Vendetta in Spain

'What shall we do with him?'

'Put an end to him, of course,' Zapatro replied hoarsely. 'He has invited it. Not only is he dangerous to our organization; the swine tried to kill me.'

'You're right,' Sanchez supported him. 'He would have killed me too had not Dolores seized his arm.'

For a moment she stopped her cursing to put in, 'The bullets are only pellets. With that little pea-shooter he could not have killed anyone, except by a freak shot. But that's not the point. He is a monarchist spy and may have ferreted out all sorts of things about us. We have no alternative but to eliminate him.'

Sanchez had pulled his long knife from the cupboard. Giving it a flourish he cried, 'Dios! That is obvious. Why do we wait? Bring him along the passage, some of you, and hold his head over the basin. I'll do the rest.'

De Quesnoy's wits were gradually coming back. Dully it impinged on his mind that Sanchez meant to have him dragged to the lavatory and there cut his throat. A tremor of horror ran through him as he had a vivid mental picture of himself with his head in the cracked, dirty basin and his blood gurgling down the waste. With an effort he struggled into a more upright position, but Zapatro gave him a kick on the shin and snarled at him to stay still.

So far Benigno had taken no part in these swift exchanges; now he spoke in his precise voice. 'All that Dolores said is true, but we cannot deal with him out of hand like this.'

'Why not?' asked Sanchez truculently.

'Because all decisions in matters concerning a death sentence are always taken by our father.'

'Since he is not here we must act for him.'

'Benigno is right,' said Jovellenos. 'We ought to wait until Senor Ferrer returns.'

'But he will not be back until tomorrow,' Zapatro objected. 'The committee that is planning the attempt on Quiroga will be sitting till the small hours, and he told me that he meant to spend the rest of the night with Pedro Conesa.'

Dolores tittered. 'You mean with Conesa's daughter, Teresa? She's a hot little piece if ever there was one, and our vert galant never misses the chance of a tumble with her whenever he has to go out to the mill.'

'Anyway, he will not be back before first school is due to start; so we must deal with this man'ourselves,' Zapatro gestured towards the Count. 'We dare not let him go, even temporarily; and there is nowhere here where we could hold him prisoner without risk that he would either escape or be found by one of the students.'

'I am averse to taking any irrevocable step until it has received Senor Ferrer's approval,' Jovellenos declared. 'Why should we not take our prisoner up to the private apartment? We could get the Senora Ferrer to turn out a cupboard and lock him into it. She could keep an eye on him and no one would discover him there.'

'No one except the police!' Dolores rounded on her recent chess opponent with a sudden sneer. 'You are talking like a fool, Enriquez. You forget that he is a spy. The odds are that after every evening he spends here he reports to the police all that we have said. He must know that he has been walking on a razor's edge, and probably has some arrangement with them that, should he fail to make his report by a given hour, they are to assume that we have caught him out, and raid the place in the hope of rescuing him.'

'She's talking sense,' cried Sanchez. 'It's not often that we disperse before midnight, so we've no need to fear a raid for some hours yet; but the sooner we get this job done the better.'

Benigno laid a hand on his arm. 'Calm yourself, brother, I beg. Remember the rule our father has laid down. It is that in this house no act of violence should be permitted. I agree that this man must die. He actually saw us manufacturing a bomb. Little more would be needed for us to find ourselves facing a firing squad. But he must not be executed yet, and not here.'

'What reason can you possibly advance for postponing the death of this louse?'

'Only that such matters have always been left to our father's judgment. It is just possible that he may be making use of this man.'

'Nonsense! Is it likely that he would be doing so without having warned us about him? No. He is a spy; and in such cases our father has only one verdict. In the past few years we have had several through our hands. You know as well as I do that in every case he has ordered their execution.'

'True. I know it,' admitted Benigno. 'But not here. Not in this house. After what Dolores has just said how can you fail to realize the danger? Should the police raid us in the early hours as she suggests, think what they might find - blood all over the place, and perhaps even his body if we had not had time to get it out of the house. It is just that sort of ill chance that our father has always so wisely guarded against.'

Sanchez laughed and slapped his thigh. 'You need have no fears on that score, brother. I've just thought of a better plan than to cut his throat. We can dispose of him without leaving a trace by burning him up a limb at a time in the furnace in my foundry.'

7

To be Disposed of Without Trace

For the past few minutes de Quesnoy had been conscious of a warm wetness at the back of his neck. It was the blood that had trickled down from the nasty cut on his head made by the heavy ruler with which Schmidt had struck him down. He had no idea of the size or shape of the wound, for the whole back of his head felt as though it had been bashed in. The pain was agonizing and the pulses in his skull throbbed as though it was about to burst. Yet he was just capable of taking in what was said by the group clustered about him.

At Sanchez's proposal to kill him in a way that would also dispose of his body, the saliva ran hot in his mouth and his flesh crept. Courageous as he was, the idea of being burnt alive filled him with fear and horror. When Ferrer had taken him over the Escuela Moderna he had been shown the foundry in which Sanchez gave classes in metal-work. The furnace in it was a fair-sized one but certainly not large enough to take a body, and Sanchez had spoken of burning him in it a limb at a time. To kill and cut him up first would mean spilling quarts of his blood - the very thing they wanted to avoid - so the intention must be to thrust him in head or feet first, then reverse the process, until the white-hot interior of the furnace had baked his limbs dry of blood, and only then cut up the charred remains for final cremation.

It was possible that they might first strangle or knock him on the head, but he had a ghastly conviction that they would not show him even that much mercy. It was based on his knowledge of the extraordinary contradiction that was a salient feature of the Spanish character. Normally they were sensitive and generous and would go out of their way to avoid hurting another person's feelings. They adored their children, lavishing on them pretty clothes and toys that they could often ill-afford, and in Spain there were fewer cases of cruelty to children than in any other country in Europe. Yet they worked and beat their animals to death, and the favourite national pastime was the bullring.

The Count had been to a number of bullfights, and while he was filled with admiration for the bravery and skill of the Matadors, as they pirouetted within inches of the bull and even allowed it to tear with its horns the gold lace from the breast of their costumes, he had been baffled and sickened by the part that horses were forced to play in this cruel sport.

It had been explained to him that the whole object of the elaborate playing of the bull was to wear down its strength, so that the great muscles in its neck tired until, when facing the Matador, it could no longer hold up its head, thus enabling him to plunge his sword between its horns and through its shoulder straight down into its heart; and that for the mounted men to rear their horses right on to the bull, so that it had to take the whole weight of horse and man on its horns, was simply a part of the wearing-down process. Even so, it shocked and amazed him that thousands of women as well as men could burst into excited applause at the sight of a screaming horse falling with its guts torn out by the horns of a bull.