A NIGHT OF TORMENT
My first thought when I was seized so suddenly in the darkness was that
a fresh trap had been laid for me and that I had blundered into it; and
that all the fierce wrangling between Inez and Barosa in my presence
had been mere pretence, to lead up to her saying what she had about my
leaving the house with Miralda.
But why all that trouble had been taken when I was already in their
power and, above and beyond all, why she should have given me a loaded
revolver, was utterly baffling.
I had not more than a minute or two to worry over that, however, for my
captors dragged me in silence to a room close by, which, like the rest
of the house, was in darkness.
“Don’t speak above a whisper,” said one of them fiercely, putting his
lips close to my ear.
An electric lamp was flashed in my face and the sudden light set me
blinking and winking like an owl.
“Do you know him?” asked a voice out of the darkness.
A murmur of dissent from the rest followed.
“Where are the rest of you?” was the first question asked of me.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied after a pause.
“Answer my question at once.”
I was at my wits’ end to know what line to take. I had had such
dramatic proof of Barosa’s methods of testing my good faith, that the
suspicion flashed across me that this was just another of them. He
and Inez might have patched up their quarrel--if it had been one in
reality--and he might have devised this means of seeing whether I meant
to keep my promise of silence, before he allowed Miralda to leave the
house with me.
My hesitation appeared to provoke the man who had put the question.
“Answer at once, you dog,” he said. But whether his anger was real or
assumed, I could not tell.
“There is some mistake----” I began.
“You’ll find that out if you don’t answer at once,” he broke in.
“I am an Englishman, Ralph Donnington, and have been kept a prisoner in
this house since this morning.”
“Answer me instantly,” he repeated with an oath.
“I have given you the only answer I can.”
The lamp was directed at my face the whole time--the only gleam of
light in the whole room. And to me everything was, of course, just one
huge blur of utter darkness.
“You refuse to tell me? You will repent it, I warn you.”
“I have answered,” I said again.
“You say you were a prisoner?”
“Yes.”
“When did you come to the house?”
“This morning. I came here from my yacht, the _Stella_. She is in the
river now.”
“Who made you a prisoner, and why?”
To answer that involved the telling of all I knew. And whether this was
sham or reality, it meant danger to Miralda. “You may be sure I mean to
find that out,” I said, fencing.
A pause followed and I heard some whispering. Then the man’s former
question was repeated. “You say you were a prisoner?”
“Yes.”
“A prisoner at liberty to roam about the house armed with a loaded
revolver? Is that what you mean?”
“Some little time ago a woman came to me--I was locked in a room at the
top of the house--and gave me the revolver and told me I could leave.”
This was the truth; but it sounded like a preposterous lie--as the
truth sometimes will.
“And that was just at the moment when you were all hurry-scurrying
for your lives on our arrival. Of course you don’t know who the woman
was, any more than why you came sneaking down the stairs in the pitch
darkness with her revolver ready to put a bullet into any one who
prevented your escape.”
“What I tell you is absolutely true. I was trying to get away, of
course, and came down in the dark fearing some trick on the part of
those who had imprisoned me.”
“You know whose house this is?”
“Oh, yes. The Contesse Inglesia’s.”
“Oh come, you know something,” he sneered. “I suppose she is a friend
of yours--just in a social way?”
“I was presented to her at the house of the Marquis de Pinsara
just after my arrival in Lisbon. I came to Lisbon on a mission of
considerable importance in which the Marquis and others of his friends
are greatly interested.”
“Do you include His Majesty the King in your circle of friends?”
I disregarded the sneer and replied gravely, “No, but I can give you
a list of those who are interested in my affairs;” and beginning with
M. Volheno, I rattled off a number of names. It was no good having
well-placed acquaintances without making some use of them.
“You are an impudent scoundrel,” was the hot reply. “Why did you come
to this house to-day?”
“On matters closely connected with my object here in Lisbon.” This was,
of course, my real object--Miralda--but it was not necessary to split
hairs or trouble with too much explanation.
“Whom have you seen here?”
“The Contesse Inglesia and the woman who gave me the revolver.”
“No one else?”
“I should not identify any one else.” This was very close to a direct
lie; and as I had no intention of either telling what I knew or of
committing myself to a direct denial, until I was certain about the
nature of the whole proceedings, I added: “I have said that I am an
Englishman. I have given you my name and have told you I am a friend
of M. Volheno, amongst others. You do not believe what I say, and I
claim my right as a British subject to communicate with my country’s
representatives here in the capital. Let me send to them or yourselves
send to M. Volheno. I shall not answer any more questions.”
“Tell me at once where to find the rest of your companions,” he said
very sternly.
“I know no more than yourself. I have no other answer to give.” I spoke
very firmly and half expected that my experience of the former test
would be repeated and that the men would be satisfied.
