Part 33

One day the guerrilla camp in the mountains was thrown into some excitement by the sudden reappearance of Pepito. All the guerrilleros by this time knew something of the strange complications in which the English senor was involved. They had been constantly on the look-out for the gipsy boy whom he was so anxious to see; and when, on this sunny morning, the boy was seen bounding up the hillside, they flocked to him in a crowd, crying "Que hay de nuevo? Que hay de nuevo?" Pepito made them no answer. He had already caught sight of his master sitting some yards above him, and rushed forward with a piercing cry of delight.

"Found, Senor!" he shouted. "Found!"

Jack needed no telling who was found.

"Where is she?" he asked.

"Glad Senor is well, glad Senor is well!" shouted the little fellow. "The Senorita will be glad too. Oh, she will! When I told the Senorita--"

"Where is she?" repeated Jack impatiently.

"When I told the Senorita that Senor was ill, she jumped up; said she must come; but the old Busna looked ugly; said no; and I come to fetch Senor."

"Pepito, tell me at once where she is."

"Safe, at a convent near Carinena, Senor, all among the trees and flowers. Senor can go, now he is well, and I know who will be pleased. Yes, I know!"

"You're a good boy, Pepito." He turned to Dugdale. "Grampus, when shall I be fit to ride?"

"Good heavens! Not for a long time. Look here, Lumsden, I'm not going to have my cure spoilt and my career ruined by you going raiding before you're fit. Don't laugh. I'm in dead earnest. I'm sick and tired of playing the fool at Oxford. As soon as I get home I'm going to be a doctor. New idea, you know; fresh air and cold water. The pater will laugh himself into a fit when I tell him; but don't you see, if you back me up, and I can show you as my first case--why, bet you the old boy comes round and doubles my allowance, to encourage me. See?"

"All right!" said Jack, laughing. "But you must finish my cure quickly, for the instant I can manage it I'm going to ride over to Carinena."

"What for? What is there special about Carinena?"

"Well, I've a--a friend there I want specially to see."

"H'm! A friend? Bet you my first year's fees it's a girl. Now look here, Lumsden, don't be a fool. An Englishman oughtn't to marry till he's thirty at least. I've got ten years yet, and it won't be too much. It takes time to be able to face a girl without flinching, and for my part I'd rather learn Greek verbs than--"

"Oh, shut up!" exclaimed Jack. "Who said anything about marrying? Juanita--"

"Oho! Juanita! Sorry for you, my boy; no cure for that complaint. Well, I'll take care of you, but it'll be a long time yet before you can ride."

Nearly a month passed away before Jack, after a few experiments, was pronounced fit to undertake the ride to Carinena. The period of waiting was diversified by one or two expeditions against French convoys, in which Antonio achieved brilliant successes. Jack chafed at being obliged to remain inactive, and to share in these raids merely in imagination. He spent hour after hour in attempting to decipher the postscript of Don Fernan's letter, always without success. Remembering the enigmatical phrase in the letter he himself had received in Salamanca, "Palafox the Man, Palafox the Name", he believed that the key must be contained in that; but though he tried to fit it to the ciphered message, and made considerable demands on Dugdale's patience, he drew no nearer to solving the puzzle, and finally gave it up in disgust.

At length the day arrived when, feeling well and strong, he set off on his ride to the convent. Pepito had several times conveyed verbal messages between him and Juanita, but nothing had been committed to paper for fear lest it should fall into the hands of the French. Guided by the boy, who rode before him, he reached the convent in the afternoon of a beautiful April day, and was at once admitted to the presence of Juanita, with whom he found the old duenna he had seen in Saragossa.

Though Juanita greeted him with as much cordiality as ever, he was conscious of a slight difference in her manner; there was not quite the same frank comradeship she had shown in Saragossa.

"I am very glad to see you looking so well, Jack," she said. "Will you take a cup of chocolate?"

"Thanks!" replied Jack briefly. He sipped it for a brief interval without speaking, then said suddenly: "I say, Juanita, I am mighty glad you escaped, you know. It was good of Padre Consolacion to help you--after trying to persuade you to marry Miguel, too. Tell me about it."

