"All right then," said Haigh; "so far as I"m concerned, I"m quite willing. You do the recruiting. We might call ourselves the Raymond Lully Exploitation Company, Limited."
I went out there and then about the errand, and found Taltavull at his own house, sitting in a huge stuffed armchair. He was reading _L"Intransigeant_, and marking in blue pencil the points where he considered its racy blackguardisms were not sufficiently pungent.
The furniture of a Spanish sitting-room is made up, as a rule, of whitewash on the walls, and a good supply of eighteenpenny rush-seated chairs scattered about the tiled floor. This is on account of the climate, which at times makes all appearances of coolness to be highly appreciated. But the anarchist was not a Spaniard, nor an Italian, nor anything else so narrow. He was a man of no nationality, and cosmopolitan, and sublimely proud of that expansiveness. Consequently, he had taken his ideas of furniture from a more northern island, and had his room well crammed with ma.s.sive mahogany and dark oak, with the upholstery in dull crimson velvet. To be sure, no style could be more unsuited to the climate, but then, on the other hand, it was a standing witness of his emanc.i.p.ation from all restraint. The thing might bring him discomfort, but that was a secondary matter, and he was prepared to suffer for his faith"s sake. Certain hard and fast principles always came first with him, and in the heavy mahogany and the hot plush velvet none of them were violated.
He put down his paper when I was announced, and said he was glad to see me; and I honestly believe that the phrase of welcome was no empty one, even before he knew what I had come about. He seemed--I say it without conceit--to have taken a fancy to me at our first meeting.
The gist of my tale came out pretty rapidly, although I skipped no details, but waded through chapter and verse; but before it was half told, Taltavull had sprung up from his seat, and was pacing backwards and forwards over the thick carpet, fiercely waving his long arms, and looking for all the world like a mechanical frock-coated skeleton. I broke off, and asked half-laughingly if I had offended him.
"I deem you, senor," cried he, "the greatest benefactor that my cause and I have ever known. I shall feel myself standing to the chin in your debt, whatever your conditions may be."
And with that I went on to the end of the yarn.
"Senor Cospatric," said he, when the last had been told, "it is directly contrary to the tenets of our creed to a.s.sist one individual--much less two--in piling up wealth beyond the due proportion. But it is also our fixed maxim to deal honourably with those who do the like by us. You, Don Miguel, are one of our enemies, a pa.s.sive one, it is true, but none the less an enemy, because you are not for us. Also I see with sorrow and certainty that you will never become a convert. There is something in your blood, some hereditary taint of conservatism, which forbids it. But for all that, you shall find that we anarchists can keep faith with our opponents. You shall have your rigid eighteen months" monopoly of the diamonds before we begin to stir the market and set about revolutionizing the world."
"Always supposing you can manage to finger the Recipe, which, as we stand at present, seems a by no means certain thing."
"Pah, _amigo_, you are half-hearted. I"--he struck his narrow chest fiercely--"shall never think of defeat. From the outset I shall go into the business with intention to succeed. Of my methods you may not learn much, for to those beyond the pale we lock out secrets. But could you know how far our brotherhood extends, and how deep is the responsibility with which each member is saddled, you would have more faith in the mighty weapon whose hilt I, Taltavull, grasp between my fingers."
"Don"t you go and involve Haigh and myself in a political row."
"No word of what is happening will pa.s.s outside the bounds of our own clique."
"I just mentioned the matter, y"know, because you anarchists have got the reputation of not sticking at much."
"My dear Don Miguel, a statesman in your own islands once evolved the policy of Thorough. We have adopted the selfsame principle. n.o.body and nothing must stand in the way of our ends. We stand up for humanity in the ma.s.s. _Bourgeois_ society is bound to go under. And to hasten its downfall any one of our members is proud to offer himself as a sufferer, or as even a martyr to death, for the Cause. We aim at producing a state of society in which men may live together in harmony without laws. You must see that we are merely extreme philanthropists, and that our motives are pure in the extreme. And, _amigo_, you must disabuse your mind from the vulgar illusion that we are nothing but a band of brutal a.s.sa.s.sins who murder only through sheer l.u.s.t for blood."
I started some sort of apology, but he cut me short.
"My dear fellow, you haven"t put my back up in the very least. A man is bound to misunderstand us unless he is on our side; because if he does understand and appreciate, and has any claim to the t.i.tle of man, he could not help being an anarchist. But now let us drop the question and get to the work of the more immediate present. I am going to the telegraph office first. Let me accompany you back as far as your hotel."
"When shall I see you again?" I asked, as we parted at Bustamente"s doorway.
"When I find where the Recipe is."
"And that will occupy how long? A week?"
Taltavull laughed. "You will see me to-morrow afternoon at the latest,"
said he.
