CHAPTER I

OF THE STRANGE EVENTS AT ZINDERNEUF

TOLD BY MAJOR HENRI DE BEAUJOLAIS OF THE SPAHIS

TO

GEORGE LAWRENCE, ESQ., C.M.G., OF THE
NIGERIAN CIVIL SERVICE

“_Tout ce que je raconte, je l’ai vu, et si j’ai pu me tromper
en le voyant, bien certainement je ne vous trompe pas en vous le
disant._”

“The place was silent and _aware_.”

Mr. George Lawrence, C.M.G., First Class District Officer of His
Majesty’s Civil Service, sat at the door of his tent and viewed the
African desert scene with the eye of extreme disfavour. There was beauty
neither in the landscape nor in the eye of the beholder.

The landscape consisted of sand, stone, _kerengia_ burr-grass, _tafasa_
underbrush, yellow, long-stalked with long thin bean-pods; the whole
varied by clumps of the coarse and hideous _tumpafia_ plant.

The eye was jaundiced, thanks to the heat and foul dust of Bornu, to
malaria, dysentery, inferior food, poisonous water, and rapid continuous
marching in appalling heat.

Weak and ill in body, Lawrence was worried and anxious in mind, the one
reacting on the other.

In the first place, there was the old standing trouble about the Shuwa
Patrol; in the second, the truculent Chiboks were waxing insolent again,
and their young men were regarding not the words of their elders
concerning Sir Garnet Wolseley, and what happened, long, long ago, after
the battle of Chibok Hill. Thirdly, the price of grain had risen to six
shillings a _saa_, and famine threatened; fourthly, the Shehu and Shuwa
sheiks were quarrelling again; and, fifthly, there was a very bad
smallpox ju-ju abroad in the land (a secret society whose “secret” was
to offer His Majesty’s liege subjects the choice between being infected
with smallpox, or paying heavy blackmail to the society). Lastly, there
was acrimonious correspondence with the All-Wise Ones (of the
Secretariat in “Aiki Square” at Zungeru), who, as usual, knew better
than the man on the spot, and bade him do either the impossible or the
disastrous.

And across all the _Harmattan_ was blowing hard, that terrible wind that
carries the Saharan dust a hundred miles to sea, not so much as a
sand-storm, but as a mist or fog of dust as fine as flour, filling the
eyes, the lungs, the pores of the skin, the nose and throat; getting
into the locks of rifles, the works of watches and cameras, defiling
water, food and everything else; rendering life a burden and a curse.

The fact, moreover, that thirty days’ weary travel over burning desert,
across oceans of loose wind-blown sand and prairies of burnt grass,
through breast-high swamps, and across unbridged boatless rivers, lay
between him and Kano, added nothing to his satisfaction. For, in spite
of all, satisfaction there was, inasmuch as Kano was rail-head, and the
beginning of the first stage of the journey Home. That but another month
lay between him and “leave out of Africa,” kept George Lawrence on his
feet.

From that wonderful and romantic Red City, Kano, sister of Timbuktu, the
train would take him, after a three days’ dusty journey, to the
rubbish-heap called Lagos, on the Bight of Benin of the wicked West
African Coast. There he would embark on the good ship _Appam_, greet her
commander, Captain Harrison, and sink into a deck chair with that
glorious sigh of relief, known in its perfection only to those weary
ones who turn their backs upon the Outposts and set their faces towards
Home.

Meantime, for George Lawrence—disappointment, worry, frustration,
anxiety, heat, sand-flies, mosquitoes, dust, fatigue, fever, dysentery,
malarial ulcers, and that great depression which comes of monotony
indescribable, weariness unutterable, and loneliness unspeakable.

And the greatest of these is loneliness.

§2.

But, in due course, George Lawrence reached Kano and the Nassarawa Gate
in the East Wall, which leads to the European segregation, there to wait
for a couple of days for the bi-weekly train to Lagos. These days he
whiled away in strolling about the wonderful Haussa city, visiting the
market-place, exploring its seven square miles of streets of mud houses,
with their ant-proof _dôm_-palm beams; watching the ebb and flow of
varied black and brown humanity at the thirteen great gates in its
mighty earthen ramparts; politely returning the cheery and respectful
“_Sanu! Sanu!_” greetings of the Haussas who passed this specimen of the
great Bature race, the wonderful white men.

Idly he compared the value of the caravans of salt or of ground-nuts
with that of the old slave-caravans which the white man thinks he has
recently suppressed; and casually passed the time of day with Touareg
camel-drivers, who invited him to hire or buy their piebald, brindled,
or white camels, and, occasionally, a rare and valuable beast of the
tawny reddish buff variety, so prized for speed and endurance. . . .

On the platform of Kano Station (imagine a platform and station at Kano,
ancient, mysterious, gigantic, emporium of Central Africa, with its
great eleven-mile wall, and its hundred thousand native inhabitants and
its twenty white men; Kano, eight hundred miles from the sea, near the
border of Northern Nigeria which marches with the French _Territoire
Militaire_ of Silent Sahara; Kano, whence start the caravan routes to
Lake Tchad on the north-east, and Timbuktu on the north-west)—on this
incredible platform, George Lawrence was stirred from his weary apathy
by a pleasant surprise in the form of his old friend, Major Henri de
Beaujolais of the Spahis, now some kind of special staff-officer in the
French Soudan.

With de Beaujolais, Lawrence had been at Ainger’s House at Eton; and the
two occasionally met, as thus, on the Northern Nigerian Railway; on the
ships of Messrs. Elder, Dempster; at Lord’s; at Longchamps; at Auteuil;
and, once or twice, at the house of their mutual admired friend, Lady
Brandon, at Brandon Abbas in Devonshire.

For de Beaujolais, Lawrence had a great respect and liking, as a French
soldier of the finest type, keen as mustard, hard as nails, a thorough
sportsman, and a gentleman according to the exacting English standard.
Frequently he paid him the remarkable English compliment, “One would
hardly take you for a Frenchman, Jolly, you might almost be English,” a
bouquet which de Beaujolais received with less concern by reason of the
fact that his mother had been a Devonshire Cary.

Although the Spahi officer was heavily bearded, arrayed in what Lawrence
considered hopelessly ill-fitting khaki, and partially extinguished by a
villainous high-domed white helmet (and looked as truly French as his
friend looked truly English), he, however, did not throw himself with a
howl of joy upon the bosom of his _cher Georges_, fling his arms about
his neck, kiss him upon both cheeks, nor address him as his little
cabbage. Rather as his old bean, in fact.

A strong hand-grip, “Well, George!” and, “Hallo! Jolly, old son,”
sufficed; but de Beaujolais’ charming smile and Lawrence’s beaming grin
showed their mutual delight.

And when the two men were stretched opposite to each other on the long
couches of their roomy compartment, and had exchanged plans for spending
their leave—yachting, golf, and the Moors, on the one hand; and Paris
boulevards, race-courses, and Monte Carlo, on the other—Lawrence found
that he need talk no more, for his friend was bursting and bubbling over
with a story, an unfathomable intriguing mystery, which he must tell or
die.

As the train steamed on from Kano Station and its marvellous medley of
Arabs, Haussas, Yorubas, Kroos, Egbas, Beri-Beris, Fulanis, and assorted
Nigerians from _sarkin_, _sheikh_, _shehu_, and _matlaki_, to peasant,
camel-man, agriculturist, herdsman, shopkeeper, clerk, soldier, tin-mine
worker, and nomad, with their women and _piccins_, the Frenchman began
his tale.

Through Zaria, Minna Junction, and Zungeru, across the Jebba Bridge over
the Niger, through Ilorin, Oshogbo, and mighty Ibadan to vast Abeokuta,
with brief intervals during which Lawrence frankly snored, de Beaujolais
told his tale. But at Abeokuta, George Lawrence received the surprise of
his life and the tale suddenly became of the most vital interest to him,
and from there to Lagos he was all ears.

And as the _Appam_ steamed through the sparkling Atlantic, the Frenchman
still told his tale—threshed at its mystery, dissected and discussed
it, speculated upon it, and returned to it at the end of every
digression. Nor ever could George Lawrence have enough—since it
indirectly concerned the woman whom he had always loved.

When the two parted in London, Lawrence took it up and continued it
himself, until he, in his turn, brought it back to his friend and told
him its beginning and end.

§3.

And the story, which Major Henri de Beaujolais found so intriguing, he
told to George Lawrence as follows:—

“I tell you, my dear George, that it is the most extraordinary and
inexplicable thing that ever happened. I shall think of nothing else
until I have solved the mystery, and you must help me. You, with your
trained official mind, detached and calm; your _phlegme Britannique_.

Yes—you shall be my Sherlock Holmes, and I will be your wonder-stricken
little Watson. Figure me then as the little Watson; address me as ‘My
dear Watson.’

Having heard my tale—and I warn you, you will hear little else for the
next two or three weeks—you must unhesitatingly make a pronouncement.
Something prompt and precise, my dear friend, _hein_?”

“Quite,” replied Lawrence. “But suppose you give me the facts first?”

“It was like this, my dear Holmes. . . . As you are aware, I am
literally buried alive in my present job at Tokotu. But yes, with a
burial-alive such as you of the Nigerian Civil Service have no faintest
possible conception, in the uttermost Back of Beyond. (You, with your
Maiduguri Polo Club! Pouf!) Yes, interred living, in the southernmost
outpost of the _Territoire Militaire_ of the Sahara, a spot compared
with which the very loneliest and vilest Algerian border-hole would seem
like Sidi-bel-Abbès itself, Sidi-bel-Abbès like Algiers, Algiers like
Paris in Africa, and Paris like God’s Own Paradise in Heaven.

Seconded from my beloved regiment, far from a boulevard, a café, a club,
far, indeed, from everything that makes life supportable to an
intelligent man, am I entombed. . .”

“I’ve had some,” interrupted Lawrence unsympathetically. “Get on with
the Dark Mystery.”

“I see the sun rise and set; I see the sky above, and the desert below;
I see my handful of _cafard_-stricken men in my mud fort, black
Senegalese, and white mule-mounted infantry whom I train, poor devils;
and what else do I see? What else from year’s end to year’s end? . . .”

“I shall weep in a minute,” murmured Lawrence. “What about the Dark
Mystery?”

“What do I see?” continued the Major, ignoring the unworthy remark. “A
vulture. A jackal. A lizard. If I am lucky and God is good, a
slave-caravan from Lake Tchad. A band of veiled Touaregs led by a Targui
bandit-chief, thirsting for the blood of the hated white _Roumi_—and I
bless them even as I open fire or lead the attack of my
mule-cavalry-playing-at-Spahis . . .”

“The Dark Mystery must have been a perfect godsend, my dear Jolly,”
smiled Lawrence, as he extracted his cheroot-case and extended it to his
eloquent friend, lying facing him on the opposite couch-seat of the
uncomfortable carriage of the Nigerian Railway. “What _was_ it?”

“A godsend, indeed,” replied the Frenchman. “Sent of God, surely to save
my reason and my life. But I doubt if the price were not a little high,
even for that! The deaths of so many brave men. . . . And one of those
deaths a dastardly cold-blooded murder! The vile assassination of a
gallant _sous-officier_. . . . And by one of his own men. In the very
hour of glorious victory. . . . _One of his own men_—I am certain of
it. But why? _Why?_ I ask myself night and day. And now I ask you, my
friend. . . . The motive, I ask? . . . But you shall hear all—and
instantly solve the problem, my dear Holmes, eh? . . .

Have you heard of our little post of Zinderneuf (far, far north of
Zinder which is in the Aïr country), north of your Nigeria? No? Well you
hear of it now, and it is where this incomprehensible tragedy took
place.

Behold me then, one devilish hot morning, yawning in my pyjamas over a
_gamelle_ of coffee, in my quarters, while from the _caserne_ of my
_légionnaires_ come the cries of ‘_Au jus_,’ ‘_Au jus_,’ as one carries
round the jug of coffee from bed to bed, and arouses the sleepers to
another day in Hell. And then as I wearily light a wretched cigarette of
our beastly _caporal_, there comes running my orderly, babbling I know
not what of a dying Arab _goum_—they are always dying of fatigue these
fellows, if they have hurried a few miles—on a dying camel, who cries
at the gate that he is from Zinderneuf, and that there is siege and
massacre, battle, murder, and sudden death. All slain and expecting to
be killed. All dead and the buglers blowing the Regimental Call, the
rally, the charge; making the devil of a row, and so forth. . . .

