Bandit Love Part 22

"If Don Carlos lied, and you still refuse to renounce the senorita after you have been flogged and put to the torture, then I will set her free and you also," Cojuelo said grimly. "That is a promise, and Cojuelo never breaks a promise. Meanwhile I say again that you are lying, and that Don Carlos told the Senorita Rostrevor the truth."

"Here, I say, Cojuelo, cut out this bluff about torture and all that sort of nonsense," exclaimed Standish, with just a suspicion of unsteadiness in his voice. "I tell you I am prepared to pay any sum within reason as a ransom, and you won't get any more by threatening me with physical violence. Look here, I'm willing to apologise for having tried to shoot you, but you know you exasperated me by taunting me about not valuing Miss Rostrevor."

"What a charming piece of condescension on your part!" sneered Cojuelo.

"If Don Carlos de Ruiz lied to the Senorita Rostrevor, I shall shoot him. That is another promise, senorita. As for you, perhaps the lash and the red hot iron on your flesh will induce you to speak truth as well as test your courage!"

He turned to the door, outside which the man with the keys was standing.

"Mendoza, order Perez, Riafio and Garcilaso to get ready the whipping post and make hot the branding irons at once," he commanded in Spanish, then repeated the order in English for the benefit of Standish, whose face went livid.

"Oh, surely you won't be so fiendishly cruel!" burst out Myra pa.s.sionately. "If you dare to harm Tony----"

"We will withdraw, senorita, and leave Senor Standish to nerve himself for the ordeal that awaits him," interrupted Cojuelo, and hustled her out of the cell before she could say more. "I swear I did not lie to you, Myra," he resumed, as he clanged the door shut on the prisoner.

"I am bluffing now, and have no intention of flogging or branding Standish, but only of scaring him into confessing that he is willing to give you to me to save himself."

"And if he stands the test, if he refuses to give me up even when threatened with flogging and burning, you will keep your promise and set us both free?" asked Myra, after a breathless pause.

"Yes, a.s.suredly--and I shall also keep my promise to shoot Don Carlos,"

was the grim reply. "Look, is it not a picturesque scene?" he added, with a change of tone.

The great cave, lighted by electricity, was certainly a remarkable sight, filled as it was with a picturesque crowd of men, some of them in what looked like stage costumes, nearly all chattering like excited children antic.i.p.ating a treat as they watched some of their fellows erecting a whipping-post in the centre of the place, while another was busy working the bellows of what looked like a blacksmith's furnace and making irons red-hot. A scene a great artist might have loved to paint, yet the atmosphere was so sinister that Myra s.h.i.+vered involuntarily.

"You are frightened, senorita?" queried Don Carlos, and it seemed to Myra there was something mocking and sardonic in his tone. "In England, I remember, you were renowned for your courage and your love of adventure. Surely this is a great adventure?"

The remark stung Myra's pride, and her fair face flushed hotly.

"It disgusts and revolts me that you should try to terrorise a defenceless man to gratify your own vanity and humiliate me," she answered angrily. "As for being afraid, the remote prospect of having to marry you certainly frightens me."

Don Carlos made no answer, but strode across and talked rapidly to the men gathered round the whipping post and the furnace, evidently explaining to them at length what he wished them to do. Myra, of course, could not understand what was said, but she saw that some of the men laughed while others looked disappointed, and she concluded that Don Carlos was telling them that the preparations for the torture of the Englishman were all bluff.

"G.o.d grant that Tony's courage does not fail him, and that he stands the test," she whispered under her breath.

"It will be necessary for you to remain and witness the performance, senorita," said Don Carlos coldly, returning to her. "If I spared you the ordeal, you might again refuse to believe me when I reported the result."

"I wish to stay," Myra answered, and her red-gold head went up proudly.

"My presence will give the man I love courage."

"It is a great gamble, and you, fair lady, are the stake," said Don Carlos. "The stage is set and our fate will be decided within a few minutes."

He nodded his cowled head, shouted some orders in Spanish to his men, and took up a position beside the whipping-post, which somewhat resembled an ancient pillory. Four men hurried to the cell in which Standish was confined, to reappear after the lapse of a few minutes with the prisoner between them.

They had stripped Standish to the waist, and he walked forward with firm step and head erect, but at the sight of the whipping-post and the furnace, and the sinister figure beside them with a cat-o'-nine-tails in his hand, he halted suddenly with an involuntary gasp, and his face went ashen.

