. 'I'm all right; but he got away. It was Sanchez Ferrer. I'll tell you all about it in the morning.'

Going inside, he looked at the portrait under the light. It was of a gipsy dancer, and had been taken by a photographer in Granada. Getting out fresh night clothes he changed out of his mud-covered ones into them, then went along to the cloakroom off the hall to wash himself and bathe his hurts. Back in his room he lowered himself into the armchair and considered for a while what was best to be done.

As it was impossible to guess even in which direction Sanchez had made off it was pointless to telephone the police. Moreover, the police were the last people that de Quesnoy now wished to bring into the matter. He knew little about photography, but was inclined to suppose that it was by no means easy to take good pictures by artificial light; so that taken by Sanchez might not come out. On the other hand it was unlikely that he would have taken it if he had not thought there was a good chance that it would. And if it did it could lead to most appalling trouble.

Gulia, in her transparent nightgown, had been as near naked as made no matter, and she had been facing the window. At the angle from which the picture had been taken his body would probably have shielded one side of her, but as she was nearly as tall as he was her face musfhave appeared in it over his shoulder, and she had had her arms round his neck. It compromised both of them beyond all possible argument, and for it to fall into the hands of the police would be nearly as bad as if it were shown straight away to Jos6. Therefore, by hook or by crook he must get the negative back.

On re-examining the photograph that Sanchez had dropped he saw that on the back there were scrawled a number of letters and numbers, in most cases having dashes between them. But he could think of no clue to these hieroglyphics.

Glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece, he saw that it was now a quarter past two; so if he woke at six he could still get in the best part of four hours' sleep. Getting into bed he put out the light.

Gulia's visit had greatly disturbed him, but he was decidedly relieved that he had not allowed her to persuade him to make love to her; and Sanchez's appearance on the scene had now given him an excuse to escape further situations in which her beauty might lead him to succumb to temptation. He felt no righteous glow in having rejected her advances. On the contrary he was inclined to think that in refusing so lovely a gift of the gods he might, at times, look back with regret on this lost opportunity to take as his mistress a woman so gifted in so many ways; but at least he was able to go to sleep without any twinge of conscience.

As a soldier, he had long since trained himself to wake at any hour, and within a few minutes of six he opened his eyes. A slight ache in his chin recalled to him at once the events that had taken place during the night and for a short while he lay turning them over in his mind. Then he got out of bed, put on his dressing-gown and walked along to the library. There, he wrote two letters. Both were to Gulia. The first ran:

Dear Dona Gulia,

The intruder who was seen in the garden two nights ago was here again last night. He made an attempt to get into my room, but fortunately the noise he made trying to force the lock of the window woke me. I jumped out of bed, chased him through the garden and caught, but failed to hold him. (/ fear that as a result of our encounter one of your lily pools has suffered sadly.) However, the light was good enough for me to identify him as Sanchez Ferrer.

He will naturally expect me to report the occurrence to the police, as a result of which the San Sebastian district would become too hot to hold him; so the odds are that he will go into hiding again further afield. Last time he was in danger of arrest the police had reason to believe that he went to earth in Granada, and during our struggle last night he dropped a photograph taken in Granada, which makes it as good as certain that he did. But he cannot know that the police suspect that he has a hide-out there so I think it highly probable that he will return to it.

Having considered turning the matter over to the police I have decided against that. There would certainly be delays while statements are taken and passed on to Granada, and it is most unlikely that any of the Granada police could identify Sanchez on sight. Therefore, with the aid of the photograph he dropped, if I act promptly I consider that I stand a better chance of laying him by the heels myself.

Please forgive me for not delaying to make my formal adieux to you, but I am loath to disturb you so early in the morning and must leave the house soon after eight if I am to catch the nine-five for Madrid. (There is just a chance, too, that Sanchez may be on it.)

One more thing. As a knife will be found in or near the lily pool it would be foolish of me to conceal from you that Sanchez attempted to kill me. In consequence, if my idea is correct and I run him to earth in Granada, there is always the possibility that in another attempt he might prove more successful, or that I might be laid up there for a while with another wound.

