William McGivern - The Caper of the Golden Bulls

Peter was already out of sight. Carlos stood indecisively for a moment, his head tilted in thought. At last he took a pencil and notebook from his pocket, moistened the tip of the pencil with his tongue, and began to write an account of the incident.

Carlos was a meticulous policeman; he bored his superiors with extensive and accurate accounts of all happenings on his beat which seemed to him in any way curious or suspicious.

Carlos knew how his superiors felt towards him, but he had a notion they might not be bored with this particular report. Not if the rumours going around about the Banco de Bilbao turned out to be true.

Peter returned to his hotel room with a headful of worrisome considerations, none of which, however, was related to his plans for stealing the jewels and gems of the Virgins during the coming week.

Cursing himself for a mooning, irrelevant ass, he flung his hat and coat in the general direction of a chair, and reached for the light switch.

He was troubled by guilt, troubled by innocence, troubled by the dubious purity of past and present motives; he was behaving as idiotically, as witlessly, as a man on a scaffold worrying about whether the drop would disturb the part in his hair.

Peter’s hand froze on the light switch; he stood motionless, hardly breathing, while his remarkable senses scanned the dark and silent room for danger. Fool, he thought, irrelevant fool! Troubled by harmless thunder; ignoring the fatal lightning bolt.

He dipped a hand quickly into his pocket and took out a cigarette lighter. Gripping it tightly in his fist, he extended it at arms’ length, parallel to the floor.

“Ecoutez, mes amis,” Peter said quietly. “Don’t move; don’t talk. I am holding three ounces of tri-nitro-cellulose in my hand. Should I be forced to drop it Pouf! Et finis!”

A gasp sounded behind Peter.

He snapped on the lights.

“Darling, what are you raving about?” Grace asked him anxiously.

“How did you get in here?”

“I told the desk clerk I was a friend of yours. He said that made us friends, since you and he are friends. We all have passion, he said, and let me in. But please don’t try to change the subject. Why were you going on that way in French?”

“As a matter of fact, I was expecting someone else.”

“Yes. Tri-nitro whatever it was. Pouf. Finis! I guess you were.”

She smiled uncertainly. “Peter, what’s wrong? You’re different, somehow. You’ve changed.”

And so had she, Peter realised sadly. He had always thought of her in images and metaphors. Silver trees, golden bonfires, stately clippers.

Now in this transparent and cruelly realistic northern air, she seemed less mysterious, less a creature of magic and enchantment; she was human, after all, lovely beyond words to be sure, but weighable and measurable now, an entity composed of readily ascertainable details.

She wore a dress the colour of cocoa, a short coat of natural wool, and narrow black boots with tops of brown fur which fitted snugly about her fine ankles. There was a smudge of dust on her cheek. A tendril of fine hair had escaped a sleek coiffure to prance on top of her head like a tiny golden sea-horse. She must have come straight from the train, he thought with a pang of sympathy. She would probably love a bath and a nap. Somehow details he had never noticed before made her even more precious and dear in his eyes.

“Peter, you can’t go ahead with this business,” she said quietly.

“Dear, I’ve got to.”

“But it’s insane. It’s worse. It’s stupid and sentimental. When you told me about it at first, it sounded sweet and splendid. Like listening to a dear old uncle reading fairy tales before a cosy fire. But it won’t work, Peter. There’s no place for romantic gestures outside of books. I want you to be practical. To be sensible.”

Yes, he thought, she was real enough now, no doubt of it. Sensible. Practical. But what had happened to the bonfires and cellos? Where had the enchantment gone? And yet, he thought, it probably wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t deliberate, at any rate. She must have been lulled to sleep, as he had been, by insidious and deceptive southern breezes.

He remembered what Antonio, the policeman, had told him about the north and south of Spain. It made a sad kind of sense now. The south sold gypsies and romance, ogres riding the west winds. While the north sold the things of the real world good hotels and electricity, shops full of handbags and brass candlesticks. In the south, dreams of innocence and passion were understood and accepted as fancies borne on the African trades. But here in the north they were neither understood nor accepted; they were not sensible, not practical. But where, Peter wondered unhappily, did passion and innocence exist? In the needle of a compass? Or in the beat of a heart?

“Please listen to me, Peter. Please.” He saw the tremor of her lips, the fear in her lovely eyes, and the way her hands were twisting together at her breast, and he thought wistfully of tall, silver trees, of stately clipper ships. How he missed them now!

“Yes?”

“I’ve got enough money for both of us. In twenty-four hours we could be half-way around the world. In Melbourne, Tokyo, or anywhere you like. Please come away with me, Peter.”

“I can’t. It just wouldn’t work.”

“Do you think this business will work? You’re all alone, Peter. With no one to help you. You’ll be caught and sent to prison, or you’ll be shot and killed. Don’t you realise that?”

“Yes, I suppose I do. But I can’t help it.”

“And I can’t help caring about you. That’s all I do care about, Peter.”

“I wish my commitments were so simple,” he said with a sigh.

“I am selfish and mean. You are loyal and pure. Is that what you’re telling me?”

He said quietly: “You know I’m not taking a high moral stand. As you suggested, I’m trying to be practical. If I ran off with you and left my friends to hang, I’d hardly be the man you think you’re in love with. I’m not sure who I’d be then. The change might even be an improvement. But you wouldn’t have what you wanted, and neither would I. You’d have a nice sensible coward; and I’d have a woman who wanted a nice sensible coward. Neither of us would care for that. After a bit, we’d have difficulty looking at one another. Don’t you see it wouldn’t work?”

Unexpectedly she smiled and said, “Of course. You’re absolutely right, Peter. You couldn’t possibly come away with me. I see that now. So I’ll have to stay with you. It’s that simple.”

“Don’t talk like a fool!”

“But you’ve got no one else to trust. Your old friends aren’t at your side. And Angela and Francois will sell you out the minute the job is done. They’ll have to throw you to the police to protect themselves. Don’t you realise that?”

“Of course. I’m not a complete idiot. But I’ll have something to say about that when the time comes.”

“But you can’t watch both of them. Please, Peter.” She came closer to him and put her hands on his shoulders. There was a strange challenge in her smile, exciting lights in her splendid eyes. “Let me help you.”

“Now you’re talking like an idiot. You women pride yourselves on being realists. At bottom you’re all as frivolous as tinkers.” He pulled her hands down from his shoulders. He was quite angry. “This isn’t a game we’re playing. I’m not a knight in armour. I’m a thief. What I’m going to do what I must do is dangerous and wrong. Legally and morally. Will you get that into your silly head?”

“What’s so immoral about it? What good are all those jewels doing strung about the necks of plaster statues?” There was a flash of mutinous tears in her eyes. “When families are cold and children are hungry? How can stealing them be morally wrong? You won’t be depriving a single human being of comfort or solace.”