The Car of Destiny
place in some cellar to lay me away when I should be finished. I should
last some days yet; but it took time to do these things well. At the hotel
they had told me how a year or two ago, in destroying an old house in the
Albaicín to build a new one on the sight, workmen had come across the
skeletons of two French grenadiers neatly sealed up in a wall of stone,
where they had kept guard since the time of the Peninsular War. Probably a
night or two had been needed for the making of their niche.
Chink—chink! Yes, the old wretch must be at work in a cellar. The noise
certainly came from underground; and it was not as agreeable to my ears as
the tinkle of the vanished fountain. I wished the hour would come for the
water to leap up and drown that other stealthy sound.
Suddenly, as I turned a wistful gaze on the alabaster shell dimly
glimmering among the low palms, to my astonishment it seemed to totter. I
thought that it must be a mere illusion of weary eyes, or that the effect
was created by a cloud obscuring the starlight. But again the white shell
moved against the dark green background, this time swaying from side to
side.
Could there be an earthquake, so slight that I did not feel the shock?
Even as I asked myself the question, the shell of the fountain was
loosened from its support, and fell into the main basin, now almost empty.
The water-lilies and their green pads which floated sparsely there muffled
the sound of the crash, but there was a noise of breaking. The slabs of
coloured mosaic which paved the lower basin upheaved, as if the earth
beneath were bursting, and scattered from side to side, falling over the
crushed lines. Then through a ragged black aperture rose the head and
shoulders of a man.
The metallic sound had stopped; but from somewhere in the house there came
the slamming of a door.
The head and shoulders, motionless now, were sharply defined against the
scattered heap of white fragments, like the bust of a man modelled in
black marble. Someone whistled softly, and the tune was, “The Girl I Left
Behind Me.”
“Dick!” I called through the close wooden lattice.
“Hurrah!” he answered; and the black marble bust became a full length
statue of a man.
How he had found me, how he had come, I did not know; but there he was,
and the gate of life had not closed upon me after all. Dick was out of the
jagged hole in the basin, and half across the _patio_, when a door, which
I had always seen shut, burst open to let out a stream of light, and the
figure of the old man I knew so well, leaped on him.
I was weak, and for a moment I turned sick, the _patio_ with its broken
fountain, and the forms of the men in a halo of yellow light, whirling
before my eyes as if there were indeed an earthquake. Then the mist
cleared, and like a rat in a cage I watched the fight which meant life or
death for more than one of us.
There was no _capucha_ now to cover the grey-streaked head and venerable
beard. Once I caught a glimpse of a profile sharp as a hawk’s. The old man
had come out of the house with a Toledo sword-stick, such as the King and
his friend had used with the brigands, and as he saw the enemy he had to
deal with, he had thrown away the bamboo stick. The long, thin blade
glittered in the same light that showed me Dick, armed with an iron
crowbar, formidable and threatening.
If it had been a scene in a play, and I in the audience, I should have
applauded, for there was something in me which cried out that it was a
fine picture. But Dick’s life and mine were in the balance.
XXXIX
DAY AFTER TO-MORROW
The pair stood eyeing each other like two fencers, Dick with the crowbar
raised, and pointing at his heart the blade which would pierce it when the
Spaniard dared advance an inch.
I longed to shout “Fling the crowbar at his head!” But if Dick’s eye
released the eye of his opponent he was a dead man, I must not risk
distracting him for the fraction of a second.
It seemed an hour, though it could not have been a minute when, as if my
thought had winged to his brain, the thick iron bar whirled through the
air, and struck the old man full upon the forehead. The Toledo blade
dropped from his hand, and he fell back without a cry, his head inside the
open door.
“Is he dead?” I called.
Dick bent over the limp body; but, after a long moment, he was up again,
waving a big, old-fashioned key.
“No,” he answered. “Heart beating. Bad penny. He’ll be all right. This the
key of spider’s parlour?”
“I think so,” I said. “Dick, you’re just in time to keep me from giving
in. I’m starved.”
He stooped and picked up the crowbar.
“Old brute! I’ve a mind to finish him!” he exclaimed.
“You don’t mean that,” I said. “But look for something to tie him up with.
He may come to himself before we’re off.”
“I guess I’ll just tote him along with me,” said Dick. “Safe bind, safe
find.”
Gathering up the long body as if it had been the form of a sleeping child,
Dick disappeared into the house. I knew that he was looking for the door
of my cage, and presently—for the first time with pleasure—I heard the
slipping back of the bolt and turning of the key.
Already I was at the door, opening it for Dick to come in with his heavy
burden.
“Here’s the bed,” I said, and Dick laid his burden down, not too gently.
Then I think the next thing we did was to shake hands.
“Blessed old man!” exclaimed Dick, a little unsteadily. “What a beastly
business.”
“It’s a mystery,” I said. “And how you got to me—”
“Conduit,” said Dick, “But I’ll tell you all about that, and everything.
Got no electric light here?”
“Nothing but starlight. For Heaven’s sake, tell me about Monica!”
