Chapter XXXI Doctor Grampus and a French Cook
An Amateur—Pantomime—At Cross Purposes—Miguel’s Pocket-book—Links—In Cipher—Potatoes—Monsieur Taberne on Duty—The Compelling Onion
When Jack came to himself it seemed to him that he was in a shaded room by an open window, for the air gently fanned his temples, and he saw a wide stretch of blue sky. He turned his aching head.
“Hullo!” said a voice in English.
“Hullo!” murmured Jack in reply, automatically, not knowing what he said. He looked with puzzlement at the speaker, a tall, stout young fellow in guerrilla costume.
“There, I wagered you wouldn’t know me in this rig. Don’t you remember Dugdale, at Salamanca—Percy Dugdale, don’t you know?”
“The Grampus!” whispered Jack.
“The very same. I might have bet you’d know Grampus better than my good old respectable honoured ugly name. Here, drink this.”
He held a cup to Jack’s lips. After drinking, Jack closed his eyes and fell asleep.
“Where am I?” he asked, waking an hour later.
“Feel better? That’s grand. Where are you? High up among the hills, in a sort of cave, lying on a pile of blankets, with a splendid outlook over—well, nowhere in particular.”
“In the hills!” repeated Jack feebly. “How did I get there? I can’t remember. Is anything wrong with me? I don’t seem to be able to move. I don’t feel right.”
“There’s gratitude! Why, you’re as right as a trivet. You’re really doing splendidly! Now, you’re not to talk. Doctor’s orders.”
“Oh!”
Jack was silent for a moment, and dozed away again.
When he woke, Dugdale came towards him from the entrance of the cave.
“What’s the matter with me? How do you come here? I can’t remember anything.”
“I said you were not to talk. Doctor’s orders.”
“Tell the doctor I want to see him.”
Dugdale chuckled.
“Bet it’d be no go. Truth is, I’m the doctor. I’ve pulled you through, and when I get home I’m going to demand a diploma from the doctors’ college or whatever it is gives a man a licence to be a sawbones.”
“I must know all about it. I can’t remember. How long have I been ill?”
“Nearly three weeks. Now, if you’ll promise not to get excited, I’ll tell you what happened. You know a man named Antonio?”
“Yes, of course; he helped me in Saragossa.”
“Well, if he weren’t a friend of yours I’d punch his head. He is the leader of this band of ruffians that scooped me up, two months ago, when I was riding over the hills to see the fun at Saragossa. Antonio wasn’t with them then. I couldn’t understand a word they said. They couldn’t understand a word I said. I roared ‘Inglese! Inglese!’ till I was sick. No good. They kept me with them and made me get into this outrageous toggery, and with them I’ve been ever since, like a canary in a cage.”
“But—”
“You mustn’t talk. Doctor’s orders. Lucky for you I was here, or they’d have sent you to kingdom come. With their nasty messes!—ugh!”
“Where did you get your medicines, then?”
“Silence! Don’t believe in medicine. Bet Antonio three to one in Frenchmen—only he couldn’t understand—that I’d pull you through on cold water; and I’ve done it,—thank God!”
The sudden change to earnestness in Dugdale’s tone was almost comic.
“And you were pretty bad, I can tell you. Raved like one o’clock. All about Pomeroy and Pepito, and some chap whose name rhymed with ass, and Mig Prig—most about Mig Prig,—and you laughed and shouted ‘Fire the mine!’ and ‘Pommy, I’ll punch your head,’ and all sorts of funny things.”
“But what made me ill?”
“A villainous stab in the back. By gum! if I had the beast here I’d trounce him, I bet I would. You and Antonio had captured a foraging-party of French at a country-house down there; you tackled the officers single-handed; dashed plucky of you, begad! and you sprang out after a scoundrelly Spaniard who escaped, a fellow in French pay; and afterwards you were found among the olives with a hole in your back and your sword covered with blood.”
“I remember now,” cried Jack. “I must get up. I must save Juanita.”
He tried to rise, but found that he had no power.
“Juanita be hanged, whoever he may be. Lie still, and don’t talk. I haven’t finished yet. Wish I’d been with you, but these confounded brigands won’t let me stir from head-quarters. I’ve had the most disgusting luck. I came out to see the fun, and hanged if I’ve seen any at all. Well, they found you with a hole in your back and brought you here, and they were in a deuce of a way about you. They had a score or more of French prisoners with them, including officers, one of them a fat, red-faced fellow—”
“I remember it all now. That’s my friend the commissary.”
