The Four Corners of the World Part 36

"Do you see that last sentence? 'We shall do what we like in neutral countries.' No man ever spoke the mind of his nation better than Peiffer did that night in a squalid cafe in Melilla."

Slingsby looked out over the harbour to where the sun was setting on the sierras. He would have given an arm to be sure of what Peiffer had set on foot behind those hills.

"I wonder," he said uneasily, and from that day he began to sleep badly.

Then came another and a most disquieting phase of the affair. Peiffer began to write letters to Slingsby. He was not comfortable. He was not being treated as an officer should be. He had no amus.e.m.e.nts, and his food was too plain. Moreover, there were Germans and Austrians up in the camp who turned up their noses at him because their birth was better than his.

"You see what these letters mean?" said Slingsby. "Peiffer wants to be sent away from the Rock."

"You are reading your own ideas into them," I replied.

But Slingsby was right. Each letter under its simple and foolish excuses was a prayer for translation to a less dangerous place. For as the days pa.s.sed and no answer was vouchsafed, the prayer became a real cry of fear.

"I claim to be sent to England without any delay. I must be sent," he wrote frankly and frantically.

Slingsby set his teeth with a grim satisfaction.

"No, my friend, you shall stay while the danger lasts. If it's a year, if you are alone in the camp, still you shall stay. The horrors you have planned you shall share with every man, woman and child in the town."

We were in this horrible and strange predicament. The whole colony was menaced, and from the Lines to Europa Point only two men knew of the peril. Of those two, one, in an office down by the harbour, ceaselessly and vainly, with a dreadful anxiety, asked "When?" The other, the prisoner, knew the very hour and minute of the catastrophe, and waited for it with the sinking fear of a criminal awaiting the fixed moment of his execution.

Thus another week pa.s.sed.

Slingsby became a thing of broken nerves. If you shut the door noisily he cursed; if you came in noiselessly he cursed yet louder, and one evening he reached the stage when the sunset gun made him jump.

"That's enough," I said sternly. "To-day is Sat.u.r.day. To-morrow we borrow the car"--there is only one worth talking about on the Rock--"and we drive out."

"I can't do it," he cried.

I continued:

"We will lunch somewhere by the road, and we will go on to the country house of the Claytons, who will give us tea. Then in the afternoon we will return."

Slingsby hesitated. It is curious to remember on how small a matter so much depended. I believe he would have refused, but at that moment the sunset gun went off and he jumped out of his chair.

"Yes, I am fairly rocky," he admitted. "I will take a day off."

I borrowed the car, and we set off and lunched according to our programme. It was perhaps half an hour afterwards when we were going slowly over a remarkably bad road. A powerful car, driven at a furious pace, rushed round a corner towards us, swayed, lurched, and swept past us with a couple of inches to spare, whilst a young man seated at the wheel shouted a greeting and waved his hand.

"Who the d.i.c.kens was that?" I asked.

"I know," replied Slingsby. "It's Morano. He's a count, and will be a marquis and no end of a swell if he doesn't get killed motoring.

Which, after all, seems likely."

I thought no more of the man until his name cropped up whilst we were sitting at tea on the Claytons' veranda.

"We pa.s.sed Morano," said Slingsby. And Mrs. Clayton said with some pride--she was a pretty, kindly woman, but she rather affected the Spanish n.o.bility:

"He lunched with us to-day. You know he is staying in Gibraltar."

"Yes, I know that," said Slingsby. "For I met him a little time ago.

He wanted to know if there was a good Government launch for sale."

Mrs. Clayton raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"A launch? Surely you are wrong. He is devoting himself to aviation."

"Is he?" said Slingsby, and a curious look flickered for a moment over his face.

We left the house half an hour afterwards, and as soon as we were out of sight of it Slingsby opened his hand. He was holding a visiting card.

"I stole this off the hall table," he said. "Mrs. Clayton will never forgive me. Just look at it."

His face had become extraordinarily grave. The card was Morano's, and it was engraved after the Spanish custom. In Spain, when a woman marries she does not lose her name. She may be in appearance more subject to her husband than the women of other countries, though you will find many good judges to tell you that women rule Spain. In any case her name is not lost in that of her husband; the children will bear it as well as their father's, and will have it printed on their cards. Thus, Mr. Jones will call on you, but on the card he leaves he will be styled:

Mr. Jones and Robinson,

if Robinson happens to be his mother's name, and if you are scrupulous in your etiquette you will so address him.

Now, on the card which Slingsby had stolen, the Count Morano was described:

MORANO Y GOLTZ

"I see," I replied. "Morano had a German mother."

I was interested. There might be nothing in it, of course. A n.o.ble of Spain might have a German mother and still not intrigue for the Germans against the owners of Gibraltar. But no sane man would take a bet about it.

"The point is," said Slingsby, "I am pretty sure that is not the card which he sent in to me when he came to ask about a launch. We will go straight to the office and make sure."

By the time we got there we were both somewhat excited, and we searched feverishly in the drawers of Slingsby's writing-table.

"I shouldn't be such an a.s.s as to throw it away," he said, turning over his letters. "No! Here it is!" and a sharp exclamation burst from his lips.

"Look!"

He laid the card he had stolen side by side with the card which he had just found, and between the two there was a difference--to both of us a veritable world of difference. For from the second card the "y Goltz," the evidence that Morano was half-German, had disappeared.

"And it's not engraved," said Slingsby, bending down over the table.

"It's just printed--printed in order to mislead us."

Slingsby sat down in his chair. A great hope was bringing the life back to his tired face, but he would not give the reins to his hope.

"Let us go slow," he said, warned by the experience of a hundred disappointments. "Let us see how it works out. Morano comes to Gibraltar and makes a prolonged stay in a hotel. Not being a fool, he is aware that I know who is in Gibraltar and who is not. Therefore he visits me with a plausible excuse for being in Gibraltar. But he takes the precaution to have this card specially printed. Why, if he is playing straight? He pretends he wants a launch, but he is really devoting himself to aviation. Is it possible that the Count Morano, not forgetting Goltz, knows exactly how the good Peiffer spent the six hours we can't account for, and what his little plan is?"

I sprang up. It did seem that Slingsby was getting at last to the heart of Peiffer's secret.