“She’s all right,” said Dick. “Not a Duchess yet, if that’s what worries
you. Look here, if this place has been good enough to box you up in all
this time, it’s good enough to keep _him_ in—” (He nodded towards the
alcove.) “He lives alone here, without servants; I’ve found out all that,
with a lot more; and his master—guess you know who—is in Madrid; so when
this chap comes to himself he can try how he likes your quarters. They
seem rather nice ones, judging from what I can see; but Carmona always
does himself well.”
“Is this Carmona’s house?” I asked.
“You bet it is. Little private sort of place he keeps ready when he wants
to amuse himself in some way which his mother and Monica and other people
mightn’t approve of in Dukes. This old Johnny’s a combination of caretaker
and physician in ordinary to his grace. But let’s get out of this. I can’t
give you a marble bath or Moorish decorations at my hotel, but I shouldn’t
wonder if you’d prefer the accommodation; and after that conduit business
I need a ‘wash and brush up’ as much as you do. Why, old man, what’s the
matter? Not going to crack up, are you?”
“I’m all right,” I said; “but I haven’t had anything to eat since the day
after I saw you off, except milk, and none of that for the last two days.”
“Great Scott! you’re joking. We parted five weeks ago!”
The words gave me a shock in spite of the stubble on my chin and the
whiteness of my hands. Dick had his wet arm round my shoulders, and we
were at the door, which he was about to lock, and I startled him by caving
in a little at the knees.
“See here,” he said, hanging on to my arm as if he were afraid I should
vanish in thin air, “we won’t wait to dine at my hotel. We’ll nose round a
bit in this old Johnny’s larder. You must be bucked up before you go out
into the street. Oh, it’s safe enough. The old brute’s a hermit—for his
own reasons or Carmona’s. Nobody comes near the house, and we can take our
own time. While you’re eating you shall hear everything I’ve got to tell.”
He locked and bolted the door, and helped me down the stairs, up which I
must have been carried unconscious; perhaps by the gypsy, assisted by the
master of the house.
Below stairs the place was dark save for the light which had streamed out
into the _patio_ with the opening door. It came from a good-sized room
evidently intended for a kitchen, but also used by the solitary tenant as
a dining-room. It had a window opening on the court; this, however, was
not only covered with heavy shutters, but protected by a curtain as well,
and ventilation came through an adjoining room from a window that looked
on another small court.
Evidently my gaoler had been interrupted in the midst of his supper, and
hearing a noise in the _patio_ had stopped only long enough to snatch up a
sword-stick. On the table was a simple meal of cold meat, salad,
goats’-milk cheese, and fresh fruit; but to my starved eyes it seemed a
feast. There was also a bottle half-full of red Spanish wine; and I did
not wait for Dick’s suggestion to sit down. I must get back my strength if
I were to be of any use to Monica or myself, and I hardly listened to
Dick’s warning that a starved man must not satisfy his first hunger.
“Eat slowly, and not too much,” he said, with anxious eyes on my face,
which must have been frightful, though he was too tactful to make
comments. As I obeyed, he told me his story, briefly and disjointedly, as
the points came back to him.
“Didn’t hear from you,” he said, “and began wondering what was up. Wired
twice; no answer; was a bit taken up with my own affairs just then, I’m
afraid. Yes, I mean Pilar. After five days, wired the landlord. He
answered you’d left with a friend. I thought that queer, and set out for
Granada by next train, Ropes with me. At the Washington Irving I found
both my telegrams to you and a letter. Landlord said he got a note from
you, dated Motril, telling him you’d met a friend and gone off
unexpectedly in his automobile. You enclosed more than enough money to pay
bill and tips, and asked him to have your luggage packed and kept till
your return, which might be in a few days or not for some time. Naturally,
he hadn’t worried; and as he’d destroyed the letter, I couldn’t tell if it
was your handwriting.
“Well, I thought you _might_ have rushed off suddenly on account of some
lark of Carmona’s; but I soon found out he was still in Granada, slowly
getting better; and the guests hadn’t gone. By the way, I called, but
nobody in the house was seeing visitors. Ropes discovered that your car
was in a stable down in the town, where you’d left it, without saying for
how long. He and I were getting scared, and I went to the police, but
didn’t dare give your real name without your permission, especially as the
authorities had a kind of prejudice against it. Fired off my best Spanish,
though, and insinuated that Carmona wasn’t very fond of you; but when I
began hinting that it might be convenient for his plans that you should
disappear, they wouldn’t take me seriously, were polite, and all that,
promised to look you up, as if you were a stray kitten, but intimated that
most people who vanished had private reasons for doing so.
“After that, I didn’t expect them to find out anything, and they did their
best not to disappoint me. I saw that if anybody was going to do the
Sherlock Holmes’ act, it must be Ropes and me. We sat tight at the
Washington Irving, and looked around; but at the end of a fortnight no one
was any wiser than at the beginning. Then what should happen but the dear
old Colonel and Pilar popped down to see if they could help. Oh, and I
forgot to tell you that meanwhile the people at Carmona’s palace had
cleared out. They’d gone back to Seville again by train; and what should
happen but the Colonel and Pilar met Carmona face to face in the station.”
“Not Monica?” I broke in.
“No. I suppose the others had got into a carriage; he was lingering behind
to give a valet directions about luggage. And then there was a scene.