‘_And is it the dying camel that cries all this?_’ I ask, even as I leap
into my belts and boots, and rush to the door and shout, ‘_Aux arms! Aux
armes!_’ to my splendid fellows and wish to God they were my Spahis.
‘_But no, Monsieur le Majeur_,’ declares the orderly, ‘_it is the dying
goum, dying of fatigue on the dying camel._’

‘_Then bid him not die, on pain of death, till I have questioned him_,’
I reply as I load my revolver. ‘_And tell the Sergeant-Major that an
advance-party of the Foreign Legion on camels marches en tenue de
campagne d’Afrique in nine minutes from when I shouted “Aux armes.” The
rest of them on mules._’ You know the sort of thing, my friend. You have
turned out your guard of Haussas of the West African Frontier Force
nearly as quickly and smartly at times, no doubt.”

“Oh, nearly, nearly, perhaps. _Toujours la politesse_,” murmured
Lawrence.

“As we rode out of the gate of my fort, I gathered from the still-dying
_goum_, on the still-dying camel, that a couple of days before, a large
force of Touaregs had been sighted from the look-out platform of
Zinderneuf fort. Promptly the wise _sous-officier_, in charge and
command since the lamented death of Captain Renouf, had turned the
_goum_ loose on his fast _mehari_ camel, with strict orders not to be
caught by the Touaregs if they invested the fort, but to clear out and
trek with all speed for help—as it appeared to be a case of too heavy
odds. If the Touaregs were only playful, and passed the fort by, after a
little sporting pot-shotting, he was to follow them, I suppose, see them
safe off the premises for a day or two, and discover what they were out
for.

Well, away went the _goum_, stood afar off on a sand-hill, saw the
Touaregs skirmish up to the oasis, park their camels among the palms,
and seriously set about investing the place. He thought it was time for
him to go when they had surrounded the fort, were lining the sand-hills,
making nice little trenches in the sand, climbing the palm trees, and
pouring in a very heavy fire. He estimated them at ten thousand rifles,
so I feared that there must be at least five hundred of the cruel
fiends. Anyhow, round wheeled Monsieur Goum and rode hell-for-leather,
night and day, for help. . . .

Like _How we brought the good news from Aix to Ghent_, and _Paul
Revere’s Ride_ and all. I christened the _goum_, Paul Revere, straight
away, when I heard his tale, and promised him all sorts of good things,
including a good hiding if I found he had not exceeded the speed limit
all the way from Aix to Ghent. Certainly his ‘Roland’ looked as if its
radiator had boiled all right. And, _Nom d’un nom d’nom de bon Dieu de
sort!_ but I made a forced march of it, my friend—and when we of the
Nineteenth African Division do _that_, even on mules and camels, you can
hardly see us go.”

“Oh, come now! I am sure your progress is perceptible,” said Lawrence
politely. “Specially on camels, and all that. . . . You’re too modest,”
he added.

“I mean you can hardly see us go for dust and small stones, by reason of
our swiftness. . . . Any more than you can see a bullet, witty one,”
rebuked de Beaujolais.

“Oh, quite, quite,” murmured the Englishman.

“Anyhow, I was away with the advance-party on swift _mehari_ camels, a
mule-squadron was following, and a company of Senegalese would do fifty
kilometres a day on foot till they reached Zinderneuf. Yes, and, in what
I flatter myself is the unbreakable record time between Tokotu and
Zinderneuf, we arrived—and, riding far on in advance of my men, I
listened for the sound of firing or of bugle-calls.

I heard no sound whatever, and suddenly topping a ridge I came in sight
of the fort—there below me on the desert plain, near the tiny oasis.

There was no fighting, no sign of Touaregs, no trace of battle or siege.
No blackened ruins strewn with mutilated corpses here. The Tri-couleur
flew merrily from the flagstaff, and the fort looked absolutely
normal—a square grey block of high, thick mud walls, flat castellated
roof, flanking towers, and lofty look-out platform. All was well! The
honour of the Flag of France had been well defended. I waved my _képi_
above my head and shouted aloud in my glee.

Perhaps I began composing my Report then and there, doing modest justice
to the readiness, promptitude, and dispatch of my little force, which
had maintained the glorious traditions of the Nineteenth African
Division; giving due praise to the _sous-officier_ commanding
Zinderneuf, and not forgetting Paul Revere and his Roland. . . .
Meanwhile, they should know that relief was at hand, and that, be the
Touaregs near or be they far, the danger was over and the Flag safe. I,
Henri de Beaujolais of the Spahis, had brought relief. I fired my
revolver half a dozen times in the air. And then I was aware of a small
but remarkable fact. The high look-out platform at the top of its long
ladder was empty.

Strange! Very strange! Incredibly strange, at the very moment when great
marauding bands of Touaregs were known to be about—and one of them had
only just been beaten off, and might attack again at any moment. I must
offer the _sous-officier_ my congratulations upon the excellence of his
look-out, as soon as I had embraced and commended him! New as he might
be to independent command, this should never have happened. One would
have thought he could as soon have forgotten his boots as his sentry on
the look-out platform.

A pretty state of affairs, _bon Dieu_, in time of actual war! Here was I
approaching the fort in broad light of day, firing my revolver—and not
the slightest notice taken! I might have been the entire Touareg nation
or the whole German army. . . .

No, there must be something wrong, in spite of the peaceful look of
things and the safety of the Flag—and I pulled out my field-glasses to
see if they would reveal anything missed by the naked eye.

As I halted and waited for my camel to steady himself, that I might
bring the glasses to bear, I wondered if it were possible that this was
an ambush.

Could the Arabs have captured the place, put the defenders to the sword,
put on their uniforms, cleaned up the mess, closed the gates, left the
Flag flying, and now be waiting for a relieving force to ride, in
trustful innocence and close formation, up to the muzzles of their
rifles? Possible—but quite unlike brother Touareg! You know what _his_
way is, when he has rushed a post or broken a square. A dirty fighter,
if ever there was one! And as I focussed my glasses on the walls, I
rejected the idea.

Moreover, yes, there were the good European faces of the men at the
embrasures, bronzed and bearded, but unmistakably not Arab. . . .

And yet, that again was strange. At every embrasure of the breast-high
parapet round the flat roof stood a soldier, staring out across the
desert, and most of them staring along their levelled rifles too; some
of them straight at me. Why? There was no enemy about. Why were they not
sleeping the sleep of tired victors, below on their cots in the
_caserne_, while double sentries watched from the high look-out
platform? Why no man up there, and yet a man at every embrasure that I
could see from where I sat on my camel, a thousand metres distant?

And why did no man move; no man turn to call out to a sergeant that a
French officer approached; no man walk to the door leading down from the
roof, to inform the Commandant of the fort?

Anyhow, the little force had been extraordinarily lucky, or the shooting
of the Arabs extraordinarily bad, that they should still be numerous
enough to man the walls in that fashion—‘all present and correct,’ as
you say in your army—and able to stand to arms thus, after two or three
days of it, more or less.

As I lowered my glasses and urged my camel forward, I came to the
conclusion that I was expected, and that the officer in charge was
indulging in a little natural and excusable _fantaisie_, showing
off—what you call ‘putting on the dog,’ eh?

He was going to let me find everything as the Arabs found it when they
made their foolish attack—every man at his post and everything
_klim-bim_. Yes, that must be it. . . . Ah, it was! Even as I watched, a
couple of shots were fired from the wall. They had seen me. . . . The
fellow, in his joy, was almost shooting at me, in fact!

And yet—nobody on the look-out platform! How I would prick that good
fellow’s little bubble of swank! And I smiled to myself as I rode under
the trees of the oasis to approach the gates of the fort.

It was the last time I smiled for quite a little while.

Among the palm trees were little pools of dried and blackened blood
where men had fallen, or wounded men had been laid, showing that,
however intact the garrison of the fort might be, their assailants had
paid toll to the good Lebel rifles of my friends.

And then I rode out from the shade of the oasis and up to the gate.

Here half a dozen or so kept watch, looking out over the wall above, as
they leant in the embrasures of the parapet. The nearest was a huge
fellow, with a great bushy grey moustache, from beneath which protruded
a short wooden pipe. His _képi_ was cocked rakishly over one eye, as he
stared hard at me with the other, half closed and leering, while he kept
his rifle pointed straight at my head.

I was glad to feel certain that he at least was no Arab, but a tough old
legionary, a typical _vieille moustache_, and rough soldier of fortune.
But I thought his joke a poor one and over-personal, as I looked up into
the muzzle of his unwavering rifle. . . .

‘_Congratulations, my children_,’ I cried. ‘_France and I are proud to
salute you_,’ and raised my _képi_ in homage to their courage and their
victory.

Not one of them saluted. Not one of them answered. Not one of them
stirred. Neither a finger nor an eyelid moved. I was annoyed. If this
was ‘making _fantaisie_’ as they call it in the Legion, it was making it
at the wrong moment and in the wrong manner.

‘_Have you of the Foreign Legion no manners?_’ I shouted. ‘_Go, one of
you, at once, and call your officer._’ Not a finger nor an eyelid moved.

I then addressed myself particularly to old Grey-Moustache. ‘_You_,’ I
said, pointing up straight at his face, ‘_go at once and tell your
Commandant that Major de Beaujolais of the Spahis has arrived from
Tokotu with a relieving force—and take that pipe out of your face and
step smartly, do you hear?_’

And then, my friend, I grew a little uncomfortable, though the
impossible truth did not dawn upon me. Why did the fellow remain like a
graven image, silent, motionless, remote—like an Egyptian god on a
temple wall, looking with stony and unseeing eye into my puny human
face?

Why were they all like stone statues? Why was the fort so utterly and
horribly silent? Why did nothing _move_, there in the fierce sunlight of
the dawn? Why this tomb-like, charnel-house, inhuman silence and
immobility?

Where were the usual sounds and stir of an occupied post? Why had no
sentry seen me from afar and cried the news aloud? Why had there been no
clang and clatter at the gate? Why had the gate not been opened? Why no
voice, no footstep in all the place? Why did these men ignore me as
though I were a beetle on the sand? Where was their officer? . . .

Was this a nightmare in which I seemed for ever doomed to ride voiceless
and invisible, round endless walls, trying to attract the attention of
those who could never be aware of me?

When, as in a dream, I rode right round the place, and beheld more and
more of those motionless silent forms, with their fixed, unwinking eyes,
I clearly saw that one of them, whose _képi_ had fallen from his head,
had a hole in the centre of his forehead and was dead—although at his
post, with chest and elbows leaning on the parapet, and looking as
though about to fire his rifle!

I am rather near-sighted, as you know, but then the truth dawned upon
me—they were _all_ dead!

‘_Why were they not sleeping the sleep of tired victors?_’ I had asked
myself a few minutes before. They _were_. . . .

Yes, all of them. _Mort sur le champ d’honneur!_ . . .

My friend, I rode back to where Grey-Moustache kept his last watch, and,
baring my head, I made my apologies to him, and the tears came into my
eyes. Yes, and I, Henri de Beaujolais of the Spahis, admit it without
shame.

I said, ‘_Forgive me, my friend._’ What would you, an Englishman, have
said?”

“What about a spot of tea?” quoth Mr. George Lawrence, reaching beneath
the seat for his tiffin-basket.

§4.

After a dusty meal, impatiently swallowed by Major de Beaujolais, that
gentleman resumed his story, with serious earnestness and some
gesticulation, while, on the opposite side of the carriage, George
Lawrence lay upon his back, his clasped hands beneath his head, idly
watching the smoke that curled up from his cheroot. But he was paying
closer attention to the Frenchman’s tale.

“But, of course, it soon occurred to me,” continued that gentleman,
“that someone must be alive. . . . Shots had been fired to welcome
me. . . . Those corpses had not of _themselves_ taken up those
incredibly life-like attitudes. Whoever had propped them up and arranged
them and their rifles in position, must be alive.

For, naturally, not all had been struck by Arab bullets and remained
standing in the embrasures. Nine times out of ten, as you know, a man
staggers back and falls, when shot standing.

Besides, what about the wounded? There is always a far bigger percentage
of wounded than of killed in any engagement. Yes, there must be
survivors, possibly all more or less wounded, below in the _caserne_.

But surely _one_ of them might have kept a look-out. Probably the
Commandant and all the non-commissioned officers were killed.

Even then, though, one would have expected the senior man—even if the
survivors were all _soldats deuxième classe_—to have taken that much
ordinary military precaution! . . .

Well, I would soon solve the problem, for my troop was approaching, my
trumpeter with them. I was glad to note that my Sergeant-Major had
evidently had a similar idea to mine, for, on coming in sight of the
fort, he had opened out and skirmished up in extended order—in spite of
the bravely-flying Flag.

