Vendetta in Spain Page 9

  He treated her, too, more like a servant than a wife; for as soon as she had filled their sherry glasses, although she showed an inclination to linger and join in their conversation, he as good as ordered her out of the room.

  Having offered his guest a cheroot he sat back in his chair and launched out into an enthusiastic description of his school. Latin and Greek he declared to be a waste of time, and acquiring an extensive knowledge of literature and art a luxury which could be afforded only if one intended to take them up as a means of livelihood or make them one’s chosen recreation. Grammar and syntax he also declared to be unnecessary, except for a would-be writer, as all that the average man needed was the ability to make himself understood with reasonable clarity. Naturally, everyone should have a basic knowledge of most subjects taken in a normal education, but the really important thing was that both men and women should concentrate from their ‘teens onward on some course of study which would enable them to become useful members of society.

  He had as pupils boys, girls and also grown-up men and women. When they came to him they had to select one, or at most two, fields suited to their abilities in which to specialise. All had to go through the three courses in history that he had outlined to de Quesnoy at their earlier meeting, in order that they might fully understand the development of mankind, their obligations to their fellow-men, and become workers in the international movements to free the masses from their centuries-old slavery. But apart from this sociological instruction all their other time was given to developing their natural talents. There was a section in which pupils could graduate through carpentry, plumbing and practical building to architecture, another in which they could graduate through typing and shorthand to secretarial duties or journalism, and sections teaching cooking and household management, engineering and technology, chemistry and science, and agriculture. In addition, extra courses could be taken in French and German and in literature and art.

  Now that the matter was put to him de Quesnoy was inclined to agree that in normal schools much time was wasted drilling into pupils matter that could be of little value to them later in life, and that for men and women who would have to earn their own living this new system of education, in which they devoted their energies to acquiring practical knowledge in specialised fields while still young, had much to commend it. But one thing stood out a mile. The heart and soul of Señor Francisco Ferrer’s Escuela Moderna lay in the course which all pupils were compelled to take, whereby he disseminated his doctrines for the abolition of the Church and State and the emergence of a classless society.

  In the Count’s mind there lay no shadow of doubt that Ferrer’s school was the root from which the Spanish anarchist movement was fostered and supplied every year with scores of young enthusiastic recruits. It now remained to discover whether he was content only to spread his mental poison, or if he actually encouraged the more fanatical of his disciples to undertake Propaganda by Deed.

  Far from disclosing even a suggestion of his thoughts, de Quesnoy expressed the greatest interest in Ferrer’s work and gave it the highest praise. When they had finished their drinks the schoolmaster stood up and proposed to show his guest over the premises. Following him downstairs de Quesnoy duly inspected the rows of typewriters in one room, the long carpenter’s bench in another, the drawing-boards of the technicians in a third, and so on, until they came to a laboratory. In it two youngish men stood side by side bending over one of the slabs, their backs turned to the door. At the noise of the door opening they both swung round and, after a moment’s hesitation, Ferrer introduced them:

  ‘My two sons, Benigno and Sanchez; Señor Chirikov, who has recently arrived from Russia.’

  If appearances went for anything the brothers had had different mothers, Benigno was small, sandy-haired, intelligent-looking and had both his father’s high forehead and sharp nose. He gave the impression of being about twenty-six. Sanchez was a big man, dark to the point of swarthiness, with the coarse features of a peasant and narrow eyes that suggested he had inherited a peasant’s cunning. De Quesnoy put him down as about twenty-one.

  As the Count walked forward to shake hands with them his glance took in the slab at which they had been working. On it there was a metal canister, the works from the inside of a small clock, some slabs of stuff that looked like coffee, and several strands of thin wire. Having been a soldier he immediately recognised the slabs as dynamite and realised that the brothers had been constructing an infernal machine.

  Ferrer, too, had immediately grasped the situation. His face suddenly dark with anger, he snapped at his sons, ‘I have told you before. I will not allow you to construct such things here. The … the workshop at the mine in which they are used is the place for that.’