Without her usual animation Juanita recounted how she had been captured as she neared Morata by a party of troopers, among whom she had recognized Perez, Miguel's one-eyed man. She had been treated kindly enough by the wife of a colonel of chasseurs, who, however, irritated her beyond endurance by constant reference to her approaching marriage. Miguel himself had only seen her once. He had asked what had become of her father's old servant Jose, and shown some annoyance when she refused to answer. But she had had another and a more frequent visitor. After the capitulation, Padre Consolacion had been surprised to find that, though he had been as consistent an opponent as Don Basilio and Santiago Sass, he had not met with the same fate at the hands of the French. He could only conclude that he owed his security to the good offices of Miguel, whom, however, he now held in utter abhorrence. Making his escape from the city, he had gone into hiding at Morata, where he soon learnt of what had befallen Juanita. It was not difficult for him, with the assistance of the people of the house, to obtain secret interviews with her. On the day before Miguel went with Commissary Taberne on the foraging expedition, Juanita learnt from the colonel's wife that pressure was to be brought to bear in high quarters for the purpose of bringing about her marriage with Don Miguel. She sent a message by a secret channel to Padre Consolacion, informing him of this alarming news. On the next evening, almost at the moment when Jack was surprising the commissary, she had slipped out of the house in the dress of one of the Spanish maid-servants, fled to where the priest was awaiting her, and by him was escorted to the convent, where she was joined in a few days by the duenna, after the sudden swoop of Antonio had cleared the place of French.

"The padre is a trump," said Jack. "I confess I didn't like him in Saragossa; but then, of course, he hadn't found Miguel out. I thought he must be either stupid or something worse. I shall do him more justice in future."

He would not perhaps have been so cordial if he had known that it was to Padre Consolacion he owed the strange alteration in Juanita's manner which had puzzled him. When he left her in the convent, the padre's last words had been: "Now, querida mia, though I have helped you to escape a marriage with a traitor and a villain, remember I shall not approve, I shall forbid, your marriage with a heretic. You will understand me."

All unconscious of this, Jack waxed eloquent in praise of the padre, and went on: "Well now, I've something to tell you besides what you have heard from Pepito. You remember that a letter left with General Palafox for my father disappeared--a letter about your property?"

"Yes. I hate the sound of the word 'property'."

"I have the letter. It was--perhaps you guess--in the possession of Miguel."

He proceeded to tell the whole story. Juanita listened with growing interest, and when it was concluded every trace of her stiffness had passed away.

"Ah, Jack!" she cried, "now we can get this wretched treasure that has nearly cost your life--for but for it you would never have come to Saragossa--and then--oh! do you think we can get away to England?"

"I'm very sorry, Juanita. I was just going to tell you that I'm afraid we can't get the treasure."

"Why not? You said the letter was about it."

"So it is. But, unfortunately, the secret of its whereabouts is locked up in a postscript--a single line of capital letters, which I can't read. It is in cipher."

"Show it to me. You have it with you?"

Jack took out the paper, and unfolded it before her. She read over the postscript letter by letter:

S E O S F L S A E O A P E J E J P J J F J P J X P A P P F

"Certainly a most curious-looking sentence," said Juanita. "And have you no clue at all?"

"None whatever. I thought I had. I made sure I had, but when I tried to work it out in the cipher it proved useless."

"What was it?"

"Well, I had never told anyone. Your father said I was to burn the letter as soon as I received it, and I did so; but now that things have altogether changed, there can be no harm in telling you all about it. In the letter I received at Salamanca, Don Fernan said that I was to remember the phrase, 'Palafox the Man, Palafox the Name'. It occurred to me, of course, that the clue to the cipher might be found in that phrase; but, try it as I might, I couldn't make anything of it. You see, the cipher message contains all the letters of the word Palafox, but there are a number of J's and other letters that have nothing to do with it."

"And you gave it up!" exclaimed Juanita, with some scorn. "Just like a boy!"

"Really, Juanita--" began Jack, but she interrupted him.

"Don't talk. Let me see if I've a little more perseverance. I count six P's, three A'S, one L, three F's, two O's, and one X; that accounts for PALAFOX. Why are there so many P's? Besides, there are four E'S, six J's, and three S's. What can EJS stand for? EJS, ESJ, JES, JSE--I see it! Take an O out of PALAFOX and you have JOSE. That is the name of our old servant, and of the Captain-General too. Now, do you see, Senor Don Juan?--the key to the cipher is JOSE PALAFOX."