Therefore, just in case anything prevents my returning to San Sebastian, I would like to express how deep is my gratitude to you, to Josi and to Francois for the wonderful care you have taken of me since I was brought to you as a shattered wreck. That I am whole and strong again so soon is due entirely to the unceasing thought that you have so generously given to my nursing and well being. It is a debt that I shall never be able to repay. But I have every hope of returning safely from Granada and later expressing the above sentiments to you in person.

My affectionate regards to you, to Josi and to Fran go is.

Your most devoted and grateful friend,

Armand de Quesnoy.

P.S. There seems nothing to be gained by my going secretly to

Granada; so please tell Jos£ that if he wishes to get in touch with me I shall be staying at the new Alhambra Palace Hotel under my own name.

His second letter ran:

My very dear Gulia,

It is imperative that the police should not be brought into this. Sanchez got away with his camera and if it is humanly possible I must get hold of it myself before anyone else sets eyes on the film that it contains.

Why he should have taken a photograph instead of trying to shoot me puzzled me a lot; but I think I have found the answer. To shoot anyone through a thick pane of glass is a chancy business, as the odds are very high on the bullet being deflected and failing to hit its intended victim. Moreover, a shot would have aroused the house and he might have been caught. In any case the whole police force of San Sebastian would have been alerted and on the look-out for him before he could get away from the district.

The probability is that he has been snooping about the place for a fortnight or more. If so he must have seen us many times virtually alone together on the beach and in the garden, and come to the conclusion that we were having an affaire. The idea of blackmail would then automatically have come to his mind, because he told me himself when he believed me to be an anarchist sympathizer, that for some months past he had been successfully blackmailing an unfortunate Marquesa in Barcelona. His next step would then have been to conceal himself for a number of nights in succession outside the patio which gives on to my bedroom hoping that a chance would arise for him to get a compromising photograph of us.

The obvious assumption is that, if he succeeded, he would use it to demand money. But I do not think that in this case that was his intention or, if so, only as a secondary object of his plan. I have good grounds to believe that the Ferrer family are most strongly united. In any case, the two brothers are devoted to one another, and I feel convinced that Sanchez's mind at the present time is dominated by the wish to save his brother and father.

It may be that he thinks that with this photograph he will be able to blackmail me into refusing to give evidence against them at their forthcoming trial. But to make sure of that, even if I promised not to, would be difficult because it is quite certain that I shall be subpoenaed. My guess is, therefore, that he intends to use the photograph as bait - to lure me into a situation where he, probably aided by several of his anarchist associates, can kill me without risk of being caught.

If I am right, in the course of the next day or two a letter will arrive here for me enclosing a copy of the photograph with a demand for money in exchange for the negative, and directions where I am either to meet him or leave the money.

It is of the utmost importance that you should secure this letter on its arrival so as to guard against any possible chance of its being opened by anyone in error. Destroy the photograph and send the letter on to me at the Alhambra Palace. But with a little luck₉ aided by the clue to finding him that he dropped during our struggle, by then I shall have located him, taken him by surprise and dealt with him.

And now, my very dear Gulia, what can I say to you other than that I was moved to the depths of my being by all you said to me last night, and that I count your honour as dear to me as my own. Be sure that I will stick at nothing to secure this accursed photograph that now menaces it.

I kiss your hands,

Armand.

Having read the two letters through, he felt that they should serve their respective purposes adequately and that the last paragraph of the more personal one would cause her to feel less badly about his having left without saying good-bye to her. That he had a good excuse to do so was a great relief to him; for, their scene during the night having ended without his either definitely refusing or agreeing to become her lover, he felt sure that had they met again that morning, even for a few moments, she would have done her utmost to extract from him a promise about the future.

To make it would, he knew, have been a hideous temptation. Moreover, realizing from his feelings for her what she must feel about him, he doubted if he could have brought himself to be so brutal as to leave her without hope. Yet, now that fate had temporarily intervened, his instinct was to take it as a sign that he should stick to his resolution not to betray his friend; and, once away from San Sebastian he felt sure that it would strengthen. However much he might now long for her, he could protect himself from weakening by finding some excuse not to come back.

Having put the personal letter inside the one he intended her to show her husband, he tucked them both into an envelope, sealed it carefully, and addressed it to her. Then on his way back through the hall he propped it up on the table there against the mail-box.

