“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 adventures awaited me there? What was to be the next pass in this queer duel with Carmona?
But I need not have searched for comparisons. As we rushed into Madrid without threading through any suburbs,—since suburbs the city has none,—I discovered that it bore no resemblance to any other place.
We flashed from open country to a shady park, set about with buvettes and beer gardens; ran through a massive gateway, and were in the heart of Madrid. Electric trams whizzed confusingly round us, and far above the hubbub of such traffic loomed proudly a hill crowned with an enormous palace. There was no need to ask if it were the royal palace, for it was essentially Royal, a house worthy of a king.
My father had fought to put Don Carlos there—Don Carlos, far away now in Venice; but with all my admiration for his brave son Don Jaime, my sympathies flowed loyally towards the young dweller on those heights.
We swept under and round the palace hill, as Colonel O’Donnel directed. In spite of his instructions, however, Dick lost the way twice, plunging into wrong turnings; but the second time he did this it seemed that San Cristóbal—whose medal now adorned our Gloria and shaped our destinies—must have twisted the steering-wheel. There, before the door of an official building guarded by sentries, panted the grey car of Carmona; and among its passengers Carmona alone was absent.
“That’s the Ministry of War,” said the Cherub, and with a quick thought I asked Dick to slow down. Taking advantage of her son’s late cordiality, I spoke to the Duchess.
“We thought we had lost you,” said I airily. “I hope nothing’s wrong, that you stop here?”
“Not in the least, thank you,” coldly replied the Duchess.
But Monica spoke up bravely. “The Duke didn’t tell us why he wanted to go in. He only said he wouldn’t keep us many minutes. Señorita O’Donnel, shall you be in Madrid long?”
“Only a few days,” said Pilar. “And you?”
“We shall be here again at the time of the wedding,” Monica answered quickly; “so I believe the Duke and Duchess will—”
“It is undecided,” Lady Vale-Avon cut in before the girl could make us a present of Carmona’s plans. “We may take some excursions. As there’s a fine road to Barcelona, we may go there and to Montserrat; and the Duke has said something about Bilbao—”
“But, Mother, surely we’re going to Seville for Holy Week!” cried Monica.
“There’s no reason why we should arrive before Maundy Thursday,” replied Lady Vale-Avon, hiding annoyance. “But isn’t that the Duke coming out? I hope he won’t be long. It’s windy here, and you have a cold coming on, my dear Duchess.”
We were dismissed; and raising our hats again we drove on, Pilar waving a small, encouraging hand to Monica. “They won’t do any of those things,” said the Spanish girl. “Something tells me they mean to start for Seville as soon as they can.”
“Something tells me so too,” said I. “And something tells me that Carmona’s errand at the Ministry of War is to find out whether Lieutenant Cristóbal O’Donnel y Alvarez is really away from Burgos on leave.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” murmured the Cherub. “But the thought will not bring a grey hair. Cristóbal _is_ on leave; and he told his brother officers that he expected to go with his family to Seville. It was at the last minute that his plans were changed. No one was taken into his confidence; and it will be very negligent of San Cristóbal to let him meet in Biarritz any common acquaintance of his and Carmona’s.”