CHAPTER XXV

Pepito finds a Clue

JACK was awakened next morning by the sounds of altercation outside the small room on the ground floor of the Casa Alvarez that he had reserved for himself.

"You shall not!" he heard Pepito cry in his shrill voice. "The Señor sleeps; you-shall—not—”

Then his voice was stifled by the noise of scuffling. A heavy thud shook the door, as though some massive body had been driven against it. Springing from his bed, on which he had lain down in all his clothes save his boots, Jack went to the door, opened it, and saw Antonio, the guerrillero, raining blow after blow on the small form of Pepito, who had twisted himself about one of the big man's legs and held on grimly, though he must have suffered not a little.

"Come, come!" said Jack; "what is it, Antonio? Pepito, let him go!"

Pepito sprang away instantly.

"The Busno wanted to wake the Señor," he piped, with a fierce look at Antonio. "You waked me between you. Well, Antonio?" "Señor, I was on night duty; I was to be relieved at two o'clock, so it was arranged by Don Cristobal; the chief was to relieve me. He did not come. I waited, one hour, two hours; he did not come. The Señor knows I would not leave my post. At five came Don Cristobal on his round of the posts. I told him; he put a man in my place and I went home tired as a dog, and there, in the top room I share with the chief, there, Señor, I saw him, Pablo Quintanar, on the floor, still, dead, and blood all round him.'

Jack looked sharply at the man. There was every sign of amazement and agitation in his face, but Jack remem

Morning Light

bered that he had quarrelled with his chief on the previous day, and could not but suspect there had been a repetition of the dispute when the men met in their lodging, and that, possibly by accident, it was Antonio's knife that had done the fatal work. Antonio appeared to guess what was passing in his captain's mind.

"I swear I did not do it, Señor. I knew nothing of it till I saw him there on the floor. We quarrelled; yes, the Señor knows that, but I keep my knife for the French; I would not—”

"Take me to the place," interrupted Jack coldly. Staying only to pull on his boots, he accompanied the man to the dirty lane and into the dingy house from which Miguel had stealthily issued some six hours before. Pepito was at his heels as he climbed the filthy staircase; the gipsy sniffed and snorted at the foul odours his nostrils encountered, and put his hand on his knife as he passed each doorway.

They entered the attic. The gray light of a dull morning coming through a narrow skylight barely illuminated the sordid room. On the floor, stretched on his face, with arms extended towards the door, lay the figure of the guerrillero. This was no death in fair fight, face to face with his enemy; but the base, stealthy thrust of an assassin.

"That is how I found him, Señor," said Antonio. "Yes; it is the Spanish way."

He had noticed that the dead man's hand clasped a knife. Stooping, he removed it from his grasp; the steel was bright and clear, as though it had never been used for any but innocent purposes. Jack, as he held the weapon, reflected. The man had drawn his knife. It must have been for attack or for self-defence against an enemy in front of him; therefore the blow from behind that killed him must have been dealt by a second person. Antonio was scarcely likely to have brought another man into his personal quarrel; Jack was inclined to believe that he was guiltless, as he said. He looked around the room; there were few signs of a scuffle.

It was useless to institute

an enquiry among the other people in the house, and the sound of musketry and cannon-shots without already called him to his duties.

(B 177)

289

T

Bombarded

'Bury the poor wretch," he said, "and tnen come to

me."

"The Señor believes I did not do it?"

"Yes, yes; we have no time for enquiries. work for us who are left alive."

There is

He hurried away. There had been something sinister about the guerrillero, something that Jack could not fathom; perhaps it was resentment at a stranger being brought in and placed above him; but Jack could not help feeling a passing pity for the Spaniard who had met his death by the hands presumably of one of his own countrymen, instead of in heroic combat with the enemy.

He returned to his post. The situation as it had been left on the previous evening had now been complicated. The cannon-shots he had heard in the attic had been fired from two pieces mounted by the French at the angle of the street. An epaulement of sand-bags and gabions had been thrown across between the ruined blocks, and from that point of vantage the French gunners were pointing their cannon so that their shots fell plump upon the walls of the Casas Vega and Tobar. These, it was clear, would before long be a heap of ruins. Jack sent men to the end of his subterranean galleries to listen whether mining operations had been resumed by the French. When they returned, reporting that no sound could be heard, he concluded that the signal failure of their last mines had been enough for the enemy, and that in future they would probably trust entirely to cannonade, followed by attacks in force. He could not reply to their artillery; all that lay in his power was to hold his men in readiness to repel a charge, and to fire his long Y-shaped mines when the French attack was being pressed home.

