Vendetta in Spain

De Quesnoy appreciated, too, that such scenes had symbolized far more than a marvellous spectacle and the power which came from armed might. There would also have been present elderly men deeply versed in the law derived from the Koran, poets* doctors, architects, mathematicians, astrologers, geographers, and others more learned, more humane and more advanced in thought than any then living in the Christian world. For it was the so-called Infidels who from Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo had inherited and perpetuated the great civilizations of Greece and Rome.

History as written by the Western world accounted it a great triumph that the Moors had been driven out of Europe. It had been for the Christian faith; but in no other way. These cultured people, with their high standard of living and scrupulous bodily cleanliness, had been replaced by Europeans who were little better than barbarians: their highest caste still inhabiting bitterly cold and uncomfortable castles, ignorant, unwashed, lice-ridden, a prey to witchcraft and superstition, and dominated by priests whose cruelty had not been equalled since in ancient times the priests of Moloch had also appeased their God by consigning human victims to the flames.

Pondering upon this, de Quesnoy wondered whether, had the Moors defeated the Christians and, in due course, having become the masters of Europe, carried their culture north, humanity might not have been spared the endless wars between Catholics and Protestants, which had caused such appalling suffering and, perhaps, enjoyed the benefits of science and hygiene several hundred years earlier than, with the Christian victory, had proved the case.

While going through the upper floors of the palace he came to the apartments of the Harem. One of the largest rooms was made delightfully airy from one of its walls being composed only of a row of arches, which gave on to a wide covered balcony. Going out on to it he remained there for a few minutes enjoying the view. The wall of the palace and the cliff on which it was built fell almost sheer to a gorge two hundred feet below. On the far side of the gorge lay the old Moorish city; a huddle of white, red-roofed buildings still surrounded by ancient crenellated walls.

Beyond it the ground rose in a rugged slope pitted with caves and dotted here and there with small clusters of low, white-painted walls that were evidently living quarters built against the hillside. From a few of them smoke spiralled up. In some places it also rose from what, in the distance, looked like short posts set up on parts of the rock where it was fairly flat, but actually they were chimney pots to carry off smoke from cooking fires in caves hidden below them. It was the gipsy settlement.

That night, after he had dined, de Quesnoy had himself driven out there. He was wearing informal evening clothes under a long black cloak and a flat-crowned sombrero. Behind his right hip, hidden by the cloak, he carried de Cordoba's revolver, fully loaded. Behind his left hip, similarly hidden, he had slung a leather bag containing a considerable sum in Spanish gold coins. In his pocket he had another, smaller, bag of gold and a number of loose pieces for immediate expenses.

The driver set him down at the entrance to one of the clusters of low white buildings on the hillside. He gave the man ten pesetas and told him to wait, adding that in no circumstances was he to allow anyone else to hire him, even temporarily for a trip into the city and back, or to send him away, and that on their return to the hotel he should receive four times that sum.

Delighted at the thought of receiving two whole gold pieces for his night's work, the driver declared that for such a munificent cciballero he would wait a week. He then drove off to a sheltered gully in which were lined up several carriages that had already brought visitors.

Meanwhile de Quesnoy made his way past a low enclosure that held a herd of goats, and through a narrow passage between two of the hutments that were built into the cliff face. Beyond it there was an open space the size of which surprised him. A natural cave had evidently been enlarged until it formed a rough horseshoe with the roof at its widest part about ten feet high. In it were a dozen wooden tables, all of which had been set round its walls to leave a circle of sanded floor in their centre free for the dancers. It was lit by half a dozen acetylene flares each of which, in its immediate vicinity, gave off a terrific heat.

No dancing was going on^at the moment and all the tables were occupied, but only about half of them by visitors; at the others sat one or more of the women of the troupe. The Count was ful-somely welcomed by the Maestro of the establishment: an elderly gipsy whose greasy black locks were streaked with grey, and who sported both gold ear-rings and a gold front tooth.

With many bows the Maestro led him to a table at which one of the prettier girls was seated. She was rather plump-faced and had black kiss-curls plastered flat on the upper parts of both her cheeks. The rest of her hair was piled high and held in place by a big tortoiseshell comb from which hung down a black lace mantilla. From her shoulders rose many-layered puffs of gauzy material below which her well-made arms extended; she had a slight cast in one eye.

De Quesnoy made her a smiling bow, which she acknowledged with an inclination of the head, then he sat down beside her and told her that his name was Jaime Avila. She replied that she was known as La Conchita and had only recently been made a member of the troupe. A hunchback appeared in front of their table carrying a goat-skin containing wine. Skilfully he squirted a quarter of a litre of the wine into each of the earthenware mugs that stood before them and, with a grin, scooped up the pesetas pushed across to him in payment. The Count lifted his mug to his companion, murmured 'Salud, Madonna,' and tried the wine. It was a little thin and slightly acid but quite drinkable.

His excitement rising now he felt that he was most probably sitting within a hundred yards of Sanchez's hide-out, he took stock of the other occupants of the cave. They numbered altogether about twenty-five, of which ten men, including himself, he put down as visitors. At the far end of the cave was the band, consisting of two men with guitars who, at the moment, were talking to a very fat middle-aged woman. The remaining dozen were made up by the Maestro, the hunchback waiter and the dancers.

His eyes ran swiftly over the women, endeavouring to identify La Torcera. Except that the colour of their costumes differed they were all dressed much alike - high combs and mantillas, puffed sleeves and voluminous skirts made in many layers over numerous frilly petticoats. But, after a brief scrutiny, he decided that she must be the woman seated at a table nearly opposite him with a heavy-jowled, middle-aged man wearing a grey suit and a red cummerbund.

The guitarists began to strum, then moved into a swift rhythm. La Conchita excused herself and, with another girl, got up to dance partnered by the two men of the troupe. Both the latter were as slim as matadors and, like them, wore skin-tight trousers which showed the rippling muscles of their thighs and buttocks.

All four of them stamped their heels and made the traditional provocative gestures of advance and withdrawal originally inspired by the courting of birds. When the dance was well under way de Quesnoy beckoned the Maestro over to him and said:

'The dancer opposite is La Torcera, is she not?' and as the man nodded he went on, 'I have been told that she is amusing to talk to. Please tell her that after she has danced I should like her to come to my table.'

The Maestro shook his head. 'I regret, Senor; but for this evening, as you see, she is already engaged.'

'For the whole evening?' asked the Count.

'Yes, Senor. The senor with whom she sits is a rich merchant from Alicante. He arrived early and asked for her; so it is certain that he intends to spend the whole night in her company.'

This was a most annoying development and one for which de Quesnoy had not bargained. But, now that he had shown himself among the gipsies, he was most averse to putting off his plan even for a night. To the Maestro he said, 'I, too, am rich, and I am prepared to outbid him for her. Be good enough to arrange the matter.'

'Excellency, I regret,' the Maestro raised his broad shoulders and spread out his arms in a helpless gesture. 'The senor who is with her has already made me a generous present with the request that tonight I should introduce no other admirers to her. How can I now make a deliberate attempt to rob him of his pleasure?'

As the Maestro moved away the dance was ending. La Conchita and the other girl were pirouetted by their partners, their skirts flairing waist high to tantalize the male onlookers with the sight of their white-stockinged legs, elaborate garters and, above them, a glimpse of naked thighs.

When La Conchita rejoined the Count, he summoned the hunchback to pour her more wine. Then, having given her time to get her breath back, he said softly, 'My dear, you are certainly the prettiest woman in the troupe, and had I come here tonight for the purpose of enjoying myself I would ask nothing better than to remain with you. But I have a matter of business that it is imperative that I should discuss with La Torcera. As you see, she is not free, and the Maestro tells me that he has been well paid to refrain from disturbing the tete-a-tete she is engaged in. I want you to give me your help in getting her away from her companion. Now, put your hand under the table.'

When she did so he pressed two gold pieces into her palm. It was much more than she would ordinarily have earned in a night and, a swift glance down having shown her that the coins were gold, she said with an uneasy smile:

'Mil gracias, Don Jaime. You are a true caballero. But I am much afraid that I shall be unable to earn this generous present. Since the Maestro has refused to present you to La Torcera, I dare not. And I see no other way in which I can help you.'

'It is quite simple,' he answered her. 'All I wish you to do is to go over to her and make some excuse to get her to go outside with you for a moment. When you have her alone tell her that I will give her five hundred pesetas if she will get rid of her companion.'

'Five hundred pesetas!' repeated La Conchita, her dark eyes opening to their fullest extent. 'Do you really mean that? If so, you must be a Prince travelling incognito.'

'I am; my real name is Kropotkin. Please tell her that - Prince Peter Kropotkin.' He told the glib lie because he thought it certain that the gipsies, being perpetually at war with the law, would be anarchist sympathizers, and that, while it was most unlikely that any of them had ever seen the Prince, Sanchez would most probably have spoken of the famous anarchist leader to La Torcera; so she would be all the more willing to get rid of the man she was with and, perhaps, even disclose Sanchez's whereabouts without being bribed to do so.

La Conchita nodded and stood up. As she crossed the floor a little group came on to it. The fat middle-aged woman, carrying a rush-bottomed chair, placed it opposite the entrance and plumped herself down; the guitarists and three girls grouped themselves round her and, following her lead, they all began to clap in rhythm. A young man, scarcely more than a boy, then entered the circle and began to dance. As he did so, shouts of 'Olel Ole/' came from several of the spectators and most of them joined in the clapping.

It was evident that the youth was a favourite and the Count soon saw that his popularity was justified. Holding himself as stiff as a ramrod, with one hand above his head and the other on his hip, he moved at a snail's pace back and forth and round and round, but the whole time his feet tapped the floor at an incredible speed, changing their beat only for an occasional stamp at each sudden cessation of the clapping.

Meanwhile, with a little smile of satisfaction, de Quesnoy saw La Torcera and La Conchita leave the cave together. They were absent for about five minutes, then they both returned and the latter rejoined him. Leaning towards him, she said:

'As I feared, the matter is not easy. It is against all custom for one of us to leave a patron with whom the Maestro has provided us. We may do so only if it transpires that he has no money or is so drunk that he becomes troublesome and insulting. She cannot therefore send him away or come over to you. But, of course, here as elsewhere there are times when disputes arise between two men, both of whom desire the company of one woman. If you decide to attempt to get rid of him yourself, she will not take his part but will remain passive; and she is naturally much flattered by your interest in her. It remains now for you to make up your mind whether your wish to get her to yourself is worth risking what may prove an unpleasant scene.'

De Quesnoy had already considered going over to La Torcera's table and boldly asking her to leave it with him, but it was obvious that such a step would result in high words and probably a fracas. If that happened, he feared that the Maestro and other men of the troupe would join in and, as he would clearly be in the wrong, side with the merchant from Alicante. As he was carrying a revolver he had no doubts about his ability to protect himself and get out of the place unharmed, but having to do so would promptly terminate any chance of his achieving the object with which he had come there. Turning to the girl beside him, he said:

'I had thought of doing what you suggest, but there would not be much point to it if it resulted in my being thrown out. From the way you speak, though, that does not always follow. Do you think the Maestro and the others would leave me a free field to get rid of the other fellow?'

She gave a quick nod. 'Yes. What woman does not enjoy having two men fight over her? La Torcera would see to it that you had fair play. All gipsies love watching a fight, too, so our men would not interfere - that is unless either of you drew a knife. They would then from fear of a killing, for we do not like to give the police an excuse to come nosing about up here.'

'Thank you, my dear. In telling me that you really have been helpful.' With a grim little smile, the Count made to stand up. But she quickly laid a hand on his arm, and said:

'Not yet. La Torcera is about to dance. You must wait now until her dance is over.'

La Torcera was partnered by the taller of the two men who had danced before. Now that she was standing up and the Count had a closer view of her, he saw that she was both a taller and bigger woman than he had so far judged her to be. She was handsome, but in a coarse way, and smallpox had left her with a slight pitting on the lower part of her right cheek. Her features and her skin, which was a shade darker than that of the other women, suggested that she had a touch of Moorish blood. As a Flamenco dancer she was clearly in the front rank, clacking her castanets in perfect timing with the beat of the guitars, jerking back her head with admirably simulated violence, and swaying her big shapely hips in sensuous invitation. Twice as she came round to face de Quesnoy she gave him a smile and raised an interrogative eyebrow.

He did not wait until she had finished her dance, but after it had been going on for some while he bid a smiling adieu to La Conchita, then stood up and skirted the floor until he reached the table opposite. It had occurred to him that to get his way without a scene was at least worth trying, and this was the time to attempt it; so, with a bow to the merchant from Alicante, he addressed him with the utmost politeness.

'Senor, allow me to introduce myself. I am Prince Peter Kro-potkin. You may perhaps have heard of me. Most of my life has been spent championing the underdog, and I have a particular admiration for the gipsies. They show such a praiseworthy independence of spirit, and are a living example of my contention that life may be enjoyed without resorting to the law or owning personal property. No doubt it is a similar admiration for them that has brought you here tonight.'

The man gave him a puzzled look and replied, 'Well, not exactly, Senor Prince. As a matter of fact I came here because I enjoy their Flamenco music and watching them dance.'

'Ah!' beamed the Count. 'That is quite understandable; and I see that we shall soon be able to arrange matters.' As he spoke he pulled out a chair, added 'Permit me' and, without waiting for the other's consent, sat down.

'Arrange matters,' the merchant frowned. 'I don't understand what you are talking about, and this table . . .'

'Exactly. It is about this table we have to arrange. As you have come here only to listen to the music and watch the dancing you will, I am sure, have no objection to moving to another.'

'I'll do nothing of the kind,' came the angry retort. 'This is La Torcera's table, and I have booked her to spend the evening with me.'

'That is unfortunate, because it so happens that I have matters to discuss with her that are of much more importance than any of the sweet nothings that you may have visualized yourself whispering in her ear. May I suggest that you should whisper them instead to the young woman I have just left. She is called La Conchita and . . .'

At that moment La Torcera was facing the table at which they sat. Taking a flower from behind her ear she threw it between them. No one could say that it had not been intended for her admirer from Alicante; but it was de Quesnoy who caught it and blew her a kiss.

The merchant had gone red in the face and burst out, 'You may be a Prince, but I'll see you damned before I'll give way to you. My money is as good as yours, and . . .'

'Forgive me,' the Count interrupted. 'You have, no doubt, made certain disbursements to the Maestro, and also perhaps to the lady. I should have mentioned that I will willingly refund them to you.'

'That's not the point,' the other thrust out his chin aggressively. 'You've no right to . . .'

'No; there is only one point,' de Quesnoy's voice was silky as he came quickly to his feet and moved round the table. 'It is whether you are prepared quietly to vacate the chair upon which you are sitting, or whether I must forcibly remove you from it.'

The merchant was a strongly-built, broad-shouldered man of about forty. Turning his face up with a sneer, he muttered, 'You dare to lay a hand on me and I'll break every bone in your body.'

'I would regret to have to soil my fingers,' retorted the Count, his grey eyes now hard and brilliant. Next second he had hooked his foot under the nearest back leg of the chair and given a violent jerk upon it. Had it stood the strain and lifted the merchant must have slid off its far side. As it was, the leg being of flimsy wood, it snapped and he was precipitated sideways towards de Quesnoy. The Count took a quick pace back and the unfortunate man hit the ground at his feet with a heavy thud.

Up to that moment no one else in the cave had noticed their quarrel, because attention had been concentrated on the dancers.

But, at that moment, after a final spin by La Torcera with her skirts flaired out about her like a cartwheel, the dance ended. There came a burst of clapping and Oles! but they quickly subsided and all eyes were turned on her table, on the far side of which, now screaming curses, the merchant had just staggered to his feet.

De Quesnoy was not quarrelsome by nature, but in North Africa and elsewhere he had been involved in enough similar scenes to know that the art of getting onlookers on one's side was to make one's adversary look ridiculous. His arm shot out from beneath his cloak like a piston. With his forefinger and thumb he seized upon the merchant's fleshy nose and proceeded to wring it.

The wretched man clawed frantically at the Count's hand but could not break the grip. Suffering acute pain, blinded by tears and giving vent to a low wailing, he staggered from side to side with his head held down to the level of de Quesnoy's chest, while the ring of spectators who had formed about them gave way to peals of laughter.

When at length the Count did let go, his victim staggered back, his hands to his bleeding nose and, turning, blundered away towards the entrance to the cave.

As the laughter subsided de Quesnoy bowed the smiling La Torcera to her chair, beckoned up the hunchback to give them wine, and called to him to fill the mugs of the whole company. This evoked a chorus of clapping and loud Oles! in appreciation of his generosity then the occupants of the cave who, since his arrival, had increased to about forty, settled down again.

For a while the Count kept his conversation with La Torcera to compliments and urbanities. He said that having heard a great deal about her he had been most eager to meet her, and that as he was staying only one night in Granada he had seen no other course but to take the steps that he had to become acquainted with her. She said how flattered she was by his attentions and congratulated him on the way in which he had so skilfully relieved her of the merchant's company without resorting to an unseemly brawl. He paid her compliments on the finished artistry of her dancing. She replied that for anyone born with the gift it was then only a matter of hard training, and that with anyone as handsome as himself showing special interest in her performance, that had naturally encouraged her to put her heart into it.

He then declared that he was abysmally ignorant about Flamenco and asked her to enlighten him on some of the finer points of its technique. She willingly obliged and was still discoursing on the subject when another party of dancers arranged themselves. Now the whole troupe, except for herself and the girl who had danced at the same time, took the floor. The haunting music began and the four couples started to stamp their feet and gyrate.

For a few minutes de Quesnoy watched them, then he said, 'I find it terribly hot in here. Let's go outside and get a breath of air.'

'But you will miss the dancing,' she declared. 'And you are wearing a heavy cloak. No wonder you are hot. Take it off.'

He shook his head. 'No; I prefer to keep my cloak on. And it is not that which makes me hot. It is the smoke and the closeness of the atmosphere. As for the dancing, I can watch it again later.' Standing up, he took her gently by the arm and added, 'Come! I pray you, humour me. Let us go outside for a while and look at the stars.'

Assuming that he wanted to get over the first fences of making love to her, she gave him a roguish smile and let him lead her from the cave. Outside it was broad moonlight, and he saw with relief that no one was about. Still holding her arm he guided her over to one side where a great hump of rock threw a deep shadow. Halting there he turned, faced her, and said:

'Senorita, I have greatly enjoyed meeting you; but I must now tell you the real purpose of my visit. I have come here to discuss an urgent matter with Sanchez Ferrer.'

For a moment she did not reply; then she asked, 'Are you then a friend of his?'

De Quesnoy nodded, and lied, 'Yes; a most intimate friend. Please take me to him without delay.'

By way of answer she drew back her head, then like a striking cobra spat straight into his face.

13

A Strange Partnership

La torcera's spittle had barely landed on de Quesnoy's chin when both his hands shot out. They seized her wrists and brought them together with a smack in front of her. A second later he had put into practice a trick that he had taught his troops in North Africa for use when alone with a prisoner whom they suspected had a knife concealed in his robes. With a swift move of his right hand, before she had a chance to pull her wrists apart, he had grasped them both, then with his left hand he imprisoned both her thumbs.

