The Complete Four Just Men (23 page)

The difficulties of the road were greater than she had expected. Sometimes it was little more than a track across a boulder-strewn hillside. What advantage she had in the chase lay in keeping to this track, for the carriage must go the longer way round, keeping to the road. She found food at wayside houses, food of the roughest and wine with a resinous bite to it, but it served. Every hour or so the short cuts brought her to the road again, and the marks of the coach wheels on the white dust of the road were recent.

The sun was going down when she reached Granja de la Flores. Its grandiloquent title served to designate a wretched little village in a fold of the hills, a collection of whitewashed hovels, cowering about a big dominating church. Before the dilapidated
fonda
she pulled up and called for the landlord. Two or three unshaven men, sitting in the shade of a tattered sunblind, rose and swept off their hats mechanically, regarding her with suspicion. The landlord came at his leisure, rolling a cigarette and pausing at the door to cry a string of instructions over his shoulder.

‘Can you supply me with a horse?’ she asked.

The man looked up at her with a familiar grin.

‘Beautiful lady, there is nothing in the world I cannot supply you with at the
fonda
of Granja – but a horse, no.’

He devoted his attention to the cigarette in making.

She made as though to dismount.

‘Permit me, excellency,’ he said quickly, and helped her down.

Her horse needed rest and food – she must spare a precious hour.

‘Find me a room,’ she said imperiously, and the man grinned again. There were two rooms beside the public room, and all three were unsavoury enough, but she found a dubious-looking sofa, and passed the hour dozing. She had no need to ask how long since the carriage had passed. Evidently her arrival had interrupted a discussion between the idlers before the
fonda
as to the exact hour the coach had left the village. This argument was now resumed. By their talk she gathered that she was less than two hours behind them, and they must halt as well as she. Her horse did not show signs of distress, the rest and food would help him.

At the end of the hour she rose and called for the horse. At their leisure the servants of the house brought it and she chafed under the delay. Also the landlord was unnecessarily familiar. It is not usual for beautiful young ladies to ride unattended in Spain.

His imprudence reached its culmination when she asked for assistance to mount.

‘Better remain here,
bello mio
,’
he sighed heavily; ‘the roads are unsafe for such pretty birds as you.’

Then when she would have mounted unassisted, he held her arm gently but firmly, and she took a grip of her steel-ribbed riding-whip, and lashed him twice across the face. He went back shrieking with his hands to his eyes, and she sprang into the saddle. Then, as she turned her horse to the mountain road, he recovered and came at her bellowing with a knife in his hand. Perhaps he did not intend using it; it may be he expected to frighten her. I advance this excuse for the innkeeper’s indiscretion, as the merest speculation. The solution of this little problem does not lie with us.

The Woman of Gratz, galloping along the mountain path, came suddenly face to face with a brown-faced member of the Guardia Civile. He reined back his horse into the undergrowth to allow her to pass and greeted her respectfully.

She checked her horse to exchange the customary civilities.

‘I thought, señora, I heard a shot,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘a man has been shot in the village.’

‘If you will permit me I will leave you,’ he said, and she heard the loose stones flying under the hoofs of his galloping charger.

The villagers gathered about the man, who lay full length in the white dust of the road, explained the circumstances, and the philosophical policeman looked grave.

‘A reputation for Granja de la Flores!’ he said with heavy sarcasm; ‘that a foreign lady cannot come to your village without undergoing insult. Is this swine dead?’

‘No,’ said an apologetic bystander.

‘Then take him into the house whilst I write a report,’ said the magnificent custodian of the peace.

He met the innkeeper’s wife at the doorway, arms akimbo, and very voluble. She defamed the Woman of Gratz, beginning with the probability of her irregular morals and ending with forecasting the destination of her immortal soul.

‘And,’ she added to clinch the matter, ‘she has not paid for her room or for the fodder of the horse!’

‘That,’ said the policeman wisely, ‘is a matter for the civil courts.’