Some two hours later he was consulting with Don Cristobal on the possibilities of capturing the French guns in a night attack, when Pepito came up, looking even more than usually mysterious. He stood before Jack with his hands behind him, waiting until his master, now deeply engrossed in conversation, should notice him.

"I should dearly like to make the attempt," Jack was saying, "but your arguments are, I am afraid, conclusive. We can't afford to lose any of our men unless we can be sure of success, and after their recent warnings I

An Afrancesado

We

don't think we shall catch the French napping. must give up the idea, I suppose, but you will see that our men keep a keen watch on the epaulement, Señor— Well, what is it, Pepito?"

Pepito came forward carelessly.

"I found these, Señor," he said, handing two papers to Jack, who took them carelessly.

them, he asked:

"Where did you get these?"

"In the tall house, Señor." "Which tall house?"

"Where the Señor went just now."

"Where the man was murdered?"

Without unfolding

I was

"Sí, Señor. The big Antonio took him away. there. In a minute, two men came in. 'Now we get a bed,' they say. They pull the dirty quilt off the bed. One man carries it; the other pulls off the mattress. There, on the boards, I see two papers. I snatch them, and say: 'I take these to the Señor Capitan'. The man laughs; and here they are, Señor."

Jack unfolded the papers and glanced at them curiously. Suddenly he started, and keenly scrutinized one of them.

"It is explained now, Señor," he said to Don Cristobal, at the same time laying the papers before him. Quintanar was a spy."

"An afrancesado!" ejaculated the Spaniard.

Unhappily. One of the papers, you see, is a pass through the French lines; the other a rough plan of our defences. See, the miserable fellow had begun to dot in our mines under the houses opposite. Someone must have discovered his treachery, and killed him without remorse."

"So perish all traitors!" said Don Cristobal.

At this moment a man rushed in with the news that a small breach had been made in the wall of the Casa Tobar.

"We must do something to check them," said Jack, rising. "A few good marksmen on the top of this house might pick off their gunners; let us go and see."

They went up the staircase towards the roof. Pepito, left alone, put his hand into his pocket, and drew out a

From the Roofs

small silver buckle, such as Spanish burghers and officers wore on their shoes.

"Señor has the papers," he muttered. "Ca! I have the buckle. The buckle is better than the papers."

He swung it round his forefinger, humming under his breath, and was still toying with it when Jack came downstairs again. Then he hurriedly thrust it into his pocket, and stood unconcernedly as though waiting for orders.

A moment's glance had shown Jack that his plan of placing marksmen on the roof would be useless. The Casas Vega and Tobar, though much lower than the Casa Alvarez, were not low enough to allow an effective fire over them. But what could not be done from the Casa Alvarez might be done from the lower roofs nearer the guns. Jack lost no time in making his way to the flat roof of the Casa Tobar. Carefully crawling along and peeping over, he saw that the angle of depression was just sharp enough to allow a good marksman to take aim at the gunners' heads. It would be dangerous work, for the French would instantly perceive the source of the shots, and would bring a concentrated fire to bear in return. There was no parapet to the roof, but a parapet could perhaps be extemporized with sand-bags, between which the Spaniards' muskets might be placed.

Returning to the ground, Jack explained what he had in his mind, and Antonio at once volunteered to make the attempt. With some of his men he climbed to the roof, where they pushed sand-bags along until they came to the edge. Then one of the men tried a shot. He missed. But Antonio took more deliberate aim, through the interstice between two sand-bags, and hit one of the French gunners in the arm.

Three Frenchmen had been hit before the enemy discovered whence came these disconcerting shots. Then bullets began to patter on the walls and roof. But the Spaniards were too well protected by their extemporized parapet to be in much fear, and continued their firing without suffering serious loss. Before the day was out the French found it the part of discretion to withdraw their gunners, and for the time being the cannon were useless.

Jack was not surprised next morning to learn that