Too late she made a violent effort to pull away from him. She was now as much his prisoner as if with his left hand he had a firm grip on a chain by which she was handcuffed to him; and his right hand was free. His grey eyes were blazing. Lifting his hand, he snarled:

'You bitch! Had you been a man I would have half-killed you for that.' Then he slapped her hard three times across the face.

At the sting of his slaps the black pupils of her eyes expanded, narrowing the surround of yellowish white, and tears sprang to them. She choked, gasped and gulped in a breath to shout for help. But again he was too quick for her. Pulling his revolver from under his cloak he jabbed it into her stomach, half-winding her. As she gave another gasp and almost doubled up, he drew it back, held it in front of her face, and snapped:

'This is loaded. Give one cry and you will never dance again.'

Panting, and with the tears now streaming down her coffee-coloured cheeks, she straightened herself. For a moment they stared at one another in silence, then he said:

'I came here to speak with Sanchez. Had you not behaved like a fool I would have paid you well for taking me to him. As things are you'll get no reward but will take me to him just the same.'

'I can't,' she muttered thickly.

He gave a cynical little laugh. 'D'you expect me to believe that?'

'Believe it or not, I cannot. He is no longer here.'

'That we shall see. If he is here, no doubt while strangers are about he will be skulking in your sleeping quarters. You will walk ahead of me and lead me to them. But I warn you, I am a crack shot. Should you attempt to run for it, shout a warning to him as we approach, or play me any other trick, I'll put a bullet through your ankle.' With a contemptuous gesture, as he released his hold on her thumbs, he flung her hands away from him.

Without a word she turned and, with her head now held high, set off along the cliff-face. As he followed her, he considered the possibility that she might be telling the truth. If so, he would have had all his trouble for nothing. He had all along been conscious that the evidence for his belief that he would find Sanchez in Granada was very slender. It was based only on the police report that he had taken a ticket to go there when he had fled from Barcelona, and the photograph of La Torcera that he had dropped. She had just admitted that he had been there, but that might have been only to lie low before making his trip to San Sebastian.

On the other hand, if Sanchez had returned he could have got back only that day, and it seemed most unlikely that he would have left again within a few hours. Besides, the Count reasoned that an obviously primitive and passionate woman like La Torcera would lie to protect her lover was to be expected. The thing he could not understand was where he had slipped up and enabled her to guess that he was not a friend of Sanchez's but an enemy. Having weighed the pros and cons, worried as he now was that he might be about to suffer a grievous disappointment, he still thought it a fifty-fifty chance that he would surprise Sanchez in her quarters. But it then occurred to him that she might yet try to cheat him, so he said:

T have another warning for you. If you take me to the quarters of some other woman, pretending that they are yours, you may fool me for the moment, but you will live to regret it. Tomorrow I can easily bribe someone to check up, and if I find you've tricked me I'll come back here when you least expect it. By the time I've done with you you'll not have the looks ever to attract a man again.'

'I'll not trick you,' she flung back over her shoulder. 'I've no need. I tell you Sanchez has gone from here. There is my lodging, just ahead of us.'

They had rounded a bend in the cliff and were approaching a six-feet high wall of whitewashed brick with a low door in its centre, which was evidently the entrance to a small cave. Catching up with her, he took her right hand and swiftly twisted it up in a half-nelson behind her back, as he said softly:

'Now; no nonsense. I am aware of Sanchez's skill in throwing a knife and I've no mind to have one in my chest. But he won't throw one at you, so you are going to stand in front of me. You will now call him by name so that he comes to the door of the cave. You are to call his name, mind, and not a word more.'

Obediently she called 'Sanchez!' There was no reply. But as no light was filtering through the cracks round the door de Quesnoy thought it possible that Sanchez was sleeping; so he made her call again, louder. Still there came no reply. After waiting a good minute the Count told her to call again, but the cave remained in darkness and there was no sound of movement from within it.

Releasing her arm, de Quesnoy said, 'It seems that you were telling the truth. Go into the cave now, leave the door wide open and light a candle or a lamp. If you have a knife there I warn you not to touch it. Remember, I can still put a bullet through your foot.'

With a shrug she did as he had told her. Through the open door he saw her light an oil lamp then, with his revolver still at the ready, he followed her inside.

The cave was no more than ten feet deep and a little less in width. From six feet in height at its entrance its rough-hewn ceiling sloped down to four at the back where there was a brick hearth with a chimney and a few iron cooking pots. Along one wall there was a truckle bed, against the other a long trestle table on which stood an enamel basin, toilet things, a mirror, and an array of cosmetics; in front of it stood a single chair.

As the Count put his foot over the door sill La Torcera drew back a little in the confined space, dropped him a mocking curtsy and said sarcastically, 'Enter, noble Prince, and be pleased to search my vast apartment; but have a care when crawling under the bed lest the giant who lies concealed there should seize upon and devour you.'

De Quesnoy gave her a half-smile. 'I admit that after all the unnecessary precautions I took against Sanchez being warned of my approach, you have the laugh of me. Incidentally, too, I am not a Prince. I used Kropotkin's name only because I thought you might know it and that it would influence you the more readily to take me to Sanchez.'

'Neither are you a friend of Sanchez,' she took him up quickly. 'That was made very clear from your fear that he would send a knife whizzing at you.'

'No,' he agreed. 'It would be pointless for me to continue to pretend that Sanchez and I are anything but enemies.'

Her black eyes, no longer misted by tears, flashed angrily. Stamping her foot, she burst out, 'Then why in the name of Shaitan did you not tell me so in the first place?'

'Because I believed him to be your lover.'

'What led you to believe that?'

Putting up his revolver, he showed her the photograph of herself and said, 'On about the twenty-fourth of August Sanchez fled from Barcelona and there was some reason to think that he had gone to Granada. Recently he has been in San Sebastian. Four nights ago I had a fight with him, and this photograph fell out of his pocket. As it was taken in Granada, that confirmed my belief that he had been lying low here. From that it was no great jump to the assumption that he was your lover and you had been hiding him.'

With a glance at the photograph she muttered sullenly, 'You were right. He came here first last summer on a holiday. He is a handsome devil and I let him have his way with me. That lasted for about ten days. He turned up again this August and told me that he was on the run. I had no permanent lover at the moment; so we took up with one another where we had left off and I let him share my cave.'

'How long did he remain here this time?'

'About a fortnight. He left on a Wednesday. I think . . . yes . . . it was September the 8th.'

'And he has not been back since. Today, I mean; even to see you for an hour or leave a message for you?'

'He neither has been back, nor will be.'

'You cannot be sure of that. I believe him to be making his way south by slow trains and branch lines. That could easily take him a day longer than I reckoned on. He may quite well turn up tomorrow.'

'I tell you he will not. He will never return here; no, not if you wait for him till Doomsday.'

'How can you be so certain of that?'

La Torcera's face suddenly contorted into a fierce scowl and she cried, 'Because he knows that if he did I'd stick a knife in his guts. He left me for another woman, and not content with that the swine stole my savings to go off with her.'

Convinced that all this time she had been lying to protect her lover, de Quesnoy had remained blind to any other possibility. But her bitter words had the ring of truth. Now it flashed upon him that he had completely misinterpreted her act of spitting in his face. She had done so not because he had somehow given it away that he was after Sanchez's blood, but because she had accepted his statement that he was Sanchez's intimate friend.

He gave a rueful laugh. 'It seems that for the past quarter of an hour we have been at cross purposes. That was my fault, of course; although I had no means of guessing that Sanchez had given you grounds to hate him. Still, now that we understand one another we must work together, and with luck I'll be able to aid you in getting your revenge. Have you any idea where he would be likely to have made for after leaving San Sebastian last Tuesday?'

She shook her head. 'No, none. I wish I had. I'd give a year's work to get even with him.'

'While he was here did he never mention to you any other places in which he had friends who might have hidden him?'

'No. He spoke little of his affairs, except when following in the newspapers what had occurred after he left Barcelona. The school his father ran there was closed by the police, and his father, brother and many of his friends were arrested. He attributed all this ill-fortune to a Conde de Quesnoy who, according to news he received here through the anarchist grape-vine, had had a miraculous escape from death and had denounced them all.'

De Quesnoy smiled. 'Although I am not a Prince I can give you my word that I am a Conde. I am that Conde de Quesnoy of whom he spoke. It is tfue that I denounced these anarchists and Sanchez's having escaped the net is one reason why I am hunting him. But I suppose you have anarchist sympathies yourself; so had you not personal grounds for wishing to be revenged you would refuse to help me catch him.'

She shrugged. 'I think we gipsies are all anarchists at heart, but we have enough troubles without mixing ourselves up in politics; and all of us thought the attempt to kill the handsome young King and his bride a most wicked thing. That you are an anarchist-hater and hunting Sanchez on that account makes no difference to me. I'd still aid you to catch him if I could, but I see no way to do so.'

After a moment's thought, de Quesnoy asked, 'What of this woman for whom he deserted you? Tell me about her.'

'She was not one of the troupe, but a girl of the town named Inez Giudice; a little red-headed bitch in her early twenties.'

'Was she a native of Granada?'

'No. After they had gone I made inquiries about her and I learned that she had been living in Granada for only about six months. She is the daughter of a Cadiz shipwright, and had been brought up there.'

'That may prove a clue worth having,' murmured the Count. 'Since Sanchez was being hunted by the police he would still have had to keep under cover, and if she had lived in Cadiz all her life she would have friends there who could hide him; particularly as with your savings they would have had ample money to make it worth-while for such friends of hers to aid them. It seems to me that the odds are definitely on their having gone to Cadiz.'

La Torcera nodded. 'You are probably right. But about the money, I have no wish to mislead you. It was not the savings of a lifetime; no more than about eight hundred pesetas. I had put by a considerably greater sum, but I confess that last spring I squandered it on a handsome young matador for whom I developed a sudden foolish passion.'

'Eight hundred pesetas,' repeated the Count. 'No, that would not have kept them very long if they had to use money to keep still tongues in other people's heads. And Sanchez was in no position to earn any money. If he has returned to her they must by now be on their uppers.'

With a shrug and a cynical smile La Torcera replied, 'At all events they'll not starve. She is a whore by profession, and you may be sure that Sanchez would feel no scruples about sending her out on to the streets to earn enough to keep him in food and wine.'

'Did you ever see her?' the Count asked.

'Yes; she was twice brought here to see the troupe perform by a man who enjoyed Flamenco. He was, I suppose, one of her regular patrons. Sometimes Sanchez used to watch the dancing from behind the curtain that screens the entrance to the big cave. That is probably how he first saw her and became enamoured of her. But every few nights he became bored from having nothing to do up here, and in spite of the risk he ran I could not prevent him from going down into the city. It must have been on one such occasion that he saw her again and became acquainted with her. In any case, after he had left me, and I was near distraught with grief and rage, the brother of one of the girls in the troupe told me that he had seen them together on the station platform. That is how I know that it was she who took him from me.'

'Then you would be able to recognize her?'

'Yes, anywhere,' La Torcera's eyes glowed with vindictiveness. 'And should I ever come upon her I'll pull every hair from her red head.'

'I think not,' said de Quesnoy quietly. 'At least not until after she has led us to Sanchez.'

La Torcera glowered at him. 'What do you mean by that?'

'I mean that as there seems a good chance that he went with her to Cadiz and by now has rejoined her there, it is my intention that we too should pay a visit to that ancient port. Since you say you would have no difficulty in recognizing her and the city is of no great size, by haunting the bars and public places where prostitutes ply their trade it should not be long before you spot her and can find out where they are lodging. Once you have done that I will settle accounts with Sanchez for both of us; his woman I shall be happy to leave to you.'

Her eyes grew round and she stammered, 'But the troupe! I . . . I could not leave them. It ... it is my living.'

Putting a hand under his cloak, he unhitched the small sack of gold behind his left hip, produced it, and threw it with a clang on the trestle table. That contains a thousand pesetas,' he said; 'more than the sum of which Sanchez robbed you. If we succeed in this business I will give you in addition four times that amount. Whatever happens, any woman who has mastered the art of Flamenco dancing as ably as yourself should have little difficulty in securing employment in another troupe, even if this one will not receive you back; so you can regard the greater part of this money as a bonus.'

Still staring at him a shade uncertainly, she stretched out a hand and lifted the bag. On its weight reassuring her that it really contained gold, she nodded slowly. 'Very well, then. When do you wish me to start?'

'Now,' he replied. 'As soon as you have packed your things. The sooner we arrive in Cadiz the better.'

'No!' she shook her head. 'That really is not possible. I am due to dance again in about twenty minutes.'

He had made up his mind to take her with him, in case if he left her there till morning she should mention her intentions to any other member of the gipsy fraternity and, through a grape-vine, they should reach Sanchez.

'That cannot be helped,' he said firmly. 'You must cut your dance and come with me. I intend that we should leave Granada by the first fast train going west tomorrow; and that may mean an early start. Get your things together, now; and be quick about it.'

'I cannot go in these clothes,' she protested.

'True. Then I will go outside while you change.' As he spoke he picked up the bag of gold from the table.

Her eyes suddenly fierce again, she made a snatch at it and exclaimed, 'You said that was for me! I'll not leave here without it.'

'It is for you, but I don't mean to chance your changing your mind during the night about coming with me to Cadiz.' Opening the bag he poured about a third of its contents into his palm, laid the little heap of coins on the table, and added, 'There is an earnest of my good faith. The rest you shall have when we are on the train tomorrow.'

Leaving the cave he walked some way down the hill to the gully in which the carriages that had brought visitors were waiting, found his driver, roused him from sleep and told him to get ready to return to the city. By the time he had climbed the slope again a good ten minutes had elapsed; so, after he had knocked on the door outside the cave and she had told him to come in, he found that she had finished changing.

Her high comb, mantilla and dancer's frock with its scores of flounces had disappeared. Dressed now in a grey coat and skirt, and wearing elastic-sided black boots and a black sombrero, she was just starting to pack her things into a large, finely-woven oblong basket, which had beside it a similar basket to fit over its top.

While walking back up the hill it had occurred to him as strange that since Sanchez had deserted her for another woman early in September, he should still be carrying her portrait at the end of the month; and he asked her if she could account for it.

She replied that she could not; so he took it out again, showed it to her, and asked if the rows of letters and figures on its back conveyed anything to her.

After looking at it for a moment she said, 'They don't mean anything to me; but might not the letters stand for towns and the figures be the times of trains leaving them?'

That possibility had already occurred to de Quesnoy, and he had even thought of attempting to check them against the Spanish timetable; but that would have entailed many hours of work and, even if successful, still left him in ignorance as to which of a score of trains Sanchez might have taken. Now that La Torcera had had the same thought it strengthened his opinion and, if Sanchez had used the back of the photograph to list a number of trains, that would account for his having kept it.

When she had finished packing he helped her put a strap round the big oblong basket. She put out the lamp and locked the door to her dwelling after them; then they walked side by side down the hill to the carriage.

By the time they reached the hotel it was past two o'clock in the morning and there was only a night porter on duty. When the Count asked for a room for La Torcera the man had already taken in the fact that she was a gipsy; but, knowing that it was not for him to question the vagaries of the hotel's wealthy patrons, he quickly checked his glance of disapproval. If the management chose to make a tactful remonstrance in the morning, that was their affair. Producing the key to a single room at the back on the upper floor, he picked up her basket with barely-concealed reluctance and took her up in the lift.

Meanwhile de Quesnoy had gone behind the porter's desk, found a timetable and was looking up trains. The direct route from Granada to Cadiz was via Antequera and Ronda, but that meant going by slow trains and making two changes. The alternative was to go round by Seville, which meant an extra fifty miles, but at 8.30 there was an express to Seville and Cadiz was only another forty-odd miles on from there; so he decided on the latter.

On a note pad he wrote a line for La Torcera, T have ordered breakfast to be taken up to you with this at a quarter to seven. Please be packed and ready to leave at eight sharp. You will find me down in the hall, de Q.'

When the porter returned he gave the note to him with instructions about breakfast for himself and his guest, and asked that his bill should be ready without fail at five minutes to eight. Then he tipped the man well and went up to bed.

Next morning at the station he asked La Torcera if she would like a book for the journey or only magazines. She replied that she had had little schooling and could read only large print slowly; so he bought her some picture papers to look at, and also a box of chocolates. These unexpected attentions by him removed the expression of rather sullen suspicion she had worn during their drive down from the hotel, and after he had fulfilled his promise to give her the rest of the gold in the little sack he felt confident that, in spite of the high-handed way in which he had treated her, he had now won her allegiance.

Although they were leaving the mighty range of the Sierra Nevada behind, the greater part of the journey was through desolate but picturesque mountain country. For much of the time the train was winding its way round bends along a narrow track with a precipitous gorge on one side, so, although termed an express its speed often dropped to thirty miles an hour. But to some extent it made up for that on entering the comparatively flat country farther west and they reached Seville a little before half-past one.

After a meal in the station restaurant, they drove to a small hotel that the Count had noticed during his first visit to the city, which appeared pleasant but unpretentious. There he booked a room for La Torcera and, having given her some more money, told her to go out and buy a hat and clothes of a more fashionable kind than those she had on at the moment, then to return and get changed. He too went out on a brief shopping expedition to buy for her a leather portmanteau, an eyeshade, a crooked stick and, at a secondhand shop for a few pesetas, a greasy old black cotton hood and robe such as were worn by the poorest elderly peasant women.

Having completed his purchases he put the robe in the suitcase and returned to the hotel. Finding that it was still only four o'clock and as the evening train for Cadiz did not leave till six, he sent the portmanteau up to La Torcera's room with a message that ran: 'Repack your things, the old robe, and the clothes you were wearing in this, and give your travelling basket to the chambermaid. Please be down in the hall ready to leave at half past five.' Then he went out to pay another visit to the Alcazar.

The last time he had been in the old Moorish Palace had been barely a fortnight after Angela's death, so he was now in a much more suitable frame of mind to appreciate its beauties. This time he found even more to wonder at in the Salon de Embajadores and the patios de las Munecas and de las Doncellas, with their slender pillars and stone tracery mirrored in the brightly-polished marble floors, and he could not now make up his mind if these glorious Courts or those of the Alcazar in Granada were the more beautiful. But afterwards, when he took a short stroll in the garden, he saw at once that he had been right in thinking it far superior to that of the much vaunted Generalife.

Soon after his return to the little hotel, La Torcera came downstairs. She was now wearing a dress that swept the ground, of smooth fawn cloth decorated with applique work, had huge puffed out sleeves and a ruched collar. On her head was balanced a large hat crowned by a mountain of violets.

He smiled his approval and had a carriage summoned to take them to the station. On the way she asked him why he had sent her up the filthy old robe, and he replied, 'Because, much as I regret having to ask you to do so, you will shortly have to wear it instead of your pretty new clothes. We cannot afford to risk having Sanchez or his woman recognize you, and perhaps take alarm; so it is part of a disguise that I have bought for you.'

