Part 70

Sometimes virtue brings its own reward, and mine came when I learned that our new companion had met an automobile going at a great pace towards Jerez. It had gone so fast that, in the dust, he was not sure of the colour or number of persons inside, but he thought that he had seen several ladies.

If he could he would have compelled us to stop in Jerez and give evidence of the attack by brigands; but laughingly we told him that, rather than be delayed again, we would spill him out by the roadside and vanish into space before he could set the telegraph to work. As for the brigands, the leader with three others had escaped, and the faces of those captured were not known to the guard. But the fact that they had been seven was significant in his opinion; and he believed that they would prove to be men of Ecija, forming a band officially supposed to be defunct.

Should we give a hint of our suspicions, we knew well that every effort would be made to detain us at Jerez, and such a catastrophe I would have avoided at almost any price, unless there had been a hope of handicapping Carmona. But that there was no such hope I was as sure as that the abortive plan had been organized by him.

How he had communicated so quickly with his friends the Seven, I did not pretend to say, unless he had known where to find their leader, and visited him this morning in his car. Whatever he had done, however, he would not have been fool enough to jeopardize his reputation for the sake of laying me by the heels. The fact that he had claimed the aid of bandits proved that he wished to dispose of me without implicating himself, though why he had not adopted the far simpler plan of denouncing me as Casa Triana to the police, I could not conceive. Still, there was ingenuity in this idea. If a young man—or two young men—were captured in a lonely place known to be infected with brigands; if such young men were held for ransom, and kept out of the way for weeks or months, what was all that to a Duke of Carmona?

What if, when one of those young men appeared in the world again (minus an ear or a finger, perhaps), he told a fairy story about the enmity of the Duke, and reminded the public of an old nurse’s tale concerning a bond between the house of Carmona and the leader of the seven famous brigands? Who would believe him? Who would not think it a silly and spiteful attempt on the part of an embittered man to injure a grandee of Spain?

Carmona would not have taken the whole Seven into his confidence, that was certain. He would have appealed to the leader alone. That leader had escaped; and even if he were captured he would not betray the Duke. Why should he, since it would not help himself; whereas, if he were loyal, Carmona would secretly use influence to lighten his lot?

Dick and I discussed these matters in English, under the nose of the civil guard, as I drove on to Jerez; and shrewd Yankee as he was, for once he accepted the Spanish point of view. If we were to “get even with Carmona and pay him out for this,” it must be in some less clumsy way, Dick agreed.

XXXIV

THE RACE

It was lucky for us that the guard had met an automobile between the brigands’ barricade and Jerez, otherwise we should have been at sea. The road-mender near Utrera had seen but one car, and that might have been the King’s; but now we had something to hope for still; and Dick and I resolved to get out of Jerez as soon as possible, provided we could learn that the car we followed had gone on. If we lingered, the civil guard might, after all, think it his duty to have us detained, and we did not wish to give him time to change his mind.

“It’s a pity, though,” said Dick, with a thirsty sigh. “I’ve always had a sneaking fancy that if I ever came to Spain I’d stop at Jerez—‘the place where the sherry comes from’—and potter about in huge, cool bodegas, sampling golden wine from giant casks with queer names on them. Only think what it would feel like to-day to have a stream of mellow ‘Methusalem’ trickling over our dusty lips and down our dry throats? Great Scott! I daren’t dwell on it, since it can’t be. But it’s a grand chance missed.”

Almost as he spoke we flashed into a neat white town, with green glimpses of patios; and groaning, Dick shut his eyes upon a great bodega where the famous names of Gonzalez and Byass loomed black on white.

We dumped our civil guard at the entrance to a side street which was, we hinted, rather narrow for automobiles, and, not waiting for his grateful adieux, we darted on, asking a bootblack the way to the best hotel. At the “Sign of the Swan” we paused just long enough to give the Gloria water, and to find out that a motor-car had stopped for a few moments about two hours ago. There were ladies inside, but they had not got out. A gentleman, covered with dust, had ordered sherry and biscuits, which he and the chauffeur had themselves carried to the other passengers, appearing rather impatient with the waiters. This gentleman had spoken Spanish in the hotel, but had been heard conversing in English with his friends. They had remained about fifteen minutes, and had then gone on. A waiter remembered seeing the chauffeur and his master consulting a road-map, and had heard the word “Cadiz” spoken.

This gave us an apparently unbroken clue, and half expecting to be caught in a police-trap, we slipped stealthily out of Jerez, with a spurt of speed as streets were left behind.

Still we were watched by purple-robed, guardian mountains, sitting in conclave. A running fire of poppies swept the fields between which we travelled, while distant meadows were paved with gold, or with forget-me-not blue like squares of the sky’s mosaic fallen out. The air grew luminous as the crystal bell which hangs over the lagoons of Venice; and with the subtle change of atmosphere we had in our nostrils the first tang of the sea.