"What an ass I am!" said Jack. "It never struck me that Palafox's Christian name might be included. But what then? The only ciphering I ever did was in money sums, and weights and measures. How do you work out the thing now?"

"Why, it's clear that my father's message is made up of the words JOSE PALAFOX, which have only nine different letters. It's not likely that the message contains only nine letters; therefore one letter of the cipher probably stands for several, and I shouldn't wonder if all the letters of the alphabet were represented by those nine. Suppose we put down the letters of the alphabet and the other letters underneath, and see what can be made of it then."

"We don't know what language it is in."

"Probably Spanish, like the letter itself. Let us try."

She wrote down the twenty-seven letters of the Spanish alphabet, and under each the corresponding letter of the key words:--

a b c ch d e f g h i j l ll m n n o p q r s t u v x y z J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P

"There you are, Jack. Now look. The first letter of the cipher, s, may stand for either _c_ or _m_ or _x_; we can't tell which of the three until we get a little further."

"It's a pretty puzzle," said Jack. "The next letter is E; that may be either _ch_ or _n_ or _y_, and if we put either of them after _c_, _m_, or _x_, we sha'n't begin to make any Spanish word that I know of."

"No," agreed Juanita, putting her pencil to her lips. "It looks as if the sentence can't be Spanish."

"Don Fernan wrote to me in English. Let us try that. I'll do it this time."

Jack wrote down the letters of the English alphabet, placing the key-words below as before:--

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E

"S is either _c_, _n_, or _y_ this time, and E is either _d_, _o_, or _a_. We can drop _d_ and _e_, because they can't follow any of the first three; that leaves _co_, _no_, and _yo_. This is getting interesting, Juanita."

"Yes, I am getting quite excited. Now for the next letter, O. That can stand for _b_, _j_, _m_, _u_, _x_. I'll write down all the combinations, and see how they look."

They were fifteen, as follows:--

cob nob yob coj noj yoj com nom yom cou nou you cox nox yox

"Some of these are too comical for anything," said Jack; "but we've one complete word, _you_. Let us see what the next comes to. S again; that's _c_, _n_, or _y_. Then F; that's _i_ or _t_. No English word begins with _ct_, _nt_, or _yt_, so _t_ goes out. Now for L; that's _g_ or _r_; and the combinations now are:--

cig nig yig cir nir yir

I say, your father wouldn't begin by addressing me as 'you nigger', would he? The next letter is S; _c_, _n_, or _y_ again. Not a single one of them helps to make a word. We are on the wrong track, Juanita."

"Perhaps the first word is not _you_ at all."

"Well, let's go back and see how many of the fifteen combinations of the first three letters will fit on to the fourth. It's quite clear that you can't make a word by putting c or y after any of them; there's only n left, and all we can make is _coun_ and _noun_. Don Fernan wouldn't go in for grammar, would he? If we drop _noun_ we've only coun, and that looks most unlikely."

"Be quick with the next letter, Jack. Why do you talk so much? I could jump with excitement."

"Don't be in a hurry; perhaps the whole thing will come to grief again. The next letter is F; that stands for _i_ or _t_; _i_ won't do, but _t_ will, and we get _count_; that's a word at any rate. I wonder what we're to count. Now for L; that's _g_ or _r_; and S again; that's _c_, _n_, or _y_. And unless I'm a Dutchman, that makes the word _country_."

Juanita clapped her hands and laughed.

"You _are_ getting clever!" she said.

The irony escaped Jack, who was busy working out the next word. In a few minutes he had made out _house_.

"Country house!" exclaimed Juanita. "Oh, you are slow, Jack; do be quick! What about the country house?"

But the same process had to be gone through with every letter, and it was quite half an hour before the whole message was deciphered. The excitement of Juanita and himself increased with every fresh discovery, and when the task was finished, and the simple English words were written down, each gave a gasp of relief. The message consisted of but six words:--

_Country house old well twelve feet_.