  De Quesnoy could not tell if Ferrer’s anger was real. If it was it lent support to the police reports about him, which stated that, although he openly preached the doctrines of anarchy, he was opposed to violence and had no connection with the militant anarchists. On the other hand it might be simulated and the implication that the explosives were to be put to a legitimate use in a mine a clumsy attempt to cover up the use his sons were making of the laboratory.

  For a few tense moments the Count seethed with real rage, but of the fierce and internal variety. Whether Ferrer’s outburst was genuine or not, clockwork infernal machines were never used in mines. The two young men were making a bomb, and there could be little doubt how they meant to use it. There could be little doubt either that it was here, in his laboratory, that Morral had learnt how to make the sort of bomb that had killed Angela. And it was more than likely that it was the Ferrers who had taught him how to do so. At the thought de Quesnoy clenched his hands until the nails dug into his palms and his knuckles went white. He felt a terrible temptation to whip out the little revolver he always carried and shoot them where they stood.

  With a great effort he mastered it. To execute two men who he felt convinced had played a part in bringing about Angela’s death would give him a grim satisfaction; but if he held his hand for the moment he now had a lead which might enable him to destroy the whole brood of assassins root and branch, and that would be a far more fitting memorial to her.

  His brain clicked over. He had the lead, but if he did not take it at once it might be lost. Still outwardly calm, and ignoring what Ferrer had said about a mine, he stepped over to the slab, picked up the works of the little clock and remarked:

  ‘I wonder that you still use these things. Their ticking often gives them away so that they are discovered before they are timed to go off. It is far better to use a small phial of acid which, in a given time, eats through its container, and then a thin wire, the snapping of which detonates the bomb.’

  For a moment there was a stunned silence, while the brothers stared at him uncertainly, then he added with a smile, ‘My cousin is a nihilist and at his home in Odessa I sometimes used to help him make his bombs; so I know quite a lot about such things.’

  Both brothers gave a sudden sigh of relief, then the face of the elder lit up and he exclaimed, ‘Then you are one of us! Welcome to Barcelona, Señor Chirikov; it is a pleasure to meet you.’

  Ferrer had remained scowling in the background. Now he burst out: ‘You young fools. I’ve warned you time and again to stop associating with the militants. You’ll end by getting yourselves shot. I warn you, too, Señor Chirikov. Have nothing to do with these young hotheads. I make no secret of my views, but we’ll not achieve our ends by violence.’

  The sandy-haired Benigno turned to de Quesnoy. ‘Sanchez and I are sorry to disagree with our father, but he is old-fashioned and out-of-date. We’ll get nowhere by just talking. We’ve done little else for far too long. Our only hope lies in Propaganda by Deed and in terrorising all those who attempt to suppress us.’

  ‘Right or wrong,’ Ferrer declared harshly, ‘I’ll not allow you to use this house to make engines of destruction. Take your things, or better still, render them safe, and throw them in the dustb
in, then get out. Now, Señor Chirikov, come with me and I will show you the rest of our premises.’

  ‘One moment, father,’ the black-browed Sanchez intervened. ‘I’d like to hear something about the Russian nihilists at first hand, and I’m sure Benigno would too. What about having a drink with us this evening, Señor Chirikov?’

  ‘I should be happy to,’ de Quesnoy replied, with difficulty concealing his elation at this chance to win the confidence of two active anarchists. ‘Where shall we meet?’

  ‘It would be better still if the Señor would dine with us,’ suggested Benigno. ‘We’d have longer to talk then, and could go out to the Font de Lleo at Montjuich.’

  On de Quesnoy’s accepting, as the restaurant was some way outside the town, it was arranged that the brothers should pick him up at seven o’clock near the Columna de Colón, which was not far from his pensión. Then, having said good-bye to them for the present, he accompanied the now sullen Ferrer on a tour of the library, the foundry, the kitchens and the publishing part of the establishment.

