With Wellington in Spain: A Story of the Peninsula

Was he foxing? Was this crafty fellow luring them on? No – a thousand times no. The whole transaction had been so spontaneous.

Tom looked across at Alfonso and found no warning glance in his eyes. His Spanish cousin was as eager as he; he had no fears of a plot against them.

"Ready then," said Tom, as he felt the dagger beneath his waistcoat and the pistol thrust into the leg of his boot, for he was seated on the shaft of the cart. "We put ourselves in your hands."

"Then come."

Watched by the eyes of the other men who had accompanied them, Tom and his cousin went off with their companion and were soon within the city, for the place had opened on the arrival of the British. Plunging into a side street, they wended their way towards the lower quarters of the city and were soon threading narrow alleys with noisome slums on either hand. Then their guide turned into a doorway and tapped three times sharply. Once more he gave his signal. Scurrying feet were heard. Stairs groaned and squeaked beneath a descending weight. The door was dragged open on rusty hinges.

"Enter – how many?"

"Three."

"Then enter."

Led by the one who had opened the door, and next by the rascally muleteer with whom they had scraped an acquaintance, Tom and his cousin entered the narrow, dark passage. They climbed the same groaning, squeaking flight of stairs, and then plunged into a room but dimly lighted. Ten men were present, a full ten, seated about a rickety table.

Who were they? Conspirators? Yes, without doubt. Was José there? Impossible to say. Then any other they could recognize? No – yes.

Tom's eyes pierced the flimsy disguise of one of the men present. It was the selfsame rascal captured outside Ciudad Rodrigo, whom he had impersonated, a spy then, and one now, one, moreover, whose sharp eyes might easily penetrate his own disguise and bring a hornet's nest about him.

"But it's duty," he murmured softly to himself, as he took a seat. "Wellington's orders must be obeyed. I'm here to unravel a plot and make an end of a set of ruffians who are a nuisance and a danger to my countrymen."

Yes, it was duty. But the risk! Tom and his cousin had still to fathom its depth, had still to face the consequences of this rash visit.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Conspirators' Den

Imagine a low-ceilinged room, the whitening long since gone a dull smoke colour, cobwebs in the corner, dust on every angle and ridge, and a floor innocent of scrubbing-brush for many a long day. Imagine an atmosphere charged with pungent smoke from the pipes and cigarettes of ten conspirators, smoke generated by tobacco of the coarsest and foulest. Add to that the nauseating fumes of an oil lamp, trimmed perhaps a month before, flickering, red, and smoky. Then picture the forms and faces of those ten conspirators gathered about a huge, rickety table, forms of small proportion for the most part, slim and lithe as becomes the young man of Spain, but alternated in the case of two at least by the grossest stoutness. Double chins were owned by that more aged couple. Their faces were masked by bushy eyebrow, and fierce moustaches, that curled upwards, while their chins were clad and obscured by black beards of a week's growth. For the rest, they were mostly clean-shaven, hawk-eyed, keen, blinking at the newcomers through the smoke which filled the chamber.

"Welcome!" A solitary voice broke the silence when at length Tom and his companions were seated. But whence it came, from whom, he had no notion. The tones were deep, almost guttural. They might have emanated from the floor or from the smoke-blacked ceiling.

"Welcome! You come in time to do good work. Declare your names, your age, and your parentage. Let one of you stand out before us and speak."

The time had come to brave the whole matter, to risk discovery. Tom rose to his feet from the rickety chair to which he had been invited and stood before the company. He stared across the table, through the gloom, and sought the one who had spoken. But not one of the ten had moved. Not one seemed to have opened his lips. Ah! in the background, sheltered in the angle of the room, was yet another figure. The face leered out at him, one writhing hand concealing the features. Did Tom recognize this fellow even then?

"No," he told himself. "The cunning beggar keeps a hand across his face. But – but I'll swear the voice is familiar, though masked now. Present!" he cried boldly. "We have come for information. We are ready to do good work and to earn a reward better than that paid to humble muleteers."