Confidence is said to be infectious, but I can"t say that my hopes were very highly excited by Taltavull"s sanguineness of success. As to Haigh, he had scoffed at the idea of tracing up the Recipe from the first, and all I could tell him about the new power on the scent would not change his cheerful pessimism. "The whole loaf we are not going to get, dear boy," was his stated opinion; "and we may as well be contented with the crumbs we"ve grabbed, and enjoy "em accordingly.
There"s the dinner bell. Let"s go and make merry with the drummers."
However, true to his word, and not a little to our surprise, Taltavull turned up about four the next afternoon and told us that he had been successful. There was a little subcutaneous pride to be noted as he made the announcement, for, after all, he was a human man as well as an anarchist, and had done a thing which we deemed very nigh impossible.
But he kept this natural exultation under very modestly, saying that all credit that might be due was owing not to him, but to the great organization. We were merely offered a proof, he said, of what the anarchist body could encompa.s.s when once their machinery was put in motion. And then, having given us the broad fact, he proceeded to show out details. Or rather, to be strictly accurate, he gave us a string of results, without any hint as to how they had been arrived at, a certain amount of mystery being the salt without which no secret society could possibly exist.
Put briefly and in its order of happening, the story ran as follows:--
The raider, as we had already faintly surmised, was none other than the man with the spectacles in the Genovese _caffe_. His name was Pether--N. Congleton Pether; he was of Jewish extraction, and he was stone-blind. He had been much in Africa, and it was in the southern part of that continent that an accident deprived him of his sight. The injured eyeb.a.l.l.s had been surgically removed, and artificial ones mounted in their stead. The man was clever in the extreme in hiding his infirmity; for a week none of the hotel people where he was staying in Genoa even guessed at it. Casual acquaintances scarcely ever detected the missing sense.
English being his native tongue, Pether had naturally lost no word of the discussion over Weems"s ma.n.u.script, and directly the little schoolmaster and myself had left the _caffe_ he had beckoned his servant Sadi, who was within call, and had gone off on his arm towards the harbour. There he threw money about right and left, and the information he wanted was given glibly. A freight steamer consigned to some senna merchants would be sailing for Tripoli at noon on the morrow. To the skipper of this craft he betook himself, and bargained to be set down unostentatiously in Minorca. It would mean a very slight deviation from the fixed course, and what he paid would be money into that skipper"s own pocket. You see Pether knew how to set about matters. Had he gone to the shipowners, he would as likely as not have failed, or at any rate been charged an exorbitant fee; but by applying to a badly paid Italian seaman who was not above cooking a log, he got what he wanted for a thousand-franc note.
The senna steamer made for neither Ciudadella nor Port Mahon. Her doings were a trifle dark, and she did not want to be reported. But her skipper was a man of local knowledge, and remembered that there were three small harbours on the northern coast of Minorca, used exclusively by fishermen and _contrabandistas_. Further, being a man of guile, he understood the ways of the outpost Carabinero. He knew that if an open boat were seen to come into one of these village harbours from somewhere out of vague seaward darkness, the local preserver of the king"s peace and the king"s customs would not be rude enough to look in that direction. That uniformed worthy would understand that some gentleman in the neighbourhood wished to land a cargo, probably of smokable tobacco, free of duty. He would know that if he interfered, he would probably test the chill sensation of dull steel jabbed between the shoulder blades before many days were over. He would expect that in the ordinary course of events judicious short-sightedness would be rewarded by notes for many pesetas, and American tobacco in generous quant.i.ty. And he would reroll and smoke his Government cigarette, placidly non-interferent, thanking his best saint for the happy time to come.
And in fine it was managed in this very fashion. The senna steamer hove-to in the twilight some three miles off-sh.o.r.e, and a boat put into the tiny sheltered bay of Cavalleria just two hours after nightfall.
The boat scarcely touched the beach. She disgorged herself of two pa.s.sengers and a small lot of luggage, and departed whence she had come in scared haste.
A Carabinero, with his back ostentatiously turned to the newcomers, leaned on his rifle, whistling mournfully. Sadi wrapped a greasy note round a pebble, and chucked it to the man"s feet, whence it was transferred to the pocket of his ragged red trousers without comment, and then the pair took their way up past the carvel-built fishing-boats into the straggling village street.
Cavalleria has no regular _fonda_, or even _casa_, but there is a shop where they sell wine, and black tumour-covered sausages, and white bread, and _algobra_ beans, and Scotch sewing cotton. The whole village knew of their arrival, and were gathered in this shop to meet them when they came in. Few questions were asked. The Spaniard of the lower orders has a most Hibernian weakness for anything smacking of conspiracy, or any enterprise which is "agin" the Government." Pether saluted the audience with one mysterious grin, which they appeared to consider as fully explanatory, and then inviting them all to drink with him, put down a peseta,[2] and received much change in greasy bronze.