The journey from Seville to Cadiz took only a little over an hour and the last ten miles of it was along a narrow isthmus that ran from south to north with a bulge at its extremity on which stood the city. The western side of the isthmus, washed by the Atlantic, formed part of the coastline running up towards Portugal, while the eastern side faced a mile-wide lake or, rather, gulf. This vast land-locked harbour made Cadiz one of the finest natural ports in Europe, and as de Quesnoy gazed at it from the window of the train he visualized the great fleets of galleons that once must have lain sheltered there, either assembling before setting sail for the Indies, or just returned laden with gold and silver from Mexico and Peru.

He then recalled that it was here that Sir Francis Drake had, as they said, 'Singed the King of Spain's beard.' The English

Admiral had caught assembling there a powerful squadron that was intended to form part of the Armada and, having sailed right in, had burnt or sunk the greater part of it. 'What bold courageous devils those islanders were; and they're still at it today carrying their Union Jack into all the still-unclaimed parts of Africa, Asia and the Pacific,' was the thought that ran through the Count's mind. Then, to the surprise of La Torcera, he burst out laughing, for he had suddenly remembered that he was now of British nationality himself.

Dotted along the peninsula there were villages and one quite considerable town. At all of them on both shores, tents, rows of bathing huts, concert platforms on the sand just above the tide level, roundabouts, swings and booths, showed that these long beaches were favourite holiday resorts. But now most of them were closed and there were only a few groups sitting or strolling in the evening light; for it was the 1st of October and the holiday season was over.

When they alighted at the station they found it to be on the narrow neck of the isthmus, adjacent to the main port, so they had a further mile's drive through the city to its northern extremity where lay the big hotels and the wealthy modern residential quarter. Before leaving Granada that morning the Count had wired to the Hotel Atlantico for a suite, and on reaching the hotel they were shown straight up to it. The bedrooms, on either side of a private sitting-room, looked out across the public gardens to the sea, and La Torcera, whose only experience of a luxury hotel had been sleeping in one for a few hours the previous night, did not seek to hide her amazement at the elegance and comfort.

Although, for Spain, it was still early to dine, de Quesnoy sent for the head waiter, chose dinner and ordered it to be served in the sitting-room in half an hour. By the time they had unpacked and he had freshened himself up with a wash, the floor-waiter, assisted by a white-aproned commis, had laid the table and wheeled in a trolley with spirit-lamps burning under a number of dishes.

When they had dined and fortified themselves with a good bottle of Rioja he glanced at his watch and said to his companion, 'We have done very well. It is not yet half past ten; so the night life of the city can only just be starting. As soon as you are ready we will go out and take a look at it.'

'Tonight!' her face fell. 'But you had me out of bed hours earlier than I usually get up, and in Seville I had time for only half an hour's siesta.'

He shrugged. 'You dozed for quite a while in the train this morning. Anyhow, we cannot afford to lose an evening. I am suggesting not that you should spend the night haunting bars, but that we should make a reconnaissance; then tomorrow night you will not have to waste time finding out the most likely places in which to look for Inez Giudice. While you put on your things I will go downstairs and arrange for a guide.'

A quarter of an hour later, freshly made up and now wearing only a mantilla over her black hair, she joined him below in the lounge. The hall-porter had sent for a guide and after a short wait a page-boy came to fetch them. The guide, who introduced himself as Miguel, was a very small man in his middle thirties with side-whiskers and a leery expression. Obsequiously he bowed them into a hooded carriage and took the small seat opposite them. The coachman, evidently knowing the guide and his usual programme, did not wait for any order but flicked his horse lightly with his whip and they rattled away over the cobbles.

Miguel then proceeded to sound his customers about their tastes. Had he had only a man to deal with he would have come straight to the point, but as his patron had a woman in tow he had to be tactful. There was the remote possibility that she might be his wife, in which case they would wish only to drive through the most brightly-lit streets of the city and round its old walls with a stop at the castle on the point to admire the moonlight shimmering on the Atlantic rollers as they broke over the breakwaters. If she was his mistress the odds were that after a short drive he would want to take her on a round of the better nightclubs, where they could dance and at one of which they would sup. But it was his experience that, not infrequently, rich men took their mistresses with them to brothels to watch nude cabaret shows and exhibitions of still more dubious kinds.

After pattering off his piece about Cadiz - known from its white-walled houses as 'The Silver Platter' - being the most beautiful town in Spain and that its climate, warm in winter and cooled by sea breezes in summer, made it the best of all holiday resorts, etc., etc., he went on to say that while its night-life could not rival that of Barcelona or Madrid, it had several Maisons de Dance of the first elegance and other establishments at which, if one cared for that sort of thing, one could see groups of young senoritas pose most artistically and see magic lantern displays of a curious and unusual nature.

De Quesnoy told him that they were not interested in senoritas, neither did they wish to dance that evening; but they would like to drive round to see the outsides of these places so that they might decide which they would prefer to patronize another night.

At this Miguel's sallow little face fell, as he saw disappear his hope of collecting a handsome commission from introducing his patrons at numerous places of entertainment. But he obediently gave appropriate orders to the coachman, and they drove down the brightly-lit Calle del Duque de la Victoria to the Plaza General Varela, then made a tour of the streets round about it in which considerable numbers of people were strolling.

Miguel pointed out to them four night-clubs that he recommended, but their fronts were ill-lit and no one was going into any of them. De Quesnoy remarked on this, and their guide said in surprise:

'But, Excellency, it is barely half past eleven. They do not open till midnight and do not really warm up until about two o'clock when people go on to them from the theatre.'

On his visits to Spain the Count had had no occasion to visit a night-club, but he had been to several theatres and recalling that, owing to the very late hours at which the Spanish upper class dined, they did not begin until eleven o'clock, he felt he should have realized that the dance places would not put on their cabarets until still later. To Miguel he said,

'As we do not intend to patronize any of them tonight their not yet being open makes no difference to us. We would like now to look at the ships in the port and drive round the harbour district.'

The driver was duly instructed and turned his carriage in a south-easterly direction. Then Miguel, with new hope in his voice, said, 'Down there is the house where you can see the magic lantern slides. It is owned by a friend of mine, a most respectable lady. The show, of course, could be put on specially for you in private so, if you did not wish you need not mix with other people who might be there. It will cost you only . .

'Thank you,' de Quesnoy cut him short. 'We are not interested in magic lantern slides, curious or otherwise. What we do wish to see is how the people of Cadiz amuse themselves at night; so take us, please, to the centre of the locality in which lie the less expensive dance-halls and bars.'

Miguel then had them driven to a Plaza approached from the landward side by three broad avenues all leading up to the palace of the Civil Governor, beyond which lay the docks and harbour. Turning right, out of the Plaza, they entered a maze of narrow streets that evidently formed part of the old city. Here there were so many sauntering couples and groups of men arguing on street corners that the carriage had to proceed at a walk; but that suited de Quesnoy, as it gave him time to ask the names of the streets through which they had passed and make a mental note of the places of entertainment that seemed to be doing most business.

In the poorer quarter night-life was already in full swing. Rows and arches of flaring gas-jets, designed to attract custom, enabled passers-by to see into steamy eating-houses and crowded bars. In a few of the larger cafes girls, tightly swathed in colourful long-fringed silk shawls, were dancing between the tables; while in every street some melody, either plaintive or gay, came to the ear as its notes were plucked out from mandolin or guitar.

To Miguel's frustration, the Count had the carriage driven to and fro through the same half-dozen streets for over an hour while steadfastly refusing even to stop and take a glass of wine anywhere; but when they finally returned to the Atlantico, about half past one in the morning, he was dismissed with a bigger tip than he had expected.

The following day they spent a lazy morning and it was not until after lunch that de Quesnoy discussed his plan in greater detail with La Torcera. He told her then that he wished her to play the part of a semi-blind beggar woman. In every Spanish city there were a legion of poor wretches, mostly cripples, who depended for their meagre livelihood on the coppers they could collect from the charitable. In consequence, pests though they were with their whining interruptions of conversations, there were very few cafes and even restaurants that they were not allowed to enter. His idea was that in this guise La Torcera should make the round of the places they had marked down the previous night in the hope of finding the one in which Inez Giudice plied her trade; and that if she succeeded Inez would remain in ignorance that she had been traced, because the hooded robe and eye-shade would prevent her from recognizing her erstwhile rival.

They filled in the afternoon with a drive right round the sea front that almost entirely encircled the city; then, when the shops reopened after the siesta, they bought a gross of matches, several dozen bootlaces, and a small tray that could be hung from the neck by a strap, so that La Torcera could hawk these wares for which it was customary to give beggars five to ten times their proper value.

That evening, after they had dined in their private sitting-room, the Count gave to La Torcera the eye-shade and the stick he had bought for her to tap her way about with, and they had a dress rehearsal. The gipsy dancer proved clever enough with her makeup to give the lower part of her face, which could still be seen beneath the shade, the appearance of that of a somewhat older woman, and when she tapped her way round the room with hunched shoulders and bent back de Quesnoy congratulated her on her performance.

At half past ten, while most of the hotel guests were still dining, he escorted her downstairs, wished her luck and saw her off into the warm darkness. He then had a word with the head hall-porter and told him a little story to* ensure that La Torcera should meet with no difficulty about getting in on her return.

He said that the relative with whom he was sharing his suite was deeply religious and most charitable. Sometimes for several nights in succession she felt the urge to go off on her own and distribute money to the poor, but obviously she could not do so without fear of running into trouble if she went out dressed in her normal fashion. She therefore disguised herself as a beggar-woman and gave away boxes of matches to the destitute, in which they later found not matches but money. He then gave the head porter a handsome tip to pass these particulars on to the night porter.

It annoyed him that he could not participate in the search for Inez and Sanchez; but he would not have known the girl even had he come face to face with her, and to do that with Sanchez was the last thing he wanted, as he would then have been deprived of any chance of taking his enemy by surprise. It was to avoid any risk of doing so that he had elected to stay at the most luxurious hotel in Cadiz, as he and La Torcera could live there without any likelihood of its coming to Sanchez's ears that they were in the city.

He whiled away the next two hours by listening to a concert in the lounge, then went upstairs, changed into a dressing-gown, and did his best to concentrate on a novel by Blasco Ibanez until La Torcera got back.

She returned about half past two, to report that she had had no luck. From eleven till one o'clock she had peddled her matches and bootlaces in the bistros and dance-halls down by the harbour, and had then moved on to the better-class clubs, at four of which, after tipping their doormen to let her in, she had had a good look round. De Quesnoy was naturally disappointed, although he knew that to expect success in such a quest at the first attempt had really been too much to hope for.

He had already found that he and La Torcera had so little in common that there were few subjects on which they could talk with mutual interest. Since, too, he was both rich and handsome she had, not unnaturally, soon had visions of herself living permanently in clover, so indicated very clearly that she was quite ready to become his mistress; but he had promptly, though courteously, poured cold water on her ambitions in that direction. Recognizing that the only bond between them lay in their common desire to run Sanchez and Inez to earth, he felt no scruples next day at leaving her with a pile of picture papers, revelling in the -for her - unusual luxury of her surroundings, while he went out on his own.

Restrained by caution from going into the main streets of the city, just in case he was seen by Sanchez, he remained in its wealthy residential quarter, in the morning amusing himself by shooting clay pigeons, ejected by a machine for him over the sea-wall, and in the evening taking a long stroll in the Parque Genoves.

That night they followed the same routine as they had on the previous one, but again La Torcera had no luck.

Next morning de Quesnoy paid another visit to the park and sat there for quite a time considering the situation. It was now October the 3rd, so six days since Sanchez had taken that incriminating photograph in San Sebastian. If it had been his intention to return to Cadiz he could easily have reached the city, even by slow trains, three days ago. The inference that he had, had been drawn only from the fact that his latest woman, Inez Giudice, was a native of Cadiz. On leaving Granada he might quite well have gone off with her elsewhere. If so, for the time being there was no possible means of tracing them.

However, the Count reasoned, six days having elapsed, by now Sanchez should have made an attempt to exert some form of blackmail through the photograph. Allowing two days for him to reach the place where he meant to go to earth, a third for a letter from him to reach San Sebastian, a fourth for Gulia to send it on to Granada and a fifth for the hall-porter to forward it on to him in Cadiz, it should have arrived that morning. As that schedule made no allowance for delays, de Quesnoy felt it might easily be another couple of days before Sanchez's ultimatum reached him.

When it did, the advantage would lie with the enemy, as there could no longer be any hope of taking him by surprise. To stand any chance of getting hold Of that damnable photograph he, de Quesnoy, would have to walk into whatever trap Sanchez might set for him. It was a gloomy prospect; but there was still a chance that Sanchez might be in Cadiz, or that Inez might be found and bribed or forced to give information as to his whereabouts; so there must be no relaxing the search for them until the letter turned up to provide a definite, if dangerous, new opening.

That night La Torcera again set off on her quest while the Count kept a lonely vigil. She returned much earlier than expected. It was only a little after midnight and he had not long left the lounge to go up to their suite. To his delight he saw at a glance that she had news. Her eyes sparkling with excitement, she exclaimed:

'I've found her! It was shfcer luck. I was doing my act as usual in one of the bars when I overheard two men at a table talking. One said to the other, "Have you been to the Silver Galleon lately? There's a red-head there, a girl named Inez, that I used to know as a kid. She left Cadiz some time ago but she came back last month. She won't play for less than ten pesetas, but you can take my word that she's worth every centavo of it." '

'And then?' asked the Count eagerly.

'I felt sure he must have been speaking of the bitch we're after; so in another bar I asked the whereabouts of the Silver Galleon. It is a fair-sized inn some way from the red-light district but still on the water-front. It lies behind the little park in which stands the memorial to the Cortes. I went off there at once and my luck was in. The place has a cosy little bar and is frequented by the better class of seamen. There were eight or ten of them in there drinking and playing dice, and only two girls: Inez and another. I hung about for a bit and again luck favoured me. One of the men had been standing her drinks and they went out together. I shuffled after them and managed to see that they didn't leave the house. They went upstairs together; so evidently she's got a room there and the landlord is in on it, taking a rake-off on her earnings.'

T suppose you saw no sign of Sanchez?'

She shook her head. 'No, none. But at that hour it would have been surprising to see them together. If she is keeping him, as I have no doubt she is, the last thing he would do is to go about with her in the evenings. Even if he loitered in the same bar it would soon get round that he was her bully and be likely to scare off her possible customers.'

'That's true. Anyhow, your having run her to earth is half the battle. With luck now, she'll lead me to him.'

For a moment de Quesnoy was tempted to go out there and then on the chance that by the time he reached the Silver Galleon Inez would be back down in the bar hoping to pick up another customer, but he put the idea from him. She might be spending the night with the man who had gone upstairs with her, or when he had left her decide not to come down again; and he did not want to show himself in the bar until he could be reasonably certain that she would be there.

Next morning he made out a draft on the Banco de Coralles for four thousand pesetas in favour of La Torcera. With the thousand he had already given her she would be receiving about £200 for her services, but he did not consider that an excessive price for having enabled him again to get on Sanchez's track, seeing that there had been no other possible way of his doing so.

He thought it very unlikely that her troupe at Granada would refuse to take her back after her few days' absence or, if they did, that she would not be able to get a job as a dancer in a cafe. In any case, with her normally modest way of living, such a sum would keep her for a year, or provide a much fatter nest egg than that of which Sanchez had robbed her. Even so, as he had promised her the money, he was surprised and touched when, on his giving her the draft, she burst into tears, kissed his hands, called down blessings on him and declared him to be a true hidalgo.

Before lunch he went out and bought at a ready-made clothes shop a blue cloth suit with a square-breasted jacket, a muffler and a flat cap with a shiny peak, which would give him a somewhat nautical appearance. Then, thinking it probable that he might be up all night, he went to bed in the afternoon and had a long sleep.

In the evening he had an early meal sent up to the sitting-room and afterwards changed into the rig-out that he had bought earlier in the day. No letter forwarded on by Gulia had arrived that morning, so La Torcera's having located Inez Giudice remained his only chance of getting on Sanchez's trail. That he might not have returned to her after his trip to San Sebastian, or had returned and since left her for some other woman, were, the Count realized, depressing possibilities. But should either prove the case he might still hope to deal with Inez as he had with La Torcera and secure from her a new lead to his quarry.

At half past nine, still speculating, not altogether pessimistically, on his chances of settling accounts with Sanchez that night, he walked out of the Hotel Atlantico. He had left La Torcera up in the sitting-room immersed in a new batch of picture papers. Now that she had done the job that he had required of her and he had paid her off, it was his intention the following morning to put her safely on a train back to Granada. The one thing he did not expect was that he would never see her again.

The Red-headed Harlot

Having been indoors most of the day de Quesnoy had intended to walk to the Silver Galleon, but it was something over a mile away and within a few minutes of leaving the Atlantico there was a distant rumble of thunder, then it came on to rain; so he picked up a carriage. It set him down opposite the flamboyant monument commemorating the Cortes held in Cadiz in 1812, that had given Spain her famous Liberal Constitution, then he walked through the park in the direction La Torcero had told him that the Silver Galleon lay.

He found the inn without difficulty. It stood on a corner and was a rambling old seventeenth-century two-storied building with tiled roofs that buckled here and there, gable windows and an archway in its front that faced on to the park and port. After inspecting its two visible sides, the Count walked through the archway to find, as he expected, that it led to a yard that had stabling for three or four vehicles and about a dozen horses. A covered wagon stood in its centre but no one was about.

On either side of the archway, near its street end, there was a door. From under one only a faint light showed; from the other came a much brighter light and the sound of voices. This door obviously led to the bar. The short, sharp shower was over but de Quesnoy still had the collar of his jacket turned up and now, pulling the peak of his cap well down, he went in.

At a glance he saw it to be a comfortable room furnished with old but solid pieces. In one corner four men were playing dice, farther along two others were seated drinking, a seventh was leaning on the bar and, beyond him, two women were sitting in an inglenook with a table in front of them. Behind the bar stood a broad-shouldered, square-faced man of about fifty with greyish grizzled hair, whom de Quesnoy rightly guessed to be the landlord.

Touching his cap with a murmured Buenas tardes to the company, he walked over to the bar and ordered himself a brandy and ginger-ale. It was not a mixture that he particularly liked, but he had found that while the best Spanish brandy, although not comparable with fine French cognac, was quite palatable, the worst could be horrible; so in a place like this it was safer not to take it neat.

The landlord had been chatting with the other men at the bar. As he served the Count, he remarked that it was getting late in the year for a thunderstorm, but it didn't look like coming to much. De Quesnoy replied that it had already stopped raining, which was a pity as it was oppressive and a bit more would have freshened things up. Then the landlord just nodded and moved along to resume his conversation with his earlier customer.

The Count took a drink and lit a cigarette. Both the women behind him were wearing mantillas made from small fluffy black bobbles sewn on to net, but under this head-dress the hair of one of them had certainly been lightish, and as nine out of ten women in Spain were brunettes he felt fairly certain she would prove to be Inez Giudice. It looked, too, as though he had timed his entry well, as he had not wanted to have to linger about there and perhaps be drawn into conversation with other people before she turned up, or, on the other hand, leave his arrival so late that she might have already been picked up by some other man.