But nothing of the kind followed. After a pause the light was suddenly
put out, a whispered command was given, and I was hurried out of the
room and then out of the house, dragged with no little violence into a
carriage and driven away.
This might still be part of a drastic test, of course; so I held my
tongue and let them take me where they would. As I left the house I
glanced about me in the hope of catching sight of Bryant; and was
considerably troubled when I could not see him.
But I was soon to learn that it was no mere test. The carriage pulled
up before a gloomy building and I was half led, half dragged inside,
where I was confronted by a number of men in police uniform. I was
searched and everything taken from me; my name was entered; and without
more ado I was led away to be thrust into an unmistakable prison cell
with other equally unmistakable prisoners.
The experiences of that night live as an ineffaceable memory--worse
than any nightmare horrors; worse than one’s worst imaginings of any
nether world.
The cell was a large one in which perhaps twenty or thirty could have
been confined without any undue crowding. There were more than that
number already there when I was thrust inside; and many others were
brought in afterwards, men and women indiscriminately, until we must
have numbered over sixty altogether.
Had all been approximately clean or approximately sober, the air
would still have been too foul to breathe and we should have been too
crowded to move without shouldering one another. By the exercise of
strict discipline and mutual arrangement and forbearance, it would have
been possible, by taking turns, for some to have slept while the rest
huddled together.
But there was neither cleanliness nor discipline. Most of the
men and some of the women were of the scum of the gutter; filthy
beyond description and evil-smelling to the point of nausea--the
incarnation of all that is offensive and abominable in humanity. And
to add to the horror, many of the men were in different stages of
drunkenness--hilarious, quarrelsome, brutal or obscene, according as
the drink developed their natural or unnatural temperaments. But all
were noisy and equally loathsome.
Some dozen of the men and most of the women--of whom there were
about fifteen--were of a better class. But two or three of the women
were too hysterical from fear to be capable of anything approaching
self-command. Their cries and moans of anguish were heartrending; and
their occasional piercing screams and vehement outbursts of sobbing,
not only added to the general din and racket, but provoked the anger of
the drunkards and drew from them a flood of obscenity and abuse.
Wherever a dozen women are brought together in trouble, however,
you may confidently look for at least one “ministering angel” among
them. There were two in that awful den that night. In appearance they
afforded the extremes of contrast. One was a tall buxom woman in the
forties with a hard forbidding-looking face, but with a heart as stout
as her big body and courage as strong as her bared brawny arms. The
other was a pale frail slip of a girl who looked as if a breath of wind
would have knocked her down; and it was an act of hers which brought
matters to a crisis.
On my entrance two or three fights were in progress, and as I had no
wish except to avoid trouble, if possible, I pushed my way to a corner
near one of the small barred windows, and stood leaning against the
wall, watching the unruly crowd in dismay at the prospect of a night to
be passed in such company and in such utterly foul surroundings.
Whenever the door was opened and fresh prisoners were thrust in, their
entrance was hailed by raucous shouts of welcome or hoarse oaths and
jeers of anger according to the feelings which the newcomers’ looks
inspired. Those who were known favourably were hailed by their names,
while others were received with yells and curses and immediately seized
and buffeted and kicked and mauled, dragged hither and thither like
a big bone by a pack of yelping curs, until bruised, battered and
half-dead with fear, they found rest and obscurity in a corner; or
until some new arrival distracted the attention of their persecutors.
I had been watching one of these affairs when I turned to find the
girl I have mentioned at my side. Her fragile form and pale face
moved my pity, and I made way so that she could stand just under the
window. She thanked me with a smile, and we stood thus for a long time,
exchanging an occasional glance.
Later on, one of the noisiest of the hysterical women drifted our way
and the girl instantly left her place and began to try and comfort
the woman. There must have been magnetism in her touch and eyes, for
the effect was remarkable. The other’s cries ceased and her sobbing
subsided, and she soon regained a measure of composure.
She was a good-looking woman and her face attracted the attention
of a drunken brute of a bully who shouldered his way up and with a
coarse oath tried to put his arm round her waist to kiss her. Without
a second’s consideration of her own risk, the girl thrust herself in
his way and pushed him back with all her little strength, and stood
guarding the woman like a young lioness at bay.
The beast swore viciously, glared at her and raised his hand for a
blow; then his look changed, his eyes blazed with animal passion and he
tried to seize her, swearing he would kiss her instead of the woman.
I shouldered my way to her rescue, but before I could reach her, the
big woman intervened. She grabbed the brute from behind and dragged him
off, with a voluble torrent of language which, “ministering angel” as
she afterwards proved, had very little of the minister and nothing of
the angel in it.