  When, nearly an hour later, he left the Escuela Moderna he had plenty to think about, and the problem uppermost in his mind was the question whether Ferrer was genuinely opposed to violence or had been playing a part. He had certainly appeared to be in earnest, and Benigno’s attitude to his father supported a belief that he had been. On the other hand, if Ferrer’s sons had been using the laboratory against his express wishes it seemed strange that they had not at least taken the precaution of locking themselves in before getting to work. If, too, Ferrer’s was, in fact, the brain that plotted and directed the anarchist outrages it would be a matter of the first importance that he should be protected from the least breath of suspicion; so it might well be that Benigno had played up to him on a well-established procedure of always making him appear before strangers as only a propagator of anarchist theory. Whichever might prove to be the case, the Count felt that his luck had been very much in that morning and that he could look forward to a promising evening.

  By five to seven he was standing outside the Museo Marítimo opposite the towering column erected to the memory of the discoverer of America; but few Spaniards have much regard for punctuality, and it was nearly half past before the brothers, without apology for their lateness, but with cheerful greetings, picked him up in a one-horse coche.

  Montjuich is a great hill rising to six hundred feet in height on the western outskirts of Barcelona. Towards the sea its side is almost sheer, so the approach to its summit has to be made from the landward side, and even there the slope upward round a succession of hairpin bends is so steep that de Quesnoy felt pity for the poor lean horse drawing them and, half-way up, insisted on getting out. The Ferrers thought his conduct strange, but attributed it to Russian eccentricity, and good-naturedly joined him.

  At the top of the hill they got into the carriage again and drove through pines, palms and tamarisks towards its southern slope, on which stood the restraurant. From its terrace there was a fine view of the great rambling castle that for centuries had dominated Barcelona, and one could see for many miles out to sea.

  Even before they sat down at one of the tables in the garden, the clothes of people at others and the waiters hurrying about in spotless white aprons told de Quesnoy that it was a much more expensive place than he had expected the Ferrers to take him to, and he wondered that they could afford it.

  For a moment he put it down to Spanish pride to showing a foreigner round, coupled with a generous desire to do him well; but, in spite of the rather shoddy suits all three of them were wearing, the head waiter hurried up to take their order, and it then emerged that the brothers often came there on Sundays in the summer. That caused the Count to think again, and he recalled the fact that in Russia it was common knowledge that the nihilists not only committed assassinations, but also robbed banks and blackmailed wealthy people. They justified such crimes by saying that they were committed as their only means of raising funds to continue their political campaign and support their comrades who were in hiding. But de Quesnoy thought it probable that in some cases a part of the proceeds was kept back; and he had no reason to suppose that the activities and morals of the Spanish anarchists differed much from those of the Russian nihilists.

  As the evening advanced he formed the opinion that Sanchez, anyhow, was in the movement mainly for what he could get out of it. The burly, coarse-featured young man gulped down the rich dishes he had ordered with a zest that implied that he could not have enough of them, and each time he filled his mouth with wine his eye roved round the prettier of the women at the nearby tables. In Spain no respectable woman then ever took a meal in public; so the majority of them were the better class of kept girls out for the evening with their mostly middle-aged lovers, and two of them, no doubt attracted by Sanchez’ fine physique, covertly returned his glances. Although he did not actually say so his attitude clearly conveyed that this was the sort of life he visualised himself living when equality for all had been achieved, and that he would be entitled then to the best of food and wine all the time, with no nonsense about any monied class having first call on the prettiest women.

  Benigno was very different and, de Quesnoy soon decided, a true fanatic. He seemed little interested in what he ate and drank, and not the least in any of the good-looking girls at nearby tables; but he was intensely interested in all the Count had to say on the condition of the Russian workers. Sanchez was interested only in the accounts that their guest gave them of high officials being blown to pieces, shot, knifed or poisoned, whereas Benigno wanted to know what wages the workers received, the cost of rent and food, the percentage of them that contributed the little they could afford towards the freedom movements, and the answers to a score of similar questions.

