CHAPTER XVII.
BY A HAIR’S BREADTH.
Just how that explosion came about will never be known. It is probable that, in springing after the escaping boy, one of the men overturned the table, casting the bombs upon the floor.
The building was entirely wrecked. Amid the ruins were found the bodies of several men and a woman. Some of the men were horribly mangled, and it was said that others had been blown to atoms, so their bodies could not be gathered.
The woman was not mangled, but she had been instantly killed. She was taken to the morgue, and Frank Merriwell saw her there upon a marble slab. She was still very beautiful, with a bit of color in her cheeks, and her parted lips showing her snowy teeth. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed to be sleeping.
No one seemed to know her; but she was not given a nameless grave. Frank saw that she was buried and that a headstone was placed above her, on which was inscribed, “Mlle. Mystere.” That was all.
Frank and Wynne had escaped from the vicinity of the explosion, and, having consulted together, decided not to tell the Paris police what they knew, as they might be detained and caused no end of trouble.
When Professor Scotch heard the story, he was appalled.
“Mercy me! mercy me!” he gasped, holding up his hands. “I had much better taken you to the Moulin Rouge! There you could not have been in such danger.”
To Frank it seemed like a fantastic dream. He could scarcely realize that all those events had actually taken place.
“Anyway, I have seen enough of Paris, and I am ready to move on,” he said.
“Me, too, by gum!” nodded Ephraim Gallup.
No time was lost in quitting the city.
Frank had already made up his mind where to go next.
“I want to see something of Spain,” he said. “Let us go to Madrid.”
“Any sport there?” queried Ephraim.
“Well, I reckon there is a little,” returned Frank. He was thinking of the bull fights, of which he had often read.
There was a long talk. Professor Scotch wanted Frank to go direct to London. But the youth was stubborn and said he would not go until he had visited Madrid.
So the following day saw them on their way to the principal city of Spain.
Arriving at Madrid they put up at a first-class hotel fronting the main square of the city.
Then Frank went sight-seeing in earnest, along with Ephraim and the professor, and thus the days slipped by pleasantly enough.
The horrible happenings at Paris were forgotten, and Frank enjoyed himself immensely.
The same, however, cannot be said of the professor.
To tell the truth, the Spaniards were still sore over the way their country had been treated by the United States during the trouble in Cuba, and it was only by pretending to be Englishmen that they passed in many public places without getting into trouble.
One day they got into something of a warm row in the streets and the professor rushed back to the hotel full of excitement and alarm. When the boys followed they found him walking up and down one of their rooms in great nervousness.
“I won’t stand it!” said Professor Scotch. “No, I won’t stand it. Why, we may all be murdered!”
“Come off, professor!” cried Frank, disdainfully. “That the Spanish are hot-blooded and quick-tempered I will admit, but I do not believe they would deliberately murder us, even if they knew we were Americans. Some of the more excitable might mob us, but I do not fancy they would go any further.”
The professor wagged his head knowingly.
“You can’t tell,” he said. “It was a crazy notion of yours, Frank, this coming here to Madrid. I didn’t want to come, but you made me feel that I would be guilty of ‘robbing you of a wider knowledge of the world,’ as you put it, if I did not let you visit Spain.”
Frank winked at Ephraim.
“That was it exactly, professor,” he nodded. “And now, with one exception, we have seen all I desire to see of Spain. Madrid is to Spain what Paris is to France or London to England. I have studied the people, have seen palaces, fountains, museums, triumphal arches and so forth. I have passed the statue of Murillo, traversed the street of the Turk, where General Prim was assassinated, visited the Square of Cortez and the Square of the Orient, beheld the royal palace, and done other things too numerous to mention. And now—now——”
“Now——”
“I am going to see the bull fights.”
“Horrible! I cannot allow it—I forbid it, sir!”
“Be careful, professor!”
“Er—er—what do you mean, Frank?”
“Remember the Moulin Rouge in Paris. I wanted to visit that, and you would not permit it till you had investigated. You went off to investigate, and while you were gone I visited another place, and got into the worst scrape of my life. Beware, professor.”
Scotch shivered.
“What can I do with you?” he cried, in despair.
“Take me to see the bull fights,” smiled Frank, in a jolly way.
“But it is a terrible and degrading spectacle—something that should not be tolerated in a civilized country.”
“Remember that we have prize fights in the United States.”
“I do not countenance prize fights, but bull fights are worse.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. There are various opinions on that point.”