"I see it! I see it all!" exclaimed Juanita. "Oh, Jack, we shall get it after all! I don't care for the treasure itself one bit really, not one bit; but I could dance with joy at defeating that wretch Miguel, and I should like to have some money to give to the poor people ruined in Saragossa. You must go, Jack. The well is in the garden behind the house, near the wall. It has not been used for many years; we got water from a new well by the kitchen. Only to think that all is coming right after all!"

"Yes," said Jack; "Pepito and I will go to-morrow. How deep is the well, Juanita?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. Twelve feet means something. You will find out what, Jack. And then--"

"Then, Juanita, for England!"

*CHAPTER XXXIV*

*Dead Men Tell no Tales*

The Old Well--A Voice--Visions--Infimis

"It is locked, Senor."

Pepito had dismounted at the gate of the Casa Alvarez on the hillside.

"Shout, Pepito," replied Jack from the saddle of his mule. "Perhaps the old man will hear us from the house."

The gipsy put his hands to his mouth, and called shrilly. There was no answer, no sound save the hum of bees and the song of birds.

"We must climb the wall, then," said Jack, springing to the ground.

"See, Senor, a face in the bush!" cried Pepito, pointing through the iron railings into the garden.

Looking, Jack saw, framed in the foliage of a dense laurel, the face of the old gardener.

"Adelante, hombre!" he said.

Instantly the face vanished. Jack called again; no voice answered, no footstep was heard. The two riders tied their steeds to trees in the plantation on the right, then scaled the wall and hastened towards the house.

Nearly two months had elapsed since Jack's night adventure. He was struck by the alteration in the place. It had looked untidy, ill-cared-for, then; it was now a wilderness. Flowers and shrubs bloomed in unchecked luxuriance; hollyhocks drooped their heavy heads, sprays of woodbine twined in and out among the laurels, unpruned vines crept over the weedy paths, the sweltering air was sickly with mingled perfumes. The house stood white and brown in the glowing sunlight; lush creepers almost hid the door; the dry wood-work was blistered, the lattices falling away; all was decay, silence, and desolation.

It was high noon of a sultry summer day, yet Jack shivered. He rapped at the door. There was no response save an echo. He walked round the house; every window was shuttered, every door barred. He went on down the garden at the back, following the directions given him by Juanita, and Pepito crept along behind him, his big eyes wide with awe. A vulture flew up in front, and clattered away on creaking wings. He stepped from the path, and pushed his way through tangled shrubs and matted undergrowth towards a broad chestnut in the angle of the wall. Tendrils of convolvulus clung around his feet, the scent of thyme came in gusts with the cloying odour of gardenias. Suddenly the rank vegetation ceased, and before him, in a clear space, he saw the circular covering of the old well.

Frame and winch had been removed. A broken moss-grown bucket lay hard by; near it was a long bar of wood. Around the well was a broad patch of soft black earth. As Jack approached to remove the wooden cover from the well-mouth, Pepito touched him on the arm.

"Marks, Senor!" he said under his breath; "footsteps, and marks of a mule's hoofs; fresh, Senor; made to-day."

Jack started. A green lizard, sunning itself at the edge of the well, disappeared in a flash. He saw the hoof-marks in the soil; his heart sank with a sudden misgiving. The well-cover seemed to have been clumsily replaced.

"Help me lift it," said Jack.

They removed the heavy cover. The well opened black before them. Pepito peered over the edge; he saw nothing; there was neither rope nor ladder.

"How can we get down?" said Jack.

Looking around, he saw what appeared to be the end of a ladder projecting from beneath a bush. He dragged it out; a snake dropped from it and vanished in the grass; it was a ladder some sixteen feet long.

"It will not reach the bottom of the well," said Jack. His eye caught the bar of wood.

"Bring me that, Pepito."

He laid it across the well-mouth; on its mossy side there was a dull splash of red. The bar stretched across the opening. Lifting it again, Jack gave it to Pepito, and, taking the ladder, lowered this into the well till only the topmost rungs were above the brickwork.

"Put the wood through," he said.

Thus the ladder hung dangling on its support, fifteen feet into the well. Pepito looked at his master enquiringly.

"Yes, you are to climb down. Stay!" he added, as the boy prepared to step down on to the swinging ladder.

He took some papers from his pocket, twisted them into a loose mass, and wound about them the end of a long vine tendril. Then he kindled them from his tinder-box, and let the flaming mass down quickly into the well. It burned until it was consumed.

