The Car of Destiny Part 9

Naturally the official fell into chat with the new-comer, and it was necessary to remind him that we had the right of precedence. Every moment was of importance, for already there was time for a telegram to have arrived. Presently there would be time for its instructions to be acted on as well. And at this moment I realized, as I had not fully realized before, all that it would mean to me of humiliation and defeat to fail ignominiously on the threshold of my adventure.

It was hard to show no impatience as the _douanier's_ lazy, cigarette-stained hand wandered among the contents of the suit-case. When any article puzzled him, he paused; another precious minute gone. But eventually, having had a safety-razor explained, he was satisfied with the inspection of the luggage, and indicated that it might be replaced. Then came the question of the deposit of money for the car, on entering Spain.

Very carefully did the imperturbable official examine each Spanish bank-note we tendered; laboriously did he make out the receipt. Had he meant to detain us, his movements, his words, could not have been more deliberate. How I had longed to hear again the Spanish language spoken by Spaniards in Spain, yet how little was I able to appreciate the fulfilment of my long-cherished wis.h.!.+ At last, however, every formality was complied with, and we were free to go.

With all speed we took our man at his word. The leather-coated, leather-legginged chauffeur set the engine's heart going in time with his own, flung himself into the tonneau, and had not shut the door when Waring slipped in the clutch, muttering "Hooray!"

Another second and we should have been beyond recall; but hardly was the brake off than it had to go cras.h.i.+ng on again to avoid running over a sergeant and two soldiers who rushed up and sprang in front of us, puffing with unwonted haste.

In his hand the sergeant held an open telegram.

"You speak Spanish?" he panted.

"A little," said d.i.c.k. "French better."

"I have no French, senor," replied the sergeant, "But my business is not so much with you as with this gentleman," he glanced at the telegram, "in the grey coat with the fur collar, the grey cap, the goggles in a grey felt mask, the small dark moustache, the grey buckskin gloves." (Carmona had noticed everything.) "Our instructions are to prevent the Marques de Casa Triana from going into Spain."

"Casa Triana? What do you mean?" cried d.i.c.k. Then he laughed. "Is the person you're talking about a Spaniard?"

"He is, senor."

d.i.c.k laughed a great deal more. "Well, I guess you'll have to look somewhere else. There's a mistake. The gentleman in the grey coat and all the other grey things has hardly enough Spanish to know what you're driving at."

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and looked determined. "There is no mistake in my instructions, senor. I am sorry, but it is my duty to detain that gentleman. If there is an error there will be apologies."

"I should say there jolly well was an error," sputtered d.i.c.k, in his wild combination of Spanish and English and American. "George, show your card.

He thinks you're a Spaniard, who's 'wanted.' "

The gentleman in the grey coat showed the visiting cards of Mr. George Smith, and the Spanish soldier examined them gloomily. "Anybody might have these," said he, half to us, half to a group of his countrymen. "Senor, I must reluctantly ask you to descend and to come with me. It will be much better to do so quietly."

"Of all the monstrous indignities," shouted d.i.c.k. "I'm a newspaper correspondent on a special detail. I'll wire the American minister in Madrid, and the English Amba.s.sador too. I'll-"

But the gentleman in the grey coat had obeyed the sergeant. He had also taken off his goggles.

"It will be all right in a few hours, or a few days," said he in English.

"You must go on. Don't worry about me."

"Go on without you?" echoed d.i.c.k, breaking again into astonis.h.i.+ng Spanish for the benefit of the official. "Well, if you really don't mind, as I'm in the d.i.c.kens of a hurry. You can follow by train, you know, as soon as you've proved to these blunderers that you're George Smith."

"If you are Senor George Smith, you will be free as soon as the photograph of the Marques de Casa Triana has been sent on by the police at Madrid,"

said the sergeant. "If not-" he did not finish his sentence; but the break was significant. And the soldiers closed in to separate the alleged George Smith from his companions of the car, lest at the last moment they should attempt a rescue.

"We'll make them sorry for this, George," said d.i.c.k. "But as we really can't do much for you here, we'll get on somewhere else, where we can."

"I must ask also for the name of the owner of this automobile, and for that of his chauffeur," insisted the sergeant, "before I can let you go."

"Oh, all right," said d.i.c.k, crossly, producing his pa.s.sport, and cards with the names of the papers for which he had engaged to correspond.

"Ropes, fork out your credentials."

The chauffeur brought forth his French papers, and pointed to the name of Peter Ropes. The sergeant industriously wrote down everything in his note-book, a greasy and forbidding one.

"It is satisfactory," he said with dignity; "you can proceed, senores."

The engine had not been stopped during the scene; and as the gentleman in the grey coat was marched off to the guard-house with a jostling Spanish crowd at his heels, the red car in which he had lately been a pa.s.senger slipped away and left him behind.

