Chapter 26

When the second night closed in, I made up my mind that he had decided upon my death. Perhaps, if I had been docile, when the time fixed by his employer had expired, he might have chosen to set me free, trusting that I believed his story. But seeing that I did not believe it, that I would spare no effort, no trick, which might enable me to escape while my presence in the outside world was still highly undesirable, the man had probably crushed all humane feeling for his prisoner. Since no one had sought me, living, in his house, it was unlikely that I should be sought for there when dead.

I was at the window, as I told myself these things, looking out into the _patio_, where the palms, and the shell which was the upper basin of the fountain, were faintly definable in starlight. Robbed of my watch, the only way I had of calculating time after nightfall was by the silence which came about an hour after sunset. Then the gurgling voice of hidden water (which sang underground in this secluded _patio_ as everywhere in the Albaicín, and on the Alhambra hill) abruptly ceased, after a distant ringing which I took to be that of the bell in the Torre de la Vela, regulating the irrigation of all the country round. At this same moment the diamond plumes of the fountain invariably fell, and disappeared, not to wave again until the morning sun was up.

I was always sorry when the fountain died, for it was the sole companion of my captivity, my one dim pleasure watching its nymph-like play. And to-night the dead silence of the _patio_ seemed the lull before my own death.

It must have been, I thought, somewhere about ten o’clock when I heard a new sound in the court, slight, elusive, but distinct. Chink—chink—like metal on stone, as if a troll were mining underground. The old man was taking time by the forelock, I said grimly to myself, getting ready a place in some cellar to lay me away when I should be finished. I should last some days yet; but it took time to do these things well. At the hotel they had told me how a year or two ago, in destroying an old house in the Albaicín to build a new one on the sight, workmen had come across the skeletons of two French grenadiers neatly sealed up in a wall of stone, where they had kept guard since the time of the Peninsular War. Probably a night or two had been needed for the making of their niche.

Chink—chink! Yes, the old wretch must be at work in a cellar. The noise certainly came from underground; and it was not as agreeable to my ears as the tinkle of the vanished fountain. I wished the hour would come for the water to leap up and drown that other stealthy sound.

Suddenly, as I turned a wistful gaze on the alabaster shell dimly glimmering among the low palms, to my astonishment it seemed to totter. I thought that it must be a mere illusion of weary eyes, or that the effect was created by a cloud obscuring the starlight. But again the white shell moved against the dark green background, this time swaying from side to side.

Could there be an earthquake, so slight that I did not feel the shock? Even as I asked myself the question, the shell of the fountain was loosened from its support, and fell into the main basin, now almost empty. The water-lilies and their green pads which floated sparsely there muffled the sound of the crash, but there was a noise of breaking. The slabs of coloured mosaic which paved the lower basin upheaved, as if the earth beneath were bursting, and scattered from side to side, falling over the crushed lines. Then through a ragged black aperture rose the head and shoulders of a man.

The metallic sound had stopped; but from somewhere in the house there came the slamming of a door.

The head and shoulders, motionless now, were sharply defined against the scattered heap of white fragments, like the bust of a man modelled in black marble. Someone whistled softly, and the tune was, “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

“Dick!” I called through the close wooden lattice.

“Hurrah!” he answered; and the black marble bust became a full length statue of a man.

How he had found me, how he had come, I did not know; but there he was, and the gate of life had not closed upon me after all. Dick was out of the jagged hole in the basin, and half across the _patio_, when a door, which I had always seen shut, burst open to let out a stream of light, and the figure of the old man I knew so well, leaped on him.

I was weak, and for a moment I turned sick, the _patio_ with its broken fountain, and the forms of the men in a halo of yellow light, whirling before my eyes as if there were indeed an earthquake. Then the mist cleared, and like a rat in a cage I watched the fight which meant life or death for more than one of us.

There was no _capucha_ now to cover the grey-streaked head and venerable beard. Once I caught a glimpse of a profile sharp as a hawk’s. The old man had come out of the house with a Toledo sword-stick, such as the King and his friend had used with the brigands, and as he saw the enemy he had to deal with, he had thrown away the bamboo stick. The long, thin blade glittered in the same light that showed me Dick, armed with an iron crowbar, formidable and threatening.