  De Quesnoy succeeded in satisfying both of them, although in the case of Benigno he was compelled to use guesswork in answering most of his enquiries. The evening therefore proved a great success, and as they drove back through the cool night air to the city the brothers pressed their new friend to keep in touch with them and to come out with them again. To maintain the rôle he was playing he had to say that, to his regret, his very limited resources did not permit him to return their hospitality on the scale they had entertained him; but, as he had felt sure they would, they brushed that objection aisde, declaring that among friends the bill should be paid by whoever happenened to have most money.

  Thinking over the evening as he undressed in his bed-sitting room, with its cheap furniture and faded wallpaper, two things were uppermost in the Count’s mind: one was the pleasure he had derived, after making do for a fortnight on indifferent food, from a meal of lobsters, duck and wood strawberries with cream; the other was how strange it was that Benigno, who was far the more intelligent of the two, apparently failed to see his younger brother as he was—a gross, brutal egoist who camouflaged his selfish appetites under a veneer of back-slapping good fellowship—and quite clearly worshipped the ground he walked on.

  On the Monday, and again on Tuesday, to de Quesnoy’s considerable annoyance Ferrer sent him students who wished to take a course in Russian; so there was nothing for it but to agree to the times that suited them and during those hours assume the rôle of a pedagogue. Fortunately neither of them could afford more than two hours a week, so they did not greatly interfere with his pursuit of the lines through which he hoped to succeed with his mission.

  He had no place in which to give these lessons other than in his bedroom, and it was on returning to it late on the Tuesday night, when he had again been out with the Ferrer brothers, that he found that his things had been searched. Nothing had been taken, and he had little doubt that on Ferrer’s instructions one of the students had returned to his room during his absence to vet its contents; so he had good reason to be glad about the precautions he had taken.

  Most evenings he continued to put in at his branch of the Somaten; but in addition to Tuesday evening he also spent that of Friday with the Ferrer brothers
, taking them to the club for a snack meal. He was, however, a little suprised to find they they did not know any of its members.

  When Sunday morning came round again he decided to pay Ferrer another visit. To thank him for having sent the two students was excuse enough, and Ferrer received him without any trace of the moody anger he had displayed when they had last parted. After they had talked for a few minutes in the hallway of Ferrer’s apartment, in order to prolong the conversation de Quesnoy asked if he might borrow a few books. Ferrer then took him down to the library, which on Sundays was closed to the public.

  Having found the shelves containing books in French, de Quesnoy looked through them and chose three. One was a work in support of the expulsion of the religious Orders from France by the government of the atheist Emile Combes, another was on the brutal exploitation of the Negroes in the Congo by their Belgian overlords, and the third was a translation from the German of Paul Eltzbacher’s book, Anarchism, which Doña Gulia had recommended to him.

  After glancing at their titles Ferrer remarked, ‘An interesting choice; but as you intend to settle here I should have thought that it would have paid you better to improve your knowledge of Spanish, rather than to struggle through serious works in French.’

  De Quesnoy smiled. ‘French is my second language. I both read and speak it fluently.’ By way of explanation he transposed the nationalities of his parents, and added, ‘My mother was a Frenchwoman.’

  Ferrer raised his thinly-marked eyebrows. ‘Indeed!’ Then after a short pause he went on, ‘That being the case I think I could offer you employment—although it would be only of a temporary nature. My French master, Emile Degas, has been ill for some time. Poor fellow, he is suffering from a cancer and in great pain. I have arranged for a new man to take his place, but he will not be arriving from France until towards the end of the month. In the meantime I would have liked to relieve Degas of his duties, but the classes must go on. Do you think you would be competent to take them, so that I could release him at once to receive full-time treatment?’