The Five Arrows. Chase Allan

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СКАЧАТЬ in the west suburb.

      "The villa belongs to Jorge Davila, a lawyer for some of the great landowning families of the south. Davila's record as one of the leaders of the now illegal Falange and an organizer of the Cross and the Sword has been covered in my previous report, dated July 7th of this year." Fielding poured some fresh coffee for Hall and himself. "Tomorrow or the next day I can show you the report in question, Hall. But to proceed with this report.

      "At Davila's home, a group of Cross and Sword leaders were waiting for the three men in the sedan. They had a long meeting, lasting over five hours. Then eight men, including the Spanish ship's officer, left the house and entered two fast cars of American make. The cars proceeded to the town of Alcala, in the sugar lands some seventy miles from San Hermano.

      "In the morning, there was no trace of the eight men in Alcala. That night, the sugar fields of the English planter, Basil Greenleaf, were set on fire by incendiary flames started in over twenty different parts of his acreage at the same time. Two of Greenleaf's employees who were attempting to fight the blaze in the east field were killed by rifle fire. One of them lived long enough to stagger to the road where he told his story to the Greenleaf foreman, a man named Esteban Anesi.

      "I must call your attention, sir, to the fact that Greenleaf was the only planter in the Alcala region who had contracted to sell his crop to Great Britain, and that the fire took place exactly two weeks before the harvest time.

      "Eduardo Jimenez was next seen in San Hermano the day after the fire, when he appeared in the Municipal Police Headquarters in what was evidently a state of extreme intoxication. He complained that on leaving his ship on the twentieth, he had gone to a bar for a drink, met up with two pimps, and had then been taken to a brothel where, after two days of drunken revelry, he had been cleaned out of his life's savings and then been carried out to sleep it off in an alley off the Calle Mercedes. Having made his complaint, he passed out. A police doctor examined him, recommended a good night's sleep."

      Fielding held his finger under the word sleep. "Hah," he roared. "Damn clever, the bastards! Now then, where was my place? Oh, yes, good night's sleep. Yes."

      "In the morning, Jimenez awoke, vomited, and started to yell for the jailer. He wanted to know what he was doing in a cell, and when shown his complaint, he expressed innocent amazement. He could not recall a thing. The warden gave him a hearty breakfast and sent him on his way. Jimenez joined his ship, which sailed for Spain that afternoon with a cargo of beef."

      The case of Eduardo Jimenez was the last in the report. Fielding put the copy aside and leaned back in his chair. "Was this worth your while, Hall?" he asked.

      Hall grinned. "You have the necessary proof?"

      "Absolutely. To the last word, old man. To the last word."

      "May I have a copy of your report?"

      "Of course. I hope you will get better results, though."

      "May I ask an impertinent question, sir?"

      "Be as impertinent as you wish. I'm sixty-four years old, Hall, and if I can't put up with Yank impertinence in this late stage, I deserve no sympathy."

      "Well then, and don't answer if you think me too brash, Fielding, it's simply ..."

      "Hold on!" Fielding held up a restraining hand. "Let me write your question out on this slip of paper and after you ask it, I'll show you what I've written." He scribbled a few words on the paper, covered them with his left hand.

      "Are you British Intelligence?" Hall asked him.

      Fielding handed Hall the slip of paper. On it was written: Q. Fielding, old man, are you a British agent? A. No, my fine impertinent friend. Believe it or not, I am not a British agent.

      He was not smiling when he put a lighted match to the slip of paper and watched it burn to ashes in the bronze tray. "As a matter of fact," he said, soberly, "I am not in very good repute at the British Embassy. I organized a dinner of the more sensible people in the British colony here in '38 and, after I'd made a blistering speech against Munich and non-intervention in Spain we all signed a row of a cable to Nellie Chamberlain. They have me down as a sort of an eccentric and a Red. Perhaps I am eccentric, but I'm no more a Red than poor Professor Tabio or your own Mr. Roosevelt."

      "I've been called both things before myself."

      "I'll bet you have, Hall. I'll bet you have. Let's have another jug of coffee and look through some more reports. Can you stay awake for an hour or so?"

      "I can stay up all night."

      "Well, maybe you can. But I'm not as young as I used to be. We'll finish the reports in this folder and call it a night. But first—the coffee."

      The aroma from the jug warmed Hall's senses. In the cell at San Sebastian he would awake at night dreaming that he was smelling the sweet vapors of a fresh pot of coffee boiling away near his pallet. "God," he said, "I must tell you about what this smell means to me some day."

      "There's nothing like it," Fielding agreed. "Now let me see, here's a photostat of a letter from the Embassy acknowledging the receipt of the report I just read, and here ... Ah...." He started to turn the next letter over, but Hall, reading the letter-head, laid a hand on the sheet.

      "May I?" he asked.

      Fielding handed him the letter. It was on the stationery of the International Brigade Association in London, dated January, 1938.

      "The action on the Jarama front ... bitter ... your son Sergeant Harold Fielding leading squad of volunteer sappers ... missing in action ... thorough check on records of hospitals and field stations on that front ... no record of Sergeant Fielding ... we therefore regret ... must be presumed dead...."

      The father of Sergeant Fielding held the picture of the boy in front of Hall. "This photograph," he said, heavily. "It was taken a year before he went to Spain. You didn't, by any chance, happen to know the lad, did you, Hall? He was my only child. Completing work on his Master's in biochemistry at Cambridge when the Spanish show started. You didn't happen to know him, eh, Hall?"

      Hall studied the photograph.

      "He fought with the British Battalion," Fielding offered.

      "I was with them in the fighting for Sierra Pedigrosa," Hall said. "There was Pete Kerrigan, and a boy named Patterson I knew pretty well. And—but that was after the Jarama fighting."

      "The boy is not alive," Fielding said. "I checked with the International Red Cross after the war, and he was not taken prisoner by the fascists. I just wanted to find someone who could tell me—who could tell me how my boy died."

      Hall returned the red-leather frame. "I wish from the bottom of my heart I could help you. But I just can't. I'm afraid I never did meet the boy."

      Roger Fielding read the letter from London for perhaps the thousandth time, sighed, and placed it face down on top of the pile to the left of the letters and reports in the folder. "Ah, well," he said. "Now for the living. Now here's a report I made three weeks ago. Some day those young stuffed shirts in the Embassy will have to read my reports seriously, Hall. Perhaps this is the report that will do it."

      The second report bore the heading: "Neutrality or Belligerence: Gamburdo or Tabio."

      Hall started. СКАЧАТЬ