Without a word, Myra stepped out, to see by the headlights of the car
that she was apparently in a mountain gorge, and to see a group of
masked and armed men standing beside some mules. She turned to look at
her captor as she reached the front of the car, and found that Cojuelo
was wearing what looked like a monk's cowl which completely covered his
face, and which accounted for his muffled voice. She saw that he was
tall, but that was all.
Cojuelo snapped out some orders, and a soberly-dressed, elderly man,
wearing no mask and carrying in his arms a number of parcels, appeared
out of the darkness and got into the car, which turned and sped away.
"Bien!" exclaimed Cojuelo, as the motor disappeared. "Everything is
working according to plan. In the unlikely event of the car being
stopped, it is found to contain Garcilaso, Don Carlos's steward,
returning from doing some marketing in the city. And who would guess
that the fair señorita had been spirited away in one of Don Carlos's
own cars?"
"So some of Don Carlos's servants are in your pay?" exclaimed Myra.
"They are all in my pay, sweet lady, and every man knows it is as much
as his life is worth to betray me," Cojuelo answered, with a triumphant
laugh. "But we waste time, and must not take the risk, remote as it
is, of being seen. Let me assist you to mount."
He picked Myra up in his arms and swung her up without any apparent
effort on to the saddle of a mule which one of the men had led forward,
mounted another mule himself, and gave some rapid orders.
"Follow me and ride carefully, señorita, for there are some steep and
dangerous paths to negotiate," he called to Myra. "Mendoza will lead
your mule at the most perilous places. _Avanzar!_"
To anyone less accustomed to riding and to taking risks than Myra, that
night ride through the mountains of the Sierra Morena would have been a
blood-curdling and nerve-shattering experience. Often she had to guide
her mule along a rough path barely a couple of yards wide, with a sheer
drop of hundreds of feet on one side, a path where a stumble or a false
step on the part of the animal would have meant certain death.
Yet Myra was conscious of no sense of fear now, and the dangers only
made her pulse beat faster and stirred her blood. But it was no easy
task riding a mule along precipitous paths and keeping her seat while
slithering down slopes, clad as she was in only a filmy evening frock
and a fur coat, and she cried out in protest at last:
"How much further, Señor Cojuelo? I cannot sit this ungainly brute
much longer in these clothes."
"Courage, sweet lady, we have but a little further to go," Cojuelo
called back to her over his shoulder.
He spoke truly. A few minutes later the party halted in a narrow,
pitch-dark ravine, and Myra was lifted from her mule.
"Take my arm, señorita, lest you stumble in the darkness on the rough
ground," said the muffled voice of El Diablo Cojuelo. "The entrance to
my mountain eyrie is narrow and unprepossessing, but I promise you that
you shall find comfort within."
He pressed the switch of an electric torch as he spoke, and guided Myra
over rocky ground to what seemed a mere cleft in a wall of rock.
"You will notice that this entrance to my lair is only wide enough to
allow of the passage of one person at a time," he resumed. "Here a
handful of men could defy an Army Corps, and there are other means of
entry--and other ways of escape. I give you welcome, sweet lady, to
the fortress of El Diablo Cojuelo."
Myra, again with the sensation that the whole affair was a sort of
fantastic dream, squeezed through the cleft revealed by the light of
the electric torch, advanced two or three yards, passed through another
cleft at right-angles to the first, and stopped at Cojuelo's bidding.
"You perceive, señorita, that we seem to have come to a dead end," said
the bandit, flashing the light about. "What appears to be a solid wall
of rock confronts us. It is actually a cunningly-contrived door giving
entrance to a series of caves which Nature must surely have constructed
for my use. And El Diablo Cojuelo has improved on nature. _He aqui!_"
With his foot he pressed some hidden spring or lever on the ground, and
a massive door swung open, revealing to the astonished eyes of Myra a
big, irregularly-shaped room that looked as if it had been hewn out of
the solid rock, a room furnished with roughly-constructed chairs and a
settee on which there were many cushions, and with many rugs on the
rocky floor. Most amazing feature of all, the place was lighted with
electricity and warmed by an electric radiator.