The figure moved from the angled recess in which it had been hiding. The man or youth – Tom could not guess which – writhed his way across the unwashed floor and halted at the table. One thin, shivering hand was stretched forward as if to gather warmth from the lamp, which was suddenly dashed to one side and the room plunged into darkness. At that instant vice-like fingers seized our hero by the neck, his legs were cut away from beneath him, while someone, evidently prepared for the occasion, tossed a coil of rope about him and drew it tight. There was the sound of a desperate struggle near at hand. Once Tom was violently kicked, evidently by accident. And then there was stillness; the lamp was set flaring again; the same masked, guttural voice once more was heard.

"Take them away; deal with them according to instructions. See that they are securely bound; let them understand that the end is near. Go."

Tom could still see, though his arms were trussed to his side, while he was otherwise helpless. He fixed his eyes upon that central figure and tried to pierce the disguise, for disguised this leader of the conspirators was. But was it José? He scoffed at the idea. José ringleader of such a group! He had not the pluck for such a venture. Then who? He knew the voice, masked though it was. It had been familiar at some occasion. Where, then? When?

"Go; take them away. To-morrow deal with them as you have been ordered."

Men lit their cigarettes again. The band gathered once more about the table. There was an air of triumph about them all, something which seemed to say that they had brought about a coup and had been wonderfully clever; as, indeed, they had been. Tom in his young, ambitious heart had fondly imagined that all had been taken in by the disguise which he had affected. But the rascals of whom Lord Wellington had to complain were no ordinary individuals, though, as a rule, they were dressed as muleteers and followed that vocation. There was a clever, subtle brain behind them, and that brain had contrived to discover the plan so carefully formulated by Tom and his cousin. The rascally, leering driver of mules who had brought them to this rendezvous was but a decoy, fooled just as cleverly as they had been. Their coming was expected. Preparations for their capture were completed even before they left the safety of their camp. And now, what was before them?

"Murder, I suppose," thought Tom, repressing a shiver. "That's the sort of thing these fellows go in for. What's the move now? They're bundling us out of the room, but where to is more than I can guess. Keep your pecker up, Alfonso," he called, when the door was shut on them, and they stood in a passage. "It'll all come out right in the end."

"Silence! Pass in here," commanded one of the two ruffians who escorted them. "Not both, but you."

A door was wrenched open, and Tom was flung in, receiving a savage kick from the second of their escort. The door banged, the lock creaked and grated before he picked himself up from the floor. Then there was more tramping, the wrenching open of a second door, and another crash and bang. The heavy steps of two men came and passed his door. The room beyond, which they had so lately left, was opened. There came to his ears the buzz of many voices. Even the pungent reek of tobacco and lamp smoke smote upon his nostrils, and then there was comparative silence, save for a dull murmur.

"Muzzled! Fooled! Caught finely! In chokey!" groaned Tom, full of bitterness. "And just when we thought things were going so nicely. But let's look round. I'm tied fast by the elbows and thumbs; I can't move my arms, while my legs are free. So much then to the good; it might have been worse."

That was Tom all over – an optimist from the very depths of him. Always ready to look on the bright side of things. A grouser? Never! Life held too many rosy spots for our hero, as it does for all who care to look just an inch below the surface for them. Things could not always run smoothly, that he knew. They never do for anyone. Even kings have their trials and troubles, and why not humble individuals like our hero? It is the man who looks upon the bright side of matters who lives long and enjoys happiness. Unconsciously, perhaps – perhaps also because he was the son of his father, the jovial, stout, and rollicking Septimus, himself an optimist – Tom, too, looked ever upon the rosy side. He was in trouble; why then make the very worst of that fact? Why not try to improve matters? And, being the practical fellow he was, Tom began to look about him. The gloom gave way after a while. Light from a street lamp, or perhaps it came from a house opposite, flickered into the room, and now that his eyes were accustomed to it he could see his surroundings. There was a window, yes. It was twenty feet from the ground. An easy jump if his limbs were free, a dangerous attempt with his arms fettered. There was a dirty floor and a smoke-blacked ceiling. Not a stick of furniture was present. Yes there was, if blinds are furniture; for there was a blind to the window. It was let down to its full length, and there was the cord. It passed beneath a catch, and —

"My uncle!" gasped Tom, following Jack's pet expression. "There's a serrated surface there, a regular saw, if only I could approach the edge. How's that? Bad. Try again. How's that? Worse. Never say die then. What's the report on this occasion?"