When my men arrived, I had the ‘rouse,’ the ‘alarm,’ the Regimental
Call, sounded by the trumpeter—fully expecting, after each blast, that
the gates would open, or at least that someone would come running up
from below on to the roof.

Not a sound nor a movement! . . . Again and again; call after
call. . . . Not a sound nor a movement!

‘Perhaps the last one or two are badly wounded,’ thought I. ‘There may
not be a man able to crawl from his bed. The fellow who propped those
corpses up may have been shot in the act, and be lying up there, or on
his cot,’ and I bade the trumpeter cease. Sending for the _Chef_, as we
call the Sergeant-Major, I ordered him to knot camel-cords, sashes,
girths, reins, anything, make a rope, and set an active fellow to climb
from the back of a camel, into an embrasure, and give me a hoist up.

That Sergeant-Major is one of the bravest and coolest men I have ever
known, and his collection of _ferblanterie_ includes the Croix and the
Medaille given on the field, for valour.

‘It is a trap, _mon Commandant_,’ said he. ‘Do not walk into it. Let me
go.’ Brave words—but he looked queer, and I knew that though he feared
nothing living, he was afraid.

‘The dead keep good watch, _Chef_,’ said I, and I think he shivered.

‘They would warn us, _mon Commandant_,’ said he. ‘Let me go.’

‘We will neither of us go,’ said I. ‘We will have the courage to remain
in our proper place, with our men. It may be a trap, though I doubt it.
We will send a man in, and if it is a trap, we shall know—and without
losing an officer unnecessarily. If it is not a trap, the gates will be
opened in two minutes.’

‘The Dead are watching and listening,’ said the _Chef_, glancing up, and
he crossed himself, averting his eyes.

‘Send me that drunken _mauvais sujet_, Rastignac,’ said I, and the
Sergeant-Major rode away.

‘May I go, _mon Commandant_?’ said the trumpeter, saluting.

‘Silence,’ said I. My nerves were getting a little on edge, under that
silent, mocking scrutiny of the watching Dead. When the Sergeant-Major
returned with a rope, and the rascal Rastignac—whose proper place was
in the _Joyeux_, the terrible Penal Battalions of convicted criminals—I
ordered him to climb from his camel on to the roof.

‘Not I, _mon Officier_,’ replied he promptly. ‘Let me go to Hell dead,
not living. I don’t mind joining corpses _as_ a corpse. You can shoot
me.’

‘That can I, of a surety,’ I agreed, and drew my revolver. ‘Ride your
camel under that projecting water-spout,’ said I. ‘Stand on its back,
and spring to the spout. Climb into the embrasure, and then go down and
open the gates.’

‘Not I, _mon Officier_,’ said Rastignac again. I raised my revolver, and
the Sergeant-Major snatched the man’s rifle.

‘Have you _le cafard_?’ I asked, referring to the desert-madness that,
bred of monotony, boredom, misery, and hardship, attacks European
soldiers in these outposts—especially absinthe-drinkers—and makes them
do strange things, varying from mutiny, murder, and suicide to dancing
about naked, or thinking they are lizards or emperors or
clock-pendulums.

‘I have a dislike for intruding upon a dead Company that stands to arms
and keeps watch,’ replied the fellow.

‘For the last time—_go_,’ said I, aiming between his eyes.

‘Go yourself, _Monsieur le Majeur_,’ replied Rastignac, and I pulled the
trigger. . . . Was I right, my friend?”

“Dunno,” replied Lawrence, yawning.

“There was a click, and Rastignac smiled. I had emptied my revolver when
approaching the fort, as I have told you.

‘You can live—to be court-martialled and join the _Batt d’Af_,’ said I.
‘You will be well placed among the _Joyeux_.’

‘Better among those than the Watchers above, _mon Officier_,’ said my
beauty, and I bade the Sergeant-Major take his bayonet and put him under
arrest.

‘You may show this coward the way,’ said I to the trumpeter, and, in a
minute, that one had sprung at the spout, clutched it, and was
scrambling on to the wall. He was _un brave_.

‘We will proceed as though the place were held by an enemy—until the
gates are opened,’ said I to the Sergeant-Major, and we rode back to the
troop and handed Rastignac over to the Corporal, who clearly welcomed
him in the rôle of prisoner.

‘_Vous—pour la boîte_,’ smiled the Corporal, licking his lips. And then
we watched and waited. I could see that the men were immensely puzzled
and intrigued. Not an eye wandered. I would have given something to have
known what each man thought concerning this unique experience. A
perfectly silent fort, the walls fully manned, the Flag flying—and the
gates shut. No vestige of a sign from that motionless garrison staring
out into the desert, aiming their rifles at nothing—and at _us_. . . .

We watched and waited. Two minutes passed; five; six; _seven_. What
could it mean? _Was_ it a trap after all?

‘_That_ one won’t return!’ said Rastignac loudly, and gave an eerie
jarring laugh. The Corporal smote him on the mouth, and I heard him
growl, ‘What about a little _crapaudine_[1] and a mouthful of sand, my
friend? . . . You speak again!’ . . .

At the end of ten minutes, a very _mauvais quart d’heure_, I beckoned
the Sergeant-Major. I could stand the strain no longer.

‘I am going in,’ said I. ‘I cannot send another man, although I ought to
do so. Take command. . . . If you do not see me within ten minutes, and
nothing happens, assault the place. Burn down the gates and let a party
climb the walls, while another charges in. Keep a half-troop, under the
Corporal, in reserve.’

‘Let me go, _mon Commandant_,’ begged the _Chef_, ‘if you will not send
another soldier. Or call for a volunteer to go. Suppose you . . .’

‘Silence, _Chef_,’ I replied, ‘I am going,’ and I rode back to the fort.
Was I right, George?”

“Dunno,” replied George Lawrence.

“I remember thinking, as I rode back, what a pernicious fool I should
look if, under the eyes of all—the living and the dead—I failed to
accomplish that, by no means easy, scramble, and had ignominiously to
admit my inability to climb up where the trumpeter had gone. It is sad
when one’s vile body falls below the standard set by the aspiring soul,
when the strength of the muscles is inadequate to the courage of the
heart. . . .

However, all went well, and, after an undignified dangling from the
spout, and wild groping with the raised foot, I got a leg over the
ledge, scrambled up and crawled into an embrasure.

And there I stood astounded and dumbfounded, _tout bouleversé_, unable
to believe my eyes.

There, as in life, stood the garrison, their backs to me, their faces to
the foe whom they had driven off, their feet in dried pools of their own
blood—watching, watching. . . . And soon I forgot what might be
awaiting me below, I forgot my vanished trumpeter, I forgot my troop
waiting without—_for there was something else_.

Lying on his back, his sightless eyes out-staring the sun—lay the
Commandant, and through his heart, _a bayonet_, one of our long, thin
French sword-bayonets with its single-curved hilt! No—he had not been
shot, he was absolutely untouched elsewhere, and there he lay with a
French bayonet through his heart. What do you say to that, my friend?”

“Suicide,” replied Lawrence.

“And so did I, until I realised that he had a loaded revolver in one
hand, one chamber fired, and a crushed letter in the other! _Does_ a man
drive a bayonet through his heart, and then take a revolver in one hand
and a sheet of paper in the other? I think not.

Have you ever seen a man drive a bayonet through his heart, my friend?
Believe me, he does not fumble for letters, nor draw a revolver and fire
it, after he has done _that_. No. He gasps, stares, staggers. He grips
the handle and the _forte_ of the blade with both hands, totters,
stretches convulsively, and collapses, crashing to the ground. . . . In
any case, does a man commit suicide with a bayonet when he has a loaded
revolver? . . . Suicide? _Pouf._

Was it any wonder that my jaw dropped and I forgot all else, as I stared
and stared. . . . _Voyez donc!_ A French fort in the Sahara, besieged by
Arabs. Every man killed at his post. The Arabs beaten off. The fort
inviolate, untrodden by Arab foot. The gates closed. Within—the dead,
and one of them slain by a French bayonet while he held a loaded
revolver in his hand! . . .

But _was_ the fort inviolate and untrodden by Arab foot? If so, what had
become of my trumpeter? Might not the Arabs be hiding below, waiting
their opportunity to catch the relieving force unawares? Might not there
be an Arab eye at every rifle-slit? Might not the _caserne_, rooms,
offices, sheds, be packed with them?

Absurdly improbable—and why should they have slain the Commandant with
a French bayonet? Would they not have hacked him to pieces with sword
and spear, and have mutilated and decapitated every corpse in the place?
Was it like the wild Touareg to lay so clever a trap with the propped-up
bodies, that a relieving force might fall into their hands as well?
Never. _Peaudezébie!_ Had the Arabs entered here, the place would have
been a looted, blackened ruin, defiled, disgusting, strewn with pieces
of what had been men. No, this was not Arab work.

These Watchers, I felt certain, had been compelled by this dead man, who
lay before me, to continue as defenders of the fort after their
deaths. . . . He was evidently a _man_. A bold, resourceful, undaunted
hero, sardonic, of a macabre humour, as the Legion always is.

As each man fell, throughout that long and awful day, he had propped him
up, wounded or dead, set the rifle in its place, fired it, and bluffed
the Arabs that every wall and every embrasure and loophole of every wall
was fully manned. He must, at the last, have run from point to point,
firing a rifle from behind its dead defender. Every now and then he must
have blown the alarm that the bugler would never blow again, in the hope
that it would guide and hasten the relieving force and impress the Arabs
with the fear that the avengers must be near.

No wonder the Arabs never charged that fort, from each of whose walls a
rifle cracked continuously, and from whose every embrasure watched a
fearless man whom they could not kill—or whose place seemed to be
taken, at once, by another, if they did kill him. . . .

All this passed through my mind in a few seconds—and as I realised what
he had done and how he had died in the hour of victory, _murdered_, my
throat swelled though my blood boiled—and I ventured to give myself the
proud privilege of kneeling beside him and pinning my own Croix upon his
breast—though I could scarcely see to do so. I thought of how France
should ring with the news of his heroism, resource, and last glorious
fight, and how every Frenchman should clamour for the blood of his
murderer.

Only a poor _sous-officier_ of the Legion. But a hero for France to
honour. . . . And I would avenge him!

Such were my thoughts, my friend, as I realised the truth—what are
yours?”

“Time for a spot of dinner,” said George Lawrence, starting up.

—–

Footnote 1:

Torture. The hands and feet tied together in a bunch in the middle of
the back.

§5.

Next morning, as the two lay awake on their dusty bedding, begrimed,
tousled, pyjama-clad, awaiting the next stop, bath, and breakfast, de
Beaujolais lit a cigarette, turned on his side, and fixed his friend
with the earnest troubled gaze of his bright brown eye.

“Well, George, _who killed him_—and why?”

“Oh, Ancient Mariner!” yawned Lawrence.

“What?”

“I feel like the Wedding Guest.”

“You look like one, my George,” smiled the Frenchman.

“Get on with it, Jolly.”

“How was the Commandant of that fort killed?”

“Someone ‘threatened his life with a railway-share.’ ”

“Be serious, little George. I want your help. I _must_ get to the bottom
of this. Where did I leave off?”

“God knows. I was asleep.”

“Ah! I was on the roof, pinning my Croix on the breast of the bravest
man I have ever met. Your General Gordon in miniature! This obscure and
humble soul had kept his country’s Flag flying, as that great man did at
Khartoum, and, like him, he had been relieved too late. But yes, and
there it flapped above my head and recalled me to myself.

I rose, drew my revolver, loaded it, and walked to the door. As I was
about to descend into that silence I had a little idea. I looked at each
of the Watchers in turn. No. Each man had his bayonet, of course. I had
not really supposed that one of them had stabbed his officer and then
gone back to his post and died on his feet! He would have fallen—or
possibly have hung limply through the embrasure. I raised my weapon and
descended the stairs—expecting I know not what, in that sinister
stillness—that had swallowed up my trumpeter. And what do you think I
found there, my friend?”

“Dunno,” said George Lawrence.

“_Nothing._ No one and nothing. Not even the man who had fired the two
shots of welcome! . . . As I had felt sure, really, all along, no Arab
had entered the fort. That leapt to the eye at once. The place was as
tight shut as this fist of mine—and as empty of Arab traces. The
_caserne_ was as orderly and tidy as when the men left it and stood to
arms—the _paquetages_ on the shelves, the table-apparatus in the
hanging cupboards, the _gamelles_ and cleaning-bags at the heads of the
beds, the bedding folded and straight. There had evidently been
room-inspection just before the sentry on the look-out platform had
cried, ‘_Aux armes! Aux armes! Les Arabes!_’ and all had rushed to their
posts.