"I suppose I am awake and not dreaming!" exclaimed Myra, moving forward
and gazing round with wondering eyes. "This is more amazing than the
castle of Don Carlos. Are you a magician as well as a brigand?"
"Both, señorita," Cojuelo answered, as he closed the secret door, "but
there is nothing magical about it, after all. It was a simple matter
to have an electric light plant smuggled up here in sections. It was
an equally simple matter to obtain rugs and cushions from the Castillo
de Ruiz, since all the servants of Don Carlos, as I have told you, are
in my pay."
He strode forward to the table and touched a bell, and almost
immediately an ancient woman with a wrinkled monkey-like, nut-brown
face, tanned by wind and weather, appeared through an opening concealed
by a curtain in the further wall. She was obviously of great age, but
her eyes were bright and sparkling with intelligence, and she was
active in her movements.
"This is Mother Dolores, who will attend you," Cojuelo explained, after
giving the woman some instructions in her native tongue. "She has a
change of clothing and refreshments in readiness for you. I will leave
you in her charge while I attend to the disposal of my other captives."
He disappeared through the aperture in the wall, and Mother Dolores,
after inspecting Myra appraisingly and admiringly, gabbling away in
Spanish idioma meanwhile, indicated to the fair prisoner that she
wished her to accompany her.
She led the way through a regular maze of crooked passages, and Myra
saw that Cojuelo's mountain lair was a strange freak of nature,
probably the result of a volcanic upheaval or an earthquake in some
prehistoric age. It was a series of caves connected with fissures, a
sort of irregular honeycomb of rock.
"Apartiamento--dormitorio," were the only words Myra understood of the
flood Dolores let loose as she ushered her into one of the cave-rooms,
and by pantomime indicated that she wished Myra to undress.
The rocky walls of the cave-bedroom were hidden beneath hangings of
moire silk, the floor was thickly carpeted, and the place was equipped
with an oak bedstead and some small pieces of roughly-constructed
furniture. But what made Myra gasp in amazement was to see her own
silk dressing-gown and the nightie she had worn the night before lying
on the eiderdown bedspread, together with other garments, while on the
primitive dressing-table stood her dressing-case.
"Incredible!" she exclaimed. "These things were in my bed-room at the
Castillo de Ruiz only an hour or two ago!"
"Si, si, señorita, El Castillo de Ruiz," said Dolores, nodding her head
and showing her toothless gums in a grin. "Maravilloso! Etra vez el
bueno maestro Cojuelo."
"Cojuelo boasted that all the servants of Don Carlos are in his pay,
and it must be true," thought Myra. "These things must have been taken
from my room before the raid, and the servants probably knew El Diablo
Cojuelo was going to kidnap me.... Surely I have nothing to fear from
a man who takes such trouble to ensure that I shall be comfortable?
And yet..."
Dolores scuffled out, still gabbling unintelligibly in Spanish, but
reappeared almost at once with a jug of hot water. She stood watching
Myra with mingled curiosity and admiration as her fair charge washed
after leisurely undressing, then put on her chic night-dress and
dressing-gown, and a filmy, attractive boudoir cap.
"Señor Cojuelo said something about refreshments," said Myra, hoping
she would make Mother Dolores understand, and trying to remember some
of the Spanish words she had learned. "I should like a cup of
coffee--café--or a glass of vino, and a cigarette--cigarillo.
Entender?"
"Si, si, señorita," answered Dolores. "Café, vino, aguardiene,
cigarillo, Todo pronto."
She opened the door and made signals to Myra that she wished her to
return with her to the outer apartment, at the same time letting loose
another torrent of words.
"Perhaps meals in bed-rooms are charged extra!" Myra remarked, and
laughed at the idea.
She was conscious of no sensation of actual fear, but she was curious
and apprehensive as to how El Diablo Cojuelo would behave, remembering
his reputation and his hint that he might fall in love with her and
refuse to surrender her no matter how great the ransom offered.
Still smiling, Myra slid her bare feet into her bedroom slippers and
accompanied Mother Dolores back through the maze of crooked, rocky
passages to the outer apartment.
"Comer e heber e fumar, señorita," said Dolores, indicating a tray set
on a stool close by the electric heater. On the tray stood a steaming
jug of coffee, a flagon of cognac, a plate of biscuits, a cup and
saucer, and a silver cigarette-box.