By this time the servants were about. Having found Ricardo he told him that he had overnight received a message that his presence was required urgently in Madrid, so he meant to catch the nine-five train. He then asked Ricardo to order a carriage to take him into the city, and to bring him his breakfast in half an hour. It arrived soon after he had bathed and dressed. When he had eaten it, refusing Ricardo's offer to pack for him, he selected the things he was most likely to need, including the revolver that de Cordoba had lent him, and packed them into two portmanteaux. At eight o'clock Ricardo came to collect his luggage and he followed him along to the hall.

As he picked up his overcoat and hat, then turned to follow the footman out to the waiting carriage, a low call came to him. 'Monsieur le Comte!'

He knew it instantly to be Gulia's voice and, swinging round, saw her standing half concealed behind the partially open door to the library. Putting down his things he walked over to it and entered the room. He had never seen her on horseback, but she was dressed in riding habit, and he guessed that she had put it on because the servants who saw her in it would think that she meant to go for a before-breakfast ride, thus being provided with a reason for her being downstairs so unusually early.

Stepping back behind the door she said quickly, 'Armand. As that flash went off I saw that the man was holding up a camera. I was staring straight into it. I had to know if you got the camera from him or, if not, what we should decide to do. I dressed like this and came down meaning to send Ricardo to suggest that you should come for a ride with me. Then I found your letter.'

'You've read it?' he asked.

'Yes; and I think your interpretation of the way that Sanchez's mind has worked is most probably right. What ghastly luck for us that this should have occurred; still worse that you should now have to go into danger again.'

He gave her a reassuring smile. 'Be of good heart. This time it is I who will be able to choose my moment to attack. With a little luck I'll catch him napping.'

'Oh, do be careful!' she begged, suddenly putting up her hands and grasping the lapels of his coat. 'I think I'd die if anything happened to you.'

He placed his hands over hers, but did not seek to loosen her hold on him. 'At least I'll promise not to take any unnecessary risks; but by hook or by crook I must destroy that negative.'

'I know. How long do you think this wretched business will take?*

Tt is impossible to say. My guess that he will go back to Granada may be wrong. But anyway I think I'll get a lead to him from there. If not I'll have to wait until you send on to me the letter that I feel pretty certain he will send here. Then it will be up to me to counter any trap he may set for me with a better one of my own.'

'And when you do get back . . . what of the future?'

He shook his head. 'We can't possibly discuss that now. We haven't the time. If I don't go soon, I'll miss my train.'

'But you must have formed some idea what you mean to do when the Barcelona trial is over.'

'Oh that!' He tried to prevent his voice from showing his relief that her question appeared to be impersonal. 'I haven't really decided anything, but I expect I'll take up soldiering again. I've always wanted to command a cavalry division, and I might be given one if I went out to one of the South American Republics.'

'Armand.' She hesitated a second. 'About last night. I do understand how you feel about Jose. It is just like you to consider yourself bound by the code of chivalry. But it was the thought of deceiving him that really distressed you, wasn't it? I mean . . . Well, you would feel differently if we ... if we took the bull by the horns and were open with him.'

'Yes,' he nodded. 'That would be quite a different matter. But think of the implications.'

'I did, for most of the night. I love you, Armand. I would go anywhere with you; and I'd like to go to South America.'

He shook his head. 'I'd love to take you there. But I couldn't, Gulia. It's out of the question. You are a Roman Catholic; so you can't get a divorce. How could I expose a woman like you to social ostracism when it leaked out that we were not married?'

T don't see why it should become known out there if we planned things carefully.'

'Such things always do. But, Gulia, we really mustn't attempt to settle anything without giving the whole matter most careful thought. And I must go now, or I'll miss my train.'

'Very well, then. Kiss me before you go.'

As he took her in his arms she put hers round his neck and drew his face towards hers. Their mouths met in a long, rich kiss. For a full minute they held one another in a firm embrace, then she released him and murmured, 'Go now, dear love. May God protect you and bring you safely back to me.'

Half dazed by the heady emotion her kiss had aroused in him, he gave her a lingering smile, then turned and walked quickly from the room.

in the gipsy's cave

Looking after him, she put her hand upon her wildly palpitating heart, while saying to herself, 'I've put my seal upon him. He doesn't realize it yet, but he is now mine.'