“Well, he’s peeling onions at this moment. A little change for him, but all in the same line of business. It was he told me what had happened; lucky I can make out two French words out of ten. By Jove! what bloodthirsty ruffians these Spaniards are! If it hadn’t been for me all the prisoners would have been garroted or roasted before slow fires, or something. When I saw what was in the wind my blood boiled. I couldn’t stand that; no Englishman could; so I made ’em a speech. Lord! I never knew I could rattle it off so; I must go into Parliament. Of course they couldn’t understand what I said, but I threw my arms about, and pointed to my neck, and shook my head, and generally played the goat, as I’ve seen ’em do at the hustings; and they made out what I meant, and so the prisoners are here still,—except the captain, who died of over-drinking.”
At this moment Antonio came quietly into the cave; he had been in and out during Jack’s periods of unconsciousness, and now showed every mark of delight at his impending recovery.
“The saints be praised, Señor!” he said. “We feared you would die. We should have grieved.”
Jack was touched by his simple sincerity.
“I am not gone yet,” he said, smiling, “thanks, I understand, to my friend Señor Dugdale here.”
“He is a clever doctor, Señor,” said Antonio.
“He tells me that you have the Frenchmen we captured at Morata.”
“Sí, Señor, and another lot too.”
“Indeed! It is well that he managed to persuade you to do them no harm.”
“What does the Señor mean?”
“My friend Señor Dugdale tells me that you were going to torture the prisoners, and he made a speech and—”
“Oh, that!” exclaimed Antonio, with a wave of the hand. “We didn’t understand. We thought the Señor wanted us to cut all their throats; but I knew you would not like that.”
Jack became almost hysterical with laughter at this explanation, and Dugdale bundled Antonio out of the cave, and told Jack he must go to sleep again. He allowed no more talk on that day, but the patient was so much better next morning that he made no objection when Jack asked to see the guerrillero again.
“I want to hear what has happened,” said Jack to him. “I am anxious.”
“I know, Señor; but there is no need. The day after we got back with the prisoners, the gitano Pepito came and said the Señorita Juanita had been captured by the French and was living with a colonel’s lady in Morata. I got my men together and we went down at once, and in the night surprised the French, killed a great many, and captured the rest. But the Señorita was not among them. We found the colonel’s lady; she told us that the Señorita had escaped.”
“Where is she?” asked Jack anxiously.
“We do not know, Señor. The boy Pepito was frantic; he said you would punish him for losing the lady, and he went away to find her. He has never come back.”
“Did he say anything about Señor Priego—the man who was in Saragossa, you remember?”
“He said that Señor Priego was with the French who captured the Señorita, but no more.”
“And you did not capture him at the house? It was he I was fighting in the olive-grove.”
“Por Dios, Señor, if I had known that! When we found you lying on the ground we let a few minutes slip. We thought you were dead, Señor. Then we searched all around, but we could find no one. Was it the cursed afrancesado that wounded you, Señor?”
“No. It was someone who came behind my back; his servant, I have no doubt. He has twice attempted my life.”
Antonio swore a hearty oath, and vowed a terrible vengeance should either Priego or his servant fall into his hands. Jack was much perturbed. He hoped that Juanita in escaping from the French had escaped also from Miguel, but the latter had much to gain by not letting her slip through his hands.
“There is one thing, Señor, yet to be told,” added Antonio. “In the morning, when we were bringing away the prisoners, one of my men found this at the back of the house, lying on the grass.”
He produced a leather pocket-book, which he handed to Jack.
“I can’t have this,” said Dugdale, entering at this moment. “You’re not well enough yet to be bothered with business.”
“You will do me more good by letting me get to the bottom of things. My hand’s all wobbles. Take the pocket-book, old fellow, and tell me what is in it.”
Dugdale opened the case, and, taking out a number of papers, unfolded them one by one.
“All in foreign lingos,” he said ruefully. “Can’t read one of them.”
“Let me see them,” said Jack.
