“Would you telephone the Guardia Civil at Vercín? Tell them to hold on to this man until I get there? Whatever happens — until I get there. I believe the woman may be on the way from Ronda.”
“That will be done. Good luck, Commander — and take care.”
Shaw nodded, and hurried from the room. As he went along to his own bedroom he passed Debonnair’s. She was standing in the doorway, looking seductive in nylon pyjamas; he thought she’d never appeared so damnably desirable. She said lightly, disregarding the frown which touched his eyes when he realized why she was there:
“Hey, Esmonde, you’re going somewhere, aren’t you, darling? I heard a bit of a racket, so I got up.”
“I’m going somewhere all right.” Shaw took her face in his hands, gently, looked into the hazel eyes. “And you’re going right back to bed, nice and safe till I get back.”
She said sweetly, “Oh, but that’s what you think! I can handle a gun if I have to, and if you’re driving you’ll want some one for that, darling, won’t you?”
He was impatient. “Just listen—”
“I told you earlier not to waste time arguing. I’m coming.”
Debonnair’s determined little chin was up, and he saw the old flash in her eyes. She was pale and taut, fully conscious of what she was letting herself in for, but determined just the same. And, looking at her, Shaw guessed that if she didn’t come with him she’d beg, borrow, or steal another car from Don Jaime after he’d gone; she’d get after him somehow, and he’d rather, if that was to be, that they were together. He took her in his arms, ruffled her hair a little, feeling his inside go cold.
She said softly, “Esmonde, my darling, I don’t want you to get hurt just for the want of a gun-hand who isn’t preoccupied with driving on foul roads, and you’d better just make up your mind to it.”
Within twenty minutes they were speeding down the blank darkness of the Malaga-Algeciras road towards its junction with the San Pedro road where they would turn up for Vercín, Shaw driving with set concentration and gazing out through a windscreen already spattered with the burst bodies of countless night-insects. The cool night wind tore in at the open driving window, blowing up his brown hair. He drove fast, sending the car along the road like a big black arrow, its twin headlights beaming out along the track, and Debonnair’s body pressed close and warm against his. In the glove compartment in front of Debonnair was a revolver which Don Jaime had lent her just before they started out. Shaw’s was in its shoulder-holster. They could need both soon; Debonnair must be told some of the truth about Ackroyd.
Before Rosia del Cuatro Caminos left Ronda for Vercín an hour or two later that night (it was actually the early hours of the next morning) she went down the stairs of the little pension where she had stayed so briefly and into the telephone cubicle which smelt of stale sweat and the odours of cooking-oil which had strayed in from the entrance-hall. She puffed irritably at a cigarette which hung loosely from her lips as she waited for the call to be answered, snapped at the constantly reiterated Oiga and Digame, the “Can you hear me?” and the “Speak to me” of the operator in the exchange. When the voice of the man she wanted came through she spoke to him briefly, and then put down the receiver.
She went back upstairs to her bedroom, wrinkled her nose once again at the stuffy smell of the bugs which crawled in the bed. Quickly she crossed over to the open window, flung the curtains back. She stood there looking out over the mountains. Ronda was set on the edge of a sheer cliff, its front falling precipitously into a deep valley which lay in shadow stretching to the distant ranges brought into relief by a silver moon. Somewhere beneath that moon was Commander Esmonde Shaw.
Karina knew from the grapevine that he’d got free of the casilla at La Linea, that he had been snooping around Torremolinos; she realized that very likely he had the same information as she had as to the whereabouts of the man Ackroyd. That, she thought, was just the trouble in Spain — the grapevine was excellent; too excellent, for it was impartial in its broadcasting, and that was not good. When she had heard not long ago that Ackroyd was safe in Vercín she had had a delectable moment in which she saw herself with Mr Ackroyd aboard the ship, sailing out of Malaga for Gdynia, sailing in triumph through the Straits of Gibraltar, under the very noses of the British, past the Rock itself.
She had quickly realized that that wasn’t quite ‘on.’
She knew Esmonde Shaw’s tenacity, didn’t doubt that he’d have ways and means of finding out about the Ostrowiec; suppose Shaw didn’t come to Vercín, where arrangements had been made for his reception, suppose he preferred to wait his chance in Malaga, watch the ship… even, perhaps, take the extreme step of having her searched at sea by the British Navy?
These things were possibilities.
Karina, however, had the answer.
Within ten minutes of her phone-call there was a light knock at her door, and she went quickly over and jerked it open. A tall, thin Spaniard, whose poor-quality suit with the sharply padded shoulders gave him a scarecrow appearance, came into the room. Shutting the door, Karina asked:
“No one saw you come?”
“No one, señorita.”
She pulled the door open again, quietly and quickly, looked along the passage, then shut it again carefully. There was a dead silence in the house but she kept her voice low.
She said, “Now, listen. For the Vercín end, all is arranged.”
“The señorita has made contact with El Caballero?”
Impatiently she nodded. “The señorita has! Indirectly only, but I have every confidence that he will not let me down.” El Caballero, one of the hill-bandit remnants of the Civil War, had been recommended to her even before she left her own country. “He meets me on the road below Vercin. He has been told to cut the telephone wire into the town, so we should have time in which to act before anything is known about our movements — and if Shaw should get there first El Caballero knows what to do.” She tapped the thin man on the chest, hard, and his willowy body swayed back a little. “My friend, what I want of you is this: I have fresh orders for the captain of the Ostrowiec, and you will take them yourself to Malaga at once.”
Karina spoke quietly for five minutes. She made the man repeat his orders, and then he left. Karina went slowly over to her dressing-table, picked up her handbag, felt for the small jewelled pistol. She fondled it. It wasn’t a lot of use, admittedly, but it gave her comfort; and the heavier arms would be in the car, the new car which she had been forced to hire at such outrageous expense after the fool in the lorry had driven into hers.
She looked at her watch.
Abruptly then she snapped the clasp of her handbag, slung it from her shoulder on its thin leather strap. She went out of the room. Slim, elegantly dressed, with that expensive perfume to seduce the thoughts of men, she might have been a moneyed tourist, a rich girl from New York or London or Paris enjoying the unaccustomed sensation of roughing it for a few days in the little pension. She went quickly down the stairs; there was no question of paying her bill — better that as many people as possible should think she intended remaining in Ronda, or at least intended coming back, and when they found her personal belongings in her room that would be what they would think. She let herself out of the pension and walked away, across the narrow bridge running high above the tremendous rocky gorge that splits Ronda. As she walked a car came up behind her slowly, and stopped a little way ahead. There were two men in it. The man beside the driver slid out to open the door for her, and she got into the back.