12

In the Gipsy's Cave

De quesnoy had intended to arrive at the station half an hour before the train was due to leave. Gulia's having waylaid him had cut down that margin a little but he still had plenty of leeway. After buying his ticket he sent a porter ahead with his bags and to keep him a first-class corner seat as near the rear of the train as possible; then he took up a position behind a newspaper kiosk from which he could watch, without making himself conspicuous, the passengers going through the barrier to the Madrid express. It was not until the barrier was about to be closed that he darted through it, ran down the platform, threw a tip to his porter and jumped up into the train.

He had satisfied himself that during his twenty minutes' vigil no one remotely resembling Sanchez had passed the barrier; but there was still the possibility that the anarchist had reached the station before him. As it was an express to the capital from Spain's most fashionable summer resort, the train had no third-class carriages and the firsts and seconds were the newly-introduced corridor coaches. Having taken his seat and given the passengers and attendants time to settle down, he made two slow progresses, first up to the front of the train, then to the guard's van, and back. It took him nearly half an hour, as he paused at every compartment to scan its occupants; but when he had finished his inspection he felt certain that Sanchez was not travelling on the express.

That did not surprise him, for he knew that although the younger Ferrer brother had no great brain he was well endowed with peasant cunning; so he had probably walked or driven during the night to some small town ten or fifteen miles from San Sebastian and would begin his journey south by catching an early-morning local train from there.

On arriving in Madrid, de Quesnoy booked a sleeper on the night express to Granada, then had an early dinner at Boca's, choosing for his main course a dish for which the ancient restaurant was famous - a boiled chicken which was served covered with a yellow sauce made from eggs and sherry, and having some resemblance to a zabaione. His first-class sleeper was old-fashioned but spacious and comfortable, so he slept well and arrived in Granada early in the morning on Wednesday the 29th.

155

He had never before been to this famous city from which for centuries a line of Caliphs had dominated south-eastern Spain, and which later, after the Moors had been driven out, had been greatly embellished by the Catholic Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. It was set in a vast, fertile plain enclosed by great ranges of mountains, and no finer view of it could be obtained than from the new de-luxe hotel to which the Count had wired from Madrid for rooms.

When he had had a bath and changed he went out on to the balcony. The hotel had been built on the very edge of the precipitous south-western slope of a high plateau that divided the modern city and the old Christian quarter from the original Moorish town. His room looked out over the former and from the balcony on which he stood he could have pitched a peseta down into the nearest street which lay two hundred feet below. The city lay sizzling in the sun but the air up there was cool and invigorating, and the atmosphere crystal clear. Beyond the great huddle of spires, domes and roofs the plain stretched away interminably, walled in on either side by unbroken chains of lofty mountains, those to the left having snow on their peaks gleaming white against the cloudless azure sky.

He took out the photograph that Sanchez had dropped and studied it again. It was a three-quarter length of a sultry-looking beauty. She was wearing a black, flat-crowned, wide-brimmed Andalusian hat tilted sideways on her head, and a fringed silk shawl twisted tightly round her body. Her pose was that traditional with Flamenco dancers: one hand on hip, the other crooked above her head holding castanets. The name of the photographer, which was stamped below the portrait, was Elio, and his studio was in the Calle de San Jeronimo.

De Quesnoy hired a carriage and had himself driven down to the studio. Judging him to be a possible customer of means Senor Elio willingly supplied him with such information as he could. He remembered the woman well. She had not been wearing fancy dress but was a professional Flamenco dancer known as La Torcera - which de Quesnoy later learned meant The Wriggler'. The photograph had been taken about six months ago, and on referring to his ledger Senor Elio said that he could not give her address because she had called for the prints. He added, however, that she was certainly a gipsy, so the Count should have no difficulty in finding her if he made inquiries at the gipsy settlement on the hillside beyond the old Moorish town that lay on the far side of the city.

Having thanked him, de Quesnoy declined the suggestion that he should have his photograph taken, and decided to spend the rest of the morning sightseeing.

To his surprise he found the Cathedral to be hidden away behind tall buildings in one of the main streets, and the entrance to it through first a small private house then a tiny patio; but once inside, it was a glory of brightness; all its walls and pillars being made of pure white stone. Having admired a magnificently carved interior door - the great masterpiece of the sculptor Siloe - and the famous Virgin Chapel, he went into the adjacent Capilla Real.