"More magic!" commented Myra, as Dolores set a chair for her and poured
out a glass of cognac which she insisted upon Myra drinking at once.
Then she poured out coffee, gabbled something about the "bueno
maestro," and withdrew.
Left alone, Myra sipped the fragrant coffee and looked about her with
interest.
"This is certainly brigandage up to date!" she reflected. "I wonder
what manner of man El Diablo Cojuelo is?"
A minute or two later she heard a movement behind her and glanced over
her shoulder expecting to see Mother Dolores, but saw instead the
hooded figure of El Diablo Cojuelo. Instinctively, she drew her silken
dressing-gown closer around her and started to her feet.
"I am sorry if I startled you, señorita," said Cojuelo. "It is a
delightful surprise to find you like this."
"Dolores seemed to be insisting that I must come here for my coffee,"
explained Myra, recovering her composure.
"I instructed Madre Dolores to ask you to do me the honour of returning
here to have a talk with me before you retired, señorita, forgetting
that you do not understand much Spanish," responded Cojuelo. "I hardly
hoped to find you in négligé. You are a vision of beauty to ravish the
heart of any man, sweet lady."
"Thanks for the compliment, señor," said Myra coldly. "If I had
understood you wished to talk to me, I should not have prepared to
retire. Surely anything you have to say will keep until to-morrow.
Meanwhile, I shall be thankful for a cigarette."
"Pardon!" exclaimed Cojuelo, turning quickly to pick up the silver
cigarette-box from the table, and proffering it. "Your favourite
brand, you perceive. You will give El Diablo Cojuelo credit, I hope,
for making provision for your comfort."
"You certainly seem to be something of a magician," commented Myra, as
she helped herself to a cigarette and accepted a light. "Perhaps you
are in league with the Devil, and that is why you are known as El
Diablo Cojuelo! I should be interested to know how you managed to get
some of my clothes here, together with my toilet requisites."
"That was not the work of the devil, señorita," the hooded figure
answered, with a muffled laugh, "El Diablo Cojuelo thinks of
everything, and had made his preparations in advance. Did I not tell
you all the servants of El Castillo de Ruiz were in my pay? It was a
simple matter, therefore, to have some of your things smuggled out of
the castle before the raid. Pray be seated, señorita."
He waved his hand invitingly towards the couch which was drawn up close
to the electric heater, and Myra, reflecting that it was in keeping
with the rest of the fantastic, dream-like adventure that she, clad
only in a nightdress and dressing-gown, should be talking to a hooded
bandit in an electrically-lighted room in the heart of a mountain,
seated herself.
"I suppose I should thank you for being so thoughtful," she remarked,
with a tinge of irony in her sweet voice. "Am I to understand that
even the English-speaking maid at the Castillo de Ruiz is in your pay?"
"Even she, señorita, and I reproach myself--I who have boasted that I
think of everything--for not having kidnapped her at the same time as
you, so that we should have had no language difficulty such as has
occurred with Madre Dolores. If you wish it, I will kidnap her
to-morrow."
"Please don't trouble, señor. I can't believe she is in your pay. She
seemed afraid and crossed herself when she mentioned your name. You
might frighten her to death. Incidentally, do you wear your disguise
all the time, even when you are safe here in your mountain lair? Do
you look so much like a devil that you are afraid to show your face?"
She looked challengingly at the hooded figure of her captor as she
asked the questions. His cowl had two holes cut for the eyes and a
slit at the mouth, and she was wondering what manner of face it
concealed.
"The señorita pays me the compliment of wishing to see me without
disguise!" exclaimed Cojuelo. "Sweet lady, are you not afraid you may
fall in love with your captor?"
"I think I can take the risk," retorted Myra drily.
"It is more than a risk," rejoined Cojuelo, "but I will discard my
disguise with pleasure. Behold El Diablo Cojuelo!"
He flung off his cowl and robe, and Myra sprang to her feet with a cry
of amazement and her hands went convulsively to her breast. For she
found herself looking into the smiling and triumphant eyes of Don
Carlos de Ruiz.