Vendetta in Spain

opening.

That night La Torcera again set off on her quest while the Count kept a lonely vigil. She returned much earlier than expected. It was only a little after midnight and he had not long left the lounge to go up to their suite. To his delight he saw at a glance that she had news. Her eyes sparkling with excitement, she exclaimed:

'I've found her! It was shfcer luck. I was doing my act as usual in one of the bars when I overheard two men at a table talking. One said to the other, 'Have you been to the Silver Galleon lately? There's a red-head there, a girl named Inez, that I used to know as a kid. She left Cadiz some time ago but she came back last month. She won't play for less than ten pesetas, but you can take my word that she's worth every centavo of it.' '

'And then?' asked the Count eagerly.

'I felt sure he must have been speaking of the bitch we're after; so in another bar I asked the whereabouts of the Silver Galleon. It is a fair-sized inn some way from the red-light district but still on the water-front. It lies behind the little park in which stands the memorial to the Cortes. I went off there at once and my luck was in. The place has a cosy little bar and is frequented by the better class of seamen. There were eight or ten of them in there drinking and playing dice, and only two girls: Inez and another. I hung about for a bit and again luck favoured me. One of the men had been standing her drinks and they went out together. I shuffled after them and managed to see that they didn't leave the house. They went upstairs together; so evidently she's got a room there and the landlord is in on it, taking a rake-off on her earnings.'

T suppose you saw no sign of Sanchez?'

She shook her head. 'No, none. But at that hour it would have been surprising to see them together. If she is keeping him, as I have no doubt she is, the last thing he would do is to go about with her in the evenings. Even if he loitered in the same bar it would soon get round that he was her bully and be likely to scare off her possible customers.'

'That's true. Anyhow, your having run her to earth is half the battle. With luck now, she'll lead me to him.'

For a moment de Quesnoy was tempted to go out there and then on the chance that by the time he reached the Silver Galleon Inez would be back down in the bar hoping to pick up another customer, but he put the idea from him. She might be spending the night with the man who had gone upstairs with her, or when he had left her decide not to come down again; and he did not want to show himself in the bar until he could be reasonably certain that she would be there.

Next morning he made out a draft on the Banco de Coralles for four thousand pesetas in favour of La Torcera. With the thousand he had already given her she would be receiving about ?200 for her services, but he did not consider that an excessive price for having enabled him again to get on Sanchez's track, seeing that there had been no other possible way of his doing so.

He thought it very unlikely that her troupe at Granada would refuse to take her back after her few days' absence or, if they did, that she would not be able to get a job as a dancer in a cafe. In any case, with her normally modest way of living, such a sum would keep her for a year, or provide a much fatter nest egg than that of which Sanchez had robbed her. Even so, as he had promised her the money, he was surprised and touched when, on his giving her the draft, she burst into tears, kissed his hands, called down blessings on him and declared him to be a true hidalgo.

Before lunch he went out and bought at a ready-made clothes shop a blue cloth suit with a square-breasted jacket, a muffler and a flat cap with a shiny peak, which would give him a somewhat nautical appearance. Then, thinking it probable that he might be up all night, he went to bed in the afternoon and had a long sleep.

In the evening he had an early meal sent up to the sitting-room and afterwards changed into the rig-out that he had bought earlier in the day. No letter forwarded on by Gulia had arrived that morning, so La Torcera's having located Inez Giudice remained his only chance of getting on Sanchez's trail. That he might not have returned to her after his trip to San Sebastian, or had returned and since left her for some other woman, were, the Count realized, depressing possibilities. But should either prove the case he might still hope to deal with Inez as he had with La Torcera and secure from her a new lead to his quarry.

At half past nine, still speculating, not altogether pessimistically, on his chances of settling accounts with Sanchez that night, he walked out of the Hotel Atlantico. He had left La Torcera up in the sitting-room immersed in a new batch of picture papers. Now that she had done the job that he had required of her and he had paid her off, it was his intention the following morning to put her safely on a train back to Granada. The one thing he did not expect was that he would never see her again.

The Red-headed Harlot

Having been indoors most of the day de Quesnoy had intended to walk to the Silver Galleon, but it was something over a mile away and within a few minutes of leaving the Atlantico there was a distant rumble of thunder, then it came on to rain; so he picked up a carriage. It set him down opposite the flamboyant monument commemorating the Cortes held in Cadiz in 1812, that had given Spain her famous Liberal Constitution, then he walked through the park in the direction La Torcero had told him that the Silver Galleon lay.

He found the inn without difficulty. It stood on a corner and was a rambling old seventeenth-century two- storied building with tiled roofs that buckled here and there, gable windows and an archway in its front that faced on to the park and port. After inspecting its two visible sides, the Count walked through the archway to find, as he expected, that it led to a yard that had stabling for three or four vehicles and about a dozen horses. A covered wagon stood in its centre but no one was about.

On either side of the archway, near its street end, there was a door. From under one only a faint light showed; from the other came a much brighter light and the sound of voices. This door obviously led to the bar. The short, sharp shower was over but de Quesnoy still had the collar of his jacket turned up and now, pulling the peak of his cap well down, he went in.

At a glance he saw it to be a comfortable room furnished with old but solid pieces. In one corner four men were playing dice, farther along two others were seated drinking, a seventh was leaning on the bar and, beyond him, two women were sitting in an inglenook with a table in front of them. Behind the bar stood a broad- shouldered, square-faced man of about fifty with greyish grizzled hair, whom de Quesnoy rightly guessed to be the landlord.

Touching his cap with a murmured Buenas tardes to the company, he walked over to the bar and ordered himself a brandy and ginger-ale. It was not a mixture that he particularly liked, but he had found that while the best Spanish brandy, although not comparable with fine French cognac, was quite palatable, the worst could be horrible; so in a place like this it was safer not to take it neat.

The landlord had been chatting with the other men at the bar. As he served the Count, he remarked that it was getting late in the year for a thunderstorm, but it didn't look like coming to much. De Quesnoy replied that it had already stopped raining, which was a pity as it was oppressive and a bit more would have freshened things up. Then the landlord just nodded and moved along to resume his conversation with his earlier customer.

The Count took a drink and lit a cigarette. Both the women behind him were wearing mantillas made from small fluffy black bobbles sewn on to net, but under this head-dress the hair of one of them had certainly been lightish, and as nine out of ten women in Spain were brunettes he felt fairly certain she would prove to be Inez Giudice. It looked, too, as though he had timed his entry well, as he had not wanted to have to linger about there and perhaps be drawn into conversation with other people before she turned up, or, on the other hand, leave his arrival so late that she might have already been picked up by some other man.

When he had smoked a third of his cigarette he glanced round and remained looking at the two girls for a moment as though he had noticed them for the first time. Now, he had no doubt that the fair one was Inez. Her head had been in shadow when he had glanced at her before, but now the rays of a lamp on the bar brought out its vivid red lights. As their eyes met she smiled and closed one of hers in a wink.

Returning her smile, he carried his glass over to their table, asked permission to join them, and then if he might buy them a drink. The red-head asked for a Calisay and the darker woman for an Anis. Having collected the two liqueurs from the bar, the Count told them his name was Jaime. His lead confirmed his belief that the red-head was Inez and the dark one said her name was Beatriz.

Now that de Quesnoy had a chance to look at them closely he saw that Beatriz was by a good bit the older of the two. Her face was very ordinary, with a heavy jowl and a rather bovine but not unpleasant expression. Inez, on the other hand, he decided, would prove distinctly attractive to anyone who liked the gamine type. She had a small freckled face with a retrousse nose, a wide mouth