"_Dos reales_" was the price of that piece of lavish entertainment, the old twopence-halfpenny still holding sway in out-districts against the more modern decimal notation.
[2] A _peseta_ is worth rather less than a franc at the usual rate of exchange.
And then a guide was wanted.
Every able-bodied man amongst the villagers offered his services for nothing. His time and all that he possessed was entirely at the disposition of the senores. The choice was embarra.s.sing. But at last one rope-sandalled hero was selected, and the trio set off into the night between the great rubble walls. The most of their luggage had been left to go to Mahon by mule pannier on the morrow. They only took one small box with them, slung by a strap over Sadi"s shoulders. But the guide carried pick and shovel.
They struck the main road and held on along it till they reached the cemetery, and there struck off through Alayor, and on down the narrow lanes to Talaiti de Talt. Sadi and the Spaniard dug, and being used to the exercise, and working in the cool of the night, deepened their pit rapidly. Only the stars watched them at their labours. Pether was not able to look on; he could only listen.
As day was beginning to gray the sky the entrance tunnel was unroofed, and down the two foreigners dropped into it, Sadi leading. The man of the soil feared ghosts and crouched at the lip of the hole. Also, being ignorant of all other tongues save Minorquin, he understood no word of what was being said beneath him.
But of a sudden a noiseless light of blinding whiteness flared out from the inside of the Talayot; and after an interval of black-velvet gloom it flashed out again. His fears still were strong, but curiosity trampled them under foot, and the man in the rope sandals dropped noiselessly on to the floor of the tunnel. Again the intense white glare shone out, and the watcher saw words of writing on the farther wall of the Talayot, and him of the spectacles holding his wooden box so as to face them. Afterwards, by the light of a candle, he who had made the flashes sc.r.a.ped this lettering from the plaster with his knife, and his companion, laughing, scribbled something else on the blank place. And then, as the cold earthy atmosphere was beginning to make him sweat, the son of the soil climbed out again.
"Great Caesar!" exclaimed Haigh, when the narrative had reached this point. "I"m beginning to have an inkling of how it was all worked out.
If that chap photographed the inscription by magnesium flashlight, I verily believe I know where the plates----But don"t let me interrupt yet. Finish the tale first."
And so Taltavull went on.
The uncanny sights which he had witnessed impressed the Cavalleria fisherman mightily, and when he received a valuable banknote, he helped fill up the hole and departed, fully determined to hold his tongue. The man with the spectacles said that evil would a.s.suredly befall if he spoke of the things he had seen, and that fisherman believed him implicitly.
The two raiders walked rapidly down the narrow lanes till they came upon the broad road at that point where it is interrupted by a hedge of wheelbarrows and gang planks. Coming down the other branch road opposite to them was the zinc-roofed diligence, which had left Ciudadella in chill darkness at a quarter to five. At their sign the driver brought the ramshackle conveyance to a stand, and they squeezed into the stuffy interior. Then with an _arre-e-ee_, and an impartial basting with the short whip, the four wretched horses got into their shamble again, and forty minutes later were climbing in and out of the clean dry holes in Calle Isabella 2^a at Mahon. They only had one hitch in their enterprise. During one of these b.u.mps in the uneven street the door flew open, and the camera fell out on the cobble stones with a thud and a sound of splintering gla.s.s.
"And I thought that man a Juggins," said Haigh, "and imagined I was blarneying and greening him _ad libitum_, whilst all the time he was bamboozling me--me--me, gentlemen. But, Senor Taltavull, are you perfectly certain the fellow is blind? I think you must be mistaken there."
"He is stone-blind; but, as I told you, he is marvellously clever at concealing it. You are by no means alone in being deceived."
"But, _amigo_, he looked at me when we were talking, and pointed out things about the room, and, in fact, used his eyes the whole time.
Brown eyes they were, and good to look upon."
"I tell you he is very, very clever, and as his great conceit is to hide his infirmity, he uses all his wit to do it. Sadi, his servant, had helped him to explore the room beforehand, so that he knew exactly where everything lay. And the sound of your voice would tell him where to direct his gaze during a conversation. But call to mind anything where immediate vision was necessary. Did you never ask him to read a letter or anything of that kind, and not notice (now that you are reminded of it) that he somehow or other evaded doing so?"
"No, no---- By Jove, yes, I did though. I asked him to play cards, and he wouldn"t from conscientious motives or some rot of that kind."
"There you are, then."
"Right. Of course he couldn"t see the pips. And this was the man I thought I was having on for a Juggins. And this is the man who has got the Recipe for Diamonds locked up in a photographic double dark-back.
That is, unless he"s taken it out and got it developed."