The Car of Destiny
these; and though she would not have tortured herself had she lived in
feudal days, I am sure she would have dined calmly over an underground
dungeon where an enemy—an inconvenient wretch like me, for
instance—suffered the pangs of starvation.
She squeezed into the cell, descending a couple of steps, remained for two
or three minutes, and came out, pronouncing it extremely interesting.
“Now, Lady Monica, it’s your turn,” said Carmona; but Monica drew back, “I
hate seeing torture-things,” said she, “and blood, even wicked old blood
like Philip’s, which I used to think, when I read about him in history,
I’d love to shed. No, I won’t go in, thank you.”
Pilar also refused, for if she went she would certainly have a nightmare
and dream she was walled up; thus there remained only the three men to
inspect the hidden horrors.
Carmona held his match-box to me, saying that when we had seen the place
he would look in to refresh his recollections. But Dick calmly helped
himself to several _fosforos_ and took first turn, probably suspecting
something in the way of an _oubliette_, especially prepared for me.
He reappeared presently, however, his suspicions allayed. “Beastly hole,”
he remarked; “almost bad enough for Philip, though he did grill some of my
best ancestors.”
I took a couple of matches, lighting them on the Duke’s box; then, bending
my head low, and pushing in one shoulder at a time, I squirmed through the
aperture. In so doing, however, I contrived to trip over Carmona’s foot,
which must have been thrust forward, staggered against the opposite wall
of the narrow cell, and lost both my lighted vestas. Carmona exclaimed, I
stumbled, and almost simultaneously the door slid into place with a sharp
click.
There was not space to fall at length. I merely lost my balance, and saved
my head from a bump by shielding it with a raised arm, I steadied myself
in a second or two; but I was in black darkness. Outside I could hear a
confused murmur of voices, and would have given something to know what
Dick was saying at the moment.
I was thinking that I should not like to be a prisoner in this hole (only
large enough for the swing of Philip’s scourge) for many hours on end,
when there came an imperative tapping. “Holloa!” I answered, expecting to
hear Dick speak in return; but it was Carmona’s voice which replied.
Evidently he was speaking with his mouth close to the secret door.
“I’m very sorry for this accident,” said he distinctly. “When you
stumbled, you knocked my arm, and made me touch the spring. Unfortunately
the door closed with such a crash, that the spring seems out of order, and
I can’t move it. But if you’ll be patient a few minutes, I’ll look for an
attendant who understands the thing, to bail you out of gaol.”
If I had been Lieutenant Cristóbal O’Donnel I would have heard no more in
the rhyming junction of those words “gaol” and “bail” than met the ear,
but being the man I was—the man he suspected me to be—I did hear more; and
I believed that he wished me to catch a double meaning.
“Does he mean to hand me over to the police now, on suspicion?” I wondered
in my black cell—“before Monica’s eyes?” But aloud I said, “Thanks; don’t
be too long, or I shall be tempted to smash the door.”
“You’ll find that impossible,” answered Carmona. “Don’t worry if I seem to
be gone an age. There’s only one man on duty to-day who knows the secret
of this room; I asked for him when we came, but his comrade said he was
away on leave till four o’clock. It must be that now, and I’ll have him
here as soon as possible. He will be the more pleased to set you free, as
he’s an old friend of yours. You remember little Rafael Calmenare?”
I was silent, seeing, as if by the glare of lightning, the whole design of
the trap, and seeming to see also the triumph which must be in Carmona’s
eyes. But the pause had not lengthened to a second, when I heard Pilar’s
voice, speaking also close to the door.
“Of course you remember, Cristóbal. Rafael Calmenare of the Duke’s
_ganaderia_. But it’s a long time since he went away.”
“After he was gored by Nero and lost his health, through the influence of
a friend at Court I got him a place here,” I heard Carmona say. Then
raising his voice for my ears, he went on, “Poor Rafael will be pleased to
see you again. You must have played with him when a boy. I’m off to find
him now.”
Silence followed these last words. I could picture the consternation of
Dick and Pilar. Neither could do anything to help me, nor could I help
myself. I could but wait in this suffocating black hole for the moment
when a stranger should give me light, and exclaim, “This is not Don
Cristóbal!”
Almost I admired Carmona for his quick wit. After a few moments of rage,
at sight of the suspected man of Burgos Cathedral on his track in the red
motor-car, the thought of the Escurial and his old servant must have
sprung into his mind.
Had Calmenare been available at first, Carmona would have been spared the
trouble of shutting me up in Philip the Bigot’s torture-chamber; but hard
pressed for an excuse to keep us at the Escurial till his man came back,
he had put me where I could be kept while needed. And now that he was gone
in search of Rafael, we three loyal comrades could not discuss the
situation, because of Lady Vale-Avon’s presence.
A brilliant stroke of Carmona’s to have me betrayed by another than
himself, so that Monica might not bear him a grudge! Who was this person
masquerading as an officer of the Spanish army? would be the first
question of the police. And the answer need not be long in coming. The
Duke had reason to congratulate himself; I had been a fool to drop like a
fly into his net, and now that I was in, I saw no way out.