Dugdale handed him one of the papers. It was a pass through the French lines, signed by Marshal Lannes. At the first glance Jack understood. The pocket-book must have been jerked from Miguel’s pocket when he fell on escaping from the house. Jack examined the papers eagerly. The second was a note from the marshal’s aide-de-camp Saint-Marc: “In consideration of Monsieur Priego’s services to the Government of His Majesty King Joseph, his excellency will use his influence with the commandant at Bayonne to facilitate the interview sought by Monsieur Priego”. The third was a memorandum evidently relating to private business. The fourth was a long blue paper, on unfolding which Dugdale cried:
“By George, Lumsden, this is curious! Hanged if there isn’t your name here!”
Jack took the paper with still more eagerness. He saw at once that it was in the same handwriting as the letter he had received from Don Fernan Alvarez at Salamanca. It was in Spanish, addressed to Mr. Lumsden, and Jack had only to read a few words to be assured that this was the very letter entrusted to the charge of General Palafox—the letter whose disappearance had so much perplexed him. Before he had read more than two or three lines, however, Antonio broke in:
“Señor, I know that paper. I saw it often in the hands of Pablo Quintanar in Saragossa. He used to take it out of his pocket every night and read it, and always when he came to a certain place he stopped, and frowned, and cursed. I am sure it is the same.”
In a flash the mystery of Quintanar’s assassination was made plain to Jack. Miguel must have discovered in some way that the letter was in the possession of the guerrillero, and the wretched man had been slain from behind by one-eyed Perez while Miguel tried to wrest the paper from him. Jack was aghast at this additional proof of Miguel’s villainy; his heart misgave him as he thought of what might be Juanita’s fate.
He read the letter. It gave a clear narrative of the events of which Juanita had told him—Don Fernan’s making up of the accounts of the business, the journey from Barcelona to Saragossa, the ambush on the road, the suspected treachery of Miguel Priego. Then followed a declaration of the old merchant’s intentions in regard to his property. In the last sentence he stated that the place where the treasure had been concealed was known only to his servant José, but that the secret was contained in a short postscript, which could only be read in the light of a private communication made to Jack himself in Salamanca.
Jack looked eagerly at the postscript. He uttered an exclamation of joy as he realized that Miguel must have found the letter useless to him. For the postscript consisted of a single line of sprawling uneven capital letters, set close together, not divided into words, and conveying to the uninitiated absolutely no meaning.
“What do you make of that?” said Jack, handing the letter to Dugdale.
“No good. Don’t know a word of Spanish except pan, agua, cebolla, which I hear every day, and a few—interjections, I think they call ’em in grammar.”
“I don’t mean the letter, I mean the postscript.”
“The postscript!” He held the paper at arm’s-length, shut one eye, and frowned. “H’m! Looks like a cat’s swearing, or Welsh. Too bad even for Spanish. Some infant set to practise his capitals, eh?”
Jack smiled.
“I’m as much in the dark as you are. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind making a copy of the letters, in case the original goes astray?”
“Very well. Bet you I’ll make a dozen mistakes. It dazzles my eyes. You’d better call ’em out one by one.”
Accordingly Jack read the twenty-nine letters off separately, and Dugdale, whose inaptitude with the pencil was clearly shown by the frequency with which he licked his lips, made laborious strokes on a sheet of paper taken from Miguel’s note-book.
“There,” he said, when the task was finished. “Looks a deal prettier than the original, don’t it?”
In big boyish capitals Jack saw the following puzzling sentence:—
S E O S F L S A E O A P E J E J P J J F J P J X P A P P F
“It’s all right, Grampus,” he said, after comparing it with the original. “How long shall I be on my back here?”
“Can’t say. Why?”
“Because I’ve something to do when we’ve discovered the cipher. You and I must do that, and, by all appearance, it will take time.”
“No good asking me. Never answered a riddle in my life. Blinks of Merton tried me just before I came down. Strolled into my room one morning—Blinks always dawdles,—threw his leg over a chair, and piped up: ‘Grampus, my dear, would you like to answer a question?’ ‘Well?’ says I. ‘Tell me,’ says he: ‘Why do birds in their little nests agree?’ ‘Bet you they don’t always,’ says I. He was put out; I could see it. He don’t like a chap to be serious, you know. Yet he’s a good sort; so to please him I said: ‘Why do they, then?’ ‘Because if they didn’t they’d fall out,’ says he, and strolled away quite happy. I call that mighty clever, don’t you?”
