Observing the pantomime from a distance, I fancied that, for some reason, Carmona was to be denied the privilege of which he had boasted; but, apparently, he did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle. He and the guide moved on, then stopped again to argue—this time with their backs to us; but, from the action of Carmona’s elbows, I judged that he put his hand into his pocket. Five or six minutes later he returned, to announce that after some difficulty he had succeeded in getting his own way. We might go, unattended, into the private apartments of Philip the Second; and while we were there, other visitors would be kept out. “If there are any, they’ll be taken another round,” said Carmona, “and won’t be ready to come into the King’s rooms until we’re ready to come out.”
The guide led us down the narrow staircase to the outer door of Philip’s suite, then slipped away, shutting the door behind him. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica (the mother still clasping her daughter’s arm), Pilar, Dick, Carmona, and I were now alone between the gloomy walls behind which the bigot and despot had lived his miserable life and died his miserable death.
There was a chill in the sombre place which froze the spirit; yet I, for one, did not feel sad. I was conscious only of an excited expectancy, as if I were waiting for something to happen.
We let our imagination set the meagre form of Philip in his chair, or by the desk at which he used to write; examined the grim relics of his monk-like existence; and finally moved to the death-chamber, set like a stage-box at the theatre, beside the high altar of the chapel.
So small was the room that it was filled by our little party of six; yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, through a bleak eternity.
Monica felt it too, for she shivered, and exclaimed, “Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. I can’t breathe in it.”
“But now for the secret,” said Carmona. “Would you guess at any hidden opening in these walls?”
We stared critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me. “You’d never find the place,” he said; “and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn’t prevent me from showing you what’s behind the door.”
He moved close to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a narrow aperture.
It was dark on the other side, but Carmona took a gold match-box from his pocket and struck a bunch of little wax _fosforos_.
“Philip had this cell made for a place of penance and self-torture,” he said, “and it’s just as it used to be during his lifetime, before he was too ill to go in any more. His twisted wire scourge is there, with his blood on it, his horsehair shirt, and a girdle bristling with small, sharp spikes. Will you have a look, Lady Vale-Avon? I can’t go with you, for the cell isn’t big enough for two, but I’ll hold the matches at the door.”
Lady Vale-Avon is of the type of woman who enjoys seeing such things as 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.