No, not a thing was missing or awry. The whole place might just have
been made ready by an outgoing garrison, to be taken over by the
incoming garrison. No Arab had scaled those walls nor wriggled through
the keyhole of the gate. The stores were untouched—the rice, the
biscuits, bread, coffee, wine, nothing was missing. . .”

“Except a rifle,” grunted Lawrence.

“My friend, you’ve said it! Where was the rifle belonging to the bayonet
that was driven through the heart of the murdered officer up above? That
was precisely the question that my crazed mind was asking itself as I
realised that the fort had never been entered.

Had a corpse bayoneted that _sous-officier_, returned to its post, and
flung the rifle to the horizon? Scarcely.

Had an Arab—expert in throwing knife or bayonet as in throwing the
_matrak_—possessed himself of a French bayonet, after some
desert-massacre of one of our tiny expeditionary columns? And had he got
near enough to the fort to throw it? And had it by chance, or skill of
the thrower, penetrated the heart of the Commandant of the garrison?”

“Possibly,” said Lawrence.

“So I thought for a moment,” replied de Beaujolais, “though why a man
armed with a breech-loading rifle, should leave the cover of his
sand-hill, trench, or palm tree, and go about throwing bayonets, I don’t
know. And then I remembered that the bayonet went through the breast of
the _sous-officier_ in a slightly _upward_ direction from front to back.
Could a bayonet be thrown thus into the middle of a wide roof?”

“Sold again,” murmured Lawrence.

“No, I had to abandon that idea. As untenable as the returning-corpse
theory. And I was driven, against common sense, to conclude that the
officer had been bayoneted by one of his own men, the sole survivor, who
had then detached the rifle from the bayonet and fled from the fort. But
why? _Why?_ If such was the explanation of the officer’s death—why on
earth had not the murderer shot him _and calmly awaited the arrival of
the relieving force_?

Naturally all would have supposed that the brave Commandant had been
shot, like all the rest, by the Arabs.

Instead of fleeing to certain death from thirst and starvation, or
torture at the hands of the Arabs, why had not the murderer awaited, in
comfort, the honours, _réclame_, reward, and promotion that would most
assuredly have been his? Obviously, the man who—lusting for blood and
vengeance on account of some real or fancied wrong—could murder his
superior at such a moment, would be the very one to see the beauty of
getting a rich and glorious reward as a sequel to his revenge. Without a
doubt he would have shot him through the head, propped him up with the
rest, and accepted the congratulations of the relieving force for having
conceived and executed the whole scheme of outwitting and defeating the
Arabs. Wouldn’t he, George?”

“_I_ would,” replied George, scratching his head.

“Yes, you would. And I almost sent that theory to join the other two
wild ones—the corpse who returned to its post, and the Arab who threw
sword-bayonets from afar. Almost—until I remembered that revolver in
the dead man’s hand, and the empty cartridge-case in one of its
chambers. And then I asked myself, ‘Does a man who is conducting the
defence of a block-house, against tremendous odds, waste time in taking
pot-shots _with a revolver_ at concealed enemies, two or three hundred
yards distant? Does he do that, with hundreds of rounds of rifle
ammunition and a score of rifles to his hand?’ Of course not.

That revolver shot was fired at someone _in_ the fort. It was fired
point-blank at the man who murdered him—and the murderer must have been
one of his own men, and that man must have fled from the fort. But
again, why? Why? _Why?_

Why not have shot his officer, as I said before? He would never have had
even the _need_ to deny having done it, for no one would have dreamt of
accusing him.

And then I had an idea. I suddenly said to myself, ‘Suppose some
scoundrel bayoneted the Commandant even before the alarm was given or
the attack began—and then organised the defence and died at his post
with the others?’

Led a mutiny of the garrison, perhaps; took command; and was shot and
propped up in his embrasure by someone else. Yes, but who propped the
last man up? He did not do it himself, that was certain—for every
single corpse on that roof had been _arranged_ before _rigor mortis_ set
in. The only man who was not ‘to the life’ was one who lay on his back.
It was curious, that recumbent corpse with closed eyes and folded hands,
but I did not see that it offered any clue. Whoever had been doing the
ghastly work of corpse-drilling had overlooked it—or, indeed, had been
going to set the dead man up when the final tragedy, whatever it was,
occurred.

It may have been that the brave _sous-officier_ was going to arrange
this very corpse when he was attacked. Or, as I say, the officer may
have been dead the whole time, or part of it, and the last survivor may
have had this last work cut short by a bullet, before he had put the man
in position.

But if so, where _was_ he? . . . Was it the man who had fired the two
shots in answer to mine—and if so, what had become of him? _Why had he
fired if he wished to hide or escape?_

My head spun. I felt I was going mad.

And then I said to myself, ‘_Courage, mon brave!_ Go calmly up to that
terrible roof again, and just quietly and clearly make certain of two
points. First: Is there any one of those standing corpses who has not
quite obviously been arranged, propped up, fixed in position? If
so—_that_ is the man who killed his officer and was afterwards shot by
the Arabs. Secondly: Has any one of those dead men been shot point-blank
with a revolver? (That I should be able to tell at a glance.) If so,
_that_ is the man who killed his officer—(who lived long enough to
thrust his assailant into an embrasure) . . . .’ ”

“After himself being bayoneted through the heart?” enquired Lawrence.

“Exactly what I said to myself—and groaned aloud as I said it,” replied
de Beaujolais.

“Anyhow,” he continued, “I would go up and see if any man had been shot
by a revolver, and if any man lay _naturally_ against the slope of an
embrasure. . . . I turned to ascend the stair, and then, George, and not
till then, I got the _real_ shock of that awful day of shocks. For,
_where was my trumpeter_?

I had made a quick but complete tour of the place and now realised in a
flash that I had seen no living thing and heard no sound.

‘_Trompette! Trompette!_’ I shouted. I rushed to the door leading to the
courtyard, the little interior, high-walled parade ground.

‘_Trompette!_’ I shouted and yelled, again and again, till my voice
cracked.

Not a sound. Not a movement.

And then, in something like panic, putting all else from my mind, I
rushed to the gates, lifted down the great bars, pulled the heavy bolts,
turned the great key, and dragged them open—just as the mule-squadron
arrived and my good Sergeant-Major was giving them the signal to join
the assault!

It was not that I had suddenly remembered that the time I had allowed
him must be up, but that I needed to see a human being again, to hear a
human voice, after a quarter of an hour in that House of Death, that
sinister abode of tragic mysteries. I felt an urgent and unconquerable
yearning for some . . .”

“Breakfast,” said George Lawrence, as the train slowed down.

§6.

Bathed, full-fed, and at peace with a noisy world, in so far as choking
dust, grilling heat, and the weariness of three days’ close confinement
in a stuffy carriage allowed, the two _compagnons de voyage_ lay and
smoked the cheroot of digestion in a brief silence. Brief, because it
was not in the power of the impulsive and eloquent _beau sabreur_, of
the Spahis, to keep silence for long upon the subject uppermost in his
active and ardent mind.

“_Georges, mon vieux_,” he broke silence, “do you believe in spirits,
ghosts, devils?”

“I firmly believe in whiskey, the ghost of a salary, and a devil of a
thin time. Seen ’em myself,” was the reply.

“Because the only solution that my Sergeant-Major could offer was just
that. . . .

‘_Spirits! Ghosts! Devils!_’ he whispered, when he realised that the
_sous-officier_ had been murdered apparently by a corpse, and that the
trumpeter had absolutely vanished into thin air, leaving not a trace of
himself, and effecting the evaporation of his rifle as well as of his
trumpet and everything else.

This was not very helpful, strongly as I was tempted to endorse it.

‘Sergeant-Major Dufour,’ said I, ‘I am going to propound theories and
you are going to find the weak points in them. The absurdities and
idiocies in them.

Post vedettes far out, all round the place, and let the men fall out and
water their beasts in the oasis. Sergeant Lebaudy will be in command.
Tell him that fires may be lighted and _soupe_ made, but that in an
hour’s time all are to be on grave-digging fatigue. He is to report
immediately when mule-scouts from Lieutenant St. André’s advance
Senegalese arrive from Tokotu, or if anything happens meanwhile. If a
vedette gives the alarm, all are to enter the fort
immediately—otherwise no one is to set foot inside. Put a sentry at the
gate. . . . You and I will look into this _affaire_ while Achmet makes
us some coffee’—and I gave the good fellow a cake of chocolate and a
measure of cognac from my flask. We were both glad of that cognac.

While he was gone on this business I remained on the roof. I preferred
the sunlight while I was alone. I freely admit it. I do not object to
Arabs, but I dislike ‘spirits, ghosts, and devils’—that commit murders
and abductions. Perhaps I was not quite myself. But what would you? I
had been enjoying fever; I had ridden all night; I was perilously near
_cafard_ myself; and the presence of those dead Watchers to whom I had
spoken, the finding of that incredibly murdered man, the not finding of
that more incredibly vanished trumpeter—had shaken me a little.

As I awaited the return of the Sergeant-Major I gazed at the corpse of
the _sous-officier_. I stared and stared at the face of the dead
man—not too pleasant a sight, George—contorted with rage, and pain,
and hate—dead for some hours and it was getting hot on that roof—and
there were flies . . . flies. . . .

I stared, I say, as though I would drag the truth from him, compel the
secret of this mystery from his dead lips, hypnotise those dead eyes to
turn to mine and—but no, it was _he_ that hypnotised and compelled,
until I was fain to look away.

As I did so, I noticed the man who was lying near. Yes, undoubtedly
someone had carefully and reverently laid him out. His eyes had been
closed, his head propped up on a pouch, and his hands folded upon his
chest. Why had he received such different treatment from that meted out
to the others? . . .

And then that bareheaded man. It was he—a very handsome fellow too—who
had given me my first shock and brought it home to my wondering mind
that the men who watched me were all dead.

You see, all but he had their faces in the deep shade of the big peaks
of their _képis_—whilst he, bareheaded and shot through the centre of
the forehead, was dead obviously—even to shortsighted me, looking up
from below against the strong sunlight; even to me, deceived at first by
his lifelike attitude.

And, as I glanced at their two _képis_ lying there, I noticed something
peculiar.

One had been wrenched and torn from within. The lining, newly ripped,
was protruding, and the inner leather band was turned down and outward.
It was as though something had recently been torn violently out of the
cap—something concealed in the lining perhaps? . . .

No, it was not the freak of a ricochetting bullet. The standing man had
been hit just above the nose and under the cap, the recumbent man was
hit in the chest.

‘Now what is this?’ thought I. ‘A man shot through the brain does not
remove his cap and tear the lining out. He gives a galvanic start,
possibly spins round, and quietly he falls backwards. His limbs stretch
once and quiver, and he is still for ever. His tight-fitting cap may, or
may not, fall off as he goes down—but there is no tearing out of the
lining, no turning down of the leather band.’

Bullets play funny tricks, I know, but not upon things they do not
touch. This bullet had been fired, I should say, from a palm tree, and
almost on a level with the roof; anyhow, it had entered the head below
the cap. There was no hole in _that_ whatsoever. To which of these two
men did the cap belong? . . .

Had all been normal in that terrible place, all lying dead as they had
fallen, I might never have noticed this torn cap. As it was—where
everything was extraordinary, and the mind of the beholder filled with
suspicion and a thousand questions, it was most interesting and
remarkable. It became portentous. It was one more phenomenon in that
focus of phenomena!

And from that cap and its recently torn and still protruding lining—oh
yes, most obviously torn quite recently, with its edging of unsoiled
threads, frayed but clean—from that cap, I looked quite instinctively
at the paper crushed in the left hand of the dead officer. I know not
why I connected these two things in my mind. They connected themselves
perhaps—and I was about to take the paper from the rigid fist, when I
thought, ‘No! Everything shall be done in order and with correctness. I
will touch nothing, do nothing, until the Sergeant-Major returns and I
have a witness.’

If I was to be _procureur, juge d’instruction_, judge and jury, coroner,
and perhaps, avenger—everything should be done in due form—and my
report upon the impossible affair be of some value, too.

But without touching the paper, I could see, and I saw with
surprise—though the _bon Dieu_ knows I had not much capacity for
surprise left in my stunned mind—that the writing was in English!

Why should _that_ be added to my conundrums? . . . A paper with English
writing on it, in the hand of a dead French officer in a block-house in
the heart of the _Territoire Militaire_ of the Sahara!”

“Perhaps the bloke was English,” suggested Lawrence. “I have heard that
there are some in the Legion.”