Jack made a rapid recovery. The fresh air, the good simple food, the unremitting care of Dugdale and Antonio, and perhaps, more than all, his own strong determination, soon set him upon his feet. When he was first allowed by the Grampus to leave the cave, he was much amused at the sight of Commissary Taberne sitting on an upturned pail, peeling potatoes, and singing as blithely as a bird:
“Ma mie,
Ma douce amie,
Réponds à mes amours;
Fidèle
A cette belle,
Je l’aimerai toujours.
Si j’avais cent coeurs,
Ils ne seraient remplis que d’elle;
Si j’avais cent—”
“Bravo, monsieur, et bonjour!” said Jack,
“Ha! Qui est-ce que j’ai l’honneur de voir?”
The commissary sprang off his perch, catching at the bowl of potatoes just in time to prevent a cataclysm. He presented a queer figure as he stood there, in Spanish vest and pantaloons, with bare arms and legs, for it was a hot day. Laying his hand on his portly middle, he made a bow as low as he conveniently could.
“I congratulate you, monsieur,” he said. “I am pleased to see you once more in health. Ah ça! but you have the courage, you English! It was magnificent—to come into the room alone and face me, Gustave Taberne, single-handed. Parbleu! you took me by surprise, or—Ah! and I congratulate myself that it was not my sword that wounded so admirable a warrior. Nom d’un tonnerre! that wretch, that scamp, that renegade, that Don Miguel What’s-his-name—if I could catch him! Gr-r-r-r!”
“I hope you have been well treated, monsieur,” said Jack politely.
The commissary shrugged.
“Me voici!” he said. “Here am I, a commissary-general of the emperor’s, accustomed to feed huge armies, the winner of innumerable victories that others have the credit of,—and behold me, peeling potatoes for a herd of unwashed, thieving, villainous, abomin—”
“Stay, stay!” interrupted Jack. “I really cannot hear my friends abused.”
“Pardon, monsieur. I for one moment forgot myself. I have feelings, I am sentimental, I am upset; I see myself on the road to glory; then, vlan! the vision dissolves; it is a mirage!”
“The marquisate is a little farther off, you mean, monsieur?”
“Hé quoi?”
Monsieur Taberne looked puzzled.
“Do you remember, monsieur,” asked Jack, “a little inn at Olmedo, where one day last November you made your first acquaintance with the puchero, and honoured with your conversation a young Spaniard, about my own age, who happened to be able to speak a little French?”
“H’m! h’m! I have a slight recollection of the incident. I got a good deal of information out of the young cockerel, if I’m not mistaken.”
Jack smiled.
“You were looking forward then, monsieur, to being made a peer of France, like Marshal Lefebvre, Duke of Dantzig. I am sorry that this little check has happened in your career. You promised then, you remember, to join me some day in drinking a bottle of Valdepenas—none of your tarred vinegar of Toro, you know—when your duty was done. You have one more potato to peel, monsieur. While you are doing that, no doubt my good friend Antonio will produce a bottle of Valdepenas from his store.”
During this speech the commissary had stared at Jack in amazement.
“Par le sambleu!” he ejaculated, “it is the very same!”
He dropped down on his tub, his mouth agape, and mechanically took up his last potato, which he began to pare with the dexterity of long practice. He was evidently casting back to that November day, and racking his memory to recover the details of his conversation. Jack’s eyes twinkled. The commissary caught his look, and, flinging the newly-peeled potato into the bowl, uttered a huge guffaw.
“Zut!” he cried, “I see twice, monsieur, that you are a dangerous person to meet. One needs to be of the greatest discretion. It is not only your sword that is formidable. Tenez: voici le Valdepenas! I had hoped you would have been my guest. N’importe; Valdepenas is Valdepenas. The fortune of war is now to you; perhaps on another occasion—”
“No, thank you,” said Jack, laughing, “unless our two nations are at peace. Let me say, monsieur, how glad I am that you take your little mischance with so much philosophy. I am not in command here, of course, but if there is anything I can do—”
“Morbleu, monsieur, you can do me an infinite favour. The potatoes—they are nothing; but the onions!—sapristi! when one weeps for sentiment, it is noble, it is French; but when one weeps for onions, it is a degradation. Bien sûr! precisement ça! allez!”