When he had smoked a third of his cigarette he glanced round and remained looking at the two girls for a moment as though he had noticed them for the first time. Now, he had no doubt that the fair one was Inez. Her head had been in shadow when he had glanced at her before, but now the rays of a lamp on the bar brought out its vivid red lights. As their eyes met she smiled and closed one of hers in a wink.

Returning her smile, he carried his glass over to their table, asked permission to join them, and then if he might buy them a drink. The red-head asked for a Calisay and the darker woman for an Anis. Having collected the two liqueurs from the bar, the Count told them his name was Jaime. His lead confirmed his belief that the red-head was Inez and the dark one said her name was Beatriz.

Now that de Quesnoy had a chance to look at them closely he saw that Beatriz was by a good bit the older of the two. Her face was very ordinary, with a heavy jowl and a rather bovine but not unpleasant expression. Inez, on the other hand, he decided, would prove distinctly attractive to anyone who liked the gamine type. She had a small freckled face with a retrousse nose, a wide mouth and merry grey eyes. What he could see of her figure was also good and, barely concealed by the fichu of her bodice, two small plump breasts, pushed up by her stays, pouted invitingly. Even so, experience told him that with such small features she might be more amusing but would not be as passionate as her companion, and would certainly prove more hard-boiled.

For a few minutes they talked platitudes about the weather -how oppressive it was and what a pity that the rain had stopped - then Inez said to him, 'You are not Spanish, are you?'

'No,' he replied, 'I am British, and in my own country I am called James.'

'Are you the master of a ship?' Beatriz inquired.

He shook his head. 'No, only the representative of a Shipping Company. I am out here to make some new arrangements with our agents in Cadiz.'

They asked him how long he had been in the city, whether he had been to Spain before, if he liked the country, and so on; to all of which questions he made suitable replies. But in every case he addressed his replies to Inez, hardly giving her companion a glance.

After ten minutes Beatriz took the hint. Finishing her Anis, she said to Inez with good-natured resignation, 'Well, dear, two's company and three's none, as they say; and you're the lucky one again. Maybe I'll see you later if the gentleman doesn't keep you too long. Have a good time, both of you, and thanks for the drink.'

De Quesnoy did not seek to detain her; but as with a rustle of skirts she stood up to leave them, he said, 'At least permit me to buy you another Anis to drink while you are waiting for a happy encounter with some old or new friend who may arrive to entertain you.'

It was a gracious gesture and both girls smiled their appreciation. When she had settled herself in another corner of the room he took the Anis over to her, then he collected from the bar another Calisay for Inez and another brandy and ginger-ale for himself.

As he sat down again she smiled at him, pouted her mouth, and said the one word, 'Well?'

'Well?' he repeated, returning her smile. 'Do you live far from here?'

'No.' She winked one of her bright grey eyes, then nodded in the direction of the big man behind the bar. 'I live in the house, and Senor Anzana makes no objection to my taking gentlemen friends up to my room. Would you like to see it?'

'Indeed I would,' he told her quickly.

'All right then.' Her grey eyes narrowed a trifle. 'But you understand I want a nice present.'

'Of course,' he nodded, 'that's only fair. But how much? I'm not a rich man, and the money I brought from England has got to last me out.'

'Thirty pesetas,' she suggested.

Knowing her price to be much less, he shook his head. 'No, I can't afford more than twenty.'

She considered for a moment, then nodded. 'Very well then. I wouldn't, if it weren't that I like you. You're different, somehow, to most of the men who come here.'

'I like you too,' he returned the compliment. 'You, too, are different from the sort of girls one expects to find in a place like this.' It was on the tip of his tongue to add, 'I don't wonder that licentious young devil, Sanchez, ran off with you!' but he checked himself in time.

Standing up, she said, 'Let's go upstairs, then.' Simultaneously he rose and walked the length of the bar with her. A few of the men looked up then hid a smile, but most of them took no notice.

They crossed under the archway, entered the door on its far side, and Inez led the way up a flight of stairs. At their top she walked down a corridor in which a dim light was burning. Opening the last door but one on the right she turned, smiled at de Quesnoy, and said, 'Here we are.'

He followed her in and she lit an oil lamp. On taking a quick look round he was conscious of sharp disappointment. It was a small slip-room, hardly more than a cubby-hole and furnished only with a narrow single bed. It seemed that after all she did not live at the Silver Galleon as La Torcero had supposed, but had only professional accommodation there; and even if she used it at times to sleep in, it was quite clear that Sanchez did not share it with her.

Turning away from the lamp, she put her arms round his neck, gave him a swift kiss, and asked, 'Would you like me to undress?'

'I certainly would,' he told her, as his object now was to play for time during which he hoped to get some useful information out of her.

'It will cost you five pesetas more,' she warned him.

'All right,' he agreed. 'You're pretty enough to be worth it.'

At that moment there came a loud crash of thunder and heavy drops of rain began to patter on the roof above.

'Wait a minute,' she said. 'I must shut the window of the other room.'

Picking up the lamp, she stepped over to a door that evidently connected the little room with the last one on that side of the corridor. Opening it, she went through and, by the light of the lamp she had taken with her, de Quesnoy had a fair sight of the room beyond. It was considerably larger than the slip-room in which he stood, with a double bed, chairs, a dressing-table and a wardrobe beside which stood a pair of man's boots.

At her first mention of another room the Count's pulses had quickened, and when his glance lit on the boots he felt a thrill of elation. She was living at the Silver Galleon after all, and a man was living with her. He might not be Sanchez but there was a fifty-fifty chance that he was.

The rain was now streaming down. She had closed the window and picked up the lamp. De Quesnoy's best hope of learning more before resorting to a direct .question lay in making her talk as much as possible. As she came back towards him, he asked:

'Why shouldn't we use that room? It looks much more comfortable.'

She gave a quick shake of her small red head. 'No. That is where I sleep. I share it with my man. For business I always use this room.'

Frowning, he feigned uneasiness. 'D'you mean that your husband might come up to that room at any time? If he did he would hear and surprise us.'

'You've no need to worry, dear,' she gave an easy laugh. 'He stays out half the night drinking and arguing with others of his kind at a political club to which he belongs. Even if he did return while I had someone here he knows his own interests better than to make a scene about it.'

Giving no sign of his satisfaction at this strong indication that her man was Sanchez, de Quesnoy continued to frown, and went on:

'I think you have been very unlucky, Inez, in marrying a man who makes use of you like this.'

With a quick shrug, she said, 'He's not really my husband; but he's got all those qualities that attract a woman. I may be a fool, but I'm mad about him.'

The Count threw out a mild sneer. 'He can't be much of a man if he lets others have you.'

It worked. She bridled at once and threw back, 'Speak only of what you know. If he were in work of course he would keep me. But he is a political and wanted by the police on account of some trouble he got into in Barcelona; so he dare not take a job. As things are, it is only right that I should support him.'

That, de Quesnoy felt, clinched the matter. Tonight, at last, his luck was really in. There would now be no need for him even to mention Sanchez to Inez, let alone go through another such performance as he had with La Torcera in order to get another lead to Sanchez's whereabouts. All he had to do was render Inez temporarily helpless and silent to ensure himself a free field. He could then search the bedroom for that damning negative and any prints of it there might be. If he failed to find them he would await Sanchez's return, hold him up at the point of the revolver and force him to reveal their hiding-place. Whether he found them first or had to wait until Sanchez came back, once he had secured them he meant to march Sanchez off to the police station for speedy dispatch to Barcelona so that he could be tried in the coming week with his father and brother.

'Well!' Inez chided him, breaking in on his thoughts. 'Don't look so serious. Just put my little present on that shelf over there, and I'll show you that a Spanish girl can give you a better time than an English one.'

'I doubt it,' he replied with a laugh. 'But get your things off and we'll see.'

As he spoke he produced some money, counted out the agreed amount of pesetas and laid them on the shelf. With a nod of acknowledgement she plucked with both hands at the ruching of her long full skirt and pulled it inside out over her head. For a second he contemplated seizing her and using its folds to muffle her cries; but he decided that his original plan for dealing with the sort of situation that had arisen would save a struggle and prove more satisfactory.

Unbuttoning his square jacket, he took it off. She had rid herself of her petticoat and was standing in bloomers and a cotton bodice. With a well-practised gesture she pushed the bloomers down, gave them a swift kick with her right foot lifting a shapely leg high into the air and, as the bloomers left her toe, caught them in her right hand.

As he unknotted his muffler he laughed his appreciation of her little trick, while thinking that many a sailor home from the seas might travel farther and fare worse than with this lively little red-head.

She then sat down on the edge of the bed to undo the suspender clips that attached her stockings to her long whale-boned stays. It was for her to sit down that he had been waiting. Moving round behind her, ostensibly to hang his coat on a peg in the door to the other room, he pulled from his left hand pocket a silk sock tied at the top and having in it a big fistful of sand. As he swung the sock the sand formed a ball in its toe. With a swish, he brought it down hard on the back of her head.

Stunned by the impact, without even a moan, she heeled over sideways and slipped off the bed. Picking her up, he laid her back on it at full length. From a pocket in his coat he took some lengths of tape with which he tied her wrists and ankles, then he picked up from the floor a handkerchief she had dropped, and stuffed it into her mouth. As the handkerchief was quite small it did not make a very efficient gag, but had he used a larger one there would have been a possibility that she might suffocate while unconscious, and he felt confident that the little ball of linen between her tongue and palate would be quite sufficient to prevent her, when she did come to, from making a noise loud enough to attract attention. Finally, he used another length of the tape to make a loop round her neck, then tied its end to the iron bed-rail above her head, so that, with her ankles and wrists bound, she could not get off the bed without choking herself.

As he looked down at his handiwork he thought, 'Poor little devil, I expect that by this time next week she will be working for some other blackguard; but with luck tonight I'll rid her of a murderer.' Then, to console her for the blow on the head, he took some more money from his pocket and made the amount on the shelf up to a hundred pesetas.

Readjusting his muffler, he put on his jacket and, while doing so, he saw that the door on which he had hung it had, at about chest level, an oblong slit like a letter-box in it. He had not noticed it before, because on the far side of the door it was masked by a strip of material the same colour as the paintwork. For a moment he wondered what purpose it served, then decided that it was probably used as a spy-hole so that anyone in the big bedroom could lift the flap, peep through and see what was going on in the smaller. But, having more important things to think about, he quickly dismissed it from his mind.

Picking up the lamp he carried it into the larger room and set it down on a small table. At his first swift glance round his eye lit on a camera hanging by a strap from a hook on the door giving on to the corridor. From what he had seen of Sanchez's as they had struggled together in the moonlight it looked the same. A moment later he had verified that it was because the leather was stained from its having been partly submerged in the lily pool. Opening it up he removed the spool, unrolled the film and held it up to the light to find that it was a new one, no part of which had been used.

There was no desk or bureau in the room so he decided that the chest of drawers was the best place to start his hunt for the negative. Its contents were almost entirely clothes belonging to

Inez. Quickly he turned them over and thrust his hands into the corners of the drawers, one after another, but they yielded nothing of interest. Next he tried the wardrobe. One hanging space held Inez's dresses, the other garments belonging to Sanchez. He went through the latter most carefully but the pockets had in them only a few old bills, lottery tickets and betting vouchers. The shelves and drawers of the central compartment were evidently shared, and contained scarves, mantillas, socks and shirts. Less hopefully he went to the dressing-table; its two shallow drawers had in them only Inez's manicure and make-up things.

Anxiously now, he stared round for likely hiding places then, stooping, looked under the bed. Beneath it there were three corded wooden boxes. Pulling one of them out he got the cord undone and with the aid of a long steel buttonhook prised the case open. Its contents revealed that Inez was a born hoarder. The box held the oddest collection of junk, valueless except to its owner. He prised open the second box and, to save time, upended it so that its contents spilled out over the floor. Among the pile of old handbags, bull-fight programmes, small gaudily painted figures of saints, garter rosettes, a pack of for tune-telling cards and some fancy scent bottles, were two albums. One was half-filled with picture postcards, mostly of a low comic variety or of holiday resorts; the other held photographs, but they were only faded snaps of Inez at various ages and, presumably, her family and friends. The third box held another medley of souvenirs from her perhaps more innocent past.

Angrily, de Quesnoy pushed the three boxes and most of the junk they had contained back under the bed, scrambled to his feet and cast around afresh. His searching eyes stopped again at the wardrobe as the thought came to him that there might be something on top of it. Pulling over a chair, he stepped up on to it and peered into the hollow behind the cornice. Hidden there from ground level lay a flat leather satchel. Seizing it, he jumped down and tried to open it but found it to be locked. Praying that he had at last found what he sought, and not a collection of love letters to Inez, he again used the long steel buttonhook to force its lock. Taking the satchel by its ends he tipped its contents out on to the bed. Twenty or thirty negatives and photographs shot out. One glance at them was enough. His eyes lit with triumph.

Quickly he shuffled through them, seeking the one of Gulia and himself, but he could not find it. Then it struck him that nearly all the prints were very similar. They had a blob of light up in the right-hand top corner and vague whitish figures lower down to the left. Picking up two of them he carried them over to the lamp.

As he examined them under the better light he gave a grim smile. They revealed the use to which the letter-box-like slit in the communicating door between the two rooms was put. While Inez entertained her clients Sanchez took photographs through it. The blob of light was the lamp up on a shelf, turned low; the whitish figures now spoke for themselves.

On examining some of the others the Count found that in many of them Inez's face was turned away but in every one that of the man showed. As photographs all of them were very poor, but in the majority the man's features were clear enough to identify him.

It was easy to see the vile game Sanchez was playing. Having taken his photograph he waited until Inez's customer left her, then slipped out and followed him. Judging by the men down in the bar most of them would be mates and bosuns from cargo vessels, or passengers who had come ashore for the evening from small coasters. On such birds of passage Sanchez would have wasted his time. But all the odds were that quite a number of port officials and local tradesmen also patronized the Silver Galleon. Those who had also patronized Inez would have been traced by Sanchez to their homes and, no doubt, several of the married men among them were now being squeezed by him for a quota of pesetas every week.

De Quesnoy recalled how Sanchez had boasted to him in Barcelona about blackmailing the unfortunate little Marquesa. It would have been his success in that which had led to him adopting as a regular occupation this infamous way of making money. In disgust the Count threw the prints he was holding back on the bed.

Among them he had seen no print that could possibly have been of Gulia and himself, but he had not yet examined the negatives. Gathering them together he took them to the lamp and, one by one, held them up to the light. As he looked at the sixth he gave a little gasp of delight. This was it, and as he stared at the negative he could hardly believe his good fortune.

In the left upper corner there showed the sharply outlined profile of a small bronze bust, one of a pair that had stood on the top of a low secretaire in his room at San Sebastian. For him that identified beyond all doubt the place of which the shot had been taken, but there was nothing else that could, and the only other thing visible on the negative was a little less than half of a woman's body from her raised arm to her foot. Gulia's elbow protruded because her arm had been round his neck. The blinding flash of the magnesium flare made her limbs in the negative dead black, and the diaphanous nightdress she had been wearing had not even blurred the lovely outline from bust to waist and along the curve of her hip. But where her face should have been, and the back of his head and body, the negative was completely blank.

In an instant he guessed the reason. When Sanchez had tripped and fallen flat in the lily pool the camera case must have come into violent contact with the stone rim of the pool or the ground. The jolt must have damaged the camera itself, so that before Sanchez had a chance to develop the film a little light had seeped in and ruined it.

With a sigh of thankfulness he put it in his pocket.

No damning print could have been made from it, so there was no longer the least risk that Jose de Cordoba would ever learn of his wife's desperate infatuation or believe that his friend had betrayed him with her. Even if by some freak of chance he did see the ruined negative and thought he recognized the bronze bust in it, there was nothing whatever to prove that the portion of woman's body was Gulia's. It might have been another similar bust in another house and any well-made tallish woman. That being the case, the Count decided to keep it as a memento of a night upon which he had been tempted almost beyond endurance.

The fact that the negative had been spoilt explained why Sanchez had made no use of it, and why no blackmailing letter had been forwarded on by Gulia. As de Quesnoy realized that, he wondered what Sanchez was up to now. Inez had said that he spent most of his nights drinking and arguing at a political club. Perhaps on some nights he did, and this was one of them. But he certainly did not spend all of them that way, as was shown by the photographs spread out over the bed.

Suddenly an idea came to the Count that made him laugh. How surprised Sanchez would have been if he had remained lurking in the room that night and, on hearing Inez bring a customer up to the room next door, got his camera ready, then on peering through the letter-box slit found that her customer was the deadly enemy that he believed to be still in San Sebastian.

It was at that moment that he was taken by surprise himself. He heard a noise behind him. Swinging round he saw that the door to the corridor had opened, and framed in the doorway stood Sanchez.

The Broken Mirror

The explanation for Sanchez's unexpected arrival flashed instantly upon de Quesnoy. To guard, as far as possible, against Inez having been picked up by some other man before he reached the Silver Galleon he had gone there* early. It could not have been much after a quarter past ten when she had taken him up to her room. Most nights she would probably not have succeeded in attracting a customer who would pay her price until about eleven. His search of the bedroom and looking through the photographs must have taken him longer than he thought and had brought him up to the time when, normally, Sanchez would return with the hope of finding that she had a man with her whom he might be able to photograph and blackmail.

As those thoughts coursed through his mind his hand leapt behind him to pull his revolver from his hip pocket. But Sanchez had recognized and was too quick for him. Giving one shout of surprised rage at finding his hideout had been discovered, the brawny young Spaniard flung himself upon his enemy. The impact was like that made by the charge of a young bull upon an unskilful amateur matador. The Count went over backwards on the bed with Sanchez on top of him. Half the breath was knocked out of his body. His arms had been flung out sideways. Bringing his hands together he grasped Sanchez by the throat. Sanchez dug his powerful chin down just in time and prevented the grasp becoming a stranglehold. With his left fist he struck downward at de Quesnoy's face. The Count jerked his head aside but the blow caught him on the cheek and the side of his aquiline nose. Sanchez's right hand had slid down to his cummerbund. It reappeared holding a long, thin blade. The fist that held it swept up above the prostrate Count. By the light of the lamp he caught the glint of murder in Sanchez's dark eyes. Letting go his hold on Sanchez's neck he shot out a hand and grabbed the wrist that held the knife.

For a few moments there was a tense, desperate struggle. Only the sound of gasps came from the two men. Suddenly the Count raised his head and fixed his teeth in Sanchez's chin. Sanchez let out a howl of agony. At the same instant de Quesnoy gave a violent twist and the knife dropped from the anarchist's hand.