“No,” was the immediate reply. “That he most certainly was not. A
typical Frenchman of the Midi—a stoutish, florid, blue-jowled fellow of
full habit. Perhaps a Provençal—thousands like him in Marseilles,
Arles, Nimes, Avignon, Carcassonne, Tarascon. Might have been the good
Tartarin himself. Conceivably a Belgian; _possibly_ a Spaniard or
Italian, but most certainly not an Englishman. . . . Still less was the
standing man, an olive-cheeked Italian or Sicilian.”

“And the recumbent bareheaded chap?” said Lawrence.

“Ah—quite another affair, that! He might very well have been English.
In fact, had I been asked to guess at his nationality, I should have
said, ‘A Northerner certainly, English most probably.’ He would have
been well in the picture in the Officers’ Mess of one of your regiments.
Just the type turned out by your Public Schools and Universities by the
thousand.

What you are thinking is exactly what occurred to me. English writing on
the paper; an English-looking legionary; his cap lying near the man who
held the paper crushed in his hand; the lining just torn out of the cap!
. . . Ha! Here was a little glimmer of light, a possible clue. I was
just reconstructing the scene when I heard the Sergeant-Major ascending
the stair. . . .

Had this Englishman killed the _sous-officier_ while the latter tore
some document from the lining of the man’s cap? Obviously not. The poor
fellow’s bayonet was in its sheath at his side, and if he _had_ done
it—how had he got himself put into position?”

“Might have been shot afterwards,” said Lawrence.

“No. He was _arranged_, I tell you,” was the reply, “and he most
assuredly had not arranged himself. Besides, he was bareheaded. Does a
man go about bareheaded in the afternoon sun of the Sahara? But to my
mind the question doesn’t arise—in view of the fact of that
inexplicable bayonet.

One bayonet more than there were soldiers and rifles!

No—I ceased reconstructing the scene with _that_ one as the slayer, and
I had no reason to select anyone else for the rôle. . . . Then I heard
the bull voice of Sergeant Lebaudy, down in the oasis, roar ‘_Formez les
faisceaux_’ and ‘_Sac à terre_,’ and came back to facts as the
Sergeant-Major approached and saluted.

‘All in order, _mon Commandant_,’ reported he, and fell to eyeing the
corpses.

‘Even to half-smoked cigarettes in their mouths!’ he whispered. ‘_The
fallen who were not allowed to fall—the dead forbidden to die._’
Then—‘But where in the name of God is Jean the Trumpeter?’

‘Tell me that, _Chef_, and I will fill your _képi_ with twenty-franc
pieces—and give you the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour,’ said I.

The Sergeant-Major blasphemed, crossed himself, and then said, ‘Let us
get out of here while we can.’

‘Are you a Sergeant-Major or a young lady?’ I enquired—and as one does,
in such circumstances, rated him soundly for feeling exactly as I did
myself; and the more I said, the more angry and unreasonable I grew. You
know how one’s head and one’s nerves get, in that accursed desert,
George.”

“I know, old son,” agreed Lawrence. “I have found myself half-ready to
murder a _piccin_, for dropping a plate.”

“Yes—the best of us get really insane at times, in that hellish heat
and unnatural life. . . . But I got a hold upon myself and felt
ashamed—for the good fellow took it well.

‘Did Your Excellency make a thorough search?’ he asked, rebukingly
polite.

‘But, my dear _Chef_, what need to make a thorough search for a living
man, a hale and hearty, healthy soldier, in a small place into which he
had been sent to open a gate? _Mon Dieu!_ he has legs! He has a tongue
in his head! If he were here, wouldn’t he _be_ here?’ I asked.

‘Murdered perhaps,’ was the reply.

‘By whom? Beetles? Lizards?’ I sneered.

He shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to the _sous-officier_ with a
dramatic gesture.

That one had not been murdered by beetles or lizards!

‘Yes,’ said I. ‘Now we’ll reconstruct this crime, first reading what is
on this paper,’ and I opened the stiffened fingers and took it. There
was a dirty crumpled torn envelope there, too. Now _Georges, mon vieux_,
prepare yourself. You are going to show a little emotion, my frozen
Englishman!”

Lawrence smiled faintly.

“It was a most extraordinary document,” continued de Beaujolais. “I’ll
show it to you when we get on board the ship. It was something like
this: On the envelope was, ‘_To the Chief of Police of Scotland Yard and
all whom it may concern._’ And on the paper, ‘_Confession. Important.
Urgent. Please publish._

_For fear that any innocent person may be suspected, I hereby fully and
freely confess that it was I, and I alone, who stole the great sapphire
known as ‘Blue Water.’ ” . . ._

“What!” shouted George Lawrence, jumping up. “What? _What_ are you
saying, de Beaujolais?”

“Aha! my little George,” smiled the Frenchman, gloating. “And where is
the _phlegme Britannique_ now, may I ask? That made you sit up, quite
literally, didn’t it? We do not yawn now, my little George, do we?”

George Lawrence stared at his friend, incredulous, open-mouthed.

“_But that is Lady Brandon’s jewel!_ . . . What on earth . . .”
stammered Lawrence, sitting down heavily. “Are you romancing, de
Beaujolais? Being funny?”

“I am telling you what was written on this paper—which I will show you
when I can get at my dispatch-case, my friend,” was the reply.

“Good God, man! _Lady Brandon!_ . . . Do you mean to say that the ‘Blue
Water’ has been pinched—and that the thief took refuge in the Foreign
Legion, or drifted there somehow?” asked Lawrence, lying back on his
roll of bedding.

“I don’t mean to say anything—except to tell my little tale, the dull
little tale that has bored you so, my George,” replied de Beaujolais,
with a malicious grin.

George Lawrence swung his feet to the ground and stood up again. Never
had his friend seen this reserved, taciturn, and unemotional man so
affected.

“I don’t get you. I don’t take it in,” he said. “Lady Brandon’s stone!
_Our_ Lady Brandon? The ‘Blue Water’ that we used to be allowed to look
at sometimes? Stolen! . . . And you have found it?” . . .

“I have found nothing, my friend, but a crumpled and bloodstained piece
of paper in a dead man’s hand,” was the reply.

“With Lady Brandon’s name on it! It’s absurd, man. . . . In the middle
of the Sahara! And _you_ found it. . . . With her name on it! . . .
Well, I’m absolutely damned!” ejaculated Lawrence.

“Yes, my friend. And perhaps you begin to realise how ‘absolutely
damned’ I was, when I read that paper—sticky with blood. But probably I
was not as surprised as you are now. Even that could not have surprised
me very much then, I think,” said de Beaujolais.

Lawrence sat down.

“Go on, old chap,” he begged. “I sincerely apologise for my recent
manners. Please tell me everything, and then let us thrash it out. . . .
Lady Brandon! . . . The ‘Blue Water’ stolen!” . . .

“No need for apologies, my dear George,” smiled his friend. “If you
seemed a little unimpressed and bored at times, it only gave me the
greater zest for the _dénouement_, when you should hear your . . . our
. . . friend’s name come into this extraordinary story.”

“You’re a wily and patient old devil, Jolly,” said the astounded
Lawrence. “I salute you, Sir. A logical old cuss, too! Fancy keeping
_that_ back until now, and telling the yarn neatly, in proper sequence
and due order, until the right point in the story was reached, and then
. . .”

“Aha! the _phlegme Britannique_, eh, George!” chuckled de Beaujolais.
“Wonderful how the volatile and impetuous Frenchman could do it, wasn’t
it? And there is something else to come, my friend. All in ‘logical
proper sequence and due order’ there comes another little surprise.”

“Then, for God’s sake get on with it, old chap! . . . More about Lady
Brandon, is it?” replied Lawrence, now all animation and interest.

“Indirectly, _mon cher Georges_. For that paper was signed—_by whom?_”
asked the Frenchman, leaning forward, tapping his friend’s knee, staring
impressively with narrowed eyes into those of that bewildered gentleman.

And into the ensuing silence he slowly and deliberately dropped the
words, “_By Michael Geste!_”

Lawrence raised himself on his elbow and stared at his friend
incredulous.

“By _Michael Geste!_ Her nephew! You don’t mean to tell me that _Michael
Geste_ stole her sapphire and slunk off to the Legion? ‘Beau’ Geste!
_Get_ out . . .” he said, and fell back.

“I don’t mean to tell you anything, my friend, except that the paper was
signed ‘Michael Geste.’ ”

“Was the bareheaded man he? Look here, _are_ you pulling my leg?”

“I do not know who the man was, George. And I am not pulling your leg. I
saw two or three boys and two so beautiful girls, once, at Brandon
Abbas, years ago. This man might have been one of them. The age would be
about right. And then, again, this man may have had nothing on earth to
do with the paper. Nor any other man on that roof, except the
_sous-officier_—and he most certainly was not Michael Geste. He was a
man of forty or forty-five years, and as I have said, no Englishman.”

“Michael would be about twenty or so,” said Lawrence. “He was the oldest
of the nephews. . . . But, my dear Jolly, the Gestes don’t _steal_! They
are her nephews. . . . I am going to put some ice on my head.”

“I have wanted a lot of ice to the head, the last few weeks, George.
What, too, of the murdered _sous-officier_ and the utterly vanished
trumpeter?”

“Oh, damn your trumpeter and _sous-officier_,” was the explosive reply.
“Michael Geste! . . . Lady Brandon. . . . Forgive me, old chap, and
finish the story . . .” and George Lawrence lay back on his couch and
stared at the roof of the carriage.

Lady Brandon! The only woman in the world.

§7.

And as the train rumbled on through the sweltering coastlands toward
Lagos, Major de Beaujolais, highly pleased with the success of his neat
and clever little _coup_, continued his story.

“Well, my George, figure me there, with this new astoundment, this
extraordinary accompaniment to the sinister and bewildering mystery of
an inexplicable murder and an inexplicable disappearance. . . .

And then, ‘What is in the paper, might one respectfully enquire, _mon
Commandant_,’ asked the Sergeant-Major.

‘The confession of a thief—that he stole a famous jewel,’ I replied.

‘Which was the thief?’ said he.

‘Oh, ask me some questions, my good imbecile!’ said I. ‘Ask me where the
trumpeter is, and whose is this bayonet, and who disposed these dead men
as defenders, and who fired two shots, and whether I am mad or
dreaming,’ I answered—and then pulled myself together. ‘Now come with
me,’ I bade him. ‘We will make one more search below, and then
_déjeuner_, and a quiet, sensible, reasonable discussion of the facts,
before we bury these brave fellows, detail an _escouade_ of our men as
garrison, and return to Tokotu. I shall leave you in command here until
we get orders and reliefs.’

The Sergeant-Major looked distinctly dubious at this. ‘_Here_—for
weeks!’ he said softly.

We made our tour below, and, as before, nothing unusual met the eye, and
there was no sign of the trumpeter, alive or dead. We had seen him climb
on to that parapet and apparently no living eye had beheld him again.

I was past wonder. I accepted things.

Very well, this was a place where Commandants are murdered by
non-existent people; soldiers vanish like a whiff of smoke; and English
letters concerning one’s friends are found in the hands of dead
Frenchmen. Very good. Be it so. We would ‘carry on’ as you say, and do
our duty.

‘Think hard—and be prepared to pick holes in the theories I shall
propound an hour hence,’ said I to the Sergeant-Major, as we passed out
of the gate, and I proceeded to the oasis where my excellent Achmet had
prepared my soup and coffee. . . .

_You_ do not want to hear my theories, George, and there was no need for
the Sergeant-Major to point out the impossibilities and absurdities in
them. They leapt to the eye immediately.

It all came back to the bald facts that there must be a soldier of the
garrison missing, that he must have taken his rifle and left his bayonet
in the _sous-officier_, instead of shooting him and awaiting praise and
reward; that my trumpeter had vanished; that the dead _sous-officier_
had been in possession of a confession, real or bogus, to the effect
that Michael Geste had stolen his aunt’s famous sapphire.

There it was—and nothing but lunacy could result from theory-making
about the _sous-officier’s_ murder, the trumpeter’s disappearance, or
Michael Geste’s confession and how it got there.

No—you do not want to hear those perfectly futile theories—those
explanations that explained nothing. But it may interest you to hear
that I was faced that evening, on top of the rest of my little
pleasures, with a military mutiny.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated Lawrence, turning to the speaker.

“Yes. At four o’clock I ordered the Sergeant-Major to fall the men in,
and I would tell off the new garrison for Zinderneuf.

In a most unusual manner the Sergeant-Major hung fire, so to speak,
instead of stepping smartly off about his duty.