Chapter 12

The house in the hill

In the cool of the evening the five men came to the house in the hill. They had left the coach in a little wood that marked the Castilian road. Two breakdowns had delayed them, and they were later than they had thought to be. It was difficult to find the door of the house, for Don Emanuel had carried out his orders to the letter. But Leon, making a rough calculation, fumbled amidst the drooping vines that covered the face of a small bluff and found what he sought.

‘Here,’ he said, and wrenched open the heavy door.

Into the dark interior the prisoners were pushed, and the door closed upon them.

The man called Zaragoza sniffed the newly planed pinewood and felt with his fingers the thickness of the lining of his strange prison.

Outside his captors lit a fire, and, from a ‘thermos’ bottle, Manfred poured out boiling hot coffee. He looked at his watch; it was seven o’clock.

‘In two hours,’ he said; ‘in the meantime, let us prepare for our visitors.’

Leon rose and went down the hill to the little wood. He came back shortly with what looked like a bundle of sticks. These he carefully deposited beyond the reach of the fire.

They sat talking in low tones until a few minutes before eight, then Poiccart, seeking a soft piece of ground, bored, with a thick steel rod, a hole two feet deep. Into this he inserted one of the sticks, twisting it to make sure that it had full play.

He stood waiting, whilst Manfred sat, watch in hand, by the fire; then he nodded, and Poiccart stooped and applied a light.

With a roar like the roar of a mill-race the rocket swept up into the night. Higher and higher it soared, then slowly it described a curve and burst into a great mass of white stars, so brilliant that the plain beneath was for a few seconds illuminated, as with the light of a bright moon.

The people of the little village of Anmincio, seven miles away, saw it and wondered, crossing themselves reverently at the celestial token. Other people saw it also.

Von Dunop, on his fat mule, sweating in the darkness; Elbrecht, the German anarchist, jolting over the rough road in his one-horsed cart; Saromides, the Greek, riding down from the north, and Menshikoff, riding with the Judge of the First Court of Madrid. The Woman of Gratz saw it also, for she was nearest the hill, and tightened her rein.

Manfred heard the clatter of hoofs coming up the path, and smiled. She came into the circle of lights, and Gonsalez went toward her.

‘Will you dismount?’ he asked, and it seemed to her that her coming had been expected. She declined his help with a gesture and sprang lightly to the ground. The pistol she had used with effect in the village of Granja de la Flores was in her gloved hand; but they gave no sign that they had seen it.

‘Will you sit down?’ asked Gonsalez politely.

‘I prefer to stand,’ she said. It seemed ridiculous that she could think of no opening for her attack. That her presence had been anticipated seemed monstrously unfair somehow. Manfred, who had not spoken, read her thoughts.

‘We expected you,’ he said, speaking across the fire, ‘but not quite so soon – and there are others.’

‘I would rather think that you have invented your expectation on the spur of the moment,’ she replied, and let the pistol swing pendulum fashion from her finger.

‘And there are others,’ he repeated coolly, ‘else why did we fire the rocket save to guide our guests?’

He stirred the fire with his foot, and sent a shower of sparks flying. He looked reflectively into the red heart of it, and steadfastly refused to see the weapon in her hand.

‘It was Leon who caused a message to be sent to the builder Don Emanuel,’ he went on. ‘The story he told you was carefully prepared for him. The bait was effective, and you are here.’

‘Later – ’ she began fiercely.

‘Later will come your friends,’ he finished complacently; ‘that also I know. They will find – er – obstacles.’

‘So it was a trap?’ she breathed.

‘An open trap,’ he corrected. ‘I shall not prevent your going – when we have finished with your mercenaries.’

‘You will release them also,’ she said steadily, and gathered the black blunt pistol in her hand so that it covered him. If he saw the action, he made no sign, nor did either of the men who were with him.

‘Wait awhile,’ he continued, still looking into the fire as though there the centre of interest lay. ‘In a few minutes Von Dunop will be here, and Elbrecht – we have brought him a long journey from Hamburg – and Saromides, the Greek. He represents the Red Hundred effectively in the City of the Hills, does he not?’

From the foot of the hill came a wheezing cough, and Manfred seemed pleased.