Nearly a third of this much smaller edifice he found to be occupied by four enormous tombs with the most beautiful carvings imaginable. They were those of Ferdinand and Isabella and of their successors, the mad Queen Joan and Philip the Fair of Burgundy, by whose union half Europe fell under the sway of their son, the Emperor Charles V.

A beadle, hovering for a tip, pointed out to de Quesnoy that the stone pillow under Queen Isabella's head had a deeper depression in it than that of King Ferdinand, and told him the amusing legend that it had been deliberately sculpted so because she had had more brains than her husband.

Having a wide knowledge of European history, the Count could well believe that she had; for, although it was Ferdinand who had driven the Moors out of Spain, his Queen had acted as his Quartermaster-General, and without the extraordinary feats of organization she performed he could never have achieved his victories. It was Isabella, too, who had had the vision to finance Columbus's voyage to America. The tragedy was that a woman so brilliant and so good in herself should also have been so much under the sway of pitiless priests that she had allowed them to found the Holy Office, and encouraged the terrible work of the Spanish Inquisition.

The beadle then took him down a flight of steps to a level below the huge tombs, where there was a glass panel through which he could see the actual dust-covered coffins of these two sovereigns who, by their marriage, had brought Spain under one crown and made her a great nation.

In the sacristy he saw the crown, sceptre and mass-book used by Isabella, and King Ferdinand's sword. Then, having had enough of churches for the day, he went out to wander round the streets of the old town. The Moorish bazaar delighted him, as it consisted of a series of open arcades criss-crossing one another, and each lined on both sides with shops only the width of a single narrow arch, in which craftsmen of all kinds were still plying ancient trades.

On returning to his hotel he asked the hall-porter to find out for him if a dancer known as La Torcera was still living in the gipsy settlement and, if so, how he could locate her habitation. After lunch he slept through the afternoon, then before dinner he went for a walk through the woods which covered the greater part of the Alhambra height, on which the hotel was situated.

He was thinking only of Gulia, and wondered what he had better do about her. To disclose frankly to de Cordoba that they had fallen desperately in love and intended to run away together was certainly not as despicable as entering on an adulterous liaison behind his back; yet it seemed to de Quesnoy that even the former course was highly reprehensible since, had his friend not shown his trust in him by allowing him to spend so much time alone with Gulia, the present situation would never have arisen.

There was another side to the matter, too. If Gulia was right in her belief that her husband was indifferent to her entering on an affaire, provided she was discreet, and Jose found out that they had become lovers, he might not mind very much; whereas he might mind very much indeed if his whole life were disrupted by his wife being taken away from him.

With a wry smile de Quesnoy thought how, in his case, history was repeating itself, in that for the second time in his life he should be contemplating running away with a married woman. He recalled the many times he and Angela had wrestled with the pros and cons of an elopement. In her case he would not have had the least scruple about taking her from her villainous husband, but she had had a greater sense of loyalty than Gulia and had insisted on remaining with her husband until he could surmount his financial difficulties. Gulia, on the other hand, was willing not only to sacrifice a much greater name and position for him, but also to share with him the uncertainties of a soldier's life in South America -a thing that Angela would never have agreed to even after they were legally married.

'Legally married'; he repeated the words in his mind. It was over the difficulty of their becoming so, as long as Angela's husband had been alive, that had caused them such harassing doubts about whether they should gamble everything by her cutting loose and their first living together openly in, so-called, sin. And that, now, would apply equally with Gulia. There could be no divorce, and de Cordoba might quite well refuse to countenance an appeal to Rome for an annulment of their marriage. Even if he did not obstruct the appeal the Church might refuse to grant it. At best it would take two or three years to come through. And in the meantime Gulia would be living a furtive existence with him under an assumed name, and - a thought that made him see red - be in constant dread of being subjected to slights and insults from people who knew that she was not 'legally married' to him.

After a two hours' walk he decided that, greatly as he desired her, he was neither prepared to disrupt the life of his friend nor place her in such an invidious position; and that he was certainly not going to go back on his original refusal to betray his friend's trust by taking her in secret as his mistress.