Again they wrestled fiercely. The sweat was pouring off them

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both. The Count's left hand still grasped Sanchez's right wrist. With their free hands they strove to strike or grasp one another. The blood from the Spaniard's chin mingled with that from de Quesnoy's nose. Making a feint, the Count thrust his hand under Sanchez's guard, seized him by the left ear and pulled upon it. The anarchist gave another yelp of pain. To prevent his ear from being torn off he was forced to roll sideways. The Count gave a heave, threw him over and next moment was on top of him.

But only for a moment. With all his strength Sanchez brought up his right knee. It would have been the finish of de Quesnoy had he not jerked his thighs together and taken the brunt of the blow upon them. Even as it was, he in turn gave a sharp cry followed by a groan, and the upward thrust unseated him. Yet their hands and arms were still interlocked. Simultaneously both gave a violent twist in the same direction. They slid off the bed and landed with a crash on the floor.

Sanchez was underneath. The back of his head struck the boards first, with a hard resounding thud. His body went limp. With a surge of relief the Count realized that he had him at his mercy. It was at that moment, in the sudden silence succeeding the noise of their struggle, that he heard a dragging sound in the next room.

Panting and still trembling from his exertions, he staggered to his feet. He had left the communicating door to the other room partly open, but it was dark in there. Grabbing the door handle, he pulled the door wide. Now there was enough light for him to see inside. Somehow Inez had managed to gnaw through the tape he had put round her neck and tied to the head of the bed. He could see about eight inches of its end still tied to the rail. And she was no longer on the bed. Her wrists and ankles were still tied but she was dragging herself along the floor towards the door that gave on to the corridor.

Taking in the situation at a glance, de Quesnoy guessed that she must have been conscious and working to regain her freedom for some time. Knowing that Sanchez would be returning soon after eleven she had probably been lying there, not daring to move till he came on the scene, but ready to act the moment he did. As she had managed to gnaw through the tape it seemed certain that she had first succeeded in working the gag out of her mouth. At any moment she might scream for help.

De Quesnoy moved to dive through the doorway. His arms were outstretched to seize her, but his hands clutched empty air. A strong arm had been thrown round his neck. It dragged him back. Sanchez had either only feigned being stunned, or his thick skull had saved him from being knocked out for more than a few seconds. He had come swiftly and silently to his feet behind his enemy, and suddenly gained the advantage over him.

For a few moments de Quesnoy strove in vain to break Sanchez's grip. Gasping for breath he felt himself being pulled over backwards by his more powerful antagonist. In desperation he lifted his right foot and kicked out behind him with all his might. His heel caught Sanchez on the shin bone. The sickening pain caused him to relax his hold. De Quesnoy swivelled round within it and jabbed him hard in the stomach. Sanchez was still groggy from having struck his head on the floor. Reeling backwards with the wind knocked out of him, he half doubled up.

Finding herself discovered Inez began to shout. She had now reached the door and was endeavouring to struggle up on to her knees. De Quesnoy knew that if he could not deal with them both in the next few minutes he would be caught like a rat in a trap. But he could not deal with both of them simultaneously.

Although bent half double Sanchez was reaching out a hand across the bed. On it lay the knife that he had been forced to drop. The Count dared not let him snatch it up. With his left hand he grabbed a handful of the Spaniard's coarse, black curly hair and hauled him back.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Inez, still yelling murder. She had got to her feet and was striving to get a grasp on the door knob. Her hands having been bound palm to palm made that by no means easy; but if she succeeded in opening the door, her shouts would echo down the corridor and carry double the distance they did at the moment.

De Quesnoy decided that if he was to save himself there was only one thing to do. When he had first come upon the cunning, coarsely handsome oaf he now held by the hair, he had been making a bomb in the very laboratory in which it was virtually certain that Morral had learned to make the type of bomb that had killed Angela. A few weeks later he had first wanted to cut de Quesnoy's throat, then suggested roasting him alive, and finally lent a willing hand in an attempt to murder him by suffocation. If more was wanted he was the lowest form of criminal cur who lived on the immoral earnings of women and blackmail.

Lifting his right foot the Count drew back his bent leg. Next second he brought his knee up hard against Sanchez's rump. The anarchist's body reacted to the blow by shooting forward. At the same instant de Quesnoy gave a sudden wrench on his hair, jerking his head violently back. There came the sound of a sharp crack. Sanchez's head suddenly dragged like a ton weight on the hand that grasped his black curls. The Count let go and the limp body slumped across the edge of the bed. He had broken Sanchez's neck.

Swivelling round, de Quesnoy dashed into the small room to secure Inez and muffle her shouts. He was too late. At the very instant he had put an end to Sanchez she had got the door open. As she pushed it wide, her ankles still being tied, she had lost her balance and fallen. Her red hair and most of her body were now out in the corridor and she was screaming at the top of her voice. Still worse, her earlier shouts for help must have been heard, for the Count caught the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs only twenty feet away.

The corridor was a cul-de-sac ending in a window between the big bedroom and another room opposite. Jumping over Inez's prostrate body de Quesnoy ran to it. From the reconnaissance he had made of the inn before going into its bar, he felt certain that the window overlooked the central courtyard and, as the rooms of the old building had low ceilings, he knew that he would not have far to drop.

But he had overlooked the fact that in old inns windows giving on to landings and passages are rarely opened. When he reached it he found it stuck fast. As he turned away he saw several men, one behind the other, charging down the corridor towards him. Turning, he dashed through the door to the bedroom, slammed it behind him and shot its bolt. The window in there would, he knew, open, because Inez had gone to close it on account of the storm.

Having bolted the door to the corridor had not secured his retreat. The men who were after him could still come through the slip-room. The question which now agitated his racing brain was 'Could he get the window open and drop from it before they were upon him?'

He decided that he could not. That precious minute trying to get the window in the corridor open had robbed him of the vital leeway needed to escape. But there was still a chance. He felt sure he had seen a bolt on the communicating door. If he could close and bolt that he would be temporarily safe.

He sprang round the bed, leapt towards the door and slammed it shut. But only in the nick of time. The leading man, a crop-headed fellow who looked like a Scandinavian bosun, had just stumbled past Inez and was within six feet of him. His fumbling fingers found the bolt on the door. With a gasp of thankfulness, he shot it.

Turning again, he jumped over Sanchez's sprawling legs, pulled the dressing-table aside, and reached the window. Grasping its lower sash he pulled it up and gratefully gulped in the cool night air. At that second there came a resounding crash. The connecting door between the two rooms was only a flimsy affair. The muscular square-head had burst it open with one kick of his heavy boot.

Again, there was not much more than six feet between them. De Quesnoy knew that he could not get through the window before the sailor grabbed him. He had only one course left; to hold him and the others back and, if possible, drive them from the room under the threat of his revolver. Wrenching it out he pointed it at the seaman and shouted:

'Halt! Another step forward and I fire.'

The Scandinavian halted in his tracks. Behind him was a dark-visaged Spaniard. Covered by the bulky form of the man in front of him, he drew a knife. For a moment all the figures in the room were still: the Count standing beside the dressing-table with his revolver levelled, the little mob of men who had come to get him crowded into the doorway and the slip-room beyond it. Then, leaning sideways, the Spaniard threw his knife.

De Quesnoy saw his movement just in time and sprang aside. His swift action saved him. The knife flashed past him through the open window. But calamity followed. One of his feet came down in some spilt blood, either from his own nose or Sanchez's chin. He slipped and went over backwards. As he hit the floor his revolver was knocked from his hand.

For a moment he thought it was all up with him, but as the square-head dived at him he kicked out blindly. It was a lucky stroke. The toe of his boot caught the seaman on the point of the chin. His teeth clicked and he crashed to the floor out cold. The Spaniard had also sprung forward but tripped over the squarehead's body and fell upon him. The Count rolled over twice, came up on his feet and grabbed the dressing-table mirror. He had always been told that to break a mirror was an unlucky thing to do, but it was the only weapon close at hand. As the Spaniard rose to come at him again de Quesnoy brought it smashing down on his head. It splintered into a hundred fragments. With blood streaming down his face the Spaniard sank back with a groan on to the unconscious body of the Scandinavian.

Four more men were crowded into the doorway, the brawny grizzled landlord among them. But seeing the way in which the Count had dealt with two of their companions, the nearest of the group - a lean, sallow-faced youngster - now showed reluctance to tackle him. With shouts and curses the other three both urged him on and tried to push past him. The indecision of the young fellow gave de Quesnoy the moment's respite he so badly needed. In one stride he reached the table on which stood the oil lamp. Picking it up he hurled it at them.

With a tinkle of glass its chimney broke. The oil in the container spurted out over two of the men, Sanchez's recumbent body and the side of the bed. Instantly rivulets of fire were running in half a dozen different directions and flames leaping up. Cries of terror came from the men and fresh screams from Inez added to the din.

De Quesnoy wasted no time waiting to see the results of his bombshell. Having thrown it, he stepped back to the window, threw one leg over its low sill, then the other, squirmed over on to his stomach, ducked his head and wriggled out. For a moment he hung from the sill by his hands, then he let himself drop.

As his feet hit the cobbles he tried to flex his knees, but one of his ankles turned over and he pitched sideways to measure his length on the ground. Picking himself up, he darted in the direction of the archway, but as he put his right foot to the ground he gave an 'ouch!' of pain. He had twisted his ankle badly. All the same, he knew that unless he ran for it, and ran hard, he might yet be caught.

Ignoring the pain that shot through his ankle with every stride he took, he gained the archway at a loping run and dived into it. As he did so two men entered its far end from the street. They turned towards the door to the bar, then noticed him and stopped. For him there could be no turning back, and it was too late to pretend, by dropping into a walk, that he was not trying to get away from the place quickly. Running on, he made a sudden swerve and attempted to dart past the two men. But the nearer grabbed him by the arm, swung him round to a halt, and demanded:

'Hi, mate! Where are you off to in such a hurry?'

Tt's none of your business! Let me go!' he cried angrily, and strove to drag his arm free. The man had a firm grip on his coat sleeve and refused to be shaken off. For half a minute their tug-of-war continued, then de Quesnoy's heart sank. Faint but clear, coming through the archway there were shouts of:

'Stop thief! Murder! Murder! Stop thief!'

Both the men heard them. The first shot out his free hand and grasped the Count's wrist. The other cried, 'Hang on to him, Emile!' and closed in on de Quesnoy's other side. Able now to bear his own weight only on one foot, he was no match for them. Within a minute they had him fast with one of his arms twisted up behind his back.

They had hardly done so when the burly landlord came crashing down the stairs and out of the door opposite the bar. Taking in the situation at a glance, he cried:

'So you've caught the swine! Well done, lads! Bring him in here.'

Another man had followed the landlord out. With him leading, the other three lugged de Quesnoy up the stairs and back along the corridor to the scene of the affray. Someone had fetched another lamp from one of the other rooms, and during the past five minutes several newcomers had arrived on the scene. As there had been a number of people present when the fire started it had soon been beaten out; so the only signs remaining of it were some oily smoke and the stench of burnt clothing.

At the sight of the prisoner Inez, now freed from her bonds, let out a yell of vindictive delight, and the others shouted their congratulations to his captors.

By the time he had been pushed and pulled into the bedroom it was packed to suffocation. Sanchez's body had been lifted on to the bed and a towel laid over its face, but the bed was shared by the Spaniard over whose head the Count had broken the mirror. He lay moaning beside the corpse while another man mopped at the blood that seeped from cuts on his forehead, nose and ears. The square-head had regained consciousness and was sitting on a chair nursing his injured chin. In addition there were at least ten other people, including Beatriz who had appeared from somewhere in a dressing-gown; and the noise of their excited voices now made a positive babble.

The landlord took charge and shouted loudly for silence; then when their voices fell to a mutter, he said to Inez:

'Now tell us, girl. What happened? How did this start?'

'He's a thief!' she cried. 'The dirty low-down blackguard. We'd only been up here a few minutes when he came round behind me and gave me a wallop on the head. It knocked me right out for about ten minutes. When I came round he had tied me hand and foot and to the bed; and he was in here rummaging through our things to see what he could pilfer. A long time later Sanchez came in and took him by surprise. Then they fought, and I wriggled off the bed to try to get help.'

As she ceased speaking her glance fell on Sanchez. It seemed that in the general excitement it was not until that moment that she realized that he was really dead. With a heartrending wail she cast herself upon his body. Beatriz pushed through the crowd, put her arms about her shoulders and sought to comfort her. Inez's wails continued and it was only after some minutes, during which everyone burst into speech again, that they were reduced to a passionate sobbing.

Her outburst of grief had given de Quesnoy time to recover a little from the rough handling he had received. A glance round the room was enough to show him that his position was desperate. He had killed an inmate of the house, injured two other men and inflicted nasty burns on several more. His best hope lay in the fact that most of the frequenters of the Silver Galleon, although a little rough, looked fairly respectable; so there was a fair hope that they might hand him over to the police. If they did, he felt that he had nothing worse to fear than a few nights in the cells, for he could counter a charge of murder by stating that Sanchez had been a wanted criminal and he had killed him in self-defence while endeavouring to secure him so that justice might take its course; and de Cordoba's influence would then get him a quick release. But, as he glanced round the crowded room he saw that everyone who was looking in his direction was glaring at him, and he realized that it needed only a spark to their anger for the whole lot of them to set about lynching him.

Again the landlord called for silence, then swung round on de Quesnoy and snarled at him, 'She's given us the truth, hasn't she? You can't deny it.'

'I do,' retorted the Count hotly. Having had a few minutes to think up a line of defence, he went on in a firm voice. 'The senorita is lying to cover up for her dead fancy-man. I was with her in the little room and I heard movements in here, so I came through. I found him about to take a photograph of us through a big slit in the door. I saw at once that blackmail was his game, and went for him. We fought, he went over backwards, hit his head on the chest of drawers and broke his neck. You can't blame me for that. Meanwhile she had followed me in and was about to rouse the house. Seeing what had happened I knew that if I was caught here I'd be for the lockup, and perhaps held there for months while the police went into the question of the fellow's death. Who would want that, if there was a chance of avoiding it, eh? I stopped the hussy's cries and tied her up. But my luck was out. She broke free and her yells brought some of you on the scene before I could get away. That's the truth.'

It was a good story, but Inez raised her tousled red head from

Beatriz's shoulder and screamed. 'He's lying! He's lying! He's a thief and a murderer. By the Holy Virgin I swear he's lying.'

'It's the truth, you bitch,' cried the Count, using this term as suitable to the occasion, and the indignation he was feigning as his best hope of convincing his audience so that he might get out of the place alive.

At the foot of the bed lay the leather satchel with the negatives and prints he had taken from it in a little pile near by. Pointing at them, he went on indignantly. 'There's the proof of what I've told you. Just look at them. That's the sort of photograph her pimp was about to take of her and me when I caught him at it.'

Taking a quick step forward the landlord swept the pile into the satchel, tucked it under his arm and said gruffly, 'I'll take charge of those. They're just a lot of old snaps and I've seen them before.'

At his action de Quesnoy's hopes sank. It was a clear indication that the landlord knew about the blackmail racket that Sanchez and Inez had been running, and had been taking a cut from the results of their activities. It swept from beneath his feet the ground of his best line of defence.

Meanwhile Inez had begun to shout again. 'He murdered Sanchez! He murdered him after he'd tied me up. He came here as a thief, I tell you. Look at all my things scattered over the floor.'

Her cry distracted the others from the landlord, preventing any of them looking at the photographs; and she had made a point for which the Count could offer no explanation.

As they glanced round at the junk on the floor and two still open drawers, a tall man with a grey moustache said, 'He's a thief all right. You can see that from the way the room's been searched. He killed her fellow, too. No doubt about that. We must get the police.'

'All right,' de Quesnoy volunteered. 'I'm sticking to my story and quite prepared to tell it to them.'

'No you won't,' the landlord cut in quickly. 'I'm not having the police here.' Glancing round, he added truculently, 'You can't be such a lot of fools as to want the police called in. Those of you who are off ships won't be allowed to sail in them. You'll be held as witnesses. We'd all land ourselves in for weeks of trouble.'

'He's right. That's sense.' 'Yes, we must keep the police out of this,' murmured several of the others.

The Scandinavian stopped massaging his jaw, looked up and said in broken Spanish. 'Then what will we do with him? He has killed a man, hasn't he? That he should go free is wrong.'

'Kill him !' shouted Inez. 'Stick a knife in his belly.'

Her shout was ignored, so she went on. 'Go to it, one of you. A life for a life. That's fair, isn't it? We don't need the police to settle his account. We can do it ourselves.'

Still they ignored her; so she cried, 'You lousy lot of cowards! Give me a knife, one of you, and I'll do it myself.'

The Spaniard whose face had been so badly cut about by the mirror sat up on the bed. With feverish eyes he stared at de Quesnoy, then his features broke into a cruel grin, and he rasped, 'You may spare yourself, senorita. The privilege shall be mine.'

'Shut your trap, Filipo,' snapped the landlord. 'There's been one murder here tonight. I'll not have another done before my eyes.'

A chorus of voices supported him. 'No!' 'Not that! Not that!'

'No! The police might trace him.' 'No, no; we'd all be held responsible.'

'But what will we do with him?' the square-head persisted. 'He has killed a man. That he should be let go free is not just.'

A tubby little man wearing a good reefer jacket and a brand new peaked cap, who had been one of the last to arrive on the scene, replied contemptuously, 'What is there so frightful about a killing? We all know that they happen from time to time in fo'c'sle fights; and in port, like this, when there is trouble over a woman.'

The landlord nodded. 'True enough, Captain Robles. But it's not right that we should let him get away with it altogether. What do you suggest?'

With new hope surging in his breast de Quesnoy stared at the Captain. He had lank black hair, tiny little eyes and an enormously developed jaw. After a moment he said, 'My ship is sailing for Rio in two hours' time. He looks like a seafaring type. I'm short of hands and could do with an extra man in the fo'c'sle. If he doesn't behave we'll soon teach him manners. Slug him under the jaw, one of you, and we'll escort him aboard as though he were a drunk.'

De Quesnoy listened appalled. But with the exception of Inez everyone else accepted Captain Robles's idea as an excellent solution to the problem. The Scandinavian lumbered to his feet, delighted at the chance to avenge himself for the kick under the jaw he had received. The two men who were holding the Count's arms tightened their grip on him. The sailor clenched his big fist and struck him a violent blow on the side of the chin. A black curtain descended in front of his eyes, red stars and circles flashed upon it; then he passed out.

fate stalks by night

When de Quesnoy came to he found himself in irons. He was lying on a thin straw-filled palliasse in a dark noisome hole. A rocking motion and the noise of a churning propeller told him that he was in a ship at sea. His head was aching abominably, but into his still bemused brain there drifted a picture of redheaded Inez, then of himself smashing the mirror. That had brought him ill-luck indeed.

Then another thought came to him. It was of Count Soltikoff saying 'Vengeance is Mine, saith The Lord'. Sanchez was dead, and his father and the others would shortly be on trial for their lives. But that was little consolation now. By taking the law into his own hands this was where he had landed himself. And there was no escape. He was faced with having to work his way to South America under a brutal captain as a seaman before the mast.

