Bandit Love Part 16

"Si, senorita!" he answered. "So we shall be able to understand each other. Don Carlos de Ruiz taught me English, and I imitate his voice and accent when I am speaking your language. We are really very good friends, Don Carlos and I, and he bears me no ill-will. I provide him with amus.e.m.e.nt, and he would be sorry to see me captured."

"He will certainly bear you ill-will for having kidnapped me, and make every effort to kill you," retorted Myra, recognising that Cojuelo's m.u.f.fled voice did resemble that of Don Carlos.

"Because he loves you?" queried Cojuelo, with a chuckle. "You think he will be mad because I have robbed him of his heart's desire?"

"How do you know that he loves me?" asked Myra in amazement.

She was no longer terrified, and had recovered her nerve, but she still found it difficult to believe she was not dreaming. It seemed more like a nightmare than actuality that she should be sitting in a pitch-dark car, talking of love and Don Carlos to a Spanish outlaw who had captured her, and whose arm encircled her waist. She was not conscious of fear now, but Cojuelo's reply to her question scared her more than a little.

"Sweet senorita, what man with a heart and eyesight could resist falling in love with so beautiful a woman?" he responded. "Perhaps I shall fall in love with you myself and refuse to surrender you, no matter how great a ransom is offered. For years I have been seeking my ideal, but not one of the many women I have captured in my time pleased me enough to make me wish to keep her. You may be different."

Before Myra could find words to reply, the car came to a sudden stop, the door was flung open and a gruff voice growled out a question in Spanish which Cojuelo answered in the same language.

"We will alight now, senorita, and take a little riding exercise," he said to Myra. "I know you are an expert horsewoman, for I was near you this morning when you were riding with Don Carlos, and I know you will have no difficulty in sitting a mule although you are not in riding dress. Only mules can negotiate the paths that lead to my mountain nest. Come!"

CHAPTER XII

Without a word, Myra stepped out, to see by the headlights of the car that she was apparently in a mountain gorge, and to see a group of masked and armed men standing beside some mules. She turned to look at her captor as she reached the front of the car, and found that Cojuelo was wearing what looked like a monk's cowl which completely covered his face, and which accounted for his m.u.f.fled voice. She saw that he was tall, but that was all.

Cojuelo snapped out some orders, and a soberly-dressed, elderly man, wearing no mask and carrying in his arms a number of parcels, appeared out of the darkness and got into the car, which turned and sped away.

"Bien!" exclaimed Cojuelo, as the motor disappeared. "Everything is working according to plan. In the unlikely event of the car being stopped, it is found to contain Garcilaso, Don Carlos's steward, returning from doing some marketing in the city. And who would guess that the fair senorita had been spirited away in one of Don Carlos's own cars?"

"So some of Don Carlos's servants are in your pay?" exclaimed Myra.

"They are all in my pay, sweet lady, and every man knows it is as much as his life is worth to betray me," Cojuelo answered, with a triumphant laugh. "But we waste time, and must not take the risk, remote as it is, of being seen. Let me a.s.sist you to mount."

He picked Myra up in his arms and swung her up without any apparent effort on to the saddle of a mule which one of the men had led forward, mounted another mule himself, and gave some rapid orders.

"Follow me and ride carefully, senorita, for there are some steep and dangerous paths to negotiate," he called to Myra. "Mendoza will lead your mule at the most perilous places. _Avanzar!_"

To anyone less accustomed to riding and to taking risks than Myra, that night ride through the mountains of the Sierra Morena would have been a blood-curdling and nerve-shattering experience. Often she had to guide her mule along a rough path barely a couple of yards wide, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet on one side, a path where a stumble or a false step on the part of the animal would have meant certain death.

Yet Myra was conscious of no sense of fear now, and the dangers only made her pulse beat faster and stirred her blood. But it was no easy task riding a mule along precipitous paths and keeping her seat while slithering down slopes, clad as she was in only a filmy evening frock and a fur coat, and she cried out in protest at last:

"How much further, Senor Cojuelo? I cannot sit this ungainly brute much longer in these clothes."

"Courage, sweet lady, we have but a little further to go," Cojuelo called back to her over his shoulder.

He spoke truly. A few minutes later the party halted in a narrow, pitch-dark ravine, and Myra was lifted from her mule.

"Take my arm, senorita, lest you stumble in the darkness on the rough ground," said the m.u.f.fled voice of El Diablo Cojuelo. "The entrance to my mountain eyrie is narrow and unprepossessing, but I promise you that you shall find comfort within."

He pressed the switch of an electric torch as he spoke, and guided Myra over rocky ground to what seemed a mere cleft in a wall of rock.

"You will notice that this entrance to my lair is only wide enough to allow of the pa.s.sage of one person at a time," he resumed. "Here a handful of men could defy an Army Corps, and there are other means of entry--and other ways of escape. I give you welcome, sweet lady, to the fortress of El Diablo Cojuelo."

Myra, again with the sensation that the whole affair was a sort of fantastic dream, squeezed through the cleft revealed by the light of the electric torch, advanced two or three yards, pa.s.sed through another cleft at right-angles to the first, and stopped at Cojuelo's bidding.

