El Garro—Marcos Calatrava—The Master—Confidences One night Manuel left the Círculo in company of a puny, sickly looking fellow. They were both bound in the same direction; they entered the Café de Lisboa; there the dwarf met a corpulent woman and sat down at a table with her. Manuel approached his cousin.
“What were you talking about to him?” asked Vidal.
“Nothing. About indifferent matters.”
“I warn you that he’s one of the police.”
“Is that so?”
“I should say.”
“But I saw him at the Círculo.”
“Yes. He goes there to collect graft. He’s married to that fatty he’s with now; her name’s La Chana, and she’s an old hand at swindling. She used to live on the Calle de La Visitación when I went around with Violeta. At that time La Chana ran a ‘fence.’ She knew every inspector on the force and lived with a bully called The Minister who was killed on the Calle de Alcalá. Watch out for El Garro; if he asks you anything, don’t answer a word. On the other hand, if you can pump anything out of him, by all means do so.”
[260]
The next day El Garro again managed to join Manuel, asking who he was and where he came from. Manuel, now on his guard, told him a string of lies with a face of the utmost innocence, pretending to be the dupe of Vidal and the Cripple.
“I want to tip you off that those fellows are a pair of shrewd birds,” said the police agent.
“Gee! You don’t say!”
“Uf! It would be better if they were out of sight! The Cripple, especially, is as crooked as they make them. Don’t get mixed up with him, for he’s likely to do anything.”
“Is that how wild he is?”
“You just bet. I know his history, all right, though he doesn’t know that I do. His name is Marcos Calatrava, and he comes of good family. Only two years ago he was studying medicine.”
El Garro related the entire life story of Marcos. At first he had been an excellent student. Then all at once he became a habituée of dives and dens, in one of which he once stole a cape. He was unfortunate enough to be caught red-handed; they took him off to the Model Prison and he stayed there two months. The following year he made up his mind to give up studying, and since they no longer sent him money from home he began a life of bullying around gambling resorts and joints. During a fight he was stabbed, and for a while this cooled his enthusiasm for swaggering. When he got well he went to see the Mother Superior of the San Carlos Sisters of Charity and asked her for some money. He wished to become a monk, he said; he had been[261] touched by the divine grace. With his honeyed speech he convinced the woman; he not only got the money from her, but also a letter to the prior of a monastery of Burgos.
Calatrava squandered the money and within two or three months was at the point of starvation. Hereupon he organized a company of strolling players whom he exploited in the most conscienceless manner, and about a year or so after he had received the letter from the Mother Superior, during a period of terrible famine, he came upon it at the bottom of a trunk and made up his mind to use it. As he was a man of rapid decisions, he did not hesitate, took the train without a ticket, and arrived at Burgos amongst the freight. He presented himself at the monastery and entered as a novice. Within a short time he requested them to send him among the towns collecting alms. At first he was excellent, even distinguishing himself for his zeal. Soon, however, he began to commit barbarities, scandalizing the pious inhabitants of the villages. When the prior, who had been apprised of his exploits, sent him an order to return to the monastery, Calatrava, paying no attention to the command, continued to swindle the townsfolk. When they were about to apprehend him, he returned to Madrid. After three or four months in the capital he exhausted all his money and his credit, and decided to enlist in the medical section of the army and go off to the Philippines.
An army physician, seeing how clever and ready to assist this Marcos was, tried to help him complete[262] his course and placed him as an interne in the military hospital at Manila.
At once Calatrava set about robbing the hospital pharmacy of medicines, bandages, apparatus,—whatever he could lay hands upon to sell. He was discharged; he asked for permanent papers and gave himself up to exploiting the gamblers in the Manila dives. As he was so fastidious, life there soon became impossible for him, whereupon he fell back upon a military club and succeeded in having them raise a collection for him. With that money he returned to Spain.
Once in Madrid he was soon out of funds again, but as he was not of the kind who drown in a little water, he enlisted in a battalion of volunteers en route to Cuba. Marcos won distinction through his bravery in many a battle, rose soon to a sergeantcy, when a bullet entered his leg and they had to amputate it in the Havana Hospital. The fellow now returned to Spain, with no future ahead of him and only a ridiculous pension to fall back upon.
