Sarita, the Carlist

by Arthur W. Marchmont

"Mother of Angels, I believe I see it now," he exclaimed, excitedly, and then was silent.

"You are either hiding some fact or hatching another lie," I said, sternly. "I should have thought you could see the danger of that with me."

"I will tell you, senor, I will, indeed, everything. I came to this house this afternoon in consequence of a message from his Excellency. He had for some time had a suspicion that Colonel Livenza had played him false—there was, I believe, something in which you yourself were concerned with the colonel. A warrant was made out and handed to me, and I was to wait for further instructions before making the arrest. This afternoon his Excellency rang me up on the telephone—his instrument is on the table here, you see—and he was speaking to me when the message broke off suddenly. He had got as far as this—'Go to Escorias and execute the warrant I gave you recently to arrest——' There it stopped, and I remember now there was a sharp noise I could not understand. I thought something was wrong with the wires. I waited for him to speak again, and when nothing came through I spoke to him and rang the bell. But I could get no answer, and in the end thought it best to come to the house for further instructions. I thought he might wish the senorita removed again, and came up to see."

"Then you did know where she was," I said, pointedly. "And I'm glad you see the prudence of treating me frankly. How do we get to Escorias?"

"We can drive in less than two hours, senor." I rang the bell and ordered the fastest pair of horses in Quesada's stable to be put in at once, and while waiting for them, told Mayhew what I wished in regard to the dead man's papers. As soon as the carriage came, I took Rubio and one of his assistants with me, and ordered the coachman to drive at top speed to Escorias.

Everything seemed clear to me now, and this unexpected development filled me with a new fear for Sarita's safety. Livenza, full of his wild passion for revenge, had gone to Quesada, and a fiery interview had taken place between the two, in which the Minister's old ascendancy over the weaker man had so far asserted itself, that the latter had been unable to carry out his purpose in the room. He had either discovered, or Quesada, with the probable object of pacifying him, had told him where Sarita was detained, and had very likely suggested that he should go and take her away at once—calculating with diabolical cunning that the temptation to Livenza to see her again and have her in his power, would prove irresistible. In this way the Minister had saved his life for the moment, and when Livenza had left, Quesada had planned to have him arrested. In the meantime, the murderer had seen his way to achieve both his purposes—to kill his victim secretly, by shooting him from the garden, through the broken window, and then to rush off to Sarita. He had thus probably heard the broken telephone message being spoken, and at the dramatic moment when Quesada's attention would be fixed on the telephone and his ears covered by the receivers, the shot had been fired with instantly fatal results.

So certain was my belief in my theory, and so vivid the impressions I had gathered, that I could picture in my thoughts every step and act in the progress of the tragedy. But there was one question I could not answer: and the thought of it filled me with an acute pang of alarm.

What were Livenza's intentions in regard to Sarita?

In the room at Calvarro's farm, his passion for her had been at first chilled by his fear of me, and then dominated by the even fiercer passion of revenge upon the man who had duped and out-witted him. But this thirst for revenge had now been sated by the death of Quesada, and who could say what wild form the recrudescence of the mad love-passion would assume?

Sarita, as I knew from her own lips, had fooled him. She had allowed him to make love to her; had possibly fed his passion with subtle but dangerous suggestions of a response to his love; and had won him for the Carlists by these desperate means because no others were present to her hand. My own words of warning to her recurred to me; and if he succeeded in forcing his way to her now that his enemy and master was dead, what limit could I believe he would place to his violence?