The Quest Part 35

Sheets, chemises, cloaks and all the other articles they robbed they would sell at the second-hand shop on La Ribera de Curtidores, which Don Telmo used to visit. The owner, employe or whatever he was of the shop, would purchase everything the thieves brought, at a very low price.

This "fence," which profited by the oversight of some base officer (for the police lists did not bother with these things), was presided over by a fellow called Uncle Perquique. He spent his whole life pa.s.sing to and fro in front of his establishment. To deceive the munic.i.p.al guard he sold shoe-laces and bargains that came from the old-clothes shop he conducted.

In the spring this fellow would don a cook's white cap and cry out his tarts with a word that he scarcely p.r.o.nounced and which he liked to alter constantly. Sometimes the word seemed to be Perquique!

Perquique! but at once it would change sound and be transformed into Perqueque or Parquique, and these phonetic modifications were extended to infinity.

The origin of this word Perquique, which cannot be found in the dictionary, was as follows: The cream tarts sold by the man in the white cap brought five centimos apiece and he would cry "_A perra chica! A perra Chica!_ Only five pesetas apiece! A five-peseta piece!" As a result of his lazy enunciation he suppressed the first A and converted the other two into E, thus transforming his cry into "_Perre chique! Perre chique!_" Later, _Perre chique_ turned into _Perquique._

The "fence" guard, a jolly soul, was a specialist in crying wares; he shaded his cries most artistically; he would go from the highest notes to the lowest or vice versa. He would begin, for example, on a very high note, shouting:

"Look here! A real! Only one real! Ladies' and gents' hosiery at a real a pair! Look-a-here now! A real a pair!" Then, lowering his register, he would continue, gravely: "A nice Bayonne waistcoat. A splendid bargain!" And as a finale, he would add in a ba.s.so profundo: "Only twenty pesetas!"

Uncle Perquique knew the Society of the Three, and he would favour El Bizco and Vidal with his advice.

Safer and more profitable than dealing with the stolen-goods purchasers of the second-hand shop was the plan followed by Dolores la Escandalosa, who sold the ribbons and the lace that she pilfered to itinerant hawkers who paid very well. But the members of the Society of the Three were eager to get their dividends quickly.

The sale completed, the three would repair to a tavern at the end of Embajadores avenue, corner of Las Delicias, which they called the Handkerchief Corner.

The a.s.sociates were especially careful not to rob twice in the same place and never to appear together in those vicinities where unfavourable surveillance was suspected.

Some days, which did not come often, when theft brought no plunder, the three companions were compelled to work in the Campillo del Mundo Nuevo, scattering heaps of wood and gathering it together with rakes after it had been properly aired and dried.

Another of the Society's means of subsistence was cat-hunting. El Bizco, who was endowed with no talent (his head, as Vidal said, was a salted melon) had a really great gift for catching cats. All he needed was a sack and a stick and he did famously. Every living cat in sight was soon in his game-bag.

The members made no distinction between slender or consumptive cats, or pregnant tabbies. Every puss that came along was devoured with the same ravenous appet.i.te. They would sell the skins in El Rastro; when there were no ready funds, the innkeeper of the Handkerchief Corner would let them have wine and bread on tick, and the Society would indulge in a Sardanapalesque banquet....

One afternoon in August Vidal, who had dined in Las Ventas the previous day with his girl, proposed to his comrades a scheme to rob an abandoned house on the East Road.

The project was discussed in all seriousness, and on the afternoon of the following day the three went out to look the territory over.

It was Sunday, there was a bull-fight; omnibuses and street cars, packed with people, rolled along Alcala Street beside open hacks occupied by harlots in Manila mantles and men of knavish mien.

Outside the bull-ring the throng was denser than ever; from the street cars came pouring streams of people who ran for the entrance; the ticket-speculators rushed upon them with a shout; amidst the black mult.i.tude shone the white helmets of the mounted guards. From the inside of the ring came a m.u.f.fled roar like the tide.

