Dennis Wheatley - Vendetta in Spain

'Sir, may I crave a private audience whenever it is convenient? I am anxious to discuss again with Your Majesty the subject about which you did me the honour to speak at Aranjuez.'

Don Alfonso nodded and fingered the small moustache that he had recently grown. 'Yes, certainly, Duke. But not for the present. Although I arrived here only two days ago, much to my annoyance I have to return to Madrid tomorrow. What are your plans?'

'I was hoping that I might be of some further service to Your Majesty.'

Suddenly the King frowned. 'If you were thinking of going to Barcelona again, I do not desire it. In fact I forbid it. There is going to be serious trouble there, and if you were recognized your life would not be worth a peseta.'

'For what I have in mind, to go there might not be necessary.*

'Very well, then. We will talk of the matter on my return. But I may be away for some days. I will send for you when I get back.'

Shortly afterwards the King and Queen wished their guests 'good night' and were bowed and curtsied from the room. As the party started to break up, de Richleau joined his friends and asked them if they would come with him to his hotel for a drink before returning to the villa. Count Ruiz replied that his wife had just complained of a migraine so he must take her home. As it was still quite early and de Vendome could have chaperoned Gulia, de Richleau was somewhat surprised when she also declined and said quite casually:

'I am sure the account of your adventures will lose nothing by being kept until tomorrow after the siesta.'

She had not even asked him to dinner and it was the placid, good-natured Infanta who, exercising her royal prerogative of inviting people to any house in which she was staying, repaired the omission by saying:

'Come changed, Duke, so that you can stay on and dine.'

Having thanked her and seen them to her carriage, de Richleau, accompanied by de Vendome, walked back to his hotel. There the two old friends talked until the early hours of the morning and, after the Duke had given a resum6 of his doings, the Prince told him about the crises which necessitated Don Alfonso's return to Madrid.

There was serious trouble in Morocco. The Riff tribesmen there were in revolt and had cut the railway line between the valuable Spanish iron mines up country and the port of Melilla. It was even feared that the town might be taken and sacked, so reinforcements were being rushed out there as speedily as possible. However, as the Prince - having served as an officer-cadet under de Richleau at St. Cyr - was competent to judge, the Spanish Army could not compare with that of France as far as training, efficiency and readiness for service were concerned. Moreover, for some reason that no one seemed to understand, the Generals said they could not find enough men to send unless they depleted essential garrisons.

In consequence the War Minister, General Linares, had had the not very bright idea of calling up the Catalan reserves. Since the war in Africa was most unpopular anyway and Barcelona, as ever, more strongly anti-Government than any other city, this, as might have been foreseen, had had the worst possible results. Hundreds of young Catalans liable for service were refusing to join the colours, the city was in a ferment and a General Strike was threatened. A further cause for anxiety was that these troubles now threatened to undermine the value of the peseta in the international money market.

The Duke was aware that there was fighting in Morocco, but had thought it no more than one of the outbursts by hot-headed tribesmen that so frequently took place; and as a heavy censorship was being imposed, his glance through the morning papers had given him no hint of the much more serious trouble at home. Now he no longer wondered that Don Alfonso had appeared so distrait after dinner.

Out at the villa, in the cool of the evening next day, the Cordoba house-party, which included a couple named de Tarancon, assembled round the fountain in the garden to drink iced Manzanilla while de Richleau told them how, while trying to trap an anarchist, he had been shipped off to Rio and of the life he had led in Central American cities and in the jungle.

They expressed the greatest interest and asked many questions, with the one exception of Gulia, who showed by a slight smile now and then that she was listening, but made no comment, and appeared to be half-absorbed in some embroidery that she was doing.

When the men sat over their wine after dinner they discussed the crisis again and the shortcomings of the army. The lean, good-looking Conde Ruiz, as elegant as ever with his curled hair, black sidewhiskers and wearing a velvet burgundy-coloured smoking jacket, was playing host. He maintained that the root of the trouble lay with the Church, because its demands on the State's funds were so great that there was never enough left over to provide the army with all the supplies it needed.

De Tarancon backed him up, declaring that the power the Church continued to wield was far too great. He instanced the fact that all efforts by the Government to limit the number of religious houses had been frustrated, and that quite recently the Prime Minister, Senor Maura, had been forced against his will to appoint a most unpopular monk, Father Nozaleda, as Archbishop of Valencia.

The Conde nodded agreement and went on to castigate a new measure, by which a huge loan was to be raised to compensate the Religious Orders for the damage they had sustained during the Revolution of 1868. He roundly declared that for the Government to accept liability for such a claim after a lapse of half a century and, above all, at the present time, was nothing less than a piece of financial madness.

De Vendome, however, owing to his strong religious feelings and friendship with many of the leading prelates, argued that the majority of priests lived in dire poverty, and that any nation which did not put the work of God before any other consideration did not deserve to prosper. He then went on to attack the Generals for their incompetence, lack of true patriotism and the highhanded manner in which at times they combined to defy even the King.

Later, in the drawing-room, de Richleau learnt from Gulia further particulars about her husband's trip to South America. The Conde had left Spain early in May and gone first to the Argentine. After a fortnight there he had crossed the Andes to Chile and Peru, returned to stay for a few days in Uruguay, then travelled up the coast to the principal cities of Brazil. He had last written that having completed his business in Bahia he intended to go on an expedition up the Amazon for a few weeks to hunt the wonderful tropical butterflies on the banks of which river they abounded. He would then go on to Venezuela and the capitals of the Central American Republics; so he did not expect to get back much before the end of October.

When the Duke was taking his leave Gulia did not offer him any further invitation, and it was de Vend6me who asked him to come out to bathe with them from the private beach next morning. Only then did she endorse the Prince's pressing with a vague apology for not having thought of suggesting it herself. In view of Gulia's attitude he almost felt that he ought to refuse; but since he was staying in an hotel and all of them must know it to be highly unlikely that he would have any other engagement, to do so would have struck them as very queer, so he accepted.

While he was being driven back to his hotel in one of the Cordoba carriages his mind was occupied in succession by two very different sets of thoughts.

First, distress and sympathy for the young King in his Herculean task of trying to keep the peace between the greedy hidebound Church, semi-mutinous Generals, and the large section of his subjects who was now clamouring for the blood of both.