In Kedar's Tents

by Henry Seton Merriman

That this knowledge was of that useful description which is usually designated as knowing one’s way about, soon became apparent; for the dusty traveller passed with unerring steps through the narrower streets that lie between the Calle de Toledo and the street of Segovia. Here dwell the humbler citizens of Madrid, persons engaged in the small commerce of the market-place, for in the Plazuela de la Cebada a hundred yards away is held the corn market, which, indeed, renders the dust in this quarter particularly trying to the eyes. Once or twice the priest was forced to stop at the corner of two streets and there do battle with the wind.

‘But it is a hurricane,’ he muttered; ‘a hurricane.’

With one hand he held his hat, with the other clung to his cloak and portmanteau.

‘But it will blow the dust from my poor old capa,’ he added, giving the cloak an additional shake.

He presently found himself in a street which, if narrower than its neighbours, smelt less pestiferous. The open drain that ran down the middle of it pursued its varied course with a quite respectable speed. In the middle of the street Father Concha paused and looked up, nodding as if to an old friend at the sight of a dingy piece of palm bound to the ironwork of a balcony on the second floor.

‘The time to wash off the dust,’ he muttered as he climbed the narrow stairs, ‘and then to work.’

An hour later he was afoot again in a quarter of the city which was less known to him—namely, in the Calle Preciados, where he sought a venta more or less suspected by the police. The wind had risen, and was now blowing with the force of a hurricane. It came from the north-west with a chill whistle which bespoke its birthplace among the peaks of the Gaudarramas. The streets were deserted; the oil lamps swung on their chains at the street corners, casting weird shadows that swept over the face of the houses with uncanny irregularity. It was an evening for evil deeds, except that when Nature is in an ill-humour human nature is mostly cowed, and those who have bad consciences cannot rid their minds of thoughts of the hereafter.

The priest found the house he sought, despite the darkness of the street and the absence of any from whom to elicit information. The venta was on the ground-floor, and above it towered storey after storey, built with the quaint fantasy of the middle ages, and surmounted by a deep, overhanging gabled roof. The house seemed to have two staircases of stone and two doors—one on each side of the venta. There is a Spanish proverb which says that the rat which has only one hole is soon caught. Perhaps the architect remembered this, and had built his house to suit his tenants. It was on the fifth floor of this tenement that Father Concha, instructed by Heaven knows what priestly source of information, looked to meet with Sebastian, the whilom bodyservant of the late Colonel Monreal of Xeres.

It was known among a certain section of the Royalists that this man had papers and perchance some information of value to dispose of, and more than one respectable, black-clad elbow had brushed the greasy walls of this staircase. Sebastian, it was said, passed his time in drinking and smoking. The boasted gaieties of Madrid had, it would appear, diminished to this sordid level of dissipation.

The man was, indeed, thus occupied when the old priest opened the door of his room.