The Car of Destiny
“He must keep the key in his pocket,” I thought.
I did not believe a word of the plausible explanations. The continued
mental effort I had been making had cleared, rather than tired my brain;
and I was out of that black sea of horror in which I had been drowning.
I had not been mad, and I could not have been in this house for many
weeks, since the man in the _capucha_ talked of Corpus Christi as still in
the future.
I remembered Colonel O’Donnel’s telegram, and his mention of a man in
Granada whom Carmona valued above many doctors. It seemed not impossible
that this person and my “good friend” were one and the same; but if—weak
as I was now—I hoped to get out of his house alive, perhaps I had better
change my tactics, and keep my suspicions to myself, until I should
recover strength. If the man believed that he had convinced me of his
innocence and kindly intentions, he would perhaps think it easier to let
me live than to put me violently out of the way.
I made up my mind to cultivate a more reasonable spirit, until my body
might help me defend other convictions. And one thing gave me courage to
keep the resolution. The fact that my host was not willing yet to
discharge me as cured, argued that there was still a strong motive for
detaining me behind locked doors. The time of which Carmona had spoken in
my dream had not come. He was not married yet, and I said to myself that
he never would be, if it depended on Monica’s consent to be his wife.
Since that hour in the cathedral of Seville nothing would make her believe
me disloyal, I thought; therefore nothing could make her disloyal to me.
Knowing little of illness, I trusted that, after all, I had not been put
away here for long. Maybe a few days of fever and delirium would waste the
hands and bleach out the brown stain of sunburn. At the moment, though I
was young, and had been strong, I would have no chance against even an old
man; but if I ate, and could crawl up to take a little exercise, a day or
two ought to make a vast difference.
I was still of this mind when the _capucha_ came back. So softly did he
unlock the door that I did not hear him, but he was not as stealthy about
locking it again. He had brought me a glass of milk; and when I had drunk
it he asked me to get up, and let him judge of my strength.
Weak as I was, I felt that I could have risen, but I determined to fight
him with his own weapons. Making a faint effort, I fell back on the
pillows, and closed my eyes.
“It will take many more glasses of milk before you need again ask ‘But
when do I leave you?’ ” said the voice through the _capucha_.
I agreed, and pleased myself with my strategy after the man had gone out,
until to my alarm I was overcome with sleep.
He had put something into the milk.
XXXVIII
THE FOUNTAIN
The delicate fretwork of the walls was blurred in twilight when I waked
from heavy, irresistible sleep.
I felt dull, but could trace no other bad effect from the drug. Indeed, I
fancied that I was stronger; and very slowly, with occasional rests, I got
upon my feet and began to crawl about the room.
There was very little furniture, but what there was, was good, and of a
graceful Moorish design which suited the wall decoration, and the
horseshoe shape of the window. This had an elaborate lattice of wood,
which let in plenty of air, as there was no glass; but outside were six
stout bars of iron, and the lattice was securely fastened. I stared
through the pattern of wood into a very small but charming _patio_, paved
with brick and tiles, and having in the centre a fountain, with a shallow
basin. Feathery plumes of water played over a few low palms in great blue
and white pots of Triana ware, but as I looked the plumes shrank almost to
nothing, then ceased to wave. The fountain was asleep for the night.
Supporting myself with a hand on the wall, I got to the room of the marble
bath. There, the window was but a foot square, and was set high in the
wall. On a low, carved bench, lay the clothing I had worn on the night of
my visit to the gypsy’s cave. I sat down, and explored the pockets. What
money I had had—six or seven hundred pesetas, so far as I could
remember—was gone; so was my gold watch, and the revolver I had so gaily
carried as a sure means of self-protection.
“Gypsy perquisites,” I said to myself, but the sight of the clothes
brought back the past so vividly that I could see myself bidding good-bye
to Dick at the railway station. Loyal, resourceful old Dick! Why had he
not found his friend in all this time, while my hands were growing white
and thin?
Surely there must have been some hue or cry, when I did not appear either
at the villa or the hotel? A man cannot vanish off the face of the earth,
I told myself, and leave no trace. I longed for the man with the _capucha_
to come back, so that I could ask him more questions, even though I could
put no faith in his answers; but he did not appear again that night. I
slept after a time, a sleep of exhaustion; and when I waked in broad
daylight, I found a glass of milk on a small Moorish stand by the bed.
I could not bear to drink it, lest the same drug should make me sleep as
before. But how regain strength without food? And evidently I was to have
this or none.
For a time I waited, hoping that my “good friend” would come, and that, if
I told him I disliked milk, he would give me something else, not so easy
to mix with a drug. At last, however, I grew faint. Perhaps, I thought,
the milk was innocent this time. I drank, and the same heaviness overcame
me. So, through most of the day I slept, and raged against myself when I
awoke.
Again, a full glass stood by the bedside, but I would not drink. Many
hours of dozing had left me wakeful; and my eyes were wide open when, an
hour or two after dawn, the door in the outer room was softly unlocked.