Then with groans and curses and the thud of a falling stick, Von Dunop rode fearfully to the fireside.

First he saw the Woman of Gratz standing idly with her back to a young sapling, and he gave a satisfied grunt.

‘Ach, so it is all well,’ he said, and his obvious terror evaporated rapidly. ‘I had feared that it was a trap, but the telegram gave the password, and I could not disobey.’

He saw Manfred and saluted him.

‘I do not know these comrades,’ he said, ponderously affable, and looked inquiringly at the woman.

He was not prepared for the introduction.

‘These are they who call themselves the Four Just Men,’ she said, and Von Dunop reeled back like a man stricken with vertigo.

‘Hey!’ he said loudly and put his hand to his hip.

Manfred did not move, nor the other men.

‘A trap!’ bellowed Von Dunop, with a great display of firearms.

‘Yes,’ Manfred permitted himself with sarcasm, ‘a splendid trap’; he looked at their weapons meaningly.

One by one, guided by the fire, came the others, the Greek and the German, and, coming, they stayed, weapon in hand, muttering threats, puzzled, the lives of the three in their hands, yet withal a terror that lay on them like a weight, crushing their initiative. They took council in whispers, but the Woman of Gratz said neither yea nor nay to the hurried proposals they put before her. Then came the sound of two men upon the path, and the three men bent their heads, listening, and each had his hand to his face. When they raised their hands, the Woman of Gratz saw that they were masked. She took a step forward.

‘This comedy ends,’ she said sternly. ‘Have you brought my friends here, from distant parts of Europe, to see a play? Are you mad that you think we can be held with words?’ She pointed at Manfred. A splendidly tragic figure she made in her sombre close-fitting habit. The hand that gathered her dress held the pistol, and her finger was curled about the trigger.

‘You!’ she said, raising her voice, ‘you! to add the humiliation of this farce to the slight you have already put upon me! Did you think the Red Hundred was so impotent, its powers so shattered, that you could call its leaders together to laugh at their weakness?’

So far she got when the men who were treading the path came into the light.

One of these, like the men at the fire, was masked and cloaked; the other was a man advanced in years, plainly dressed, but authority written in every line of his face.

He strode forward, bowing slightly to the woman and to the masked men by the fire.

Then something attracted the attention of the Woman of Gratz, and she involuntarily clutched Von Dunop’s arm.

On the hills around and above, in the distant valley below, little fires were twinkling at regular intervals and through the trees that fringed the path she caught the glint of steel. Manfred saw also.

‘Since we have promised you freedom – when we have finished – and since you have nothing to gain by resistance, for the hills above and the road below are held by the Pavia Hussars, you will listen and wait,’ he said, and the old man came forward to the light of the fire.

They were puzzled and alarmed, these shining lights of the Red Hundred. To their strained hearing came the far-away jingle of steel, and once a trumpet-call woke the echoes of the hills.

Except for the Woman of Gratz, I am willing to believe, that the men who condemned their fellows to cruel and merciless deaths, and that without compunction, had a wholesome regard for their own lives, upon which they placed a value out of all proportion to their real worth.

‘I must see the prisoners,’ said the old man quietly, and Leon led them, blinking and frowning, into the light. The face of him who saw the Woman of Gratz first lit with hope, but the other, staring straight ahead at the grey-haired figure by the fire, shivered and dropped his eyes.

Then the old man called their names and they answered respectfully. Then he took a scroll from the hand of his masked companion, and read, with a curious old-world dignity, a document that began with a recital of the reader’s style.

‘Don Alberto de Mandeges y Carrilla y Ramundo, officer of the Order of Charles the Third . . . ’ – there were a string of subsidiary dignitaries to be read – ‘ . . . a judge of the High Court, learned in the law . . . by these presents and in the name of His Most Catholic Highness, the Prince of the Escorial, confirm the sentence passed upon . . . ’ – he read the names and aliases of each prisoner – ‘ . . . therefore it is right and proper in the manner arranged that these men should die . . . ’

He finished reading and rolled the paper – then remembered and stepped forward to the prisoners, showing them that portion of the document bearing the neat signature of the Prince.