‘Well?’ said I sharply.

‘There is going to be trouble, _mon Commandant_,’ he faltered.

‘_Mon Dieu_, there is!’ I snapped, ‘and _I_ am going to make it, if I
have any nonsense. What do you mean?’

‘Sergeant Lebaudy says that Corporal Brille says that the men say . . .’

‘Name of the Name of the Name of Ten Thousand Thundering Tin Devils,’ I
shouted. . . . ‘You say that he says that they say that she says,’ I
mocked. ‘_Va t’en, grand babbilard!_’ I roared at him. ‘I’ll be on
parade outside those gates in ten seconds, and if you and your gibbering
chatterboxes are not awaiting me there at attention . . .’ and my poor
Sergeant-Major fled.

I was the more angry at his news, for I had subconsciously expected
something of the sort.

What else, with these ignorant, superstitious clods, who were the
bravest of the brave against human foes? None like them. Every man a
hero in battle. . . . But what of that House of Death with its Watchers?
That place into which their comrade had boldly climbed—and never come
forth again.

Rastignac had begun it. And they had seen him face instant death rather
than enter it—Rastignac, the fearless reckless devil, whose bravery
alone had prevented his escapades from bringing him to a court-martial
and the Zephyrs. He, of all men, was afraid of the place. There is
nothing so infectious as _that_ sort of panic. . . .

Well! One more fact to accept.

If the men would not enter the fort of Zinderneuf, they would not enter
the fort of Zinderneuf—and that was that.

But if the will of these scoundrels was coming into conflict with the
will of Henri de Beaujolais, there were exciting times ahead. Since they
sought sorrow they should certainly find it—and as I put on my belt and
boots again, I felt a certain elation.

‘Action is always action, _mon Henri_,’ said I to myself, ‘and it will
be a change from these thrice-accursed theories and attempts to explain
the inexplicable and reconcile the irreconcilable.’

Bah! I would teach my little dogs to show their teeth, and I rode, on a
mule, over to the fort. There I bade Dufour and Lebaudy select an
_escouade_ of the worst men, all _mauvais sujets_ of that Company. They
should garrison either Zinderneuf fort, or else the grave that had been
dug for those brave ‘fallen who had not been allowed to fall.’ . . .

As I rode up, the Sergeant-Major Dufour called the men to attention, and
they stood like graven images, the selected _escouade_ on the right,
while I made an eloquent speech, the funeral oration of that brave band
to whom we were about to give a military funeral with all the last
honours that France could render to the worthy defenders of her honour
and her Flag.

Tears stood in my eyes and my voice broke as I concluded by quoting:—

_‘Soldats de la Légion,_
_De la Légion Étrangère,_
_N’ayant pas de nation,_
_La France est votre mère.’_

Then, when the selected new garrison got the order, ‘_Par files de
quatre. En avant. Marche_,’ that they might march into the fort and
begin their new duties by bringing the dead out for burial—they did
something quite otherwise.

Taking the time from the right, with smartness and precision they
stooped as one man, laid their rifles on the ground, rose as one man and
stood at attention!

The right-hand man, a grizzled veteran of Madagascar, Tonquin, and
Dahomey, took a pace forward, saluted, and with wooden face, said, ‘We
prefer to die with Rastignac.’

This was flat disobedience and rank mutiny. I had hardly expected quite
this.

‘But Rastignac is not going to die. He is going to live—long years, I
hope—in the _Joyeux_. You, however, who are but cowardly sheep, led
astray by him, shall have the better fate. You shall die now, or enter
Zinderneuf fort and do your duty. . . . Sergeant-Major, have those
rifles collected. Let the remainder of the Company right form, and on
the order ‘_Attention pour les feux de salve_,’ the front rank will
kneel, and on the order, “_Feu_,” every man will do his duty.’

But I knew better, George. That was precisely what they _wouldn’t_ do;
and I felt that this was my last parade. That accursed fort was still
exerting its horrible influence. These fools feared that it would kill
them if they entered it, and I feared it would kill them if they did
not. For let me but handle them wrongly now, and they would shoot me and
the non-commissioned officers and march off into the desert to certain
death, as they weakened from thirst and starvation. They would be
harried and hunted and herded along by the Arabs, and daily reduced in
numbers until a sudden rush swept over them and nothing remained for the
survivors but horrible tortures.

Mutinous dogs they might be, and fools they were—but no less would the
responsibility for their sufferings and deaths be mine if I mishandled
the situation. I thought of other desert-mutinies in the Legion.

It was an awkward dilemma, George. If I ordered the Company to fire upon
the squad, they would refuse and would thereby become mutineers
themselves. They would then feel that they might as well be hung for a
sheep as a lamb, and, having shot me, take their chance of escape and
freedom.

If, on the other hand, I condoned this refusal of the _escouade_—what
of military discipline? Duty to my country came before my duty to these
fellows, and I must not allow any pity for their probable fate to come
between me and my duty as a French officer.

I decided that if they _would_ die, then die they must—but I at least
could do my best to save them. Without deviating from the path of duty,
I would hold out a hand to them.

If the _escouade_ would not enter the fort they must expiate their
military crime. If the company would not carry out my orders and fire on
the mutineers, they must expiate _their_ crime.

If I were to be shot, I should at least be saved the unpleasantness of
reporting that my men had mutinied, and I should die in the knowledge
that I had done my duty.

Yes—I would make it clear that disobedience to my orders would be
death. Swift and sudden for some, lingering and horrible for many, sure
and certain for all. Then I would ‘carry on’ as you say. Was I right,
George?”

“I think you were quite right, Jolly,” agreed Lawrence.

“As I was deciding thus, all in the space of a few seconds, with every
eye upon me and a terrible tension drawing every face,” continued de
Beaujolais, “the Sergeant-Major approached and saluted. I eyed him
coldly. With his back to the men, he whispered:

‘They won’t do it, _mon Commandant_. For God’s sake do not give the
order. They are rotten with _cafard_ and over-fatigue. That Rastignac is
their hero and leader. They will shoot you and desert _en masse_. . . .
A night’s rest will work wonders. . . . Besides, Lieutenant St. André
and the Senegalese will be here by midnight. It is full moon to-night.’

‘And shall we sit and wait for the Senegalese, Dufour?’ I whispered
back. ‘Would you like to ask these fellows to spare us till they come?’

And looking from him to the men I said loudly:

‘You are too merciful, Sergeant-Major. We don’t do things thus in the
Spahis. But these are not Spahis. However, in consideration of the most
excellent march the men have made, I will do as you beg and give these
_cafard_-stricken fools till moon-rise. It gives me no pleasure to
inflict punishment, and I hope no man will insist on being punished. We
are all tired, and since you intercede for your men I grant a four-hour
holiday. At moon-rise, our motto is “_Work or die_.” Till then, all may
rest. After then, the dead will be buried and the fort garrisoned. I
hope there will be no _more_ dead to be buried to-night.’

And I rode back to the oasis, hearing as I did so the voice of the
Sergeant-Major, exhorting the men and concluding with the order,
‘_Rompez._’

He joined me a few minutes later.

‘They’ll never do it, _mon Commandant_,’ said he. ‘They’ll fear the
place worse than ever by moonlight. In the morning we could call for
volunteers to accompany us. And then the Senegalese . . .’

‘That will do, Dufour,’ said I. ‘They will render instant obedience at
moon-rise, or take the consequences. I have strained my military
conscience already to satisfy my private conscience. If, after four
hours’ rest and reflection, they still decide to mutiny—on their heads
be it! No responsibility rests on me. If they mutiny, they do it in cold
blood. If they obey orders before the Senegalese arrive, no great harm
has been done, and discipline has been maintained. That is the very
utmost length to which I can go in my desire to save them.’

‘To save _them, mon Commandant_! It is _you_ I am trying to save,’
stammered the good fellow.

Patting him on the shoulder as he turned to go, I bade him send me a
couple of the most influential men of the _escouade_ and two or three of
the best of the remainder—leaders of different cliques, if there were
any.

I would point out to them the inevitable and awful results to the men
themselves, of disobedience and mutiny. I would speak of the heroism,
discipline, and dutifulness of the dead. I would point out to them that
in the event of mutiny, they themselves would either be loyal and die at
the hands of the mutineers, or become deserters and die at the hands of
the Arabs. I would then send them back among their fellows—and abide
the issue. . . .

It was while I awaited their arrival that I wished our army more
resembled yours in one particular—the relationship between officers and
men. Our fellows get too much non-commissioned officer and too little
officer. We are too remote from them. We do not play games with them,
get to know them, interest ourselves in them as fellow human beings, in
the way that your officers do. Too often it is a case with us of hated
non-coms. and stranger-officers. Particularly is this so in the Legion.
The non-coms. are all-powerful and tyrannical; the officers are utterly
uninterested in the men as individuals, and do not even know their
names.

And I was not one of their own officers of the Legion. I was a Spahi
officer, superintending the organising of mule-cavalry out of infantry;
or rather, making ordinary infantry into mounted infantry, that the
Legion might hope to compete with the Touaregs in mobility. We wanted
mounted riflemen down there just as you did in the Boer War, or else the
Arabs served us as the Boers did you at first.

I certainly had not been unduly harsh or oppressive during the time I
had been with this particular lot; but, on the other hand, I certainly
had no _personal_ influence with them. I did not know them, nor they me,
and all our lives seemed likely to be forfeit in consequence. . . .

However, I talked to the men whom Dufour brought, and did my best under
the heavy handicap of not so much as knowing their names. Finally, I
dismissed them with the words:

‘For your lives, influence your friends wisely and well, and get it into
their heads that at moon-rise we will have obedience with honour and
safety, or disobedience with dishonour, misery, and death. For at
moon-rise, the chosen _escouade_ will enter the fort and bring out the
dead, or the company will fire upon them. . . . _Au ’voir, mes
enfants._’

Of course, I knew the danger of making any reference to what would
happen if the company refused to fire on the _escouade_—but it was
foolish to pretend to ignore the possibility of such a thing. But I made
no allusion to the Senegalese, and the coercion or punishment of white
men by black.

It _might_ be that the company would obey orders, if the _escouade_
remained mutinous, and it _might_ be that all would reflect upon the
coming of the Senegalese.

Anyhow, I was on a knife-edge, and all depended upon the effect on these
rascals of a four-hour rest and the words of the men to whom I had
talked. There was just a chance that St. André and his Senegalese might
arrive in time to influence the course of affairs—but I most certainly
could not bring myself to postpone the issue until his arrival, and then
take shelter behind the blacks. With the full moon well up in the
sky—by its beautiful soft light—we should see what we should see . . .

And then, just as the men turned to go, I had an idea. Suppose some of
them would volunteer to go over the fort with me; see for themselves
that there was nothing to be afraid of; and then report to their fellows
that all was well.

Their statement and the inevitable airs of superiority which they would
give themselves, might well counteract Rastignac’s influence and their
superstitious fears. If some of these men, selected for character and
influence, went back in the spirit of, ‘Well, cowards, _we_ have been in
there and it is much the same as any other such cursed hole—except that
somebody had a great idea for diddling the Arabs,’ the others would
probably take the line, ‘Well, where you can go, we can. Who are _you_
to swagger?’

Yes—I would try it. Not as though I were really persuading or
beseeching, and anxious to prove that the _escouade_ had nothing to fear
if sent to garrison the place. No—merely as offering them, superior
soldiers, an opportunity of seeing the fort before its remarkable
dispositions were disturbed.

‘Wait a moment,’ said I, as they saluted and turned to go. ‘Is there a
man of courage among you—a man, _par exemple_ such as the trumpeter,
brave enough to enter an empty fort with me?’

They looked sheepish for a moment. Someone murmured, ‘And where _is_
Jean the Trumpeter?’ and then I heard a curious whispered remark:

‘_Gee! I sure would like to see a ghost, Buddy_,’ and the whispered
reply:

‘_Sure thing, Hank, and I’d like to see ole Brown some more._’

Two men stepped forward as one, and saluted.

They were in extraordinary contrast in body, and some similarity in
face, for one was a giant and the other not more than five feet in
height, while both had clean-shaven leathery countenances, somewhat of
the bold Red Indian type.

You know what I mean—lean hatchet faces, biggish noses, mouths like a
straight gash, and big chins. By their grey eyes they were Northerners,
and by their speech Americans.

‘You would like to see the fort and how it was manned to the last by
heroes—victorious in death?’ I asked.

‘_Oui, mon Commandant_,’ they replied together.

‘Isn’t there a _Frenchman_ among you?’ I asked the rest.