“Oh, how I wish we could open the secret door!” I heard Monica exclaim.
“I can’t even see exactly where it is now,” Pilar said. “Cristóbal?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Poor little Rafael; a good fellow, wasn’t he?”
“Very good,” I replied. To what end was she working? I wondered. But I was
not to be made wiser. Before she had time to finish the hint I heard
Carmona speaking.
“I’ve sent for Calmenare, who has returned, and will be here in a few
minutes,” he called to me. It was like him to hurry back, so that by no
possible means could the three suspected ones reach any understanding.
The moments dragged on, and I could have lashed myself with Philip’s
scourge in fury at the rashness which might involve the whole O’Donnel
family in my disaster. Never had I been able to think less clearly; but
perhaps it was the stifling atmosphere of the cell which made me feel that
fingers in a mailed glove were clenched round my temples.
Outside, voices buzzed; but those who spoke must have stood at a distance,
for I could catch no words. Then, at last, there was a new voice in the
room. Calmenare had come.
“How do you do, Don Rafael?” Pilar exclaimed, as politely as if she had
addressed an equal. “I’m glad to see you again. I’ve been waiting for you
impatiently. Only think, _my dear brother Cristóbal, whom you know so
well_, is in that dreadful place and can’t get out, because the Señor
Duque shut him in—by mistake—and broke the spring.”
“I do not find that it is broken, señorita,” answered the new voice.
“I couldn’t make it work,” Carmona said hastily.
Click! went the spring under skilled fingers. The door sliding back gave
me a rush of light and air which set me blinking for a second or two; and
there I stood at the stranger’s mercy.
What I saw, when my suddenly contracted pupils expanded, was a little man
in the palace livery; a pale little man with insignificant features, and
large, steady eyes. There was absolutely no expression in his face as for
one brief instant our glances met. Then—“God be with you, Don Cristóbal,”
said he. “I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope,
señorito, you have not suffered from lack of air?”
“Very little,” said I. I held out my hand. He took it respectfully.
“Is it long since you saw each other?” asked Carmona, sallow and red by
turns.
“About two years only, Señor Duque,” replied his ex-servant,
expressionless as before, and quietly respectful to all. “I could not
forget the date, for the Señor Colonel and the señorita, as well as the
señorito himself, were always very good to me.”
The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare
accepted me as Cristóbal O’Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too—at
least for the present.
“Shall we get out of this place?” he said to Lady Vale-Avon.
She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me,
sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa
Triana.
We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke’s presence; and I would have
pressed a gold piece into his hand for “opening my prison door,” but he
would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the
downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect
to the Cherub.
“My one hope was in Rafael,” she said. “I was good to him, you remember,
when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear
grey bull. I prayed he’d never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that
he’d still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes
when I said, ‘My brother Cristóbal is in that place, shut up by the Duke,
who has broken the spring.’ With all my soul I willed him to understand,
and he did. ‘If the señorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her
brother, he is her brother for me,’ is what he said to himself; no more!
But what if he _hadn’t?_”
“That’s where I should have come in,” remarked Dick.
“What would you have done?” asked Pilar, breathless.
“I don’t know,” said Dick. “I only know I should have _done_ it; and that
if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn’t have been feeling as well as he feels
now.”
XVII
LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
No longer did the Duke desire our company. He had played his little comedy
of good-fellowship, and it was over, though it had not ended according to
his hopes. The grey car did its forty-horse best to outdistance us on the
way to Madrid, but the road—so good that perhaps we lost nothing in the
detour to the Escurial—distributed its favours evenly. We kept close on
the Lecomte’s flying heels until one of our four cylinders went to sleep,
and Ropes had to get down and wake it up by testing the ignition.
Some fellow-motorists would have turned to offer help, but the Lecomte was
ever a Levite where we were concerned; and when we were ready to go on,
the grey car was not even a speck in the distance. Luckily, however, there
was little or no doubt where its occupants would put up.
Though the Madrid house of the Carmonas had been burned down ten years ago
(since when the Duchess had made her home at the old palace in Seville),
there was scarcely a Continental paper which had not described the
splendours of the Duke’s apartment in one of the finest modern flat-houses
of Madrid. Naturally, he would entertain his mother and guests there, so
that it would be difficult to slip away with them unknown to us.
The thing I did not know was, how long he meant to stay in the capital;
but as he must show Seville in Holy Week, and later perhaps other places
in the south of Spain, to Lady Vale-Avon and Monica before their return to
Madrid for the Royal Wedding, it was almost certain that he would go on in
a couple of days.
The O’Donnels recommended to us the Hotel Inglés, the best Spanish hotel
in Madrid, as well as the most amusing, and it was with a heart
comparatively light that I looked forward to a first sight of my country’s
capital. How would it compare with Paris, with Vienna, with London? What