It was good, or fair, or middling, as he changed his position ever so little. Sometimes the edges of the toothed band controlling the length or position of the pulley over which the blind cord ran gripped the strands of rope about his thumbs. Sometimes the latter slid over them as if they were not in existence. Then they gripped again, feebly perhaps, then with a vim there was no denying. Tom grew hot with the effort. Perspiration poured from his forehead. He pressed with even greater fierceness against the toothed edge he had found.

"Through! Thumbs free," he was able to assure himself after a while. "Those chaps are still at it, gassing and smoking. Now for my elbows. That's a different matter altogether. It's mighty hard to get them down into position, and one isn't sure when they're rubbing."

But it could be done. If he had been successful so far, surely this additional difficulty was not going to discourage him. Tom clenched his teeth and stooped, managing by a gymnastic evolution to bring his fettered elbows against the serrated edge of the blind-cord catch. But the task was irritatingly slow and laborious. He rubbed with all his might, and still the cord held his arms pinioned closely together behind him. However, perseverance was a virtue of which he had quite his fair share, and Tom hated being beaten. Yes, whether in a matter of life and death, as this was, or in the ordinary affairs of life, Tom was a demon for work – a stickler, a fellow who liked to see a thing through and watch it to success. A strand of the cord gave with a little pop. Beads of perspiration burst from pores in his forehead until then untapped, and, welling up, joined the stream already flowing towards the corners of his eyes. Then there came a sound of loud and exultant laughter from the smoke-grimed room occupied by the conspirators. The door burst open, while heavy feet resounded in the passage outside.

"Free! Pulled the cords open. If they try any games with me I'm ready."

He gathered up the fallen strands like lightning, threw himself into the darkest corner, with his arms held behind his back as if they were still pinioned, while in one hand he gripped his pistol, his stiletto in the other. Nor was he any too soon. A key grated in the lock; the bolt slid back with a rusty creaking. The door itself came open with a bang, admitting half a dozen ruffians, who staggered in one after the other.

One was fat and jowly and unwieldy of body. He brought a rickety chair with him and a lamp, and having thumped the former down in a central position proceeded to mop his reddened face. The others leaned against the dirty walls, surveying their prisoner with satisfied grimaces, while cigarettes protruded from their lips.

"Señor Inglise," began one – when the fat man interrupted him.

"Señor indeed! Prisoner. Dog of an Englishman!"

"As you will," shrugged the other. "Dog of an Englishman! Here is a test, and our fat friend will carry it out. You are on the staff of Lord Wellington. You know all things; then tell your tale. There is life and liberty for the telling."

"As there was for me outside the walls of Rodrigo," shouted another of the rascals, whom Tom instantly recognized as the spy his men had captured, and whom he had impersonated. "Life and liberty. I took both. Here now is your chance. The tale, and then the open door."

"Or a grave," added the fat man, thrusting his handkerchief away and slowly drawing a pistol. "Mark you, Englishman, we wish you no harm. We ask for very little. What now are the plans of the English lord?"

Tom laughed at them. He rocked from side to side at their questions, but as he did so he wondered whether he ought straightway to shoot the rascal into whose pistol muzzle he looked. It would be so easy. As for the others, pooh! he did not fear them. A blow here, a thrust with his stiletto there, and he would be out of the room. But there was Alfonso. No – the time had not yet come for shooting.

"Señors, you choose to joke," he said pleasantly. "What next?"

"For you, nothing after my bullet. For us, the easy task of extracting information from your comrade."

"Ah! There they thought to succeed – never!" Tom told himself, for Alfonso was a strict patriot. "Why ask for this information?" he demanded. "Of what use is it to you?"

Quick as a flash he saw the importance of here and now discovering whether or no this was a gang of conspirators or spies dealing in official secrets, the pests who had already purloined maps and plans from Lord Wellington's dispatch case, rascals, in fact, who traded on the news they were able to sell to the enemy. He noticed glances passing between the men present. The sunken orbits of the fat man turned from one to another, his jowly cheeks flapping. And then he swung round on Tom.

