Dennis Wheatley - Vendetta in Spain

'Guilty,' replied the handsome Captain without a shadow of hesitation.

The word was hardly out of his mouth before de Richleau exclaimed, 'Captain Escalante! Is your name Juan?'

The astonished Captain looked at him and nodded.

'You are, then, making your addresses to the Senorita Mercedes, General Quiroga's daughter.'

The Captain frowned, but again he nodded.

'Then,' gasped the Duke, 'I will tell you something about her that you do not know.'

In an instant the Captain was on his feet. 'If you dare . . .' he began angrily; but de Richleau cut him short.

'It is nothing to the young lady's discredit. She is embroidering a pair of velvet bedroom slippers with your initials as a New Year present for you.'

Urgoiti jumped to his feet and shouted, 'I protest! This is irrelevant! Yet another pack of lies by the Prisoner in the hope of gaining a respite.'

The President banged the table with his gavel. 'Silence! You have no right to address the Court unless asked for your opinion.'

The Captain, still staring at de Richleau with a puzzled look, muttered, 'If this is true, how could you possibly know of it?'

'That is my point,' the Duke was trembling with excitement and new hope. 'How could I know it? Only because I have told the Court the truth. For the nights of the 8th and 9th I was a guest in General Quiroga's home and lived as one of his family. You have only to ask the General and he will tell you that I was that Count de Quesnoy whose wife was killed by the bomb thrown at His Majesty's wedding procession, and that I have been seeking revenge against the anarchists ever since. You need not even bother the General. Send for the Senora Quiroga, for the Senorita Mercedes, for their butler, for the soldier servant who valeted me while I was a guest in their house. Any or all of them will tell you that I speak the truth.'

As he paused, breathless, the three officers constituting the Court exchanged a few quick words. Then the President announced:

'I suspend the Court until further investigations have been made.'

At that moment there came a loud report. The windows of the room rattled. A spiral of smoke eddied up from just behind the table at which the Prosecutor was sitting. Comandante Urgoiti, realizing that it must now emerge that he had known the facts from the beginning, and that ruin, disgrace and death awaited him, had pulled his pistol from its holster and blown out his brains.

His act gave immediate confirmation of de Richleau's innocence. The officers present escorted him in a body through the long corridors of the fortress to the General's office. Quiroga berated them for a set of fools; but the Duke could now afford to be generous. He spoke up for them, saying that they had only been carrying out their duty and had been entirely misled by Urgoiti's skilful plot. The General then assumed his jovial aspect and invited them all over to his residence, where he ordered up champagne for them to drink a toast to his guest's eleventh-hour escape.

Senora Quiroga and Mercedes had joined them, and de Richleau asked his host and hostess to do him a great favour. He said that since the bedroom slippers Mercedes was making for Captain Escalante had been the means of saving his life, he begged that they would there and then give their consent to the young couple becoming engaged. Mercedes's mother hesitated for a moment, but the old General declared heartily that it would make a happy ending to what might so easily have been a terrible tragedy; so consent was given.

Yet it was not quite the end. After the little celebration was over and the officers had returned to their duties, de Richleau, not having eaten since the previous evening, asked for a light meal. When he had finished it he felt so utterly exhausted from his ghastly ordeal that he went upstairs and threw himself upon his bed. Ten minutes later he was sound asleep.

At five o'clock the General went up and roused him, to tell him that at midday he had given fresh instructions to the police, who had been busy collecting witnesses all the afternoon, and that he had convened a court-martial to try Ferrer that evening. Together they walked over to the Courtroom. Evidence was given that Ferrer had played a leading part in fomenting the July revolt, and de Richleau gave evidence about the anarchist's past activities,

He was condemned to death and an order given that the sentence was to be carried out at dawn the following morning.

As the Duke and Quiroga walked away from the Courtroom, the General said, 'You know, that Engineer Officer who acted as Prisoner's Friend did a better job for him than, from all accounts, young Navarez did for you this morning. Even now we haven't succeeded in fastening on him any act of violence carried out by himself. And those woolly-minded Liberals love him. They maintain that he stands for free speech and a broader form of education. There is going to be hell to pay when they hear that we've shot him. Radical bodies all over Europe are going to raise a tremendous outcry. I wouldn't be in the Prime Minister's shoes after Ferrer's execution has been announced for any decoration His Majesty could give me.' 1

De Richleau shrugged. T don't give a damn what they say about my part in the matter. I know him for the cold-blooded viper that he is. By having him shot we are preventing him from plotting further outrages that would mean the death of hundreds more innocent people. That has been the real issue, and it is the duty of men like us to protect people who cannot protect themselves.'

That night the Senora Quiroga gave a small dinner party for relations and a few intimate friends, at which the engagement of Mercedes to Captain Juan Escalante was unofficially announced. Afterwards the handsome Captain and Mercedes overwhelmed the Duke with their thanks at having played the part of Fairy Godmother to them, and asked him to be Godfather to their first child. To which Mercedes added that she meant to make him, too, a pair of embroidered bedroom slippers for the New Year.

Delighted at having brought happiness to the young couple and with blissful thoughts of the happiness he would himself soon find again in Gulia's arms, he went up to bed.

He had arranged to be called early in the morning and a little before six o'clock he walked through the fortress to the small courtyard where executions were carried out. Soon afterwards, in the grey light of dawn, Ferrer was brought up from the dungeons, blindfolded, and put against the wall. An officer gave the order,

1Historical Note. Ferrer was shot on September 12th, 1909. Vigorous protests at his execution appeared in Liberal newspapers all over the world. So great were the demonstrations in Madrid against the Government that Senor Maura, the Conservative Prime Minister, was forced to resign. The Liberal leader Senor Moret stepped into his shoes on October 22nd. Nevertheless there can be no doubt whatever that Francisco Ferrer was morally responsible for the deaths and wounding of many hundreds of people. D.W, a volley shattered the silence, and the anarchist fell riddled with bullets.

Having personally satisfied himself that no fresh piece of treachery by fanatical Catalans or anarchist sympathizers had enabled his enemy to escape, and that his poor Angela's untimely death had been avenged, de Richleau walked back to the General's house and made a hearty early breakfast. A few hours later he took leave of the Quirogas and left Barcelona on a morning train.

On the evening of the 14th he arrived back in San Sebastian. It was too late to send a message to Gulia letting her know of his return; but soon after midnight he went to the livery stable and collected the horse, which he had left instructions should be kept at his disposal. In the orchard behind the villa he hobbled it as in the past, then he got out the ladder from the gardener's shed and climbed up to Gulia's window.