Here he went around pretending to be one of the secret service, tramping the streets, until he took up with a partner and dedicated himself to burial swindles, which, despite the extent of their practice, still yield results to professional imposters. At one time he formed a society of espadistas and domestics for the robbing of houses; he forged notes; then there was no deceit or swindle to which he would not stoop; and as he was a nimble-witted, clear-eyed fellow, he made a methodical study of all the known methods of trickery; he weighed the pros and the[263] contras of each and every one, and found that they all had their disadvantages.
“At last,” concluded El Garro, “he met the Master, who has retired. I don’t know myself where they got the money for these dives; but the fact is that they have them.”
“Are there more than one of these Círculos?” asked Manuel.
“This is the only one that’s open to the public. But they have the house belonging to the Colonel’s wife, where much more gambling goes on. That’s where the Master is every night. Haven’t you ever been to that house?”
“No.”
“They’ll take you there, all right. If you have any money to lose, between Vidal and the Cripple they’ll take you there. Then the Colonel’s wife, since she’s launching her daughter as a dancer, is going to open a salon.”
“Is this Colonel’s wife a Cuban?” asked Manuel.
“Yes.”
“Then I know her. And I know a friend of hers, too, whose name is Mingote.”
The agent eyed Manuel with a certain suspicion.
“Then you may say,” he went on, “that you know the worst scoundrels in Madrid. Mingote is at present with Joaquina la Verdeseca. They run a high-toned house of assignation. Women come there and leave their photographs. It was Mingote who organized that celebrated ball. It cost a duro to get in, and at the end they raffled off a woman: the daughter of Mingote’s mistress.”
[264]
A few days after this conversation Manuel, leaving the Círculo and coming upon Vidal, felt the need of confiding to his cousin the dissatisfaction he felt with this sort of life. That night Vidal was in a gloomy mood himself and confided several sad tales to Manuel, too.
They went to a theatre, but there was no audience to speak of; they entered a café, and after spending a terribly cold night Vidal suggested that they go to La Concha’s, on the Calle de Arlaban, for a bite.
Manuel was averse, for he felt neither like eating nor like doing anything else. He tagged after Vidal, however. It was very warm inside; they took seats and Vidal ordered a couple of whiskys and cutlets.
“A fellow must forget,” he said, after giving his order.
Manuel made a gesture of displeasure and emptied a glass of wine that Vidal had poured out.
Then he told the story that El Garro had related to him. His cousin drank in every word.
“I didn’t know Calatrava’s life history,” he confessed, after Manuel had finished.
“Well, tit for tat,” answered Manuel. “You tell me, now, who is this Master?”
“The Master ... is a colossus. Did you ever read ‘Rocambole?’”
“No.”
Vidal paused a while; the figure of Rocambole[6][265] struck him, no doubt, as most fit for a likeness to the Master.
“Very well. Then imagine a man like the Cripple. Get me? But ever so much cleverer; a man who can imitate any handwriting, who knows four or five languages, who’s always master of himself, who can wear a workman’s smock or a frock coat with the same ease, who can talk to a lady and appear the finest of gentlemen, and then gossip with a street-walker and seem a loafer; and add to this that he’s a sort of clown, that he plays the accordion, that he can imitate a train, make funny motions and mock at everybody. And yet, with all this, boy, you can catch him sometimes half in tears at sight of a half-naked ragamuffin on the street, or because a little girl has asked him for an alms.”
“And what’s his name?”
“How should I know? Nobody does. Some folks say that they knew his father and mother, but it’s not so. I’ve wondered myself whether he mightn’t be the illegitimate son of some noble, but I can’t altogether believe that, for if it had really been so, it would be shocking that they should have arrested him, as they did, when he was seventeen.”
“He began early.”
“Yes. They arrested him without cause. He was in the employ of a fellow who’d managed some swindle, and they shut him up in the Saladero together with his employer. He tells the story himself. One day, it seems, the judge was about to take a deposition from some prisoner, and as the clerk was copying the deposition he was taken suddenly[266] ill and they had to remove him to his home. The judge asked the jailer whether they had any prisoner who could copy down from dictation, whereupon the jailer summoned the Master. He sat down in the clerk’s chair, looked over the documents and began to write. The judge, after the deposition was over, casts a glance at the papers and opens his eyes in amazement. It was impossible to tell where the Master had begun and where the clerk had l............