"You perceive, senorita, that we seem to have come to a dead end," said the bandit, flashing the light about. "What appears to be a solid wall of rock confronts us. It is actually a cunningly-contrived door giving entrance to a series of caves which Nature must surely have constructed for my use. And El Diablo Cojuelo has improved on nature. _He aqui!_"

With his foot he pressed some hidden spring or lever on the ground, and a ma.s.sive door swung open, revealing to the astonished eyes of Myra a big, irregularly-shaped room that looked as if it had been hewn out of the solid rock, a room furnished with roughly-constructed chairs and a settee on which there were many cushions, and with many rugs on the rocky floor. Most amazing feature of all, the place was lighted with electricity and warmed by an electric radiator.

"I suppose I am awake and not dreaming!" exclaimed Myra, moving forward and gazing round with wondering eyes. "This is more amazing than the castle of Don Carlos. Are you a magician as well as a brigand?"

"Both, senorita," Cojuelo answered, as he closed the secret door, "but there is nothing magical about it, after all. It was a simple matter to have an electric light plant smuggled up here in sections. It was an equally simple matter to obtain rugs and cushions from the Castillo de Ruiz, since all the servants of Don Carlos, as I have told you, are in my pay."

He strode forward to the table and touched a bell, and almost immediately an ancient woman with a wrinkled monkey-like, nut-brown face, tanned by wind and weather, appeared through an opening concealed by a curtain in the further wall. She was obviously of great age, but her eyes were bright and sparkling with intelligence, and she was active in her movements.

"This is Mother Dolores, who will attend you," Cojuelo explained, after giving the woman some instructions in her native tongue. "She has a change of clothing and refreshments in readiness for you. I will leave you in her charge while I attend to the disposal of my other captives."

He disappeared through the aperture in the wall, and Mother Dolores, after inspecting Myra appraisingly and admiringly, gabbling away in Spanish idioma meanwhile, indicated to the fair prisoner that she wished her to accompany her.

She led the way through a regular maze of crooked pa.s.sages, and Myra saw that Cojuelo's mountain lair was a strange freak of nature, probably the result of a volcanic upheaval or an earthquake in some prehistoric age. It was a series of caves connected with fissures, a sort of irregular honeycomb of rock.

"Apartiamento--dormitorio," were the only words Myra understood of the flood Dolores let loose as she ushered her into one of the cave-rooms, and by pantomime indicated that she wished Myra to undress.

The rocky walls of the cave-bedroom were hidden beneath hangings of moire silk, the floor was thickly carpeted, and the place was equipped with an oak bedstead and some small pieces of roughly-constructed furniture. But what made Myra gasp in amazement was to see her own silk dressing-gown and the nightie she had worn the night before lying on the eiderdown bedspread, together with other garments, while on the primitive dressing-table stood her dressing-case.

"Incredible!" she exclaimed. "These things were in my bed-room at the Castillo de Ruiz only an hour or two ago!"

"Si, si, senorita, El Castillo de Ruiz," said Dolores, nodding her head and showing her toothless gums in a grin. "Maravilloso! Etra vez el bueno maestro Cojuelo."

"Cojuelo boasted that all the servants of Don Carlos are in his pay, and it must be true," thought Myra. "These things must have been taken from my room before the raid, and the servants probably knew El Diablo Cojuelo was going to kidnap me.... Surely I have nothing to fear from a man who takes such trouble to ensure that I shall be comfortable?

And yet..."

Dolores scuffled out, still gabbling unintelligibly in Spanish, but reappeared almost at once with a jug of hot water. She stood watching Myra with mingled curiosity and admiration as her fair charge washed after leisurely undressing, then put on her chic night-dress and dressing-gown, and a filmy, attractive boudoir cap.

"Senor Cojuelo said something about refreshments," said Myra, hoping she would make Mother Dolores understand, and trying to remember some of the Spanish words she had learned. "I should like a cup of coffee--cafe--or a gla.s.s of vino, and a cigarette--cigarillo.

Entender?"

"Si, si, senorita," answered Dolores. "Cafe, vino, aguardiene, cigarillo, Todo p.r.o.nto."

She opened the door and made signals to Myra that she wished her to return with her to the outer apartment, at the same time letting loose another torrent of words.

"Perhaps meals in bed-rooms are charged extra!" Myra remarked, and laughed at the idea.

She was conscious of no sensation of actual fear, but she was curious and apprehensive as to how El Diablo Cojuelo would behave, remembering his reputation and his hint that he might fall in love with her and refuse to surrender her no matter how great the ransom offered.

Still smiling, Myra slid her bare feet into her bedroom slippers and accompanied Mother Dolores back through the maze of crooked, rocky pa.s.sages to the outer apartment.

"Comer e heber e fumar, senorita," said Dolores, indicating a tray set on a stool close by the electric heater. On the tray stood a steaming jug of coffee, a flagon of cognac, a plate of biscuits, a cup and saucer, and a silver cigarette-box.

"More magic!" commented Myra, as Dolores set a chair for her and poured out a gla.s.s of cognac which she insisted upon Myra drinking at once.

Then she poured out coffee, gabbled something about the "bueno maestro," and withdrew.