16

Fate Stalks by Night

It was two and a half years before de Quesnoy returned to Europe. He would not have done so then had he not learnt early in March, 1909, that his father had died. In consequence, when he did return it was as the tenth Due de Richleau.

One of the blessings granted to mankind is that while it is often possible to recall and, years later, enjoy again in retrospect the most delightful hours of one's life, the emotion of terror, the sensation of pain, the gnawings of hunger, anxiety and jealousy rarely leave a permanent impression on the mind; and even the memories of long periods of distress become blunted by the balm of time.

So, when de Richleau entered the first-class deck cabin of the de luxe liner that was to carry him from New Orleans to Hamburg, he did not even give a thought to the very different circumstances in which he had arrived in South America one hundred and thirty-one weeks earlier. By then his mind had telescoped his outward voyage into a few scenes:

His first interview with Captain Robles. The morning after the tramp had sailed from Cadiz he had been taken up, still in irons, from the lazaret to the Captain's cabin. He had told Robles his proper name and offered him five hundred pounds to put back and land him in Cadiz or any other European port. The squat, baboon-jawed Captain had laughed in his face, and flatly refused to believe that he was a Count or could lay his hand on one-tenth of that sum. To threaten him, on arrival in South America, with prosecution for kidnapping was obviously futile and, de Quesnoy realized, might even have led to his not being allowed to land when they got to Rio. The only course left to him had been to put as cheerful a face as possible on matters and agree to sign on for the voyage as a deck-hand under his assumed name of Jaime Avila.

209

Then of a fight in the fo'c'sle. The rough seamen who were to be his shipmates were used to minding their own business, so did not inquire into his. An extra hand meant lightening their work so most of them gave him a surly welcome and, between them, fitted him up with spare oddments of kit, such as sea-boots, oilskins and a razor. But they soon began to put upon the landlubber who had arrived in their midst, and he saw that unless he took a stand his life, from being grim, would become intolerable. On the third night out he had refused to dubbin the boots of a brawny half-caste named Vecho. As Vecho was the fo'c'sle bully the other men did not, as de Quesnoy had feared they might, gang up against him, but stood by while the two of them fought it out. It had been a tough encounter with no holds barred; but after five gruelling minutes de Quesnoy had succeeded in getting a judo hold on Vecho and made him scream for mercy. From then on there were no further attempts to make the slim but formidable new hand do more than his share of the fo'c'sle chores.

Lastly, on the ship's arrival at Rio after three weeks at sea. During them the Count's lifelong assumption of leadership had soon made itself felt. Most of his tasks as a deck-hand required brawn rather than brains; so he swiftly mastered them and within a few days had, almost unconsciously, assumed the role of leading hand in his watch; then he had been singled out by the bosun for any special jobs needing a little ingenuity or skill. That had not been lost on Captain Robles, who had already realized that he was an educated man; yet de Quesnoy's surprise can be imagined when, on paying him off in Rio, the Captain had offered to sign him on for his next voyage as fourth mate. It had then been the Count's turn to laugh. But he was conscious that had Robles not shanghaied him he might well have been lynched and suffered some fatal injury before getting away from the Silver Galleon; so in spite of the hard time, wretched food and filthy quarters that he had since been forced to endure, he had taken leave of the tough little tramp skipper without any ill will.

In 1904, when a guest on the yacht of the American banker Channock Van Ryn, de Quesnoy had made a number of acquaintances in Rio, so he had had no difficulty in establishing his real identity there. The Rio branch of Van Ryn's bank had made him a substantial loan, which had enabled him to re-equip himself decently and live in a good hotel while arranging for funds to be sent to him from Europe, and he had at once cabled his father and de Vendome to let them know his whereabouts and that he was safe and well.

He had also written at length to de Cordoba relating all that had happened in Granada and Cadiz, and saying that it was not his intention to return to Spain. As he pointed out, the trial of the anarchists in Barcelona, having been fixed for October 11th, would by then be over. That he had been rendered incapable of appearing in court to substantiate his personal charges against Francisco Ferrer, his remaining son Benigno, and the others, was unfortunate; but Don Alfonso had been of the opinion that, even without those charges, on the evidence of their anarchist activities found in the Escuela Moderna, they would be lucky if they escaped the death penalty and, at the least, would receive long sentences of imprisonment; therefore no useful purpose could be served by his returning and having them brought to trial again.

He added that, had there been the least chance of their being set free, he would have taken the first ship back, but it had always been his intention to go to South America after the trial for the purpose of obtaining a commission in the army of one of the Republics; so, Fate having deposited him there - however uncomfortable the means she had chosen - he now took that as a good omen of better luck in Latin America than he had met with in Europe during the past year, and meant to remain there at all events for some time to come.

In due course he received a reply from the Conde telling him that, owing to his disappearance, the trial of the anarchists had been postponed. The police had traced his movements and learned from La Torcera, who had returned to Granada, that when in Cadiz he had gone out after Sanchez Ferrer. They had found out about Sanchez's death, but failed to discover what had become of de Quesnoy; so assumed that he had been made away with that same night. In consequence they had written him off as a witness for the prosecution in the Ferrer trial, and were now concentrating their efforts on ferreting out further evidence against the owner and staff of the Escuela Moderna. But there was no likelihood whatever of the prisoners being released or, in due course, not receiving long sentences; so de Quesnoy might rest content with the big contribution he had already made to breaking up the nest of vipers which, until August, had flourished in Barcelona.

The Conde concluded by conveying to de Quesnoy Don Alfonso's relief and happiness on learning that he was alive and well, with affectionate messages from Gulia, de Vendome, the Conde Ruiz, the Infanta Maria Alfonsine, and an expression of his own devoted friendship coupled with the hope that it would not be more than a year or two before they would all enjoy the happiness of having him among them again.

Meanwhile, through his acquaintances in the beautiful capital of Brazil, de Quesnoy had been exploring the possibilities of entering the Brazilian Army. As an ex-Chief Instructor of the French Military Academy of St. Cyr, with several years of distinguished active service in North Africa in addition, his qualifications could not be questioned, and after a few meetings with influential army officers the Minister for War offered him the post of Commandant at the Military College.

He would have preferred to command troops; but it appeared a good opening, so he accepted. Yet he had not long taken up the post before he regretted his decision. In those days, in Latin America, discipline among officers was still as nebulous as it had been in the European armies opposing Napoleon. Young sparks belonging to powerful families were accustomed to sleep out at nights and cut lectures and parades when they pleased but, all the same, they expected to receive the most sought-after appointments when the course was over. By cracking down on them de Quesnoy made himself intensely unpopular, and he soon learned that these wealthy idlers had complained to their influential fathers, with the result that an intrigue was developing to oust him from his job. Fighting he considered his business, but not fighting a haughty oligarchy for the right to force its decadent youth to toe the line and learn to become competent officers. In consequence, in the New Year of 1907 he had resigned and transferred to the army of one of the Central American Republics.

There he had been given the rank of Brigadier-General and sent to fight Indians. Although he found the troops allotted to him illiterate, ragged, and largely recruited from the gaols, and supplies reached him only in an inadequate trickle, he had soon become fascinated by jungle warfare. Not only was it utterly different from his campaigns against well-organized bodies of tribesmen, waged for oases in deserts and through the rocky gorges of the Atlas Mountains, it had a much closer resemblance to big game hunting, which had always been a passion with him. But in this case, instead of stalking dangerous animals for amusement, the object was to make waterways and jungle tracks safe for commerce from attack by murderous savages, and the risk entailed by the hunter was the much greater one of being pipped by a poison-tipped arrow, which could result in a death of excruciating agony.

After three months he had gone down with jungle fever and been invalided back to the capital. While he was convalescing a revolution had taken place and the new War Minister had decided that he would be of more value in helping to reorganize the army than returning to the jungle. By Central American standards the War Minister had been an honest man, and de Quesnoy had done his utmost to bring order out of chaos; but at every turn he had found his efforts baulked by the rivalries of unscrupulous Generals, graft, and every kind of political chicanery. By midsummer he had become so disgusted with the whole business that he had thrown in his hand and accepted an offer from a neighbouring State to become Inspector-General of its forces.

There he had fared little better, as its Government and the higher ranks of its rag, tag and bobtail army had proved equally riddled with corruption. But after a time he had managed to change his job for the command of an expedition to survey the upper reaches of an uncharted river and a great area of territory adjacent to it. That he had enjoyed, as it had meant his being his own master and again living dangerously, which was in his blood. It had entailed further encounters with hostile Indians, hunting an immense variety of big game, and the discovery of an ancient Maya city, ruined and half-submerged in giant creepers yet with many of its intricate carvings still undamaged. But, to his annoyance, the expedition was recalled long before it had completed its work owing to lack of funds to send up to it further essential supplies.

During the eighteen months that followed he had served with the rank of Major-General in the armies of three other Republics. In time he had come to accept the trickery, bribery and ignorance of military matters which was almost universal among his sallow-skinned, black-eyed colleagues, recognizing that their standards were as natural to them as a sense of integrity was to the majority of officers in the armies of the great European nations. Even when telling the most flagrant lies their manners were impeccable, they were most hospitable and intensely chivalrous towards women; so he came to regard them rather as selfish, wicked children than near criminals, and became good friends with a number of the more intelligent among them.

His dream of commanding a Cavalry Division remained as far away as ever since, except for a few squadrons of escort troops for Presidential processions, cavalry hardly existed, and he often thought with regret of the splendidly disciplined and equipped regiment of Spahis he had commanded in North Africa. But the half-Indian peons in the Central American armies were tough little men and earned his admiration.

For most of the time he lived in cities in which the privileged few enjoyed every luxury while the masses, mainly of mixed negroid and native Indian stock with only a rare dash of Spanish blood, plagued by disease, poverty and crushing taxation, barely managed to exist in the most appalling squalor. Yet each time resentment at such a state of things, or frustration at the intransigence and incompetence of his colleagues, had boiled up in him to a point at which he began to consider returning to Europe, he was either sent out to clear another jungle area of marauding Indians, or a revolution engineered by some magnate greedy for more wealth and power had to be crushed.

So for the past two and a half years he had at least lived a life that had not lacked for variety, and frequently provided him with situations in which he could indulge his favourite pastime of gambling his safety against his wits.

Now, as the Due de Richleau, he had to reorientate himself for his return to countries in which soldiers were not liable to be shot for minor acts of insubordination, where judges sent people to prison for offering them bribes instead of suggesting that the amount of the bribe should be doubled, where one did not have to take constant precautions against catching some terrible disease, or be liable to stumble in a street at night over the body of some poor wretch either struck down by one or knifed; and, in short, where a state of law and order was the rule rather than the exception.

Having crossed the Caribbean to New Orleans, as the nearest port from which he could be sure of making his voyage to Europe in a comfortable liner, he had had to wait there for one for eight days, and for a good part of that time he had amused himself by reading in the big City Library papers and periodicals which would bring him up-to-date with events in the Old World.

In England jovial King Edward VII still occupied the throne, with Asquith as his Prime Minister and a firebrand named Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Led by the latter the Radicals were carrying out a furious agitation to deprive the

House of Lords of its age-old right to veto measures passed by the Lower House. The Southern Irish meanwhile were carrying on an equally furious agitation to be given Home Rule. But the British people, as ever the pioneers in all forms of social welfare, had united in applauding a bill which a few months earlier had introduced Old Age Pensions for the needy.

In France Clemenceau was still Premier, but he was now having great trouble in holding together his coalition of Radicals and Socialists, and there were growing indications that the latter might split off and defeat him at the next election. The suppression of the Paris Commune, and all it stood for, in 1871 was now ancient history; but for a quarter of a century the memory of its threat to property, small as well as large, had made the majority of Frenchmen regard all workers' movements with the gravest suspicion. Since the 'nineties, however, they had gained ground by leaps and bounds. Recently the Marxists had fomented a great wave of militant strikes which, by the sabotaging of plant, had cost the country a vast sum, and had been put down only by adopting emergency measures. The anarchists, too, continued to be equally active and, following an attempt to assassinate President Fallieres, were jeopardizing the effectiveness of the army by a great campaign encouraging desertion and denouncing military service.

In Germany Kaiser Wilhelm II continued to give his Chancellor, Prince von Biilow, sleepless nights wondering what new tactless and bellicose utterance he might learn in the morning that his Royal master had given out - generally to some foreign correspondent who had played upon his vanity during a private interview. There had been serious trouble in Germany's Polish provinces and also in Alsace-Lorraine, but a combination of efficient administration backed by the Prussian jack-boot had kept both minorities under control. Commercially, Germany was enjoying an era of great prosperity and there could be no doubt at all that the Kaiser's policies of Colonial expansion and building a High Seas Fleet that could challenge the British Navy had the full support of his people.

Italy was still labouring under a vast burden of debt and the backwardness and superstition of her agricultural population. In the south and m Sicily, the government, the priests and the Mafia competed to rob the peasantry of their last centissimi, and the appalling earthquake that had a few months earlier annihilated the great port of Messina had added greatly to the general distress.

From Vienna the aged Franz-Joseph still ruled his vast multiracial Empire. It was said that he worked stolidly for longer hours per day than the most conscientious of his civil servants, endeavouring to reconcile Hungarians with Czechs, Poles with Ruthenians, Austrians with Italians and Croats with Serbs; yet none of his subject races was content and, many people thought, they were waiting only for his death to proclaim their independence.

Portugal had for a long while been bankrupt, and in a final attempt to restore his country's finances King Carlos had allowed his Prime Minister to assume the powers of a dictator. This had led, fifteen months earlier, to an attack by a band of assassins on the Royal carriage. The King and Crown Prince had been shot dead; the Queen had miraculously escaped a hail of bullets and her younger son Manuel had been only slightly wounded. Now, aged nineteen, he wore the Crown, but was no more than a puppet in the hands of a coalition government which was desperately endeavouring to stave off revolution.

In Spain no event of outstanding importance had taken place, and since de Richleau was not going there he only glanced through the back numbers of such Spanish periodicals as were available. Whatever countries he might decide to visit later he was going first to Russia, to take up his inheritance; so it was to the state of things in Russia that he gave the lion's share of his interest.

Only a year before he had been shipped off to South America the Tsar had at last given way to popular pressure and consented to elections being held for the purpose of creating a National Assembly. This first Duma - as it was called - was convened only as a consultative body. But as soon as it assembled it became apparent that its members were not going to be content to act merely as advisers to the government. The two largest parties - the Liberal Democrats and the Socialists - had both demanded that the Duma should control the executive. The Tsar had refused to yield and dissolved his first 'parliament'.

Thereupon the leaders of the Opposition had crossed the frontier into Finland and issued a violent protest known as the 'Viborg Manifesto'. It called on the Russian people to refuse to pay taxes or supply recruits to the Army and Navy until the Duma was restored. The government had then counter-attacked by establishing special courts to punish terrorists and agitators. A great purge of Socialists had been carried out and thousands of people sent into exile.

Early in 1907, by which time things seemed to have quietened down, elections for a second Duma were held; but, in spite of the purge, a Liberal-Socialist majority was again returned. The Tsar's Minister, Count Stolypin, had accused the Socialist members of conspiracy and demanded their expulsion. A Committee had been appointed to examine the evidence, but the public outcry was so great that, without even waiting for the findings of the Committee, the Tsar had again dissolved the Duma.

There had followed a period of what almost amounted to civil war. On the one hand the Government used its Secret Police, and a vast spy system, with the utmost ruthlessness in an attempt to stamp out all opposition - even executing scores of people for political offences committed two or three years earlier - on the other a great part of the normally law-abiding masses now helped to finance, hide and abet the Nihilists, who succeeded in murdering scores of police and officials.

The Government won, at least to the extent that, when a third Duma was summoned in the autumn of 1907, Stolypin had at last secured the tame assembly he desired. This enabled him to introduce such reforms as he could persuade the Tsar to agree to, and to prepare the way for the measures on which his heart was set. These were designed to substitute private for communal ownership, so that the peasants might own the land on which they worked; for it was his very sensible belief that the possession of private property would prove the best bulwark against revolution.

But matters were not moving swiftly enough for the Socialists and Marxists. They continued their underground warfare with unabated vigour. Not a day passed but shots were fired or a bomb thrown at some relative of the Tsar, one of his Ministers, a General, a Police Chief, or some high official and innumerable police agents were knifed or slugged on the head. And it was in a bomb outrage that de Richleau's father had lost his life.

The old Duke had held no official position of any kind, and had never taken Russian nationality; so he was still technically a Frenchman. He had left his estate only to attend a centenary celebration in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, as the guest of the Governor, Count Boris Plackoff, a cousin of his dead wife. As so often happened, the bomb had been badly aimed. None of its splinters even grazed the Governor, but they killed or wounded a dozen soldiers and spectators standing a few yards away from him, the Duke among them.

That both de Quesnoy's wife and father should have met their deaths in the same way was not, in fact, a particularly strange coincidence. Anyone in the vicinity of royalty or a Governor making a public appearance at that time was liable to fall a victim to an assassin; so it was no more surprising than if two people, both of whom at times climbed mountains, should both die as a result of mountaineering accidents. Yet the murder of his father re-aroused in the new Duke all the emotions to which he had been subject two and a half years earlier.

The facts that he had never regarded his father with more than respectful affection, that he had seen very little of him during the past fifteen years, and that he had benefited through his death by coming into a considerable fortune, hardly entered his mind. They were submerged under the salient fact that his parent, while an innocent bystander, had been violently and painfully done to death by a small criminal minority which sought to impose its will by acts of terror upon a vast law-abiding majority.

The news of the assassination had brought back to him vivid memories of Angela, and the way in which their happiness had been terminated with such appalling suddenness. For some days, he was afflicted with periods of bitter brooding, as he thought of what his life might have been were she still alive, and what it had become owing to her death. He would have had a permanent home with the woman who had been his earliest and greatest love, a child now two years old to cherish, the enjoyment of a circle of friends with whom to pass their time in civilized surroundings. As it was, he had been forced to become a soldier of fortune, rootless, without family, and only circles of acquaintances which changed every month as he moved from one appointment to another, engaged in jungle warfare or countering the intrigues of unscrupulous Central American politicians.

Thinking back, it gave him some consolation to recall that, by undertaking his secret mission to Barcelona, he had succeeded in ensuring that Ferrer and his vile crew had been brought to book for the backstage part they had played in Angela's murder, and had been put out of the way for good; but that did not alter the fact that the hydra-headed monster, militant anarchism, was still taking its toll almost daily of innocent victims, and that his father's life had been cut short by Russians of the poisonous Ferrer breed.

For a while he had contemplated offering to serve the Tsar in the same way as he had Don Alfonso, and under an alias seeking to penetrate the inner circles of the Russian Nihilists. But on consideration, he had recalled that the circumstances in Spain and Russia were very different. Don Alfonso had been anxious to employ him because the strongly Liberal element in his own police, especially in Catalonia, made them unreliable. To the Tsar's Secret Police, the Ocrana, that did not apply. Far too many of them had fallen victims to the bombs, pistols and knives of the Nihilists for them to have the least scruple about retaliating whenever the opportunity offered. They were already waging a relentless war against the terrorists, and had hundreds of spies constantly endeavouring to penetrate the cells of the assassins; so one more, and especially a man like himself who had not lived in Russia since his boyhood, could make no material difference.