If it had been a scene in a play, and I in the audience, I should have applauded, for there was something in me which cried out that it was a fine picture. But Dick’s life and mine were in the balance.

XXXIX

DAY AFTER TO-MORROW

The pair stood eyeing each other like two fencers, Dick with the crowbar raised, and pointing at his heart the blade which would pierce it when the Spaniard dared advance an inch.

I longed to shout “Fling the crowbar at his head!” But if Dick’s eye released the eye of his opponent he was a dead man, I must not risk distracting him for the fraction of a second.

It seemed an hour, though it could not have been a minute when, as if my thought had winged to his brain, the thick iron bar whirled through the air, and struck the old man full upon the forehead. The Toledo blade dropped from his hand, and he fell back without a cry, his head inside the open door.

“Is he dead?” I called.

Dick bent over the limp body; but, after a long moment, he was up again, waving a big, old-fashioned key.

“No,” he answered. “Heart beating. Bad penny. He’ll be all right. This the key of spider’s parlour?”

“I think so,” I said. “Dick, you’re just in time to keep me from giving in. I’m starved.”

He stooped and picked up the crowbar.

“Old brute! I’ve a mind to finish him!” he exclaimed.

“You don’t mean that,” I said. “But look for something to tie him up with. He may come to himself before we’re off.”

“I guess I’ll just tote him along with me,” said Dick. “Safe bind, safe find.”

Gathering up the long body as if it had been the form of a sleeping child, Dick disappeared into the house. I knew that he was looking for the door of my cage, and presently—for the first time with pleasure—I heard the slipping back of the bolt and turning of the key.

Already I was at the door, opening it for Dick to come in with his heavy burden.

“Here’s the bed,” I said, and Dick laid his burden down, not too gently. Then I think the next thing we did was to shake hands.

“Blessed old man!” exclaimed Dick, a little unsteadily. “What a beastly business.”

“It’s a mystery,” I said. “And how you got to me—”

“Conduit,” said Dick, “But I’ll tell you all about that, and everything. Got no electric light here?”

“Nothing but starlight. For Heaven’s sake, tell me about Monica!”

“She’s all right,” said Dick. “Not a Duchess yet, if that’s what worries you. Look here, if this place has been good enough to box you up in all this time, it’s good enough to keep _him_ in—” (He nodded towards the alcove.) “He lives alone here, without servants; I’ve found out all that, with a lot more; and his master—guess you know who—is in Madrid; so when this chap comes to himself he can try how he likes your quarters. They seem rather nice ones, judging from what I can see; but Carmona always does himself well.”

“Is this Carmona’s house?” I asked.

“You bet it is. Little private sort of place he keeps ready when he wants to amuse himself in some way which his mother and Monica and other people mightn’t approve of in Dukes. This old Johnny’s a combination of caretaker and physician in ordinary to his grace. But let’s get out of this. I can’t give you a marble bath or Moorish decorations at my hotel, but I shouldn’t wonder if you’d prefer the accommodation; and after that conduit business I need a ‘wash and brush up’ as much as you do. Why, old man, what’s the matter? Not going to crack up, are you?”

“I’m all right,” I said; “but I haven’t had anything to eat since the day after I saw you off, except milk, and none of that for the last two days.”

“Great Scott! you’re joking. We parted five weeks ago!”

The words gave me a shock in spite of the stubble on my chin and the whiteness of my hands. Dick had his wet arm round my shoulders, and we were at the door, which he was about to lock, and I startled him by caving in a little at the knees.

“See here,” he said, hanging on to my arm as if he were afraid I should vanish in thin air, “we won’t wait to dine at my hotel. We’ll nose round a bit in this old Johnny’s larder. You must be bucked up before you go out into the street. Oh, it’s safe enough. The old brute’s a hermit—for his own reasons or Carmona’s. Nobody comes near the house, and we can take our own time. While you’re eating you shall hear everything I’ve got to tell.”

