Dennis Wheatley - Vendetta in Spain

Of one thing there seemed no doubt whatever. As far as Spain was concerned Francisco Ferrer was the root of the trouble. He might never have thrown a bomb himself, or even have assisted in planning any act of violence; but it was inescapable that by corrupting the minds of others he was morally responsible for the deaths of scores of innocent people and, most probably, among them Angela's.

De Quesnoy therefore decided that his only real hope of succeeding in his mission lay in putting Ferrer out of the way; and he made up his mind that he would leave nothing untried which might get him the evidence to send the anarchist to the hangman's rope.

By the end of the week he had finished with the dossier and arranged with de Vendome to.return it to the King.

On the Saturday, de Cordoba and the Condesa Gulia arrived to spend the week-end, and both were delighted to find him much more like his old self. That evening there was a dinner-party - the first he had attended since his wife's death - at which he talked with an animation and cheerfulness which showed that he was at last free from his gloomy preoccupation with her loss. On the Sunday, after attending Mass, they all went for a ride through the woods and in the afternoon had a jolly picnic beside the river. It was soon after their return, and before going up to change for dinner, that, while strolling in the garden, he came upon Gulia sitting on a stone seat alone.

In the warm light of the summer evening she made a lovely picture. Her burnished Titian hair, worn Madonna fashion, caught the light in its side curls, her darker, arched eyebrows and slumbrous black eyes made a striking contrast to her magnolia petal skin. Her full, rich red lips parted, showing small, even, flashing white teeth as she smiled a welcome to him. Yet after one swift glance at his eyes her feminine instinct told her that he was regarding her only with the detached interest that he would have bestowed on a fine marble statue.

When he sat down beside her they talked for a while of his trip with de Vendome, then she said, 'Now that high summer is here the Court will be moving as usual to San Sebastian, and everyone who matters goes with it; the Embassies and even many big financiers like Jos6, who conducts most of his business from a branch of the bank there. We have a charming villa with a little private bay not far from the city. Both he and I would be so delighted if, when we go north next week, you would accompany us and stay with us for a while.'

Smiling, he shook his head. 'It is most kind of you to ask me, Condesa, but I fear I must refuse. On Monday I am off to Barcelona.'

'Barcelona!' she repeated, opening wide her splendid eyes. 'Whatever for ? At this time of year you will find the heat there intolerable.'

Her husband knew of the mission he had been given by the

King, as also did de Vendome, who had spoken of it in front of his mother and Conde Ruiz; so he saw no reason for concealing it from her. After drawing for a moment on the Hoyo de Monterry cigar he was smoking, he replied, 'Please regard it as a secret except from your family, who already know about it, but I am going to Barcelona to hunt anarchists.'

She gave him a long, steady look then said without a suggestion of a smile, 'In that case you need not go so far as Barcelona. You had better begin by hunting me. I am an anarchist.'

4

Anarchists and Anarchists

De quesnoy's 'devil's eyebrows' shot up as he exclaimed, 'You can't be serious!'

'I am,' she assured him, and her full, cupid's-bow mouth broke into a smile. That smile, although he did not realize it, was one of secret triumph. She had played her cards well. Her shock tactics had succeeded. He was staring at her, and for the first time consciously, in an attempt to assess her personality as a woman.

He gave a quick shake of his head. 'I refuse to believe it. What you say does not make sense.'

'It would if you knew more about me. I am a niece of Miguel de Unamuno.'

The Count's broad forehead wrinkled again, and he said, 'Unamuno? I seem to have heard the name as that of an educationalist; is he not a Professor?'

'He is that and much more. He is also a philosopher and now acknowledged as one of the greatest brains that Spain has produced in the past century. His book, The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples , is already a classic. You should read it.'

'I fear that my Spanish has not yet reached a standard high enough for me to appreciate the nuances of a philosophical treatise. And even if it had, since you imply that your uncle favours violence as a means of bringing about a change in the social order, it is quite certain that I should find myself strongly opposed to his views.'

'He does not advocate violence; he is simply a clear-thinking man with the highest ideals. His wish is to see Spain legally transformed into a true democracy in which all men are equal.'

De Quesnoy took another pull on his cigar, and said, 'I see. On the face of it, then, your uncle is a Socialist. That does not tally with your implication that you imbibed anarchist doctrines from him.'

'No; since I have been old enough to think for myself I have moved much further to the Left. I find a great deal of sound sense in the philosophy of the anarchists.'

Again the Count regarded his lovely companion with a puzzled frown. 'Do you really mean that? Had you been given Morral's opportunity on Don Alfonso's wedding day would you have thrown the bomb?'

Gulia tossed back her head and laughed. 'Of course not. How could you even suggest that I might?'

'To be an anarchist is synonymous with holding a belief in the justification of using violence to achieve one's ends.'

'No, my dear Count; in that you are entirely wrong. In Spain today there are at least a million anarchists, but I doubt if a thousand of them would kill to further the general acceptance of their principles.'

'Oh come, Dona Gulia; when you speak of a million surely you are confusing anarchism with socialism, and lumping the two together.'

'Indeed I am not. There are many more Socialists than that. By far the greater part of the workers in Madrid, Valencia, Bilboa, Seville and Cadiz is Socialist, whereas the anarchists are concentrated in other areas of the country. The million I spoke of consists of a great part of the workers of Catalonia and the peasantry of Andalusia.'

'The peasantry of Andalusia! You amaze me. I had thought that in Spain, like most other countries, the agricultural population was the main support of the Conservatives.'

'It is not so here. The great part of the land consists of huge estates owned by absentee landlords who draw their wealth from their properties but never go near them. For generations the wretched tillers of the soil have been forced to work for a miserable pittance under slave-driving bailiffs, or starve. Can you wonder that they would like to throw off the yoke and keep for themselves the results of their labours?'

'No, that is natural enough. And had I given the matter serious thought I might have guessed that such feelings existed from the appalling poverty I saw in many of the villages during my trip to the south. However, I still feel that we are using terms that have different meanings for us. By anarchists I mean the sort of revolutionaries known as dynamiters, who created a reign of terror in

Paris in '94, when I was a young Cadet at St. Cyr, and fanatics like Morral. It is true that ever since the 'eighties hardly a month has passed without one of them exploding a bomb or knifing some unfortunate person in one country or another. But, even so, their number must be comparatively limited. On the other hand, these hundreds of thousands of Catalonian workers and Andalusian peasants of whom you speak can be striving to gain their ends only by constitutional methods. Obviously those ends are the abolition of privilege, the confiscation of wealth through the penal taxation of the rich and equality for everyone in a Workers' State. What is that but Socialism?'