Another man, a big sturdy Gascon he looked, saluted and joined the
Americans. Then what they now call ‘the herd instinct’ and
‘mob-psychology’ came into play, and the others did the same.

Good! I had got the lot. I would take them round the fort as though
doing honour to the dead and showing them as an example—and then I
suddenly remembered . . .”

“The murdered _sous-officier_,” said George Lawrence.

“Exactly, George! These fellows must not see him lying there with a
French bayonet through him! I must go in first, alone, and give myself
the pleasant task of removing the bayonet. I would cover his face, and
it would be assumed that he had been shot and had fallen where he lay.
Yes, that was it. . . .

‘Good! You shall come with me then,’ said I, ‘and have the privilege of
treading holy ground and seeing a sight of which to talk to your
grandchildren when you are old men. You can also tell your comrades of
what you have seen, and give them a fresh pride in their glorious
Regiment,’ and I bade the Sergeant-Major march them over to the fort.

Mounting my mule, which had not been unsaddled, I rode quickly across to
the gate. The sentry had been withdrawn.

Dismounting, I hurried up to the roof, to perform the distasteful duty I
could not very well have delegated to the Sergeant-Major. I emerged from
the darkness of the staircase on to the roof.

And there I stood and stared and stared and rubbed my eyes—and then for
a moment felt just a little faint and just a little in sympathy with
those poor superstitious fools of the _escouade_. . . . For, my dear
George, _the body of the sous-officier was no longer there!_ Nor was
that of the bareheaded recumbent man!”

“Good God!” ejaculated Lawrence, raising himself on his elbow and
turning to de Beaujolais.

“Yes, that is what I said,” continued the other. “What else was there to
say? _Were_ there djinns, afrites, evil spirits in this cursed desert,
even as the inhabitants declared? Was the whole thing a nightmare? Had I
dreamt that the body of a French _sous-officier_ had lain here, with a
French bayonet through it? Or was I dreaming now?

And then I think my temperature went up two or three degrees from the
mere hundred and two that one disregards; for I remember entertaining
the wild idea that perhaps a living man was shamming dead among these
corpses. Moreover, I remember going round from corpse to corpse and
questioning them. One or two that seemed extra lifelike I took by the
arm, and as I shouted at them, I shook them and pulled at them until
they fell to the ground, their rifles clattering down with them.

Suddenly I heard the feet of men upon the stair, and pulled myself
together. The Sergeant-Major and the half-dozen or so of legionaries
came out on to the roof.

I managed to make my little speech as they stared round in amazement,
the most amazed of all being the Sergeant-Major, who gazed at the
smeared pool of blood where the body of the _sous-officier_ had lain.

The two Americans seemed particularly interested, and appeared to be
looking for comrades among the dead.

When would one of the men salute and ask respectfully the first of the
hundred questions that must be puzzling them: ‘_Where is their
officer?_’

And what should I reply? They could see for themselves that the Arabs
had not entered and carried him off. Perhaps their minds were too full
of the question: ‘_Where is Jean the Trumpeter?_’ for the other question
to formulate itself.

I had made no reference to the disappearance of the trumpeter; but I
knew that they had seen him enter the fort and had waited, as I did, for
an astounding quarter of an hour, to see him come out again. They had
watched me go in alone, at the end of that time, and had seen me emerge
alone. What could I say?

It seemed to me to be best to say nothing on that subject, so I said it.

After a few minutes that seemed like a few hours, I bade Dufour take the
men round the outbuildings, and then march them back to the oasis.

As he disappeared, last, down the stair, I called him back and we were
alone together. Simultaneously we said the same words: ‘_Did you move
it?_’—and each of us knew that the other knew nothing about it!

I laughed loudly, if not merrily, and the Sergeant-Major produced the
oath of a lifetime; in length and originality, remarkable even for the
Legion.

‘Quite so, _Chef_’ said I. . . . ‘Life grows a little complicated.’

‘I’ll give a complicated death to this _farceur_, when I find . . .’
growled he as I motioned him to be off. ‘Blood of the devil, I will!’

He clattered down the stairs, and, soon after, I heard his voice below,
as he led the group of men across the courtyard.

‘Not much here to terrify the great Rastignac, _hein_?’ he jeered.

‘But there is certainly something here to terrify _me_, my friend,’ I
observed to myself, and made my way back to my mule and the oasis. . . .
In fact, I fled. . . .

Well, George, _mon vieux_, what do you think happened? Did the
_escouade_ obey and enter the fort like lambs, or did they refuse and
successfully defy me, secure in the knowledge that the others would not
fire on them?”

“You are alive to tell the tale, Jolly,” was the reply. “That’s the main
thing.”

“On account of the importance of a part of it to you, my George, eh?”
smiled the Frenchman.

“Oh, not at all, old chap,” Lawrence hastened to say, with a somewhat
guilty smile. “Simply on account of the fact that you are spared to
France and to your friends.”

“I thank you, my little George. Almost might you be a Frenchman,” said
de Beaujolais, with an ironical bow. “But tell me, what do you think
happened? Did they obey and enter, or did they refuse?”

“Give it up, Jolly. I can only feel sure that one of the two happened,”
replied Lawrence.

“And that is where you are wrong, my friend, for neither happened,”
continued de Beaujolais. “They neither obeyed and entered, nor disobeyed
and stayed out!”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated Lawrence. “What then?”

And this time it was the Frenchman who suggested a little refreshment.

§8.

“Well, this is the last ‘event’ on that remarkable programme, _mon cher
Georges_,” resumed de Beaujolais a little later. “A very appropriate and
suitable one too. . . . ‘_A delightful open-air entertainment concluded
with fireworks_,’ as the reporters of _fêtes champêtres_ say.”

“Fireworks? Rifle-fire works do you mean?” asked Lawrence.

“No, my George, nothing to speak of. Just fireworks. Works of
fire. . . . I will tell you. . . .

I let the moon get well up, and then sent my servant, Achmet, for the
Sergeant-Major, and bade that good fellow to parade the men as before,
with the fort a hundred paces in their rear, the garrison _escouade_ on
the right of the line.

This party would either march into the fort or not. If _not_—then the
remainder would be ordered to right-form and shoot them where they
stood, for disobedience in the field, practically in the presence of the
enemy.

The remainder would either obey or not. If _not_—then I would at once
give the order to ‘pile arms.’ If they did this, as they might, from
force of habit, they would immediately be marched off to the oasis and
would be ‘arrested’ by the non-commissioned officers and marched back to
Tokotu, under escort of the Senegalese, to await court martial. If they
did not pile arms, the non-commissioned officers were to come at once to
me, and we would prepare to sell our lives dearly—for the men would
mutiny and desert. Possibly a few of the men would join us, and there
was a ghost of a chance that we might fight our way into the fort and
hold it, but it was infinitely more probable that we should be riddled
where we stood.

‘_Bien, mon Commandant_,’ said Dufour, as he saluted, and then,
hesitatingly, ‘Might I presume to make a request and a suggestion. May I
stand by you, and Rastignac stand by me—with the muzzle of my revolver
against his liver—it being clear that, at the slightest threat to you,
Rastignac’s digestion is impaired? If he knows that just this will
happen, he also may give good advice to his friends. . . .’

‘Nothing of the sort, Dufour,’ I replied. ‘Everything will proceed
normally and properly, until the men themselves behave abnormally and
improperly. We shall lead and command soldiers of France until we have
to fight and kill, or be killed by, mutineers against the officers of
France in the execution of their duty. Proceed.’

Would you have said the same, George? It seemed to me that this idea of
the Sergeant-Major’s was not much better than that of waiting for the
Senegalese. Would you have done the same in my place?”

“I can only _hope_ I should have had the courage to act as bravely and
as wisely as you did, Jolly,” was the reply.

“Oh, I am no hero, my friend,” smiled de Beaujolais, “but it seemed the
right thing to do. I had not in any way provoked a mutiny—indeed, I had
stretched a point to avert it—and it was my business to go straight
ahead, do my duty, and abide the result.

But it was with an anxious heart that I mounted the mule again and
cantered over to the fort.

I had thought of going on a camel, for, it is a strange psychological
fact, that if your hearers have to look up to you physically, they also
have to look up to you metaphysically as it were. If a leader speaks
with more authority from a mule than from the ground, and with more
weight and power from a horse than from a mule, would he not speak with
still more from a camel?

Perhaps—but I felt that I could _do_ more, somehow, in case of trouble,
if I could dash at assailants with sword and revolver. I am a cavalry
man and the _arme blanche_ is my weapon. Cold steel and cut and thrust,
for me, if I had to go down fighting. You can’t charge and use your
sword on a camel, so I compromised on the mule—but how I longed for my
Arab charger and a few of my Spahis behind me! It would be a fight then,
instead of a murder. . . .

It was a weird and not unimpressive scene. That sinister fort, silver
and black; the frozen waves of the ocean of sand, an illimitable silver
sea; the oasis a big, dark island upon it; the men, statues, inscrutable
and still.

What would they do? Would my next words be my last? Would a double line
of rifles rise and level themselves at my breast, or would that
_escouade_, upon whom everything depended, move off like a machine and
enter the fort?

As I faced the men, I was acutely interested, and yet felt like a
spectator, impersonal and unafraid. I was about to witness a thrilling
drama, depicting the fate of one Henri de Beaujolais, quite probably his
death. I hoped he would play a worthy part on this moonlit stage. I
hoped that, even more than I hoped to see him survive the play. I was
calm. I was detached. . . .”

George Lawrence sighed and struck a match.

“I cast one more look at the glorious moon and took a deep breath. If
this was my last order on parade, it should be worthily given, in a
voice deep, clear, and firm. Above all firm. And as my mouth opened, and
my lower jaw moved in the act of speech—I believe it dropped, George,
and my mouth remained open.

For, from that enigmatical, brooding, fatal fort—there shot up a tongue
of flame!

‘_Mon Dieu! Regardez!_’ cried the Sergeant-Major, and pointed. I believe
every head turned, and in the perfect silence I heard him whisper,
‘_Spirits, ghosts, devils!_’

That brought me to myself sharply. ‘Yes, imbecile!’ I said. ‘They carry
matches and indulge in arson! Quite noted incendiaries! Where is
Rastignac?’

I asked that because it was perfectly obvious that someone was in the
fort and had set fire to something highly inflammable. I had been in the
place an hour or two before. There was certainly no sign of fire then,
and this was a sudden rush of flame.

As I watched, another column of smoke and fire burst forth in a
different place.

‘He is tied up back there, _mon Commandant_,’ replied Dufour.

‘The forbidden _crapaudine_?’ I asked.

‘I _told_ Corporal Brille to tie him to a tree,’ was the reply.

Anyhow it could not be Rastignac’s work, for he would not have entered
the place, even had he been left at liberty and had an opportunity to do
so.

‘Send and see if he is still there—and make sure that everyone else is
accounted for,’ I ordered.

It was useless to detail a _pompier_ squad to put the fire out. We don’t
have hose and hydrants in the desert, as you know. When a place burns,
it burns. And, _mon Dieu_, _how_ it burns in the dry heat of that
rainless desert! The place would be gone, even if the men would enter
it, by the time we had got our teaspoonfuls of water from the oasis.
And, to tell you the truth, I did not care how soon, or how completely
it _did_ go!

This fire would be the funeral pyre of those brave men. It would keep my
fools from their suicidal mutiny. It would purge the place of mystery.
Incidentally it would save my life and military reputation, and the new
fort that would arise in its place would not be the haunted, hated
prison that this place would henceforth have been for those who had to
garrison it.

I gave the order to face about, and then to stand at ease. The men
should watch it burn, since nothing could be done to save it. Perhaps
even they would realise that human agency is required for setting a
building on fire—and, moreover, whoever was in there had got to come
out or be cremated. They should see him come. . . . But who? Who? The
words _Who?_ and _Why?_ filled my mind. . . .

All stood absolutely silent, spellbound.

Suddenly the spell was broken and back we came to earth, at an old
familiar sound.

A rifle cracked, again and again. From the sound the firing was towards
us.

The Arabs were upon us!

Far to the right and to the left, more shots were fired.

The fort blazing and the Arabs upon us!

Bullets whistled overhead and I saw one or two flashes from a distant
sand-hill.

No one was hit, the fort being between us and the enemy. In less time
than it takes to tell I had the men turned about and making for the
oasis—_au pas gymnastique_—‘at the double,’ as you call it. There we
should have cover and water, and if we could only hold the devils until
they were nicely between us and St. André’s Senegalese, we would avenge
the garrison of that blazing fort.