He had not forgotten his _capucha_, though he must have expected to find
me asleep. In his hand was a glass of milk, but when he had seen that I
lay awake, he saw also that the other glass had not been touched.
I was neither hungry no thirsty, I said in excuse. And I could not rest
because I was not comfortable. It had got upon my nerves, I explained, to
feel my hair long on my neck and my face unshaven. Would my host get in a
barber?
The man reflected for a moment, and then said that he would do his best as
a barber. At present, and until his vow had been accomplished, he did not
go out, except after nightfall, and therefore could not ask anyone to come
to the house.
The instant he had turned his back, I slipped off the bed, so that I might
be ready to stagger as well as I could from my alcove, and pounce upon him
when he had the door open; for I believed that I was strong enough now to
have some chance. But his hearing must have been keen, for he turned, and
told me not to exert myself. What—I was only getting up so as to be ready
when he came back with shears and razor? I need not trouble. He would do
all while I was in bed; and he would wait until he had seen me return
there.
He was master of the situation, and knew it. I was obliged to give him his
way; and afterwards he was so quick in getting to the door that, in my
weak state, I could not have reached him in time.
When he came back, however, I was ready. Waiting just inside the door, as
it was cautiously opened I threw myself upon him. But I had overestimated
my strength, and underestimated his. Quick and lithe as a leopard, the old
man wound himself round me, and for a moment we struggled together for the
mastery, I thinking of the razor he had promised to bring, and hoping to
get it. If I could do that, I should be able to keep him at bay, without
any violence, save threats.
Once, I had almost got him down, or he let me fancy it; but with a sudden
twist he caused me to lose my balance, which was none too steady. I
slipped on the tiled floor, and had half saved myself when a quick push
sent me staggering back. Instantly the _capucha_ was on the other side of
the door, a bolt slid into place, and the key turned in the lock.
Rage gave me a brief spurt of strength. I caught up the carved wooden
bench in the bathroom, and dashed it furiously again and again against a
panel of the door. But the strong wood did not even crack under my blows.
As hour after hour passed, and I was left alone, from time to time I
renewed my efforts, with no result except that eventually I broke the
bench. Then I tore at the lattice of the window, thrusting my fingers
through, and trying vainly to pull the woodwork to pieces. Though the iron
bars on the outside would prevent my escaping into the _patio_, I thought,
if the lattice were broken, shouts might be heard more easily.
At last, when I had been obliged to give up hope, I pressed my face
against the close pattern of the woodwork and yelled lustily, till my
voice failed. But my own shouts were the only sounds I heard, save distant
church bells, and the singing of subterranean waters, silent only at night
when the fountain went to sleep. It would be all but impossible, I had to
admit, for anyone outside to judge the direction of a cry, coming through
a screened window surrounded on all sides by high house walls.
Darkness fell; and I grew so hungry that I would gladly have drunk the
milk left since morning. I tasted it, and found it spoiled by the heat,
for the day had been warm. In disgust I threw it away, but when all that
night had gone and part of the next day, I regretted my fastidiousness.
Frequent draughts of water from the room of the marble bath gave me an
occasional fillip, but a man recovering from congestion of the brain or
some such malady, following the breaking of his head, cannot live long on
water; and it was clear that my host, disgusted with my “ingratitude,”
intended to punish me cruelly or to put an end to me by starvation.
When the second night closed in, I made up my mind that he had decided
upon my death. Perhaps, if I had been docile, when the time fixed by his
employer had expired, he might have chosen to set me free, trusting that I
believed his story. But seeing that I did not believe it, that I would
spare no effort, no trick, which might enable me to escape while my
presence in the outside world was still highly undesirable, the man had
probably crushed all humane feeling for his prisoner. Since no one had
sought me, living, in his house, it was unlikely that I should be sought
for there when dead.
I was at the window, as I told myself these things, looking out into the
_patio_, where the palms, and the shell which was the upper basin of the
fountain, were faintly definable in starlight. Robbed of my watch, the
only way I had of calculating time after nightfall was by the silence
which came about an hour after sunset. Then the gurgling voice of hidden
water (which sang underground in this secluded _patio_ as everywhere in
the Albaicín, and on the Alhambra hill) abruptly ceased, after a distant
ringing which I took to be that of the bell in the Torre de la Vela,
regulating the irrigation of all the country round. At this same moment
the diamond plumes of the fountain invariably fell, and disappeared, not
to wave again until the morning sun was up.
I was always sorry when the fountain died, for it was the sole companion
of my captivity, my one dim pleasure watching its nymph-like play. And
to-night the dead silence of the _patio_ seemed the lull before my own
death.
It must have been, I thought, somewhere about ten o’clock when I heard a
new sound in the court, slight, elusive, but distinct. Chink—chink—like
metal on stone, as if a troll were mining underground. The old man was
taking time by the forelock, I said grimly to myself, getting ready a