“And you boys are liable to get into trouble there. You know how you got into trouble, Frank, because you insisted that the United States could wipe Spain off the face of the earth. That scar-faced fellow wanted to murder you.”
“He might have done it, too, b’gosh! ef Frank hadn’t knocked the stuffin’ aout uv him with that round-shoulder blow uv his,” put in the boy from Vermont.
“His friends followed us to the hotel,” said Professor Scotch. “They will be watching for us, and the best thing we can do is to get out of Madrid and Spain as soon as possible.”
“I’ll not go till I have seen the bull fights, professor,” asserted Frank Merriwell, obstinately. “Why, what did you think I rushed you off to Madrid for? Did you fancy it was because I was so eager to see this city? Well, you were mistaken. I heard that the bull fighting season was at its height here, and I came for the sole purpose of witnessing the spectacle.”
The professor groaned and sank into a chair, mopping his face with a handkerchief.
“I have thought you a man, Frank,” he said, sadly; “but I see you are still a boy, and a very wayward, unruly and unreasonable boy, at that.”
“I’ll get to be a man soon enough, professor. What’s the use to decay before your time! Come, come! brace up, and say you will go with us to see the bull fights. I secured seats two days ago.”
“What?”
The little man shot up from his chair, glaring at the boy.
“You dared to do such a thing without my consent?” he roared. “You should be ashamed of yourself! How much did the seats cost?”
“One hundred reals each.”
“Whoop!” shouted the professor, staggering. “Why didn’t you buy out the whole bull ring? Wow! One hundred reals each! Three hundred reals! How much is that, anyway? Why didn’t you start a bull ring of your own! Great Homer! But what made you go in for such cheap seats?” he cried, with biting sarcasm. “Why didn’t you get a few seats set with diamonds and stuffed with swan’s-down! Shades of Cicero! Three hundred reals! How much is that, anyway?”
“Oh, about three doubloons.”
“Eh? Three doubloons? Why, that ain’t so bad, although it is pretty extravagant. Hang this Spanish money! I can never get used to it, anyway. You nearly gave me heart failure when you said you paid a hundred reals each for the seats.”
The boys laughed heartily at the little man, who had once more collapsed on a chair, mopping his face.
“Of course you will go now that I have the seats?” Frank said, coaxingly.
“Well, I—er—it seems a shame to waste so much money for seats, and then not use them.”
“And so it is. This will be the event of the season in Madrid, professor. Señorita Zuera will be there.”
“Who is she?”
“One of the bull fighters.”
“What? Why, she must be a dreadful creature! She must be coarse and masculine, and—er—all that. It is a disgrace! A woman bull fighter! Think of it!”
“We have thought of it, and Ephraim and I have decided to see Señorita Zuera. You may as well come along, professor. Madrid is talking of nothing else save this bull fight. It is said that it will be the greatest fight ever seen here. The bulls are unusually large and vicious. They are from the pastures of the Duke of Veragua and the Marquis de la Merced, and have been reared especially for the fights.”
“You seem to have obtained considerable information concerning this wretched affair.”
“I could not help it if I kept my ears open. Look, professor,” directed Frank, at the open window, where he could gaze into the square; “already the people are moving toward the circus. The living tide is setting in that direction. There will be thousands ahead of us.”
“But you have the seats,” fluttered the little man. “You have bought them and paid for them. They can’t take them from us.”
Frank repressed a smile of satisfaction, for he saw the professor was giving in.
“No, they cannot take them from us; but it will be all the more comfortable for us if we go early.”
The professor looked from the window. In truth, the tide of human beings was setting in a certain direction, and all Madrid was gayly bedecked. Men and women wore bright colors. They were calling to each other merrily, like a lot of children starting out for a frolic. The great fountain in the square was splashing, and the sun was shining its brightest. It was alluring, and Professor Scotch felt the desire to join the throng growing on him.
The wide sidewalks were swarming, the streets were full of carriages, throngs of students, uproariously boisterous, were pushing along after the fashion of students everywhere, blasts from diligent horns could be heard, together with the cracking of whips and clanking of sabres; then came a regiment and a band of music.
That music settled the matter for the professor. It seemed to get into his very veins. He fell to dancing, and then stopped suddenly, aware that the boys were laughing.
“Oh, well,” he said, “I suppose we may as well go to this brutal bull fight. It will be a disgrace, and you must both promise never to tell a soul that we attended such a beastly and degrading exhibition. Come on.”
He was the first to get his hat and hurry from the room.