"You may as well know as not," he said, with an air of impertinent assurance, "for if you speak, and tell this tale, you are one of us. If you decline – "

He levelled his pistol with precision, squinted along the sights till our hero, staring at the rogue, could see his fat cheek at the far end bulging over the butt. And then a podgy finger went to the trigger. It was a nasty feeling, that, distinctly nasty. Tom found himself clinging very hard to his pistol butt. He barely withstood the strong temptation to start to his feet and attack the odious ruffian. Then a smile broke across his face, a smile that seemed to reassure the fat man, while the others, villains undoubtedly, sighed as they were relieved of a strain which even they felt.

"But of course you will speak, and therefore I may tell you who we are," the man in the centre said, leaning forward so that the chair squeaked, while he slowly lowered his weapon. "Know then, Englishman, that we have business with all such matters. To the British we carry plans made by the French. From the British we take similar plans, and pass them to the enemy. Simple, is it not? Unpatriotic! Poof! We must live, and such business is paying. I will tell you. From this Lord Wellington our friend yonder took many documents but a month ago. They now rest in the case of Monsieur the French commander, while we live here in luxury. That is so, comrade?"

The rascal alluded to, none less than the very one whom Tom impersonated at Ciudad Rodrigo, wagged his head knowingly and smiled a smile of triumph.

"It is so; we have papers here to prove it."

"Then it's the gang, and a pretty set of scoundrels they are, to be sure," thought Tom, turning the matter over swiftly. But he wanted to know more, he wanted additional time in which to complete a plan then forming in his head. "But – " he began.

"There is not such a thing as but in our business. We succeed always. Here, supposing we fail with you, and I have the unpleasant task of shooting you, we succeed without a doubt with your comrade. Ah, that stirs you!" gurgled the fat ruffian, hugely enjoying his fancied position of bully.

"That is understood," came Tom's answer, given with easy assurance, though the poor fellow was feeling far from happy. "But I was about to ask, seeing that I am invited to join you, surely you have a leader? Then who is he?"

"The tale, and then you shall see; for of a surety we have a leader. Now, friend Englishman, you have put your own head into this noose, take therefore my advice and escape in the only way possible. Believe me, the part of spy, conspirator, what you like to term it, is easy enough."

"And supposing I know nothing?" It was, after all, only a reasonable suggestion, for the officer in command of a British army, or any other army for the matter of that, is not in the habit of spreading his plans broadcast, nor is every staff officer of sufficient importance to warrant such confidence. No; such matters are buried secrets, discussed only amongst the highest, often enough known only to those immediately helping the commander. To speak the truth, Tom had his own ideas of the future movements of this Peninsula campaign; but they were his ideas only, discussed with comrades over a camp fire. They were very likely not Wellington's. Once before, too, he had had ideas, ideas imagined for a purpose. He remembered of a sudden how he had rewritten the spy's message to the commander at Ciudad Rodrigo, giving supposed plans of his commanding officer which were likely enough, no doubt, but happened to be merely the result of guesswork. And why not buy freedom here for a while? Why not purchase respite even for a few hours? Yes, even for only a few hours, for in that space of time he could do much.

"I'll speak," he said abruptly, causing the fat man almost to overbalance. "But the tale is a long one. A map will be necessary. I must sketch the plans and write against them."

"Ah! Did I not say that he, a staff officer, must know all?" gurgled the stout wretch. "Did I not prophesy that he would speak? While our leader swore the opposite. Declared he would never open his mouth, even with a pistol grinning at him. Poof! I knew I should succeed. I have that reputation."

He mopped the perspiration from his face, rolled a cigarette, and lit it with the help of a comrade. "But why not speak now?" he asked suspiciously. "Now, while we are here to listen."

Tom paused a little before answering. It would not do, he guessed, to be too emphatic. "Yes," he began, wrinkling his brows, "I could try, of course. But the thing must be written and sketched some time if it is to be any use to you, so that I should have to tell it all over again. Why not let me do it all at the same time, and add the sketches? Then you will have such complete information that you will be able to command a high price for it."

