Vendetta in Spain

'Ha!' exclaimed the red-headed man. 'I recognize him now. He was pointed out to me by a friend of mine as a Russian nihilist, and his name ... his name . . . yes, it is Nicolai Chirikov.'

De Richleau laughed. 'Of course he remembers me. It would be extraordinary if he did not. I got a temporary job in his school for assassins and succeeded in breaking it up.'

Urgoiti gave him a queer look. 'But you are a foreigner, aren't you? Your name is not really Carlos Goma. The other evening, when we first met, Veragua also said he believed you to be a Russian refugee.'

'I am half Russian by birth. But what the devil has that to do with it? General Quiroga personally vouched for me to you, did he not?'

'Yes, yes; but he may have been deceived.'

'Deceived! What nonsense!'

Tt is not nonsense. It is much more likely that he should have been deceived about you, who arrived here only forty-eight hours ago, than that I should have been deceived about Veragua, who has worked for me for months.'

'You are quite wrong about that. General Quiroga has had incontestable proof of my true identity. What is more, I first met him three years ago, soon after this man Ferrer had failed in an attempt to have me murdered.'

'I tell you the man is not Ferrer.'

'I tell you he is,' de Richleau retorted stubbornly. 'I agree that his appearance is greatly changed, but that is mainly because he has dyed his hair. You have only to look at his scalp to see that it is dyed.'

Tt is not a criminal offence to dye one's hair, and he says he can bring plenty of people to swear to it that he is a Senor Olozaga.'

'Plenty of anarchists who are prepared to perjure themselves, no doubt; but there are many ways in which his real identity can be proved.'

'It seems to me that it is your identity that stands in greater need of proving.'

'God give me patience!' exclaimed the Duke angrily. 'I thought you an intelligent man, but tonight you are acting as though your head were made of wood.'

Urgoiti's plump figure stiffened with resentment. 'You will kindly refrain from insulting me.'

'And you will kindly refrain from questioning my integrity,' snapped back the Duke. 'Believe it or not, the man I have brought in is Ferrer. In General Quiroga's name I charge you to hold him for questioning. Should you fail to do so, I promise you it will cost you your job.'

'I'll hold him,' grunted the Police Chief, 'just to be on the safe side. But it looks to me as if he's someone you've got your knife into privately and are trying to frame.'

'Damn your impudence!' roared de Richleau. Tt now exceeds even your stupidity. I've had enough of this. I am going straight back to the Fortress to lodge a complaint about you with the Captain-General.'

'Oh no you're not.' Urgoiti pressed a bell-push on his desk. 'I'm holding you too. This man says you are a Russian nihilist named Chirikov. It wouldn't surprise me if you are, after what's happened to poor young Veragua. It looks to me as if he stumbled on the truth about you, and you shot him to keep him quiet. Anyhow, you admit yourself that you left him dying of wounds that you inflicted on him; so even if you turned out to be a Grandee of Spain, General Quiroga couldn't blame me for detaining you until we find out a bit more about what did happen. You're going to pass the night in a cell.'

That the Police Chief should have hit a bull's eye when making what he obviously thought to be the wildly improbable suggestion that Senor 'Carlos Goma' might turn out to be a Grandee of Spain, almost made the Duke laugh. But to have declared at this stage that he was one would only have made Urgoiti still more sceptical about his bona fides, and the situation that had developed was now no laughing matter. To have triumphed in his mission only to be told that he had arrested the wrong man was bad enough; to have to spend a night in prison because he had succeeded in saving his own life, at the expense of that of a youth who had been on the point of murdering him, seemed positively intolerable. Yet the last word, in this place, definitely lay with Urgoiti.

In vain de Richleau asked to be allowed to speak to General Quiroga on the telephone. Urgoiti, evidently still smarting under his insults, flatly refused. A uniformed man appeared in answer to the Chief's summons, others were sent for and the Duke and the red-headed man were both marched away, the latter loudly protesting that it was an outrage and that his name was Olozaga.

Locked in a solitary cell, the Duke took stock of the situation. When he had calmed down a little he had to admit to himself that he was in part to blame for what had happened. He had made a particular point with Quiroga about not wanting it to become generally known among the police that he was that Count de Quesnoy who had three years before worked against the anarchists and brought about the closing of the Escuela Moderna; but he had assumed that, before his arrival in Barcelona, the General had confided his true identity to the Police Chief. Evidently that was not so and the General could only have told Urgoiti that he was expecting a special investigator that evening to whom he wished him to give his full co-operation.

That being the case, when Urgoiti learned that Senor 'Gonad' had just shot one of his most promising detectives, and a man whom Urgoiti did not believe to be Ferrer declared that he knew 'Gomd' to be a Russian nihilist named Chirikov, the Police Chief had certainly had grounds for holding 'Gom&' until a full investigation into the question of his identity could be made.

About that the Duke felt no concern, for it could be only a matter of waiting until the morning; General Quiroga would be informed about what had happened, he would be released, and Urgoiti made to look a complete fool. But he was worried about Ferrer.

For a few minutes he wondered if he could possibly have been mistaken. The red-headed man certainly had only a vague resemblance to the Ferrer he had known in the past, and Urgoiti had been so positive that he was not. Yet as the Duke went back in his mind over the events of the evening his vague doubts were swiftly dissipated. Teresa had told him that Ferrer was living out at San Cugat under the name of Olozaga with Dolores Mendoza. For Dolores to have been there with a man who resembled Ferrer but was not him was beyond any possible coincidence. Then Ferrer's account of what had occurred had diverged considerably from the truth. He had said that two men had broken in; but that was not so. He said that he had hidden in a cupboard; but in fact he had been down in the cellar and had had to be smoked out. And he had^ made no mention at all of Dolores - obviously because if Urgoiti had sent out to have her picked up she would at once have been identified as one of Ferrer's closest associates and so put the noose round his own neck.

No, there could be no doubt about the red-headed man being Ferrer, but the thing that worried de Richleau was that, before he could get into touch with General Quiroga in the morning, Urgoiti might question Ferrer further, become strengthened in his opinion that the self-styled Olozaga really was an innocent person, and have him released. To have Urgoiti sacked later for his blunder would be little consolation for having lost the chance to bring Ferrer to justice.

The Duke was still speculating with considerable anxiety on such a possibility when, after about an hour, two warders entered his cell and one of them said to him, 'Senor Chirikov, we have orders to search you.'

'Chirikov is not my name,' he replied with a frown. 'Here I am known as Carlos Gomd.'

The warder shrugged. 'Chirikov is the name you're under on the charge sheet and that's good enough for us.'

'Charge,' repeated de Richleau. 'What am I charged with?'

'With the wilful murder of Detective Veragua. His body has just been brought in. Come on, now. No nonsense. Get your clothes off and quick about it.' the surprise of his life