Here and there a strip of lush green was belted with cactus, but we were driving through salt marshes, and round us spread a plain piled with strange, shining pyramids of salt, white and bright as hills of diamond dust. Then, suddenly, a broken line of turrets and domes and spires was cut in gleaming pearl against the sky; and it was not the opal clearness of the air alone which took the memory to Venice. Here was the same ebb and flow of salt water in glittering lagoons, the same dark, waving lines of seaweed, the same wide stretch of sapphire beyond the alabaster domes.

For Spain, the road was good, and we glided smoothly through the pretty old town of Puerta de Santa Maria, with its big bodegas and Byronic associations. Across the Guadalquivir, where it tumbles into the Atlantic, dashing through an aromatic forest of umbrella pines we came out at Queen Isabel’s white, Moorish looking Puerto Real. Thence, distant Cadiz on its rock appeared to change position bewilderingly, like a group of fairy castles, as we swept round the rim of that semicircular bay where once the Phœnicians traded in metals of England, and amber of the Baltic; where the ships of the Great Armada lay; and where Essex wrought destruction.

At San Fernando, I was assailed by doubt. What if, after all, the car we sought had not gone to Cadiz, but had here taken the coast road to Algeciras? The great conference was only just over, there; tourists of all nations were flocking to the town, attracted by curiosity; and as the place boasts the most beautiful hotel in Spain, it seemed likely that in flying from Seville the Duke should choose Algeciras instead of Cadiz. But some fishermen, on that rope of sand which binds Cadiz to the mainland, had seen a car pass a few hours before. Yes, only one; and they thought it was grey. It had four or five passengers, and was going to Cadiz.

Thither we spurted, Dick studying a plan of the city as we flew along the straight road embanked above the sand. By the time we arrived in silver Cadiz he was able to say in which direction I must drive to find the chief hotel; and in an open place not far from the crowded port we stopped.

Dick stayed to guard the car from the crowd which quickly collected, while I went to question the landlord.

No travellers with an automobile were stopping with him at present; but one had arrived a couple of hours ago, perhaps, and its passengers had wished to remain overnight. Unfortunately, however, as a big ship had just come in from America every room was taken.

There was no other hotel at which persons of taste could stop in comfort; and after some discussion, the owner of the car had decided to run on to Algeciras by way of Tarifa. The party, consisting of three ladies, one gentleman, and the chauffeur, had taken a hasty meal, and had got away about an hour and a half before our arrival.

“Those beastly bandidos!” I exclaimed to Dick in a rage of disappointment. “If it hadn’t been for them we should have been on the heels of the grey car, and caught it up here at the hotel. I should have been able to snatch Monica away from under their noses—for I know she wouldn’t have failed me.”

“Those beastly bandidos introduced you to the King,—don’t forget that,” said Dick consolingly. “And the day may come before long when you’ll be glad of that introduction. You can never tell, in a life like yours. And once Carmona’s at Algeciras, why, you’ve got him in a kind of cul-de-sac from which he can’t escape, any more than a mouse can jump out of a basin half full of water. If he takes rooms at the Reina Cristina, you’ll come plump upon him. If he tries to return by road, he’ll run into your arms; and one or the other must happen unless he puts his auto on a train or steamer, neither of which is likely.”

Somewhat comforted, I proposed to follow at once, but Dick wistfully reminded me that the afternoon was wearing on, and he was wearing with it. Soon he would be worn out, unless I gave him something to eat. It seemed years since that cup of coffee and roll of the early morning.

If we needed nourishment, the car needed water. Both needs were supplied somewhat grudgingly by me, though the physical part of me did appreciate the coolness of the restaurant, and the strange dishes for which Cadiz is famous; the mushroom-flavoured cuttle-fish, the golden dorado in sherry.

Then off we started again, to take a road which the landlord warned us was none too good. People who travelled by carriage or diligence had evil things to say of the fourteen to eighteen hours of journey, though the scenery was fine. This did not sound enlivening; but what good horses could do in fourteen hours, the Gloria could do in three or four.

Through ramifications of narrow streets I steered the car out of Cadiz. In all directions they branched off from one another, interlacing, overlapping with the intricacy of a puzzle. The houses were high, too, and there was not a window with glittering balcony of glass and iron, where dark-eyed women did not lean between heaven and earth, to smile down upon our humming motor. It was all very quaint and gay, in spite of ancient, tragic memories; and though few cities of Spain are older than Cadiz—which claims Hercules for founder—the white houses looked as clean as if they had been built yesterday or some mediæval model.