'He must appear to have died as the result of an accident, or disappear altogether,' Benigno replied in a firm voice. 'It is in arranging such matters in similar cases that our father has shown such ingenuity. Our only safe course is to take our prisoner out to the mill and leave it to father to decide what is to be done with him.'
'I disagree ... I disagree . . .' spluttered G6rault. 'You should kill him now ... If I felt stronger I would do it myself . . . We'll get rid of the body somehow . . . We could bury it in the woods and it would not be found for months.'
The others, now impressed by Benigno's arguments and not wanting to run any unnecessary risk, ignored the Frenchman. But Zapatro raised the objection, 'We would still have to get him out of the house and, as you said yourself just now, there is always the possibility that the police might come upon us while we are at it, or of some nosy parker of a patrolman wanting to know what we were up to.'
Benigno shrugged. 'The cases are entirely different. In the first we should be caught with a corpse on our hands, in the second only a live man that we had trussed up; so we could not be charged with murder.'
'Our friend Benigno is right,' said Jovellenos. 'From the beginning I have been all in favour 'of leaving this dangerous business to Senor Ferrer's judgment.'
Sanchez gave a grudging assent. 'I'd have liked to slit his throat. But you are the cleverest among us, brother; so let it be as you say.'
The others nodded agreement, except for Gerault, who continued to clamour nasally for the prisoner's death. Instead of listening to him they began to discuss ways and means of getting the Count out to the mill.
With his nerves as taut as piano wires de Quesnoy had listened to every word of the heated argument on how, with the least risk, to terminate his earthly existence. Now, he could at least breathe again. Even this respite of an hour or two might provide him with some chance to escape from the clutches of his enemies. Yet he was not even remotely sanguine. It seemed certain that he could not expect Ferrer to aid him in any way, and the others, with the possible exception of Jovellenos, were set upon his death. Their only concern was to avoid committing any act which might later be cited to show that they had taken a hand in murdering him. Benigno's caution had resulted in a very temporary postponement of sentence, but it could not be counted as more than that.
It was Dolores who suggested rolling the Count up in a carpet, and Benigno who improved upon this ruse for camouflaging his being got out of the house by the idea of also loading on to the cart some chairs and packing cases; so that passers-by should get the impression that they were engaged in moving some odds and ends of furniture.
Sanchez went off to get the horse and cart from a mews a little way down the street. Schmidt produced a somewhat grubby handkerchief and gagged de Quesnoy with it, while the others pushed back the furniture. When the Count was hauled to his feet he made no attempt to struggle. He knew that to do so would be futile, and he was still weak and in great pain. He could only hope that the ride in the cart would be a long one; so that by the time they reached the mill he would have got enough strength back to stand some chance in a bid to regain his freedom.
Zapatro gave him a push from behind and hooked one of his legs from under him, so that he fell on his face. Gerault then gave him a vicious kick on the side of the head that again rendered him nearly unconscious, and he was only vaguely aware through a mist of pain that he was being rolled up in the threadbare carpet that had long done duty in the masters' common-room.
Presently he felt himself lifted and carried some distance, then down the front steps. A minute later he was heaved up and thrown down with a bump on the floor of the covered cart. The sickening jolt to his injured head sent such a spasm of agony through it that he fainted.
When he came to, his heart was pounding heavily from its effort to draw enough air down into his lungs. His head was some way from the nearest open end of the carpet and, in addition, a corner of the handkerchief gagging his mouth had flapped up in front of his nostrils, so for a moment he feared that he was about to suffocate. But by exerting his will he managed to change his breathing from desperate gasps to slow regular intakes, so that the corner of the handkerchief was no longer drawn with each breath tight up against his nose.
Inside the tube that encased him it was black as pitch. His hands were still bound behind him and he could make no movement, except slight ones with his feet. The Escuela Moderna was not distinguished by its cleanliness, so the old carpet was gritty with dust and stank of the tobacco ash and wine that had been spilt upon it. For how long he had been unconscious he did not know, but now he hoped desperately that the journey would soon be over and so bring him relief from his agonizing imprisonment.
Actually he had been out only for a few minutes. The cart was moving up-hill and at a walking pace. As it jogged on he was given ample opportunity to think over the events of the evening and the terrible plight in which G6rault's arrival had landed him. Even while waging his fight for sufficient air and striving to ease his cramped muscles, he was bitterly aware of the irony of the situation. He had set out to secure evidence that Ferrer was the brain behind the militant anarchists of Spain, and he had got it.
Zapatro had said that Ferrer was attending a meeting that was planning the attempt on Quiroga, and the Quiroga referred to could hardly be anyone other than the Captain-General of Barcelona. The others, too, evidently feeling it no longer necessary to exercise caution about what they said in front of a man they had already condemned to death, had made several mentions of Ferrer's care to divert suspicion from himself and his ingenuity in eliminating without trace spies and traitors. In de Quesnoy's mind there was no longer a shadow of doubt that the whole staff of the Escuela Moderna were militant anarchists and that Ferrer was the king-pin of the movement. But now there seemed little hope of his being able to use the information, let alone warn General Quiroga that a plot was on foot to assassinate him.
At last the nightmare journey came to an end. The covered cart rumbled to a halt, but de Quesnoy was not taken out of it. For a further ten minutes he lay half stifled and sweating profusely in his smelly cocoon while, as he rightly supposed, those who had come with the cart were making a full report about him to Ferrer. Then he heard the back-board of the cart smack down, was drawn out of it, carried some way and dropped with a bump that again sent spasms of agony shooting through his wounds. Next moment he was rolled over and over till free of the carpet, then pulled to his feet.
Temporarily dazzled by the light, he at first registered only that he was in a low-ceilinged room with a number of people staring at him. After a few blinks his sight cleared and he saw that he was in the sort of parlour to be found by the thousand in the suburbs of any big city. At a small table in its centre Ferrer was sitting; on his right there was a giant of a man with a bushy upturned moustache, on his left was a bald man of about fifty, and beside him a youth with the wide-spaced eyes of a fanatic. Behind Ferrer, Benigno was standing. Schmidt and Sanchez, as the Count saw by a swift glance to left and right, were the two men who had dragged him up on to his feet.
Benigno had laid the illustrated magazine, opened at the page carrying the damning photograph, on the table in front of his father. As they looked first at it and then at him, the bald man said, 'It's him right enough. But I am amazed, Francesco, that you did not vet him before taking him into your employ, even temporarily.'
Ferrer gave an angry shrug. T did, Manuel, as far as was possible, soon after I first met him. I sent Ruben Pineda, a young student, to take Russian lessons from him, and later Pineda returned to search his room after he had gone out. There were all sorts of things in it that only a Russian would normally have possessed, and the branch of the Somaten he joined confirmed that he had come from Constantinople via Greece and Valencia.'