"There is air enough. Go down, Pepito."

He steadied the ladder as the boy descended step by step. Jack counted twelve rungs, then ordered the boy to stop.

"Do you see anything, Pepito?"

A few moments passed. The gipsy's eyes were adjusting themselves to the gloom.

"A hole, Senor, a big hole in the wall."

"Can you get into it?"

"No, Senor, it is on the other side, too far away."

Bidding the boy ascend, Jack shifted the ladder across the bar. Pepito went down again, and soon Jack heard his muffled voice exclaim that he was in the hole.

"Do you find anything there? Search thoroughly."

A minute passed. Jack was crouched at the brink, holding the joists of the ladder firmly with both hands.

"There is nothing, Senor; all emptiness."

"Come up again."

He stepped out on to the brickwork, and Jack rose to his feet.

"Dead! dead! dead!" said a quavering voice behind him.

He turned with a nervous start. While he had been engaged at the well, a figure had been slowly approaching from a thicket of laurel, furtively, with hesitation, stopping for a moment, then taking another unsteady step and stopping again. Jack recognized the old gardener, but how altered! His limbs shook as with a palsy; his lips mumbled without sound; his eyes were wild.

"What is it, hombre?" said Jack quietly without moving.

The old man stood as if listening. Then, raising his shaking right hand, the long fingers working convulsively, he murmured:

"I saw it! ... Dead!"

Then he smiled, a thin wan smile, and tottering forward pointed waveringly to the well. Jack recoiled. The old man's smile was more awful than a sob of agony.

"They came through the gate;" he pointed across the garden to the farther wall. "There were two; I was hidden in the copse; I watched them. I watched them. They brought a mule; it was a fine mule, with gay trappings,--a fine mule..." The old man passed his hand across his brow. "What was I saying? I have forgotten."

"They brought a mule," said Jack.

"Yes, they brought a mule. They led it across the garden, trampling down the poor flowers--my flowers! I saw them! There were two. One was in front--the cursed afrancesado; I knew him; yes, did I not serve him at my master's table? the afrancesado! He was in front; behind him a man, a long thin man, a one-eyed man, with the mule. They crushed the flowers--my flowers ... what was I saying?"

"They came across the garden," said Jack.

"They came across the garden. They came here, here! where we are standing. The man, the one-eyed man, fastened the mule to yonder tree; then they stooped down and lifted the cover. It was heavy...I watched them. They peered down into the well, into the deep well, but they could see nothing. Then the tall man, the man with the one eye, went away; the other, the afrancesado, the cursed afrancesado, waited, and while he waited he cast pebbles into the well ... horrible! horrible!" He covered his eyes with his hand, as if to shut out some dreadful thing. "What was I saying?"

"The tall man came back," said Jack.

"The tall man came back; he brought a ladder; he fetched a beam, that beam, and they let down the ladder into the well, the deep well ... I watched them. 'Twelve steps,' said the afrancesado, the cursed afrancesado, and the tall man, the man with the one eye, went down ... Twelve steps! ... The other, the afrancesado, bent over; there was a noise below; the afrancesado said 'Bien!'--I heard him. Then the man, the long man, the man with the one eye, came up, slowly; there was a box, a heavy box; the other took it, and the man, the one-eyed man, went down, ... twelve steps ... He came up again; there was another box, a small box. I knew it; it was the master's. Then he went down again, ... twelve steps, ... and the other, the afrancesado, the accursed afrancesado, drew his knife, silently; it flashed in the sun; I watched him..." The old man stared fixedly before him. "What was I saying?" he whispered.

"He drew his knife," said Jack.

"He drew his knife," said the old man, still in a whisper. "The other, the long man, the man with one eye, came slowly, slowly, up. He stretched his left hand for the box, he raised the arm with the knife. He was behind him. He leant forward; I saw him--him, and the long man, the man with one eye--he drove it between his shoulders..."

The old man made as if to brush a cobweb from before his eyes.

"Horrible! horrible! ... down! down! down! ... What was I saying?"

*CHAPTER XXXV*

*Doom*

Outcast--Spectres--Conscience--Tracked--Vanity--Scylla-- Charybdis--Jose--Faithful unto Death