"Bravo!" called one of the men. "He speaks the truth. Why not as he suggests? We have him securely here. Then give him time. Cut him free now, and leave him to it."

How strange to feel in his heart almost terror at that suggestion, a suggestion which he would have welcomed but ten minutes before. Tom went furiously hot from head to foot, and then felt like an icicle. For to cut him free meant a discovery. That discovery of his severed bonds would rouse suspicion, and even he could hardly hope to persuade these folks to trust him again. "Wait," he called. "Leave me as I am to think. Bring pens and ink and paper when you have them."

"And food in the first place. See you there," cried the fat man, pointing to the fellow Tom had already met, "go for food. Then pass outside the house and get the writing things. We will go back to a meal; you can join us later.

"After the meal I have a friend to see outside. I will get these things, and then join you as the night gets older."

There was a knowing smile on more than one of the ruffianly faces. The fat man grinned and chortled. "A friend! Hola!" he cried. "And one whose company is better and more entertaining than that of these comrades. Well, well! We have all had friends. When the war is ended, and we have done more business, you will marry the wench, and small blame to you."

They went away at once, banging the door and leaving their prisoner.

The sigh which Tom sighed was of the number one order. It was immense. It heaved his shoulders upward and his ribs outward till he looked like a trussed pigeon. And the perspiration trickling from his forehead showed under what tension he had laboured. For he had passed through a terrible ordeal, one which might easily have overmastered his courage. That grinning pistol was not the worst part of it all, though it was bad enough. There were a hundred fears lurking in his heart. Supposing, for instance, it came to the point where he drew up this sketch, information and plans purely imaginary, conjured up in a somewhat inventive brain, and those plans proved in the end to be actually in a manner similar to those projected by the great Wellington! Then his name would go down for ever and ever as a traitor, as a coward, as a spy. The word was loathsome to him. Better to be butchered than suffer such a chance.

Then the old optimistic spirit triumphed. "Chance! There wasn't such a thing, for he hadn't yet set his hand to paper, and wouldn't if he could help it. The job's got to be tackled right at once," he told himself; "there's no time for delaying. But one thing's certain: this is the very gang Lord Wellington wishes to discover. For haven't I had proof positive? Then how to haul the whole lot by the heels? Ah, that's a conundrum! Precious queer for a fellow to be sitting in a hole like this, a prisoner, and to wonder how he's going to capture the fellows who have bagged him! Queer, I do think!"

He actually smiled. Tom began to grin at the recollection of his good fortune, for he had had undoubtedly the best of the recent interview. He had, for the time being at any rate, hoodwinked a portion of the gang, and, seeing that the noise in the adjacent room, deafening after the entry of his late visitors, had now subsided into a gentle murmur, why, if noise was any criterion of his fortunes, the conspirators were easy in their minds.

Seated in his corner, Tom began to pass each one of the individuals who composed the gang in review before him. Not that he could remember in detail all those ruffianly countenances; but there were some whose features had left an impression. The two fat men, for instance, rascals if ever there were any; then half a dozen of the others; and lastly, and to the exclusion of the remainder, the one he had taken for leader, the shadowy individual, obviously disguised, with the writhing hand across his mouth and the assumed voice.

"Could that be José? No. The fellow was too short. But – but, awfully like him, that writhing hand. And the voice too?"

Tom scratched his head, a luxury denied him a little earlier. "Bother the chap!" he cried. "Anyway, I hope it won't prove to be that precious cousin. All the better for him and for us when I come to round up this crowd!"

How Jack Barwood would have roared with laughter at him! But let us tell the whole truth. Down in the depths of his own jovial heart of hearts Jack would have been, secretly, just a wee little bit jealous. For what thundering optimism was here!

"The cheek of him!" he would decidedly have exclaimed. "Here's Tom foxing in a corner, with his hands freed when they're supposed to be lashed together. That's, so far as I can see, his only point of advantage. Against that single item he's a prisoner, locked in a room, with a band of cut-throat villains eating their supper beside him. And here he has the amazing cheek to think, and think seriously too, of the time when he'll have captured the lot, to even sympathize with a cousin who may possibly be the leader. Hoo!"