He locked and bolted the door, and helped me down the stairs, up which I must have been carried unconscious; perhaps by the gypsy, assisted by the master of the house.

Below stairs the place was dark save for the light which had streamed out into the _patio_ with the opening door. It came from a good-sized room evidently intended for a kitchen, but also used by the solitary tenant as a dining-room. It had a window opening on the court; this, however, was not only covered with heavy shutters, but protected by a curtain as well, and ventilation came through an adjoining room from a window that looked on another small court.

Evidently my gaoler had been interrupted in the midst of his supper, and hearing a noise in the _patio_ had stopped only long enough to snatch up a sword-stick. On the table was a simple meal of cold meat, salad, goats’-milk cheese, and fresh fruit; but to my starved eyes it seemed a feast. There was also a bottle half-full of red Spanish wine; and I did not wait for Dick’s suggestion to sit down. I must get back my strength if I were to be of any use to Monica or myself, and I hardly listened to Dick’s warning that a starved man must not satisfy his first hunger.

“Eat slowly, and not too much,” he said, with anxious eyes on my face, which must have been frightful, though he was too tactful to make comments. As I obeyed, he told me his story, briefly and disjointedly, as the points came back to him.

“Didn’t hear from you,” he said, “and began wondering what was up. Wired twice; no answer; was a bit taken up with my own affairs just then, I’m afraid. Yes, I mean Pilar. After five days, wired the landlord. He answered you’d left with a friend. I thought that queer, and set out for Granada by next train, Ropes with me. At the Washington Irving I found both my telegrams to you and a letter. Landlord said he got a note from you, dated Motril, telling him you’d met a friend and gone off unexpectedly in his automobile. You enclosed more than enough money to pay bill and tips, and asked him to have your luggage packed and kept till your return, which might be in a few days or not for some time. Naturally, he hadn’t worried; and as he’d destroyed the letter, I couldn’t tell if it was your handwriting.

“Well, I thought you _might_ have rushed off suddenly on account of some lark of Carmona’s; but I soon found out he was still in Granada, slowly getting better; and the guests hadn’t gone. By the way, I called, but nobody in the house was seeing visitors. Ropes discovered that your car was in a stable down in the town, where you’d left it, without saying for how long. He and I were getting scared, and I went to the police, but didn’t dare give your real name without your permission, especially as the authorities had a kind of prejudice against it. Fired off my best Spanish, though, and insinuated that Carmona wasn’t very fond of you; but when I began hinting that it might be convenient for his plans that you should disappear, they wouldn’t take me seriously, were polite, and all that, promised to look you up, as if you were a stray kitten, but intimated that most people who vanished had private reasons for doing so.

“After that, I didn’t expect them to find out anything, and they did their best not to disappoint me. I saw that if anybody was going to do the Sherlock Holmes’ act, it must be Ropes and me. We sat tight at the Washington Irving, and looked around; but at the end of a fortnight no one was any wiser than at the beginning. Then what should happen but the dear old Colonel and Pilar popped down to see if they could help. Oh, and I forgot to tell you that meanwhile the people at Carmona’s palace had cleared out. They’d gone back to Seville again by train; and what should happen but the Colonel and Pilar met Carmona face to face in the station.”

“Not Monica?” I broke in.

“No. I suppose the others had got into a carriage; he was lingering behind to give a valet directions about luggage. And then there was a scene. Pilar told me all about it. Carmona bowed; and before the Cherub could pull the little girl away, as he tried, seeing danger in her eye, she gave the Duke a piece of her mind. Said he was a villain, or some kind words of that sort. He retorted by saying to her father that he could make a lot of trouble for Cristóbal if they didn’t take care. Pilar said they could accuse him of worse things than he could them; and somehow or other, in an evil moment, the subject of Corcito, a grey bull Carmona was once nasty about, came up. Then, before she knew what she was doing, Pilar flashed out the name of Vivillo, the beast she wanted to buy, you know. And from that minute the fat was in the fire as far as she was concerned. But about that later. What with you and the bull, she was in a dreadful state of mind when she got here, poor child. However, she put on her thinking cap, and said she, ‘Try the gypsies. See if they don’t know something.’