By the time he reached New Orleans, he had decided that there was no place for him in the secret war that the Ocrana was waging; so his thoughts instinctively reverted to the type of war which was his own province, and the possibilities of future outbreaks of hostilities in various parts of the world. With that in mind, he looked through all the more serious English, French and German magazines, and read many articles in them to get an unbiased view of what diplomats termed The Concert of Europe'.

The standard of the music had certainly not improved while the Duke had been in America, and in the past year the players, large and small, had got so out of tune that for a while it had looked as if they meant to break their instruments over one another's heads.

The Entente Cordiale still held, in spite of some discordant notes. between the Anglo-French partners, and Russia, largely owing to a visit by King Edward to the Tsar at Revel in the summer of 1908, had since been drawn away from Germany into what was now a triple Entente. Germany and Austria-Hungary, with Italy as an unenthusiastic third, formed the Triple Alliance, which led by the bellicose Kaiser, was opposing the Entente countries on every major issue.

For the past quarter of a century the ancient sprawling Turkish Empire had been falling to pieces, and it was a further stage in its disintegration which had nearly set the Great Powers at one another's throats. Early in the previous year the Young Turks had deposed the Sultan. Recent memories of the massacre of the Armenians and other horrors perpetrated by the ancien regime had secured for the Young Turks general approval of their seizure of power. But it had soon had dangerous repercussions.

Crete, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro had already thrown off the Turkish yoke. Now Bulgaria also proclaimed her independence and Austria, without consultation with the other powers, annexed the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As the two provinces were mainly populated by Serbs, Serbia had hoped to absorb them and demanded compensation. Russia, as the natural protector of the Slav races in the Balkans, backed her up, while Germany backed her ally Austria. All through the autumn and winter heated notes had volleyed back and forth between the Great Powers; but a month ago the Kaiser had openly declared his intention of supporting Austria by force of arms if the matter of her annexation of the provinces was further questioned, and Russia had climbed down.

Now, the 'Concert' was playing in reasonably fair harmony again, but in view of the violently nationalistic ambitions animating the several newly-created Balkan States, de Richleau found himself wondering for how long it would continue to do so. He was far too conscious of the appalling consequences which would result from a major war to wish to see all Europe go up in flames; but as a soldier of fortune he regarded with speculative interest the possibility of a war in the Balkans, and that another might break out either in North Africa, owing to Italian ambitions in Tripoli, or North-West Africa, where France had recently seized the Casablanca territories in the teeth of German opposition.

At the moment he was definitely looking forward to taking over and administering the great estate that had been left to him; but instinct told him that his new form of occupation would not satisfy him for very long, and that in a year or so he would once more feel a compelling urge again to use his talents as a soldier. If so, perhaps, after all, he might yet achieve his ambition to command a Cavalry Division in Tripoli, Morocco or the Balkans.

On April 2nd he sailed for Europe, to reach Hamburg after a pleasant but uneventful voyage. From Hamburg he went straight to Vienna and there, in his favourite city, he broke his journey for a week to get the feel of Europe again into his bones.

Frau Sacher, who had known him since his boyhood, received him with delight. In the lofty rooms of her exclusive hotel, with their tall double doors of baize that shut out all sound, he put from him the last unpleasant memories of his time in Latin America - the greedy half-breed politicians and generals, the sweltering heat of the jungle, the constant danger from disease and snake or tarantula bite, the stench of unwashed humanity, and the incessant pestering by flies and mosquitoes - while luxuriating in a huge bed or in the vast marble bath, as big as a Roman sarcophagus.

No sooner had he made known his presence in Vienna than he received a dozen callers and a score of invitations. Friends made in his youth, now Majors and Colonels in crack cavalry regiments, delighted to receive him again into the joyous carefree life of 'wine, women and song' that formed the very heart of Vienna's existence. He was thirty-four years old, strikingly handsome, a lean, bronzed soldier with a ready smile and dark, slightly wavy hair flecked with grey, a Duke who had now also inherited the Austrian title of Count Konigstein, rich, unmarried, intelligent, travelled and with decorations that testified to his personal valour. It was not to be wondered at that in the days that followed the most noble families in Vienna unostentatiously put their eligible daughters in his way, and that half a dozen lovely married women indicated very clearly that they would be delighted to enter on an affaire with him.

At the end of the week he reluctantly tore himself away and, resisting the temptation to break his journey again for a few nights to see old friends in gay Budapest, crossed the frontier into Russia on the 26th. The* following day he reached Jvanets, where he learned to his considerable satisfaction that the nihilist who had thrown the bomb that had killed his father had already been caught and executed.

The great rambling mansion had been built in Catherine H's time and lay deep in the woods some distance from the town. To the north of it there sprawled two acres of stables, glass-houses and farm buildings. He was welcomed by his elderly second cousin, the Countess Olga Plackoff, who had run the house for his father ever since his mother's death twenty years ago; by the silver-haired Abbe Nodier, now in his eighties, who still acted as Chaplain to the household, and by Sergi Mikszath, the Bailiff.

From the Countess Olga and the Abb6 he received a detailed account of his father's death; then Mikszath presented the house servants, grooms, gardeners, huntsmen and farm workers all of whom in turn, in the traditional manner, embraced their new master and kissed him on the left shoulder. Many of them were old friends and they begged him to come and live permanently among them. About that he would make no promise, but he smilingly assured them all that whether he did so or not he would retain them in his service and see to it that they were well treated.

As it was now two months since his father's death the household was no longer in mourning; so arrangements could be started at once for the celebrations customary upon a great noble coming into his inheritance. Invitations were dispatched to all the leading families of the Province for the last week in May and a period of great activity ensued in kitchen, farm, cellars, and in preparing many rooms in the house that had for long not been used.

The celebrations were to last a week, and as many of the guests would come from considerable distances, over fifty had to be accommodated; so poor Countess Olga was soon at her wits' end where to put them. But de Richleau came to her aid by hiring additional furniture and converting some of the larger rooms into dormitories for the younger people.

On the morning of the day that his guests were to arrive the Duke carried out a final inspection and was satisfied that they would lack for nothing. In addition to his big house-party, his tenants, everyone employed on the estate, scores of people from the town and hundreds of peasants from round about would all participate on the first and last days of the festivities; so half a dozen big marquees had been erected in the garden and huge stocks of food, vodka, wine and beer had been accumulated.

During the week it rained on only two days and neither of these were those on which the great gatherings took place. On them there were sports of all kinds, horse, foot and troika races, wrestling matches, and ploughing, tree-felling and drinking contests. There were prizes, too, for the best pies cooked by the women, the best embroidery they could produce, the prettiest dresses and the prettiest girls. At night there were fireworks and illuminations; sheep, oxen, boar and deer were roasted whole over bonfires, and the great crowd of revellers sang, danced and staggered about happily drunk until the grey light of dawn dimmed the illuminations.

In the midweek the house-party went for rides, picnics and boating expeditions on the river, held musical evenings and, according to their age, either played whist and baccarat or danced, acted charades, and played guessing games and hide and seek.

On the 29th of the month the great party ended. De Richleau had had to reply to a score of toasts and drink bumper for bumper with innumerable well-wishers, so it had proved a considerable strain. As it had enabled him to renew many old friendships and make a number of new ones he had enjoyed it, but it was with a sense of relief that he waved away the last of his guests.

Earlier in the month he had gone through his father's papers and dealt with all matters arising from them. He had also made several tours of the estate with his bailiff and issued instructions for such improvements as occurred to him. Now that he was on his own he again rode out every morning to inspect farms and coverts, but he found little fresh to remark upon.

The Countess Olga was a pleasant and sensible woman, but she had never been outside Russia and had been immured at Jvanets for the past twenty years; so her conversation was extremely limited. The Abb6 Nodier, on the other hand, could talk with wisdom and wit on a great variety of subjects; so it was in his small private sitting-room, the walls of which were lined with hundreds of battered old books, that the Duke spent his evenings. The Abbe had been his tutor and, when young, the tutor of his father before him; so he had no secrets from the old man who, although a saint himself, was always tolerant about the human failings of others. But at this season there was neither hunting nor shooting to be had, the little town of Jvanets could offer de Richleau no recreation and his nearest neighbours lived many versts away; so he soon found his life as a country gentleman extremely boring.

He had received a number of invitations from families that had stayed with him for the celebrations, but the only ones that appealed to him were for later in tha year when the shooting started; so he was faced with the problem of how best to fill in the summer months.

He was greatly tempted to return to Vienna; but he had met one starry-eyed little Countess there whom he had found most attractive, and to dally further with her might prove decidedly dangerous. His years in the jungle had not caused him to forget how easily even wary young men could find themselves entangled and be asked their intentions by the fathers of eligible young ladies; and he had no wish to get married again yet. As the London season would be in full swing he thought of visiting England; but it was long time since he had been to a European watering-place and he felt that he would enjoy himself more at a resort where he could swim and be certain of good weather, than at Ascot and in the ballrooms of Mayfair. After considering several, he decided to go down to Yalta in the Crimea.

As usual, having taken a decision, de Richleau acted promptly upon it, and after seven weeks on his estate left it in mid-June. He spent two nights in Odessa to look up old friends and on the 18th of the month arrived in Yalta.

In the same way as the French Riviera owes its delightful climate to the shelter given it by the Alpes Maritimes, so the south-east coast of the Crimea enjoys a similar protection from the Yaila-dagh mountains which run parallel to it some six miles inland, and it has been well-named the Russian Riviera. There is a further similarity between the two in that both present an almost continuous belt of semi-tropical vegetation - palms, mimosa, oleanders, magnolias, camellias, orange, lemon, olive and fig trees - among which rise hundreds of white villas framed in tall cypress trees and with gardens gay with flowers.

This lovely stretch of coast has numerous towns scattered along it and if they are not so large as Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo, they offer compensation for that in historical interest, as in their vicinity lie many beautiful ruins from the wealthy Greek colony that flourished there before the birth of Christ, Byzantine churches, Venetian fortresses and Turkish mosques.

Winter was the most fashionable time for wealthy Russians to escape from the snows to this sunny pleasure resort, and Yalta was the most fashionable of its towns, because it was there that the Tsar and Grand Dukes had their palaces. But even in the height of summer the promenades were always crowded with holiday-makers, and after the climate in Central America de Richleau found it only pleasantly warm.

At this season most of the big villas were shut, but the Duke knew a few families who had brought their children down for a summer holiday at the seaside; so he was made a member of the Nobles' Club and soon acquired a circle of pleasant acquaintances. Among them was a Baron Bezobrazov who owned a charming villa on the slope a mile or so behind the town, and on several occasions de Richleau went out there to lunch or dine.

One night after he had been in Yalta just on a fortnight he was again asked to dine there, and the Baron told him that it would be a men's party, the piece de resistance of which would be to drink some old Tokay that his cousin had sent him as a present from Hungary. Eight of them sat down to table and remained at it for close on four hours. It was a typical Russian dinner of its kind, at which ten courses were served with an interval between each for pleasant conversation during which another wine was brought round by the sommelier. Finally they drank the old Tokay with Muscat grapes and nectarines.

Afterwards the Baron suggested a game of faro; so they adjourned to another room and for a further two hours sat round a table gambling gold ten-, twenty- and fifty-rouble-pieces on the turn of the pack against the two lines of cards on which they had placed their stakes. By two o'clock de Richleau, who was rarely lucky as a gambler, became weary of consistently losing. As he was down some twelve hundred roubles, no one could suggest that he was withdrawing to conserve his winnings; so he got up from the table and asked his host's leave to go home.

The Baron made no demur and said that he would ring for a carriage to take the Duke back to his hotel; but as it was a fine, warm night de Richleau begged him not to bother and said that he would much prefer to walk. Having insisted that none of them should leave the table he thanked his host for a most enjoyable evening, nodded good-bye to the others and went out to the hall where a waiting footman gave him his hat and cloak and saw him out of the front door.

As he walked through the garden he sniffed the air appreciatively. There had been a slight shower and the fragrant atmosphere was refreshing after hours spent savouring the aroma of old brandy in a room heavy with cigar smoke. The moonfiowers were out and the moon herself lit the scene for most of the time from a sky that was only about one-third broken cloud.

For the first part of his way down the slope along a road fringed with other villas in their gardens he could see the moonlight glinting on the sea, then the roofs of the town hid it from him. It was just as he was entering the b\iilt-up area formed of solid blocks of lower-class dwellings interspersed with small, shuttered shops, that he got the impression that he was being followed.

The streets were deserted, only an occasional light showed in an upper window; the silence was not broken even by the distant rumble of the wheels of a drosky over cobbles. De Richleau strained his ears. A few more minutes and he became certain that not far behind him footsteps were echoing his own.

He had not the least reason to suppose that anyone was likely to attack him. It might quite well be that whoever was following him was, like himself, simply walking towards one of the big hotels on the promenade. On the other hand it might be some night-hawk robber who had scented money at the sight of his opera cloak and top hat.

To test the situation he turned out of the street through which he was walking into a narrower one that ran parallel with the sea front. The footsteps still followed and soon closed the gap. They were now only about fifty yards behind. He took a quick look over his shoulder, but the curve of the street prevented him from getting a sight of his shadower. Intrigued now by this possibility of a little excitement after three months of quiet life, he deliberately slowed his pace for the next hundred yards, then turned into the dark opening of an unlit arcade.

Holding his breath, he waited for a minute or more while the footsteps grew louder. At the entrance of the arcade they halted. Leaning forward from a doorway in which he had partially concealed himself, he glimpsed a slim figure peering in his direction. His shadower must have caught sight at the same instant of the white blob made by de Richleau's face. Whipping out a knife, with silent ferocity the man leapt at him.

The poor wretch might have fared better had he attacked a man-eating tiger. The Duke lunged with his malacca cane straight at the face of his assailant. It caught him in the mouth, knocking out three of his teeth. Next second de Richleau's left hand had reached out, seized the wrist of the hand that held the knife, and borne down upon it. At the same moment his right foot came up to deliver a sharp kick in his attacker's groin. Finally, having him off balance, by a violent jerk on his wrist he swung him sideways so that his head smashed the window of the shop in the doorway of which the Duke had taken temporary cover.

De Richleau released his hold and stepped back. The man collapsed and fell in a writhing, groaning heap at his feet. He did not want to go to the bother of charging him, and even felt a twinge of compassion at the terrible punishment he had inflicted. Taking a twenty-rouble gold piece from his pocket he was about to thrust it into one of the man's hands and leave him there when, attracted by the sound of breaking glass, a policeman came running up.

Had that policeman not happened to be within earshot the incident would have ended there, many things might have panned out very differently, and it is certain that de Richleau's life for the next few years would not have taken the course it did. But Fate, in the guise of a stolid Russian policeman, having appeared on the scene, the Duke now had no alternative but to give an account of what had happened and agree to charge with assault the man who lay sprawled in the gutter.

Groaning and blubbering the man was got to his feet, but on the policeman's questioning him he would not answer so much as a word. Fortunately the Police Station was not far off and, partly supported by the burly policeman, he was led there, the Duke bringing up the rear. At the Station de Richleau again told his story to an Inspector. The man was again questioned but could not be induced to reply or even give his name.

This struck both the Duke and the Inspector as queer, since the man had nothing to gain by keeping silent. He was fair-haired, dressed in a decent summer-weight suit of gabardine and had not the appearance of a common thug. His face was smeared with blood from cuts on the head and the gaps of the three teeth that had been struck from his mouth, and he stood, now hand-cuffed, with his eyes cast down; but that would not have prevented the police from recognizing him had he been a known local criminal.

In exasperation the Inspector turned to de Richleau and said, 'Your Excellency, I mean to get to the bottom of this. We'll find a way to make him talk. Wait here, please, for a few minutes.' Then he signed to two of his men to take the prisoner into the next room, went in after them, and closed the door behind him.

The Duke knew very well the sort of thing that was about to happen behind the closed door; but he had no power to intervene, even if he had wished to do so. It was common practice in the countries in which he had spent the past few years and, with only a slightly lesser degree of brutality, in most European countries as well. Besides, the man had, after all, tried to knife him, yet was not a known criminal; so he was now curious to know who he was and why he had made the attempt.

After about five minutes the door opened again. The prisoner, blubbering once more, his head hanging slack and supported between the two policemen, was dragged out. The Inspector followed and, giving the Duke a puzzled look, said:

'We haven't got out of him yet why he attacked Your Excellency, but perhaps you can enlighten us. He is a Spaniard and his name is Benigno Ferrer.'

17

Vendetta

De richleau could hardly believe his ears, but at the sound of his name being pronounced the prisoner slowly raised his head and stared sullenly at him. In spite of the blood-smeared face and swollen lips the Duke recognized him now. The man was undoubtedly Benigno Ferrer.

In Spanish, the Duke asked him, 'How do you come to be in Yalta?'

Benigno did not reply, but again let his chin fall on his chest. The two policemen who were holding his arms gave him a violent shake and one of them kicked him on the ankle. With a word de Richleau checked them and said to the Inspector:

'You were right. I know this man and I wish to talk to him in private. But it is past three o'clock; so I want to get back to my hotel and to bed. What time will he be brought before the magistrate in the morning?'

'Ten o'clock, Your Excellency.'

'Very well, then.' De Richleau stood up. 'I will be here at half past nine.' Taking from his pocket the twenty rouble piece that he had intended to leave in Benigno's hand before he knew his identity, he gave it to the policeman who had made the arrest, congratulating him on his alertness; then he said good night to the Inspector and left the Station.

On the short walk to his hotel he ruminated on the surprising encounter with a Spanish anarchist in Russia; but, realizing that speculation was futile and that he would learn more about it in a few hours' time, he dismissed the matter from his thoughts. However, it had recalled to him many memories of the months he had spent in Spain and, while he was undressing, a series of pictures flickered through his mind: Angela lying dead, Gerault exposing him as a spy in the Escuela Moderna, La Torcera spitting in his face, and the back of Sanchez's head falling limp when his neck was broken - but the most vivid of all was the unforgettable beauty of Gulia de Cordoba when, that last night in San Sebastian, she had walked round the foot of his bed and thrown off her dressing-gown.

It was a long time since he had thought of her and he wondered whether she had become resigned to her position as a neglected wife, or if she had taken a lover. He hoped that she had, for otherwise it seemed certain that she would become embittered and old before her time from having been robbed by convention during the best years of her life of that joy to which every human being was entitled. He felt, too, that for her not to have done so would be a sinful waste, since she had so much to offer and could have brought a period of great happiness to at least one man, and perhaps several.

Not for the first time he cursed his luck that she should have been the wife of a close friend, and that on that account he had felt compelled to deny her and himself the consummation of their mutual passion. Had she been only the wife of an acquaintance for whom he had no affection or respect, he would at least have had the glowing memory of a night in her arms before he had set off after Sanchez; or, had he had no scruples about her husband, they might even have decided to let Sanchez do his damnedest and, had exposure of their affaire resulted, gone off together.

