'Silence! Silence! Silence!' shouted the President; and then, 'If you do not stop this minute, I'll have you gagged.'
Breathless and sweating, de Richleau subsided. Ferrer was glancing nervously from side to side; but the Prosecutor nodded to him and he scurried swiftly back into the room from which he had come.
After a moment's hush the President said, 'Proceed,' and, standing up, the Prosecutor again addressed the Court.
T am confident,' he said, 'that the Court will disregard these wild accusations. It is obvious that they are no more than a bluff by which the Prisoner hopes to gain a few hours of life by beguiling the Court into an adjournment. But that he is guilty the Court can hardly doubt.' He then gave a very brief summing-up, ended by demanding the death penalty, and sat down.
The President made a sign to the Prisoner's Friend. Navarez stood up, bowed, fingered his little moustache, and said:
'May it please the Court, although I have been nominated as the Prisoner's Friend, I fear I can make only a poor showing in that role. When I interviewed the prisoner earlier this morning he would say little about himself except to make assertions impossible of belief, such as that he was a foreign Duke, a personal friend of His Majesty the King, had been staying in Barcelona as the guest of His Excellency the Captain-General, and so on. It is obvious that he suffers from delusions of grandeur. That would indicate that his mind is unbalanced, and the Court may wish to take his mental state into consideration. Apart from that I can only submit to you the statement he made to me, that he killed Veragua in self-defence; but, unfortunately, of that I can give the Court no proof.'
Had de Richleau not been so frantically anxious about the fate that might overtake him in the next quarter of an hour, he would have felt outraged by this travesty of a defence; but he had been prepared for something like it and his whole mind was concentrated on wondering if there was even a chance that the Court would agree on a verdict of 'Guilty, but with extenuating circumstances'. That would have meant imprisonment in the fortress and, given even a few hours, he might yet save his life.
In accordance with practice at courts-martial, the President put the question to the junior member of the Court first. 'Lieutenant Herrera, do you find the Prisoner guilty or not guilty?'
'Guilty,' replied the youth with the monocle.
The Duke's pulses raced. In his mind he saw again the courtyard outside and the lounging soldiers in it. On many occasions in Central America he had seen firing squads execute rebels, saboteurs and spies, and he knew that such executions could vary greatly. If the men ordered to do the job had never carried out an execution before, most of them hated it. They were either filled with pity for the condemned man, or reluctant to accept the guilt of having been a party to killing a fellow-human in cold blood; so they either fired over his head, or shut their eyes before pulling the trigger. That meant that the poor wretch up against the wall was rarely killed by the volley. Instead he dropped wounded and screaming, and the officer supervising the execution had to finish him off by putting his pistol to his jerking head and blowing out his brains. But if the men in the squad had had previous experience the majority of them aimed to kill. De Richleau thanked his gods that the men outside must have had ample practice at such work, so at least he could hope for a quick, clean death.
The President turned to the second senior member of the Court and said, 'Captain Escalante. Do you find the Prisoner guilty or not guilty?'
'Guilty,' replied the handsome Captain without a shadow of hesitation.
The word was hardly out of his mouth before de Richleau exclaimed, 'Captain Escalante! Is your name Juan?'
The astonished Captain looked at him and nodded.
'You are, then, making your addresses to the Senorita Mercedes, General Quiroga's daughter.'
The Captain frowned, but again he nodded.
'Then,' gasped the Duke, 'I will tell you something about her that you do not know.'
In an instant the Captain was on his feet. 'If you dare . . .' he began angrily; but de Richleau cut him short.
'It is nothing to the young lady's discredit. She is embroidering a pair of velvet bedroom slippers with your initials as a New Year present for you.'
Urgoiti jumped to his feet and shouted, 'I protest! This is irrelevant! Yet another pack of lies by the Prisoner in the hope of gaining a respite.'
The President banged the table with his gavel. 'Silence! You have no right to address the Court unless asked for your opinion.'
The Captain, still staring at de Richleau with a puzzled look, muttered, 'If this is true, how could you possibly know of it?'
'That is my point,' the Duke was trembling with excitement and new hope. 'How could I know it? Only because I have told the Court the truth. For the nights of the 8th and 9th I was a guest in General Quiroga's home and lived as one of his family. You have only to ask the General and he will tell you that I was that Count de Quesnoy whose wife was killed by the bomb thrown at His Majesty's wedding procession, and that I have been seeking revenge against the anarchists ever since. You need not even bother the General. Send for the Senora Quiroga, for the Senorita Mercedes, for their butler, for the soldier servant who valeted me while I was a guest in their house. Any or all of them will tell you that I speak the truth.'
As he paused, breathless, the three officers constituting the Court exchanged a few quick words. Then the President announced:
'I suspend the Court until further investigations have been made.'
At that moment there came a loud report. The windows of the room rattled. A spiral of smoke eddied up from just behind the table at which the Prosecutor was sitting. Comandante Urgoiti, realizing that it must now emerge that he had known the facts from the beginning, and that ruin, disgrace and death awaited him, had pulled his pistol from its holster and blown out his brains.
His act gave immediate confirmation of de Richleau's innocence. The officers present escorted him in a body through the long corridors of the fortress to the General's office. Quiroga berated them for a set of fools; but the Duke could now afford to be generous. He spoke up for them, saying that they had only been carrying out their duty and had been entirely misled by Urgoiti's skilful plot. The General then assumed his jovial aspect and invited them all over to his residence, where he ordered up champagne for them to drink a toast to his guest's eleventh-hour escape.
Senora Quiroga and Mercedes had joined them, and de Richleau asked his host and hostess to do him a great favour. He said that since the bedroom slippers Mercedes was making for Captain Escalante had been the means of saving his life, he begged that they would there and then give their consent to the young couple becoming engaged. Mercedes's mother hesitated for a moment, but the old General declared heartily that it would make a happy ending to what might so easily have been a terrible tragedy; so consent was given.
Yet it was not quite the end. After the little celebration was over and the officers had returned to their duties, de Richleau, not having eaten since the previous evening, asked for a light meal. When he had finished it he felt so utterly exhausted from his ghastly ordeal that he went upstairs and threw himself upon his bed. Ten minutes later he was sound asleep.
At five o'clock the General went up and roused him, to tell him that at midday he had given fresh instructions to the police, who had been busy collecting witnesses all the afternoon, and that he had convened a court-martial to try Ferrer that evening. Together they walked over to the Courtroom. Evidence was given that Ferrer had played a leading part in fomenting the July revolt, and de Richleau gave evidence about the anarchist's past activities,