“That was enough for me. I took a sudden fancy to Captain Pepe, the chief of the gypsies, and went every night to see a dance in his cave. But I soon saw he was straight; and they weren’t a bad lot of people in the colony. The nasty ones he kicked out, and they had to hustle for themselves. Captain Pepe told me about one fellow, Juan Castello, who’d got himself disliked, though he was a nailer with the guitar; and when he said the chap had a sister who had a fine position in the house of a titled person, because she was the best seamstress in the country, I pricked up my ears. You can bet, after I’d heard the titled person was Carmona, I turned my attention to Mr. Castello, dropped in on him one day, named a big price, and asked him to give me lessons on the guitar. He didn’t mind if he did, and we got quite friendly. I spent several evenings in his cave, where one night I heard a dog howling, as if it was mighty sick, behind a red curtain.”

“That red curtain!” I exclaimed. “I shouldn’t be where I am now, or have a scar on the back of my head, if I’d looked behind it.”

“By Jove! Well, I got some idea of that sort. Castello said the dog belonged to a gentleman in Granada, who lived all alone in the Albaicín, and kept this beast as a watch-dog; but he was afraid it was going mad, and told Castello to shoot it. However, it was a valuable animal, and Castello was undertaking to cure it for his own benefit. Already it was better, and the owner talked of buying it back if it recovered. The old gentleman was coming up to see the dog that very evening, perhaps, Castello said; and being evidently proud of a respectable acquaintance, he went on talking about him, I encouraging him all I could, because any friend of his might prove interesting to me.

“The minute I heard the chap was a kind of herb doctor, and sometimes treated grand people, I nearly jumped off my seat; for you know why Carmona was supposed to come to Granada?”

I nodded.

“Well, Castello was in with this doctor in a way, for he was engaged by him to fetch herbs and flowers from the mountains—like the Manzanilla, for instance, which only begins to grow at an elevation of twelve thousand feet. Castello believed that the old fellow could make poisons too, as well as antidotes; and said I to myself, ’Maybe that little dagger in the cathedral was specially prepared, eh?’ Which would account for Carmona hurrying off to Granada after it had found the wrong billet.

“Anyhow, I said I’d like to see the dog, so I was taken behind the red curtain into Mr. Castello’s bedroom, and on a shelf lay a revolver which might have been twin to the one you bought in Madrid.”

“It was still more nearly related,” said I.

“Well, I thought so, but wasn’t sure enough to call on the police. I went away when I’d said nice things about the sick dog; but I didn’t go far. I hung around till Castello’s visitor had been and gone, and then followed him to the door of this house. Such a mild, intelligent looking, well-dressed old gentleman, the herb doctor was; but I guess I needn’t describe him to you!

“Next day I bought some things at a baker’s not far from here, and buttered up the shopkeeper, saying his store was too good for the neighbourhood. Of course he told me he had rich customers, and it was jolly lucky I’d been fagging up Spanish for Pilar’s sake, or I should have missed a lot, right there. I soon got him on the subject of the herb doctor, his best client, who, though supposed to be well-off, and living in a good house, did all his shopping himself and kept no servants. Nobody knew much about him, except what he said of himself; that he could set bones, and was able to make as much money as he liked, selling his herb medicines to great personages. Who were the great personages? The baker couldn’t tell; but the doctor had lived in his present house for years, after taking it when in a bad state of repair, and having it done up inside by workmen he brought from Madrid. From that day on, no one the baker knew had ever been invited in, though he’d heard stories of veiled ladies, and sounds of music at night.

“At that, the thought jumped into my mind that maybe the house was Carmona’s, a little secret plaything of his. And I remembered reading about a famous old palace in the Albaicín with an underground way to the Alhambra. Why shouldn’t there be such a way from Carmona’s palace to the doctor’s house? And what a convenient place it would be to keep a troublesome person.”