As things had turned out, Sanchez's photograph having been ruined, he could not, after all, have attempted to blackmail them, and it was by going after him that de Richleau had got himself shanghaied to South America. Still thinking of the scurvy trick Fate had played him, and of what he had missed to keep face with himself, he drifted off to sleep.

At nine-thirty punctually he arrived at the Police Station. The Inspector was still on duty and made no difficulty about having Benigno brought from his cell to a bare little office room so that the Duke could interview him privately.

As soon as the guards withdrew, they seated themselves on either side of a small table and de Richleau said, 'Now, Ferrer, you will be good enough to tell me what you are doing in Yalta?'

Benigno shook his head. 'It is useless to question me. I have been caught, and that is that. But I shall say nothing.'

'In that case,' replied the Duke, 'you will be acting like a fool. And you certainly are not one. I well remember that during our association in Barcelona I came to the conclusion that you had a much better balanced mind than most of your colleagues. Listen carefully now to what I have to say. I am regarded here as a person of considerable importance. That is why I am allowed to see you alone like this. Shortly you will be put into the dock and charged. Upon whether or not you answer my questions your life now hangs. To see you executed would give me considerable pleasure. But it so happens that one of my besetting sins is curiosity. If you are prepared to give me what I feel that I can accept as a reasonably truthful account of yourself I shall simply state in court that I knew you in Spain as a dangerous political, and that you attacked me because you had an old grudge against me. That will result in you being treated as all political criminals are in Russia these days, and exiled to Siberia. On the other hand, if you refuse to talk I shall state that I knew you to be involved in the bomb plot aimed at killing S.M. el Rey y la Reina on their wedding day. That may not be strictly true, but no matter. In your present circumstances, my word will be accepted and under the emergency laws against terrorists which are in force here they will take you away and have you shot. Now, which is it to be?'

'You fiend!' Benigno whispered, lifting his red-rimmed eyes to the Duke's. 'You fiend!'

De Richleau gave a grim little laugh. 'On the contrary, you should look on me as an angel. Not many men whose wife you had helped to murder would forgo this chance to see you dead.'

'I had no hand in that. It is you who are a murderer. You murdered my poor brother.'

'Poor brother indeed!' The Duke's 'devil's' eyebrows shot up. 'That filthy blackmailing young swine! He got off too easily with the quick death that my situation compelled me to give him. But that is beside the point. In twenty minutes you will be taken into court. The life line I have thrown you is running out as we sit here. You had better snatch at it unless you wish to die.'

For a long minute Benigno wrung his thin hands in silence, then he burst out, 'You're right! Even Siberia would be better than a firing squad. What do you wish to know?'

'Why did you come to Russia?'

'To kill you.'

Again de Richleau's eyebrows lifted. 'You astound me. Since you felt the urge to kill I should have thought there were plenty of people in Spain whom you count your enemies and wish dead. What in the world induced you to undertake such a long and expensive journey and choose as your intended victim a man that for years you had not even seen?'

Benigno's eyes suddenly blazed with hate. 'It was you who killed Sanchez. According to your standards he may have had no morals; but he lived as he wished to live and that is how an anarchist should live. I didn't approve of all his actions but he had the right to do as he liked, and I loved him. I loved him more than anything in the world.'

'Then I am sorry for you,' said the Duke, and there was no trace of sarcasm in his tone. 'Love goes a long way to excusing most things. But tell me; how did you discover my whereabouts?'

'My father keeps a book in which he writes a brief account of all anarchist triumphs, wherever they may occur. He told me that your father had been killed in the attempt on General Count Plackoff last February. We felt sure that would bring you back to Europe, and we have correspondents in most of the big cities, so we asked for some of those in the ports to keep a look-out for you. Your arrival in Hamburg was reported to us, then that you were in Vienna and said to be on your way to claim your estate on the far side of the Carpathians. I would have gone there at once, but I didn't know a word of Russian; and having been told that in this vile country the police don't even need a warrant to seize on anyone, I didn't dare risk being picked up and questioned by them until I could speak enough Russian to pass myself off as a Spanish commercial traveller. For six weeks I swotted at your filthy language with a towel round my head; then I travelled to Jvanets. But I missed you by two days. I learned that you had gone down to Odessa, and there that you had gone on to Yalta. I followed you and for over a week I have been hoping for a chance to kill you; but until last night you have always been with other people or driving in a carriage.'

'Your persistence in making such a journey deserves a better reward than that you should now have to continue it for another few thousand miles to Siberia,' de Richleau remarked, this time with a cynical smile. 'But why, since you were prepared to go to such lengths to avenge your brother's death on me, did you not follow me to South America, instead of waiting until I returned to Europe?'

Tf I could have, I would,' Benigno scowled. 'But at the time Captain Robles shipped you off there I was in prison. It was over a year before I got out. As soon as I had learned the full details of Sanchez's death and what had happened to you, I wrote to correspondents in Rio. They informed me that you had left Brazil months before and were somewhere in Central America, but no one knew for certain where. I wanted to go out to search for you; but I had very little money and my father wouldn't help me. He said it would be better to wait until . . .'

'Your father!' exclaimed the Duke. 'Did he then escape too?'

'Escape!' repeated Benigno, giving him a blank look. 'Why, no; neither of us escaped. After a year in prison all of us who had been arrested at the time the Escuela Moderna was raided were released.'

De Richleau stared at him in astonishment. 'D'you mean to tell me that when you were tried not even your father received more than a twelve months' sentence?'

'We were never brought to trial. Evidently the police decided that they had not enough evidence to convict us; and many influential bodies in Spain who hold Liberal views agitated for us to be given our freedom.'

'And where is your father now?'

For the first time Benigno's face showed the flicker of a smile and his reply was tinged with malice. 'That is no secret. Soon after we were released he started his Escuela Moderna again. Not in the city because, the tyrants having confiscated our property, we could not afford to set up in another big house. The school now occupies an old building in a village just outside Barcelona. But, for having been unjustly imprisoned for a year, as was proved when the police had to let him go without preferring a charge against him, he is now looked on by all the Liberals in Spain as a martyr. No one would dare to lay a finger on him.'

At this revelation, de Richleau's thoughts began to race with furious intensity. That Francisco Ferrer, the evil genius who inspired the Spanish anarchists, the man who was basically responsible for the death of Angela and the deaths of scores of other innocent people, should again be at large, filled him with amazement. Why Ferrer and his associates had never been brought to trial seemed to him inexplicable; and that, owing to Liberal pressure, they should have been allowed to go free after only a year in prison shocked him profoundly.

He was quick to realize that, had he not been shanghaied to South America, that could not possibly have happened. They would undoubtedly have been tried and, on his evidence, convicted. Instead, it now emerged that the dreary weeks he had spent in Barcelona, the sufferings he had endured there, and the near loss of his life, had all gone for nothing. He had not, after all, as he had long believed, succeeded in avenging Angela's death. For well over a year and a half, Ferrer had been a free man, and not only free but left at liberty to incite again his admiring disciples to murder.

Benigno's last statement - that no one would now dare to lay a finger on his father - still echoed in the Duke's brain, but it needed only an instant's thought for him to realize that about that the young anarchist was wrong. He, de Richleau, had only to return to Spain and tell what he knew of Francisco Ferrer on oath before a magistrate for a warrant to be issued and a policeman to place a heavy hand on Ferrer's shoulder.

Had Benigno known better the man to whom he was speaking, he would have had more care for his father's safety than to issue such a challenge. It needed only another moment's thought for the Duke to decide that, while he could have been of little help to the Ocrana in Russia, he could still strike a great blow against the world-wide menace of anarchism by going again to Spain. Those grey eyes of his, flecked with their yellow lights, glinted and with sudden harshness he said to Benigno:

'Whatever your dupes - those guileless, woolly-minded, reform-for-reform's-sake, besotted Liberals - may think of your father, I know him to be a disciple of the Devil - a man who has not only planned murders himself, but has injected his poisonous philosophy of murder into the minds of scores of earnest, misguided young people and, if he could, would bring about unlimited misery by overturning all forms of law and order. You may take it from me, Benigno, that I will either have your father executed or put behind bars for life, if it is the last thing that I ever do.'

At that moment, the Inspector came in and said that he must take over the prisoner, as in a few minutes the Court would be sitting. With a reassuring nod to the white-faced Benigno, the Duke said, 'Don't worry. I am satisfied now that you did not mean to kill me'; then, having thanked the Inspector for letting him talk with the prisoner, he walked back into the outer office.

Benigno's case did not come on for the best part of an hour, while the Magistrates dealt with other prisoners on minor charges. Then the Duke was ushered into the witness-box. He told his story with an air of calm indifference. It was that when in Barcelona nearly three years ago, he had known this man Ferrer as an agitator who openly proclaimed himself an anarchist. Having heard him make threats against the Captain-General of the City, General Quiroga, he, de Richleau, had informed the authorities, upon which Ferrer had been arrested. No doubt Ferrer had realized who was responsible for his arrest and having, by chance, come upon him, de Richleau, again the previous night, he had sought to avenge himself by inflicting a wound.

With an innocent expression, and apparently in ignorance of the fact that he was overstepping the functions of a witness, de Richleau went on to say, 'It* is not for me to suggest to the Court how it should deal with this man. But in view of his past, it seems unlikely that he would have come to this country except at the invitation of the nihilists; or, in any event, having arrived here have not got into touch with them. I feel, therefore, that while the assault on myself might normally be regarded as an ordinary criminal offence, meriting only a few months' imprisonment, having regard to his political background it is quite a possibility that, when freed, he might attack and perhaps murder someone of considerable importance. To send him back to Spain would be a troublesome and costly business, and the Spanish authorities would certainly not thank us; so may I suggest that he should be sent to a place where for a long time to come he will be in no position to do harm to anyone.'

The Magistrates listened to the Duke with deference. As he ceased speaking they nodded their approval; then their Chairman pronounced the sentence which, at that time, had become a commonplace in all the cities of European Russia. 'The Court orders that the prisoner be dispatched forthwith to a penal settlement in Siberia, there to remain during His Imperial Majesty's pleasure.'

As de Richleau left the courtroom, he gave a last glance at Benigno. He had secured from him the information he was anxious to obtain, and he had not cheated him. Many hardened criminals survived for years the harsh life in the Siberian penal settlements; some even succeeded in escaping. But to do so needed resource, great courage and, above all, extreme physical fitness. Benigno had none of those, and the Duke would have been prepared to wager heavy odds that he would not last six months in the salt mines. He felt satisfied that this second member of the foul Ferrer brood would make no further contribution to the infliction of agony and grief on innocent people; it now remained to choke the fount from which the poison sprang.

Back in his hotel, he was unhappily aware that he was now committed to another trip to Spain. He would so much rather have remained at Yalta, enjoying his morning and evening bathes in the warm waters of the Black Sea, sunning himself on the beach, lunching in some mimosa-scented garden with friends and going to the Casino to dance, or for a mild gamble, in the evenings.

He recalled his talk with Count Soltikoff, before he had set out for Barcelona, and the old Ambassador's quoting the dictum, 'Vengeance is Mine, saith The Lord', when warning him against taking the law into his own hands. And, as it had turned out, his first encounter with the Ferrers had ended disastrously for himself. Yet at that time he had been dominated by bitterness at his loss of Angela, so was impelled by a strong personal motive to reject the Ambassador's advice. Now, after an interval of years, he was able to regard the ethical side of the question dispassionately.

He was an entirely free agent and the choice lay with him. He could either take no action, or do his utmost to have Ferrer shot. Yet, apparently, no one else was in a position to bring the anarchist to justice. That such a role should have been cast for him would, he admitted to himself, inescapably brand him, if he took it, as participating in a vendetta. Nevertheless, he decided that the public good must be placed before all other considerations, and that it was his duty to accept this personal responsibility in order, once and for all, to prevent Ferrer from doing further evil.

In consequence, that afternoon he spent nearly three hours in a travel agency. After much discussion, looking up of timetables and making long-distance calls to the offices of steamship lines in Odessa, he decided that, since he was debarred from travelling through France, his quickest way to reach Spain would be to go down to Constantinople and there pick up a ship which, without further change, would take him right through the Mediterranean to Gibraltar.

Next day, the 4th of July, he left Yalta for Odessa and, with nights spent there and in Constantinople, it was the 16th before he completed his sea voyage. The most likely person to be able to give him a true explanation for the Ferrers' release from prison was, he felt, Don Alfonso and, knowing that from the latter part of July it was the King's custom to reside at San Sebastian, he spent the next two days travelling from south to north through the length of the peninsular. On the evening of the 18th he booked in at the Maria Cristina Hotel, and on the following morning went to sign his name in the book at the Miramar Palace.

He then toyed with the idea of driving out to the Cordoba villa, but decided against it. He would have, had he been certain of finding the Conde or de Vendome there; but if it chanced that Gulia was alone on the bathing beach, it would hardly be possible to avoid all reference to their relationship when they had parted and, in view of the attraction the memory of her still exercised over him, he was very anxious to avoid a resumption of their secret intimacy.

On the other hand, to fail to let them know that he was again in San Sebastian would be thought extremely strange; so he wrote and posted a brief letter to Gulia reporting his arrival, saying how much he was looking forward to seeing them all again, and suggesting that he should come out to tell them all his news after the siesta the following afternoon. That, he felt sure, if they were at the villa, would result in an invitation to dinner and ensure that, when he did meet her again, there would be no opportunity for any private conversation between them.

His call at the Palace produced results more swiftly than he expected. After lunch a note from one of Don Alfonso's equerries was delivered to him, commanding him to dine that night. When he entered the yellow drawing-room, he found a mixed company of eight or ten people already assembled, including one couple he had met before. While he was talking to them, the gentleman-in-waiting on duty came up to him with a slip of paper in his hand, glanced at it, and said:

'Your Excellency, I am told that you already know the Condesa de Cordoba. It is His Majesty's pleasure that you should take her in to dinner.'

T shall be delighted,' smiled the Duke; and, indeed, had he been in a position to arrange such a situation himself, no bridge over to the past could have suited him better.

Two more guests arrived, then the Infanta Maria Alfonsine, Conde Ruiz, Dona Gulia and Frangois de Vendome. Gulia was dressed in white satin and wearing the priceless Cordoba emeralds. She was now twenty-six and de Richleau caught his breath at the sight of her. He had known many beautiful women but at the moment could not think of one who combined such lovely features, striking colouring and grace of figure.

As she caught sight of him her step faltered, then she gave him a slow smile. First he kissed the Infanta's hand and acknowledged her kindly greeting. Gulia then extended hers and as he took it he saw that it did not betray by the faintest tremor any emotion she might be feeling. De Vendome and Count Ruiz expressed their delight at his return and upbraided him for not having at once come out to the villa. He explained that he had arrived only the previous evening, been engaged with business most of the day, and that there was a letter in the post suggesting that he should go out there the next afternoon.

By then another couple had arrived, making the party up to eighteen. Two minutes later the big double-doors at the end of the room were thrown open, the guests formed two lines, and the King and Queen advanced between them, graciously acknowledging the deep bows of the men and the curtsies of the women.

They went into dinner in strict order of precedence, Don Alfonso taking in his aunt, the Queen escorted by the Duke de Lecera and de Richleau, as a foreign duke and a Knight of the Golden Fleece, coming next with Gulia on his arm. In consequence, he found himself on the Queen's left.

While not neglecting her other neighbour, she talked to him for the greater part of the long meal. Evidently she was unaware of the dramatic way in which he had left Spain and, having learned that he had been soldiering in Central America, did not pursue the subject. Knowing him to be of British nationality, she talked to him mostly about England - a matter always near her heart -and of the friends he had made there while he was married to Angela. In consequence his conversation with Gulia was perforce fragmentary and impersonal; but at the first opportunity he inquired after her husband, and was relieved to learn that Jos6 had not been included in the party only because he was abroad. His banking interests had decided him to make a tour of the South American cities, and he was at present in Bahia.

When the Queen and the ladies withdrew, Don Alfonso called to the Duke to come and sit next to him, and at once inquired how he had fared overseas. De Richleau provided him with an account of some of the ramshackle armies in which he had served, and some amusing instances of the barefaced trickery of Latin American politicians; but he formed the impression that the King's mind was not on the conversation and that he was secretly worrying over something.

Soon after they had joined the ladies an Italian prima donna sang several arias for them and between her songs a gifted pianist played pieces by Chopin. W^rhen they had finished de Richleau talked for a while with Maria Alfonsine. Although the plump, high-nosed Infanta was only in her middle forties her staidness made her appear older, and she was not a very bright conversationalist; but she had never forgotten how much her son, Francois, owed to the Duke, and she expressed the greatest pleasure at seeing him again.

Later he managed to catch the eye of the King and, going over to him, said:

'Sir, may I crave a private audience whenever it is convenient? I am anxious to discuss again with Your Majesty the subject about which you did me the honour to speak at Aranjuez.'

Don Alfonso nodded and fingered the small moustache that he had recently grown. 'Yes, certainly, Duke. But not for the present. Although I arrived here only two days ago, much to my annoyance I have to return to Madrid tomorrow. What are your plans?'

'I was hoping that I might be of some further service to Your Majesty.'

Suddenly the King frowned. 'If you were thinking of going to Barcelona again, I do not desire it. In fact I forbid it. There is going to be serious trouble there, and if you were recognized your life would not be worth a peseta.'

'For what I have in mind, to go there might not be necessary.*

'Very well, then. We will talk of the matter on my return. But I may be away for some days. I will send for you when I get back.'

Shortly afterwards the King and Queen wished their guests 'good night' and were bowed and curtsied from the room. As the party started to break up, de Richleau joined his friends and asked them if they would come with him to his hotel for a drink before returning to the villa. Count Ruiz replied that his wife had just complained of a migraine so he must take her home. As it was still quite early and de Vendome could have chaperoned Gulia, de Richleau was somewhat surprised when she also declined and said quite casually:

'I am sure the account of your adventures will lose nothing by being kept until tomorrow after the siesta.'

She had not even asked him to dinner and it was the placid, good-natured Infanta who, exercising her royal prerogative of inviting people to any house in which she was staying, repaired the omission by saying:

'Come changed, Duke, so that you can stay on and dine.'

Having thanked her and seen them to her carriage, de Richleau, accompanied by de Vendome, walked back to his hotel. There the two old friends talked until the early hours of the morning and, after the Duke had given a resum6 of his doings, the Prince told him about the crises which necessitated Don Alfonso's return to Madrid.

There was serious trouble in Morocco. The Riff tribesmen there were in revolt and had cut the railway line between the valuable Spanish iron mines up country and the port of Melilla. It was even feared that the town might be taken and sacked, so reinforcements were being rushed out there as speedily as possible. However, as the Prince - having served as an officer-cadet under de Richleau at St. Cyr - was competent to judge, the Spanish Army could not compare with that of France as far as training, efficiency and readiness for service were concerned. Moreover, for some reason that no one seemed to understand, the Generals said they could not find enough men to send unless they depleted essential garrisons.