"Cojuelo, you--you can't mean that you are going to be such a fiend as to torture me!" he burst out breathlessly. "I haven't done you any harm. Look here, I'll--I'll double the ransom if you'll let me off.

I'll make it twenty thousand pounds."

"Not for fifty thousand pounds would I forego my vengeance," rasped the hooded figure. "Yet you have but to confess that you did agree to go away and leave the Senorita Rostrevor here, well knowing what would happen to her, you have only to tell her now that you renounce her to me, and I will let you go unharmed."

"Don't, Tony, don't!" cried Myra. "Be brave, dear!"

Standish, who had not previously noticed her, jerked round his head at the sound of her voice.

"Myra, for G.o.d's sake intercede for me," he screamed, and began to struggle violently as his guards seized him and began to drag him towards the pillory. "Beg him to spare me!"

"Oh, Tony, don't fail me!" cried Myra, shamed by his display of terror.

"Don't be a coward! Be brave! Be Britis.h.!.+"

Struggling, shouting, protesting and appealing frantically, his face livid and the sweat of fear pouring down it, Standish was dragged towards the stake.

"The burning irons first, I think," snarled Cojuelo. "The burns will make the lash more effective afterwards."

The man beside the furnace drew from the fire a branding iron, the end of which was red-hot, and made a threatening movement. Standish squealed like a rabbit caught in a trap.

"Don't! Don't!" he shrieked in a frenzy of terror. "Oh, spare me, spare me! I'll give her up. I--I can't face it. You can have her!"

"Do you still accuse Don Carlos of having lied?" demanded Cojuelo remorselessly. "Is it not true that you were willing to escape with him, or by his aid, and leave the senorita?"

"Yes, yes, it is true," gasped Standish. "I lied to Myra to try to--to save my face. Don Carlos said he would look after her. Let me go!

Let me go!"

"You hear, senorita?" exclaimed Don Carlos, his voice ringing out triumphantly. "To save his own skin, your lover has renounced you....

Release the brave Englishman, my friends. The farce is over."

Nauseated by Tony's piteous exhibition of craven terror, Myra turned away from him in loathing and contempt as the men released him.

"Oh, you coward!" she burst out pa.s.sionately. "I was so sure you would stand the test and would not fail me that I promised I would marry this devil in your presence if you were dastard enough to offer to give me to him to save your own skin. All these preparations for torture were only bluff to test your courage and your love. You have failed me, Tony, in my hour of greatest need, and I hate and despise you. I would give myself to any bandit now rather than marry you!"

"I hold you to your promise, senorita," cried Cojuelo. "You will marry me here and now in the presence of Senor Standish.... Come hither, Padre Sancho, and perform the marriage service."

A fat little bald-headed man, dressed in a greasy black ca.s.sock and carpet slippers, shuffled forward and addressed some questions to Myra in a wheezy voice.

"He is asking if you are willing to marry me," Cojuelo interpreted.

"Yes, I will keep my promise and marry you in the presence of the man who has failed me," said Myra, and flashed a glance at Standish that made him quail.

"Here, I say! I--I didn't realise it was bluff," faltered Standish.

"I'll do anything... Cojuelo, I'll pay you fifty thousand if only you'll----"

"Proceed with the ceremony, Padre Sancho," interrupted Cojuelo; and the monk opened his book and began to gabble unintelligibly in his wheezy voice. Presently he paused and addressed a question to the hooded figure.

"I will," said Cojuelo, and took Myra's listless hand in his own. "You Myra, will also answer 'I will,' when the Padre asks you. This ring, which I took from the finger of Don Carlos de Ruiz, will serve for the present."

"Myra, for heaven's sake----" broke in Tony Standish, but Myra paid no heed to him.

"I will," she answered firmly, in response to the priest's unintelligible question.

It struck her suddenly that the priest did not appear to be treating the ceremony seriously, and the thought flashed into her mind that possibly "Padre Sancho" was only one of the brigands deputed by Don Carlos to play a part, and the whole proceeding was as much bluff as had been the preparations to torture Tony Standish.

"Is he fooling me again?" wondered Myra, as Padre Sancho gabbled through the rest of the service, closed his book and raised his right hand as if bestowing a blessing, whereupon some of the brigands behind and around him began to cheer. They cheered more l.u.s.tily still when their hooded chief put his arm round Myra's shoulders with an air of possession.