“Or to kill one,” I amended.

“I thought of that; but I hoped. People don’t commit murder when their blood is cool if they can get what they want cheaper. I went again to the police, said I believed that my friend was detained against his will in the house of Doctor Molina. But when they wanted my reasons I couldn’t give any to convince them. They thought I was mad, and refused to search. I was afraid they’d warn the old chap to look out for a crazy American, so I hurried up and took matters into my own hands.

“I wasn’t sure enough of anything to jump on the man outside his own door and do the burglar act openly, lest the police should jump on _me_, and I should be laid by before I’d found you. But about that time I began to have water on the brain; or rather, I got possessed with the idea of sneaking into houses by means of conduits; and no wonder, when the whole Albaicín is honeycombed with watercourses, gluddering and gurgling from morning till night.

“In the next street to this, there’s a Moorish house of much the same sort, being torn down. They were selling old tiles to curiosity dealers one day, so I strolled into the _patio_. The pavement was up, and I saw how the conduit ran underneath and supplied the fountain. That was instructive. Opposite this place of Molina’s is a mill. I found out how the miller got his water, and that after it turned his wheel, it poured in this direction, being turned off every night about nine. At the miller’s the conduit is open, only guarded by a rail; and I developed a taste for making sketches and taking photographs—tourist in search of the picturesque; miller got used to seeing me about, while I made myself familiar with the landscape. Then I bought a crowbar and a little electric lamp. The bar I hid under my coat; and when I was ready to shed the garment, Ropes put it on. I guess it was a looser fit for him than that conduit was for me, and there were twelve feet of conduit; good long strait-jacket, but I’ve been in it a lot of times now, and feel quite at home. You see, the job couldn’t be done in one go, for I had to make the hole under the fountain bigger, and I’ve been tinkering away for nearly a week, o’ nights when the water was stopped. And if I’d come up at last, like a demon in a pantomime, to find I’d had my trouble for my pains, I can’t say what I should have turned my wits to next.”

“Does Pilar know?” I asked.

“She and the Colonel went off in a hurry to Madrid just before I took the job on. They thought they could influence the police at headquarters, which was their principal reason for going; though they had one or two others besides. But see here, you’ve got the story pat now, and you’re looking a thousand per cent. more healthy than when you sat down at this table ten minutes ago. Poor old Ropes, who always hangs about keeping guard, will be mighty glad to see you; but before we open the door and walk out as if we owned the house, let’s have a look round. There may be something which will give me a chance to say ‘I told you so!’ to the police.”

Refreshed with wine, and such scanty rations as Dick had allowed, I walked steadily enough into the adjoining room, while Dick carried a lamp. There were no such gorgeous decorations here, as in the suite I had reluctantly occupied. A modern bed stood in one corner. There were shelves on the wall, fitted with glass doors which protected jars and bottles. On a large table lay an outfit for chemical experiments, and on another some yellow flowers half buried in green leaves. In the window was a modern desk, and Dick at once began to rummage among the few papers in the pigeon-holes. There was nothing, however, which seemed to bear upon our affairs, with the exception of a telegraph form, which I seized upon. It was dated June first, and had been sent from a Madrid office. There was no signature, but there was a hint of something secret in the three words it contained. “Day after to-morrow.”

Dick and I stared at the paper, as if we expected the meaning of the message to spring up to our eyes.

“My name’s not Richard D. Waring if Carmona’s signature oughtn’t to be tacked on to that,” he said. “Now, we’ve something to go upon, for a beginning. This telegram will be traced to the sender before I’m many hours older; we can trust our dear old Cherub for that.”

“Day after to-morrow,” I repeated. “What’s going to happen day after to-morrow, that Carmona should have wired to this man?”

“I should say it was his way of letting Molina know that the cage door could open.”

“But why day after to-morrow? He—” I broke off suddenly, and it seemed that my heart would stop beating. “Dick,” I began again, in a queer voice that did not sound like my own, “is Monica—” I could not finish the sentence. But Dick understood.