Then he fell back again to the other side of the fire, and there moved up to his side from the darkness about him a solid phalanx of civil guardsmen in their dark cloaks and high collars.

The woman was stupefied; she tried to think, to place these happenings in logical sequence. The Four Just Men were the law – in Spain. Higher than the law, for they might condemn without trial and execute without hope of reprieve.

She stood motionless whilst Gonsalez and Poiccart led the men back to the cell in the hill. They were absent longer than she expected, and when they returned Manfred rose.

‘We will go,’ he said.

She did not question his right to give the order. She was for the moment wholly under his domination. She followed meekly enough the tramping soldiers as they slipped and stumbled down the steep slopes. Two of them had lighted torches, and the difficulties of the descent were greater than she had thought.

Not until the party had halted in a clearing that commanded a view of the bluff – or would have done in daylight – did she speak.

‘Hush, hush!’ Von Dunop implored in a whisper. He was shaking like a jelly and his companions were in little better case. ‘They have promised us we shall go – say nothing.’

‘Say nothing!’

She could have struck the poltroon. ‘Say nothing! when men who took our salt are being left to die in the darkness!’

Manfred had learnt something of the Woman of Gratz; he knew to a second how long a weapon might with safety be left in her hand. Now, Leon, standing close at hand, caught her wrist, and wrenched the pistol from her grasp.

‘Later you may have it,’ he said calmly.

She could have screamed in her fury.

‘Some day, some day!’ she muttered brokenly.

‘Silence!’ commanded a voice, and then Manfred began to speak.

It was to her he spoke, and to the men associated with her in the work.

‘I have called you together that you may see. And seeing, remember. We, who are together in this work, have set ourselves the task of breaking for ever the organized power of anarchism. That we can prevent the acts of individuals privately moved to assassination by grievances existing only in their poor disordered brains, we cannot hope. That we can destroy for ever the association which exploits and directs these madmen for their profit, I am certain.’

‘The Red Hundred lives,’ she interrupted, tremulous with passion; ‘though I die and the men with me, the Red Hundred will live – and avenge.’

‘But for the fact that the Red Hundred is still powerful, I would not have brought you here,’ he said calmly; ‘but for my knowledge that your plans are complete for the continuation of your scheme of destruction in London, and that even now shipload upon shipload of material and men for the fight are pouring into England, we might dispense with your presence at this – ceremony.’ His voice rang out sternly.

‘There is no known faith or creed by which one may appeal to you. No better side or soft spot that ingenuity may reach. No concession with which to influence you. Blindly, insanely, uncaring, you move about your work, having no goal to pass or end to reach, filled with the lust of blood, slaying the innocent and sparing the guilty. God never provided for such aimless creatures as you – you are apart from
His scheme. The fiercest hurricane brings rain to some pasture or other. The gales of the poles are breezes for the tropics; the deadly
enemies of man who live in the African forests suppress other enemies – but you! Your hand is against all, your vengeance scattered broadcast, unintelligently – your very strength is a weakness pitiable and contemptible!

‘Yonder in the darkness,’ he went on, ‘are two men – tools of such people as you. Hired murderers, paid with gold to commit a crime so foul that the brain that planned it could only be that of an illogical unbalanced woman.

‘Your money is with them – ’ he turned to the Woman of Gratz – ‘my friend has converted it by chemical processes to an element that scientists know as fulminate of gold.

‘The terror they have inspired they now suffer, and I would not spare them a moment of their agony. The bomb they would have thrown now hangs suspended by a chain above them.’

He lifted the terminal of a thin coil of wire that lay at her feet and she saw that the other end twisted into the bush.

‘Give me a truce – hold back your people,’ he said earnestly – ‘in God’s name give me your word that this bloody campaign of the Red Hundred shall end – and I will give you the lives of your servants.’

She reached out her hand and took the tiny switchboard from him, and it lay in her palm.

He could see the disfiguring fury of her face, and waited expectantly.