Through the streets of Irun it pa.s.sed at funeral pace, as if in respect and regret for a friend who was lost; but once out in the green, undulating country beyond, it put on a great spurt of speed, after the chauffeur had scrambled into the front seat.

"Great Scott, but I'm as hot as if I'd come out of a Turkish bath,"

growled d.i.c.k.

"It was a warm ten minutes," said I. "Poor old Ropes-bless him!" And I sent back a sigh of grat.i.tude to the staunch friend in my grey overcoat, cap, goggles, and gloves, to whose loyalty I owed freedom.

VIII

OVER THE BORDER

Here I was in Spain, my Spain-thanks to Ropes; and, again thanks to him, probably out of danger from Carmona's suspicions for some time to come, barring accidents.

He would make inquiries at Irun when he arrived there, and learning that the obnoxious person had been detained according to information received from him, would pa.s.s on triumphantly. Even when fate brought his car and ours together, as I hoped it often would, a sight of the two remaining travellers, the American automobilist and his hideously-goggled chauffeur, would cause him amus.e.m.e.nt rather than uneasiness.

He would say to himself that, so far as he was concerned, no harm had been done, even if no good had been accomplished; for if the banished pa.s.senger were indeed Casa Triana, he had done well to get rid of him. If, after all, his quick suspicion had been too far-fetched, and he had caused the arrest of an innocent tourist, that tourist would never know to whom he owed his adventure, and would be powerless to trouble the Duke of Carmona.

As for Ropes, when the photograph taken of me years ago by the police in Barcelona should reach the police in Irun, it would be seen that two young men who are twenty-seven, tall, slim, and have dark moustaches, do not necessarily resemble each other in other details. Mr. George Smith would be generously pardoned for having occupied the attention of the police in place of the Marques de Casa Triana, and he would be free to rejoin his fellow-travellers.

During the three or four minutes of discussion we had had before making the "quick change" which transformed master into man, we had arranged to communicate with Ropes by means of advertis.e.m.e.nts in _La Independencia_.

We would forward money in advance to that journal, enough to pay for several advertis.e.m.e.nts, and could then telegraph our whereabouts at the last minute, whenever the movements of Carmona's car gave us our cue.

This was the best arrangement we could make in a hurry, and when we had time to reflect, it did not seem to us that, in the circ.u.mstances, we could have done better.

And so, come what might, the outlaw had crossed the border, and was in the forbidden country of his hopes and heart.

In spite of compunction on Ropes' account, I was happy, desperately happy.

I was free to watch over the girl I loved and who loved me; and I was drinking in the air of the fatherland. It did actually seem sweeter and more life-giving than in any other part of the world.

d.i.c.k laughed when I mentioned this impression, and said I ought to try the climate of America before I judged; but he admitted the extraordinary, yet almost indefinable individuality of the landscape as well as the architecture, which struck the eye instantly on crossing the frontier.

It was easy to cla.s.sify as peculiarly Spanish the old Basque churches, the long, dark lines of sombre houses bristling with little balconies, and sparkling with projecting windows, whose intricate gla.s.s panes gave upward currents of air in hot weather. All this, and much more was obvious in town or village; but d.i.c.k and I argued over the distinctive features of the landscape without fathoming the mystery which set it apart from other landscapes.

What was so peculiar? There were hedges, and poplars, and other trees which we had seen a thousand times elsewhere. There was a pretty, though not extravagantly pretty, switchback road of fair surface stretching before us, roughly parallel with the sea, giving glimpses here and there of landlocked harbours with colliers and tramps.h.i.+ps at anchor. There was a far background of snow mountains and a changing foreground of spring gra.s.s and spring blossoms; interlacing branches embroidered with new leaves of that pinky yellow which comes before the summer green.

There ought to have been nothing remarkable, save for the moving figures which here and there rendered it pictorial; dark, upstanding men in red waistcoats, driving donkeys; velvet-eyed girls, with no covering for their heads but their s.h.i.+ning crowns of jet-black hair, and none at all for their tanned feet and ankles, though they carried shoes in their hands; black-robed priests; brown-robed monks; smart officers; soldiers with stiff, glittering shakos, and green gloves; oxen with pads of wool on their cla.s.sic, biscuit-coloured heads. Nevertheless, d.i.c.k agreed with me in finding the landscape remarkable.

At last we began to wonder if the difference did not lie in colouring and atmosphere. The sky effects were radiant enough to set the soul of an artist singing, because of the opal lights, the violet banks of cloud with ragged, crystal fringes of rain, the diamond gleams struck out from snow peaks; and yet, despite this ethereal radiance, there was a strange solemnity about the wide reaches of Spanish country, a rich gloom that brooded over the landscape with its thoughtful colouring, never for a moment brilliant, never gay.