The drunken bully, powerful though he was, had much difficulty in
shaking her off, and by the time he had succeeded, I had reached the
girl and stood in front of her. Finding a man to deal with and one much
slighter than himself, he elbowed himself clear of the throng round him
and prepared to knock me into the next world. But I knew how to use my
fists and he did not; and as he struck at me I easily parried the blow
and gave him an undercut on the jaw which sent him staggering back, a
very much surprised bully indeed.
A fight being a welcome recreation for the prisoners, we were
immediately surrounded by a yelling, oathing crowd, and a sufficient
space was cleared for us to settle matters. It is no credit to batter a
half-drunken man, and I would gladly have avoided the thing if it had
been possible. But it was not. My antagonist was regarded as a sort
of champion by those who knew him; and as they were anxious to see me
mauled, they hounded him on with shouts and cheers of encouragement.
Five minutes finished it; and established a reputation for me which
proved of infinite value for the rest of that terrible night.
His friends led him away to the other end of the place; and when I
turned to go back to my corner, I found that the girl and her big
companion had taken possession of it for the benefit of the other
women. They had cleared a sufficient space to enable the women to lie
down; and by some magic of womanhood had comforted and soothed them
until comparative quiet had been restored.
Nor was that all. Such of the men as were sober and decent had drifted
to our end and stood in line as a guard over the women. A space of very
few feet divided us from the rowdies; and as they still persisted in
keeping up a racket, I determined to use the authority with which my
victory had invested me, to try and stop some of the din.
I picked out three of the strongest men near me, told them what I meant
to do, and asked their help. We were, of course, heavily handicapped in
numbers; but we were sober and capable of concerted action, whereas the
others were mostly drunk and at loggerheads even with one another.
Four of us crossed the dividing line and without a word seized four of
the noisiest of the crowd, dragged them from the midst of the throng,
shook and cuffed them soundly, and then ordered them to stop their
yelling and oathing.
They slunk off cowed and beaten; but a number of the others broke out
with volleys of curses and threats and showed fight. At this, the other
men from my corner came forward, and the manœuvre was repeated on a
larger scale. This time I took care to punish my man severely; and when
we shoved them reeling away and looked for fresh ones, we looked in
vain.
They all backed away, huddled together like sheep frightened by the
dogs; and for the rest of the night there was no recurrence of the row.
We went back to our side and resumed guard over the women; half our
number crouched on the ground and the rest of us did sentry work.
The rowdies across the dividing line gave very little trouble after
that. There were occasional wranglings among themselves, as they fought
for room to crouch or lie down, or struggled for space to breathe;
but they had had their lesson and were careful not to provoke another
attack from us.
Many of them were soon fast in drunken sleep, as their stertorous
breathing and loud snoring evidenced. But contrasted with the din and
racket in the past hours, this was comparative peace and silence.
How any one could sleep under such conditions baffled me. The reek and
noisome stench of the place were appalling; and although I stood as
near as I could get to one of the windows, I was almost suffocated and
felt sick, stifled, and overpowered.
The women also slept, all but the two who watched over them and tended
them with the care and vigilance of tender-hearted womanhood. The
endurance of the young girl was as wonderful as her staunch courage and
her magnetic handling of her troubled sisters. She even outlasted the
big brawny woman who fell asleep soon after the dawn broke. The light
struggled through the windows, and the abject wretchedness and squalor
of the scene were infinitely more depressing and horrible in the light
than they had seemed in the feeble rays of the gas jets.
Only once did she show even a sign of breaking down. That was about two
hours after the dawn when she was near me and I asked her why she was a
prisoner and spoke in praise of her conduct.
She told me that she was a political prisoner, and that her real name
was Pia Rosada, but she had been arrested in a different one. She was a
keen revolutionary, goaded into rebellion by the ill-treatment of her
relatives. She was only a suspect; but she knew much and looked forward
to some kind of torture being employed to force her to turn informer.
“They may do what they will, I shall tell nothing,” she said, her eyes
lighting with resolution and dauntless courage--a martyr in the making.
“I am sorry for you,” I murmured.
“I would die a hundred deaths first,” she answered. Then her look
changed. Her clear gaze was troubled and she glanced round at the
women. “Do you think we have no cause to revolt? Look at these poor
creatures;” and her eyes filled with tears. But she dashed them away.
“We cannot afford the luxury of tears,” she said hurriedly, and slipped
from me to go to one of her charges who woke and sat up and began to
weep. In a minute she was soothed and comforted by the touch of those
wonderful hands, the glance of the magnetic eyes, and the soft whisper
of the sweet calming voice.
My thoughts flew to Miralda, and with a shudder of fear I pictured her
in the midst of such a scene of abomination and desolate misery.
Death was a million times preferable to existence in such a hell of
life as this!