but that might have been only to lie low before making his trip to San Sebastian.
On the other hand, if Sanchez had returned he could have got back only that day, and it seemed most unlikely that he would have left again within a few hours. Besides, the Count reasoned that an obviously primitive and passionate woman like La Torcera would lie to protect her lover was to be expected. The thing he could not understand was where he had slipped up and enabled her to guess that he was not a friend of Sanchez's but an enemy. Having weighed the pros and cons, worried as he now was that he might be about to suffer a grievous disappointment, he still thought it a fifty-fifty chance that he would surprise Sanchez in her quarters. But it then occurred to him that she might yet try to cheat him, so he said:
T have another warning for you. If you take me to the quarters of some other woman, pretending that they are yours, you may fool me for the moment, but you will live to regret it. Tomorrow I can easily bribe someone to check up, and if I find you've tricked me I'll come back here when you least expect it. By the time I've done with you you'll not have the looks ever to attract a man again.'
'I'll not trick you,' she flung back over her shoulder. 'I've no need. I tell you Sanchez has gone from here. There is my lodging, just ahead of us.'
They had rounded a bend in the cliff and were approaching a six-feet high wall of whitewashed brick with a low door in its centre, which was evidently the entrance to a small cave. Catching up with her, he took her right hand and swiftly twisted it up in a half-nelson behind her back, as he said softly:
'Now; no nonsense. I am aware of Sanchez's skill in throwing a knife and I've no mind to have one in my chest. But he won't throw one at you, so you are going to stand in front of me. You will now call him by name so that he comes to the door of the cave. You are to call his name, mind, and not a word more.'
Obediently she called 'Sanchez!' There was no reply. But as no light was filtering through the cracks round the door de Quesnoy thought it possible that Sanchez was sleeping; so he made her call again, louder. Still there came no reply. After waiting a good minute the Count told her to call again, but the cave remained in darkness and there was no sound of movement from within it.
Releasing her arm, de Quesnoy said, 'It seems that you were telling the truth. Go into the cave now, leave the door wide open and light a candle or a lamp. If you have a knife there I warn you not to touch it. Remember, I can still put a bullet through your foot.'
With a shrug she did as he had told her. Through the open door he saw her light an oil lamp then, with his revolver still at the ready, he followed her inside.
The cave was no more than ten feet deep and a little less in width. From six feet in height at its entrance its rough-hewn ceiling sloped down to four at the back where there was a brick hearth with a chimney and a few iron cooking pots. Along one wall there was a truckle bed, against the other a long trestle table on which stood an enamel basin, toilet things, a mirror, and an array of cosmetics; in front of it stood a single chair.
As the Count put his foot over the door sill La Torcera drew back a little in the confined space, dropped him a mocking curtsy and said sarcastically, 'Enter, noble Prince, and be pleased to search my vast apartment; but have a care when crawling under the bed lest the giant who lies concealed there should seize upon and devour you.'
De Quesnoy gave her a half-smile. 'I admit that after all the unnecessary precautions I took against Sanchez being warned of my approach, you have the laugh of me. Incidentally, too, I am not a Prince. I used Kropotkin's name only because I thought you might know it and that it would influence you the more readily to take me to Sanchez.'
'Neither are you a friend of Sanchez,' she took him up quickly. 'That was made very clear from your fear that he would send a knife whizzing at you.'
'No,' he agreed. 'It would be pointless for me to continue to pretend that Sanchez and I are anything but enemies.'
Her black eyes, no longer misted by tears, flashed angrily. Stamping her foot, she burst out, 'Then why in the name of Shaitan did you not tell me so in the first place?'
'Because I believed him to be your lover.'
'What led you to believe that?'
Putting up his revolver, he showed her the photograph of herself and said, 'On about the twenty-fourth of August Sanchez fled from Barcelona and there was some reason to think that he had gone to Granada. Recently he has been in San Sebastian. Four nights ago I had a fight with him, and this photograph fell out of his pocket. As it was taken in Granada, that confirmed my belief that he had been lying low here. From that it was no great jump to the assumption that he was your lover and you had been hiding him.'
With a glance at the photograph she muttered sullenly, 'You were right. He came here first last summer on a holiday. He is a handsome devil and I let him have his way with me. That lasted for about ten days. He turned up again this August and told me that he was on the run. I had no permanent lover at the moment; so we took up with one another where we had left off and I let him share my cave.'
'How long did he remain here this time?'
'About a fortnight. He left on a Wednesday. I think . . . yes . . . it was September the 8th.'
'And he has not been back since. Today, I mean; even to see you for an hour or leave a message for you?'
'He neither has been back, nor will be.'
'You cannot be sure of that. I believe him to be making his way south by slow trains and branch lines. That could easily take him a day longer than I reckoned on. He may quite well turn up tomorrow.'
'I tell you he will not. He will never return here; no, not if you wait for him till Doomsday.'
'How can you be so certain of that?'
La Torcera's face suddenly contorted into a fierce scowl and she cried, 'Because he knows that if he did I'd stick a knife in his guts. He left me for another woman, and not content with that the swine stole my savings to go off with her.'
Convinced that all this time she had been lying to protect her lover, de Quesnoy had remained blind to any other possibility. But her bitter words had the ring of truth. Now it flashed upon him that he had completely misinterpreted her act of spitting in his face. She had done so not because he had somehow given it away that he was after Sanchez's blood, but because she had accepted his statement that he was Sanchez's intimate friend.
He gave a rueful laugh. 'It seems that for the past quarter of an hour we have been at cross purposes. That was my fault, of course; although I had no means of guessing that Sanchez had given you grounds to hate him. Still, now that we understand one another we must work together, and with luck I'll be able to aid you in getting your revenge. Have you any idea where he would be likely to have made for after leaving San Sebastian last Tuesday?'
She shook her head. 'No, none. I wish I had. I'd give a year's work to get even with him.'
'While he was here did he never mention to you any other places in which he had friends who might have hidden him?'
'No. He spoke little of his affairs, except when following in the newspapers what had occurred after he left Barcelona. The school his father ran there was closed by the police, and his father, brother and many of his friends were arrested. He attributed all this ill-fortune to a Conde de Quesnoy who, according to news he received here through the anarchist grape-vine, had had a miraculous escape from death and had denounced them all.'
De Quesnoy smiled. 'Although I am not a Prince I can give you my word that I am a Conde. I am that Conde de Quesnoy of whom he spoke. It is tfue that I denounced these anarchists and Sanchez's having escaped the net is one reason why I am hunting him. But I suppose you have anarchist sympathies yourself; so had you not personal grounds for wishing to be revenged you would refuse to help me catch him.'
She shrugged. 'I think we gipsies are all anarchists at heart, but we have enough troubles without mixing ourselves up in politics; and all of us thought the attempt to kill the handsome young King and his bride a most wicked thing. That you are an anarchist-hater and hunting Sanchez on that account makes no difference to me. I'd still aid you to catch him if I could, but I see no way to do so.'
After a moment's thought, de Quesnoy asked, 'What of this woman for whom he deserted you? Tell me about her.'
'She was not one of the troupe, but a girl of the town named Inez Giudice; a little red-headed bitch in her early twenties.'
'Was she a native of Granada?'