Vidal, El Bizco and Manuel, chagrined that they could not go in, continued on their way, pa.s.sed Las Ventas and took the road to Vicalvaro. The south wind, warm and sultry, laid a white sheet of dust over the fields; along the road from different directions drove black and white hea.r.s.es, for adults and children respectively, followed by gigs containing mourners.

Vidal indicated the house: it stood back from the road and seemed abandoned. It was fronted by a garden with its gate; behind extended an orchard planted with leafless saplings, with a water-mill. The orchard-wall was low and could be scaled with relative facility; no danger threatened; there were neither prying neighbours nor dogs; the nearest house, a marbler's workshop, was more than three hundred metres distant.

From the neighbourhood of the house could be made out the East cemetery, girded by arid yellow fields and barren hillocks; in the opposite direction rose the Bull Ring with its bright banner and the outlying houses of Madrid. The dusty road to the burial-ground ran between ravines and green slopes, among abandoned tile-kilns and excavations that showed the reddish ochre bowels of the earth.

After a minute examination of the house and its surroundings, the three returned to Las Ventas. At night they felt like going back to Madrid, but Vidal suggested that they had better remain where they were, so that they could commit the robbery at dawn of the next day.

This was decided upon and they lay down in a tile-kiln, in the pa.s.sageway formed by two walls of heaped-up bricks.

A cold wind blew violently throughout the night. Manuel was the first to awake and he roused the other two. They left the pa.s.sageway formed by the walls of bricks. It was still night; from time to time a segment of the moon peered through the dark clouds; now it hid, now it seemed to rest upon the bosom of one of those dense clouds which it silvered so delicately.

In the distance, above Madrid a bright glow began to appear, irradiated by the lights of the city; a few tombstones in the cemetery cast a pallid shimmer.

Dawn was already tinting the heavens with its melancholy flush when the three robbers approached the house.

Manuel's heart was pounding with agitation.

"Ah, by the way," said Vidal. "If by any accident we should be surprised, we mustn't run; we've got to stick right in the house."

El Bizco burst into laughter; Manuel, who knew that his cousin wasn't talking just for the sake of hearing his voice, asked:

"Why?"

"Because if they catch us in the house it's only a balked attempt at robbery, and the punishment isn't severe; on the other hand, if they catch us in flight, that would be a successful robbery and the penalty would be great. So I was told yesterday."

"Well, I'll escape if I can."

"Do as you please."

They scaled the wall; Vidal remained astride of it, leaning forward and watching for signs of any one. Manuel and El Bizco, making their way astraddle along the wall, approached the house and, entrusting their feet to the roof of a shed, jumped down to a terrace with a bower slightly higher than the orchard.

The rear door and the balconies of the ground floor led to this gallery; but both the door and the balconies were so well fastened that it was impossible to open them.

"Can't you make it?" whispered Vidal from his perch.

"No."

"Here, take my knife." And Vidal threw it dawn to the gallery.

Manuel tried to pry the balconies open with the knife but met with no success; El Bizco attempted to force the door with his shoulder and it yielded enough to leave a c.h.i.n.k, whereupon Manuel introduced the blade of the knife and worked the catch of the lock back until he could open the door. El Bizco and Manuel then went in.

The lower floor of the house consisted of a vestibule, which formed the bottom of a staircase leading to a corridor, and two rooms whose balconies overlooked the orchard.

The first thing that came to Manuel's head was to open the lock of the door that led to the road.

"Now," said El Bizco to him, after admiring this prudent precaution, "let's see what there is in the place."

They set about calmly and deliberately to take an inventory of the house; there wasn't three ochavos' worth of material in the entire establishment. They were forcing the dining-room closet when of a sudden they heard the bark of a dog close by and they ran in fright to the gallery.

"What's the matter?" they asked Vidal.

"A d.a.m.ned dog's begun to bark and he'll certainly attract somebody's attention."

"Throw a stone at him."

"Where'll I get it?"

"Scare him."

"He'll bark all the more."

"Jump down here, or they'll surely see you."

Vidal jumped down into the orchard. The dog, who must have been a moral animal and a defender of private property, continued his loud barking.