Having made this resolve it followed that in no circumstances should he again become a member of the de Cordoba household, either at San Sebastian or in Madrid; for to do so could result only in placing an appalling strain on both Gulia and himself. His first job was to hunt down Sanchez. After that he would have to appear at the Barcelona trial, but that was now barely a fortnight away; so it would be easy to make some excuse for not returning to San Sebastian in the meanwhile. When the trial was over he would spend six or eight weeks with his father in Southern Russia, then he would go to South America and see whether, in a year or so, he could not after all achieve his lifelong ambition to be given command of a Cavalry Division.

That evening the hall-porter reported that La Torcera was still living in the gipsy settlement and working in the best troupe of Flamenco dancers, who gave displays in the biggest cave for the wealthier tourists. He then asked if de Quesnoy would like a guide to take him there at ten o'clock, when the dancing started.

The Count replied that he would not be going there until the following evening, and then he would not require a guide but only a carriage to take him to the settlement and bring him back.

The porter pressed him to take a guide, giving as his reason that unless strangers were properly sponsored the gipsies could prove troublesome, as the men were a lawless lot and had been known to demand money with menaces before they would let solitary visitors leave their settlement. But de Quesnoy had no intention of saddling himself with a companion, and he assured the porter that he was quite capable of looking after himself.

His reason for delaying for twenty-four hours before getting in touch with La Torcera was based on a nicely balanced assessment of possibilities. Assuming that after Sanchez's flight from Barcelona he had been living with this woman and, following his stay in San Sebastian, intended to return to her, since he had not caught the Madrid express he could not have got back to Granada before that evening at the earliest. On the other hand, if he meant to return he should be back for certain by the following night. To have questioned La Torcera about him before he arrived would have meant running a grave risk, even if she were heavily bribed, of her warning him directly he did put in an appearance that his hide-out had been discovered; upon which it was certain that he would disappear and again become very difficult to trace.

If Sanchez was living with the gipsies it seemed most unlikely that he would show himself at any of their performances, as to do so would have been to risk some police agent among the spectators identifying him; so while strangers were about he would most probably lie low in the woman's hut. De Quesnoy's hope was that he would be able either to fool or bribe La Torcera into betraying Sanchez by pointing out her hut to him. He could then go straight to it, take Sanchez by surprise and, at the point of his revolver, compel him to give up the incriminating negative.

Next morning, as he had another day to kill, he decided to spend it up on the Alhambra height visiting the world-famous Moorish Palaces with which it was crowned.

First he went to the Generalife, one of the smaller palaces which had been used as a summer residence by the Caliphs and was said to have the loveliest gardens in Spain. He found its long walks of tall clipped hedges a pleasant sight, but no better than those he had seen in similar formal gardens elsewhere. There were, too, roses in great profusion, though their beds were ragged and ill-kept; and by and large he considered the garden of the Alcazar in Seville to be much more beautiful. However, the Generalife possessed one unique feature that it had been well worth coming to see - a very long narrow canal with a hundred fountains playing into it from either side and so forming a continuous arcade of sparkling water-drops rainbow-hued in the brilliant sunshine.

On the other side of the plateau he found that the great palace of the Alhambra more than rivalled the Alcazar in Seville. The buildings, lakes and gardens within its walls covered several acres and from the main fortress-palace a huge square casbar towered up to the sky. From its top one could see many miles in every direction, and the great ranges of mountains in the distance made the panorama superb. On the ground level its principal courts were gems at which to wonder. To construct the Court of the Lions and the Court of the Ambassadors, with their delicate pillars of different coloured marbles and incredibly intricate lace work carved from stone, must have taken an army of skilled craftsmen years of devoted labour.

In his imagination he endeavoured to people them again with the colourful throngs that must have inhabited them six hundred years ago: the Caliph, in his huge turban and gorgeous robes, seated on the divan dispensing justice; behind him his Captain of the Guards in chain mail and a spiked helmet of burnished silver, and a huge negro, naked except for a leopard-skin about his loins, the great curved scimitar with which he carried out his task as Executioner resting against his ebony shoulder; the veiled Sultana, seated just below her lord, wearing a bright embroidered jacket and Turkish trousers, her dark hair ablaze with jewels; the Moorish Knights, no darker-skinned than other Mediterranean peoples, clad in surcoats patterned in silks with peacock hues; the slender dancing girls, nude but for diaphanous muslins caught at wrists and ankles by gold bangles.