They are grand soldiers, those Légionnaires, George. No better troops in
our army. They are to other infantry what my Spahis are to other
cavalry. It warmed one’s heart to see them double, steady as on parade,
back to the darkness of the oasis, every man select his cover and go to
ground, his rifle loaded and levelled as he did so.

Our camel vedettes rode in soon after. Two of them had had a desperate
fight, and two of them had seen rifle-flashes and fired at them, before
returning to the oasis, thinking the Arabs had rushed the fort and burnt
it.

In a few minutes from the first burst of fire, the whole place was
still, silent, and apparently deserted. Nothing for an enemy to see but
a burning fort, and a black brooding oasis, where nothing moved.

How I hoped they would swarm yelling round the fort, thinking to get us
like bolted rabbits as we rushed out of it! It is not like the Arabs to
make a night attack, but doubtless they had been hovering near, and the
fire had brought them down on us.

Had they seen us outside the fort? If so, they would attack the oasis in
the morning. If they had not seen us, anything might happen, and the
oasis prove a _guet-apens_, with the burning or burnt-out fort in the
bait of the trap.

What were they doing now? The firing had ceased entirely. Probably
making their dispositions to rush us suddenly at dawn, from behind the
nearest sand-hills. Their game would be to lull us into a sense of
security throughout a peaceful night and come down upon us at daybreak,
like a whirlwind, as we slept.

And what if our waiting rifles caught them at fifty yards, and the
survivors turned to flee—on to the muzzles of those of the Senegalese?
. . .

It was another impressive scene in that weird drama, George. A big fire,
by moonlight, in the heart of the Sahara, a fire watched by silent,
motionless men, breathlessly awaiting the arrival of other players on
the stage.

After gazing into the moonlit distance until my eyes ached, expecting to
see a great band of the blue-veiled mysterious Silent Ones suddenly
swarm over a range of sand-hills, I bethought me of getting into
communication with St. André.

I had ordered him to follow by a forced march, leaving a suitable
garrison at Tokotu, when I dashed off with the ‘always ready’
emergency-detachment on camels, preceding by an hour or so the ‘support’
emergency-detachment on mules, with water, rations, and ammunition.

These two detachments are more than twice as fast as the best infantry,
but I reckoned that St. André would soon be drawing near.

It was quite possible that he might run into the Arabs, while the latter
were watching the oasis—if they had seen us enter it, or their
skirmishers established the fact of our presence.

So far, we had not fired a shot from the oasis, and it was possible that
our presence was unsuspected.

This might, or might not, be the same band that had attacked the place.
If they were the same, they might be hanging about in the hope of
ambushing a relieving force. If St. André arrived while the fort was
burning, they would have no chance of catching him unawares. If he came
after the flames had died down, he might march straight into a trap.
There would certainly be a Targui scout or two out in the direction of
Tokotu, while the main body did business at Zinderneuf.

Anyhow, I must communicate with St. André if possible. It would be a
good man that would undertake the job successfully—for both skill and
courage would be required. There was the track to find and follow, and
there were the Arabs to face.

To lose the former was to die of thirst and starvation; to find the
latter was to die of tortures indescribable.

On the whole it might be better to send two. Twice the chance of my
message reaching St. André. Possibly more than twice the chance, really,
as two men are braver than one, because they hearten each other.

I went round the oasis until I found the Sergeant-Major, who was going
from man to man, prohibiting any firing without orders, any smoking or
the making of any noise. This was quite sound and I commended him, and
then asked for a couple of men of the right stamp for my job.

I was not surprised when he suggested two of the men who had been into
the fort with me, and passed the word for the two Americans. He
recommended them as men who could use the stars, good scouts, brave,
resourceful, and very determined.

They would, at any rate, stand a chance of getting through the Arabs and
giving St. André the information that would turn him from their victim
into their scourge, if we had any luck.

When the big slow giant and the little quick man appeared and silently
saluted, I asked them if they would like to undertake this duty. They
were more than ready, and as I explained my plans for trapping the Arabs
between two fires, I found them of quick intelligence. Both were able to
repeat to me, with perfect lucidity, what I wanted them to say to St.
André, that he might be able to attack the attackers at dawn, just when
they were attacking me.

The two left the oasis on camels, from the side opposite to the fort,
and after they had disappeared over a sand-hill, you may imagine with
what anxiety I listened for firing. But all was silent, and the silence
of the grave prevailed until morning.

After two or three hours of this unbroken, soundless stillness, the fire
having died down in the fort, I felt perfectly certain there would be no
attack until dawn.

All who were not on the duty of outposts-by-night slept, and I strolled
silently round and round the oasis, waiting for the first hint of
sunrise and thinking over the incredible events of that marvellous
day—certainly unique in my fairly wide experience of hectic days.

I went over it all again from the moment when I first sighted the
accursed fort with its flag flying over its unsealed walls and their
dead defenders, to the moment when my eyes refused to believe that the
place was on fire and blazing merrily.

At length, leaning against the trunk of a palm tree and longing for a
cigarette and some hot coffee to help me keep awake, I faced the east
and watched for the paling of the stars. As I did so, my mind grew
clearer as my body grew weaker, and I decided to decide that all this
was the work of a madman, concealed in the fort, and now burnt to death.

He had, for some reason, murdered the _sous-officier_ with a bayonet
(certainly he must be mad or he would have shot him); and he had, for
some reason, silently killed the trumpeter and hidden his body—all in
the few minutes that elapsed before I followed the trumpeter in. (Had
the murderer used _another_ bayonet for this silent job?) He had for
some reason removed the _sous-officier’s_, and the other man’s, body and
concealed those too, and, finally, he had set fire to the fort and
perished in the flames.

But where was he while I searched the place, and why had he not killed
me also when I entered the fort alone?

The lunacy theory must account for these hopelessly lunatic
proceedings—but it hardly accounts for the murdered _sous-officier_
having in his hand a confession signed, ‘Michael Geste,’ to the effect
that he had stolen a jewel, does it, my old one?”

“It does _not_, my son, and that, to me, is the most interesting and
remarkable fact in your most interesting and remarkable story,” replied
Lawrence.

“Well, I decided, as I say, to leave it at that—just the mad doings of
a madman, garnished by the weird coincidence of the paper,” continued de
Beaujolais, “and soon afterwards the sky grew grey in the east.

Before a rosy streak could herald the dawn we silently stood to arms,
and when the sun peeped over the horizon he beheld St. André’s
Senegalese skirmishing beautifully towards us!

There wasn’t so much as the smell of an Arab for miles. . . . No, St.
André had not seen a living thing—not even the two scouts I had sent
out to meet him. Nor did anyone else ever see those two brave fellows. I
have often wondered what their fate was—Arabs or thirst. . . .

I soon learnt that one of St. André’s mule-scouts had ridden back to
him, early in the night, to say that he had heard rifle-shots in the
direction of Zinderneuf. St. André had increased his pace, alternating
the quick march and the _pas gymnastique_ until he knew he must be near
his goal. All being then perfectly silent he decided to beware of an
ambush, to halt for the rest of the night, and to feel his way forward,
in attack formation, at dawn.

He had done well, and my one regret was that the Arabs who had caused
the destruction of Zinderneuf were not between me and him as he closed
upon the oasis.

While the weary troops rested, I told St. André all that had happened,
and asked for a theory—reserving mine about the madman. He is a man
with a brain, this St. André, ambitious and a real soldier. Although he
has private means, he serves France where duty is hardest, and life
least attractive. A little dark pocket-Hercules of energy and force.

‘What about this, Major?’ said he, when I had finished my account, and,
having fed, we were sitting, leaning our weary backs against a fallen
palm trunk, with coffee and cigarettes at hand.

‘Suppose your trumpeter killed the _sous-officier_ himself and deserted
there and then?’

‘_Mon Dieu!_’ said I; ‘that never occurred to me. But why should he, and
why use his bayonet and leave it in the body?’

‘Well—as to why he _should_,’ replied St. André, ‘it might have been
revenge. This may have been the first time he had ever been alone with
the _sous-officier_, whom he may have sworn to kill at the first
opportunity. . . . Some fancied or real injustice, when he was under
this man at Sidi-bel-Abbès or elsewhere. The sight of his enemy, the
sole survivor, alone, rejoicing in his hour of victory and triumph, may
have further maddened a brain already mad with _cafard_, brooding, lust
of vengeance, I know not what of desperation.’

‘Possible,’ I said, and thought over this idea. ‘But no, impossible, my
friend. Why had not the _sous-officier_ rushed to the wall, or up to the
look-out platform when I approached? I fired my revolver six times to
attract attention and let them know that relief had come, and two
answering rifle-shots were fired! Why was he not waving his _képi_ and
shouting for joy? Why did he not rush down to the gates and throw them
open?’

‘Wounded and lying down,’ suggested St. André.

‘He was not wounded, my friend,’ said I. ‘He was killed. That bayonet,
and nothing else, had done his business.’

‘Asleep,’ suggested the Lieutenant, ‘absolutely worn out. Sleeping like
the dead—and thus his enemy, the trumpeter, found him, and drove the
bayonet through his heart as he slept. He was going to blow the
sleeper’s brains out, when he remembered that the shot would be heard
and would have to be explained. Therefore he used the bayonet, drove it
through the man, and then, and not till then, he realised that the
bayonet would betray him. It would leap to the eye, instantly, that
_murder_ had been committed—and not by one of the garrison. So he
fled.’

‘And the revolver, with _one_ chamber fired?’ I asked.

‘Oh—fired during the battle, at some daring Arab who rode round the
fort, reconnoitring, and came suddenly into view.’

‘And the paper in the left hand?’

‘I do not know.’

‘And who fired the two welcoming shots?’

‘I do not know.’

‘And how did the trumpeter vanish across the desert—as conspicuous as a
negro’s head on a pillow—before the eyes of my Company?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Nor do I,’ I said.

And then St. André sat up suddenly.

‘_Mon Commandant_,’ said he, ‘the trumpeter did not escape, of course.
He murdered the _sous-officier_ and then hid himself. It was he who
removed the two bodies when he again found himself alone in the fort. He
may have had some idea of removing the bayonet and turning the stab into
a bullet-wound. He then meant to return to the Company with some tale of
cock and bull. But remembering that you had already seen the body, and
might have noticed the bayonet, he determined to set fire to the fort,
burn all evidence, and rejoin in the confusion caused by the fire.

He could swear that he had been knocked on the head from behind, and
only recovered consciousness in time to escape from the flames kindled
by whoever it was who clubbed him. This is all feasible—and if
improbable it is no more improbable than the actual facts of the case,
is it?’

‘Quite so, _mon Lieutenant_,’ I agreed. ‘And why did he not rejoin in
the confusion, with his tale of cock and bull?’

‘Well—here’s a theory. Suppose the _sous-officier_ did shoot at him
with the revolver and wounded him so severely that by the time he had
completed his little job of arson he was too weak to walk. He fainted
from loss of blood and perished miserably in the flames that he himself
had kindled. Truly a splendid example of poetic justice.’

‘Magnificent,’ I agreed. ‘The Greek Irony, in effect. Hoist by his own
petard. Victim of the mocking Fates, and so forth. The only flaw in the
beautiful theory is that _we should have heard the shot_—just as we
should have heard a rifle-shot had the trumpeter used his rifle for the
murder. In that brooding heavy silence a revolver fired on that open
roof would have sounded like a seventy-five.’

‘True,’ agreed St. André, a little crestfallen. ‘The man was mad then.
He did everything that was done, and then committed suicide or was burnt
alive.’

‘Ah, my friend,’ said I, ‘you have come to the madman theory, eh? So had
I. It is the only one. But now I will tell you something. The trumpeter
did not do all this. He did _not_ murder the _sous-officier_, for that
unfortunate had been dead _for hours_, and the trumpeter had not been in
the place ten _minutes_!’

‘And that’s that,’ said St. André. ‘Let’s try again.’ And he tried
again—very ingeniously too. But he could put forward no theory that he
himself did not at once ridicule.

We were both, of course, weary to death and more in need of twenty-four
hours’ sleep than twenty-four conundrums—but I do not know that I have
done much better since.

And as I rode back to Tokotu, with my record go of fever, my head opened
with a tearing wrench and closed with a shattering bang, at every stride
of my camel, to the tune of, ‘_Who killed the Commandant, and why, why,
why?_’ till I found I was saying it aloud.

I am saying it still, George.” . . .

§9.

Passengers by the _Appam_, from Lagos to Birkenhead, were interested in
two friends who sat side by side in Madeira chairs, or walked the
promenade deck in close and constant company.

The one, a tall, bronzed, lean Englishman, taciturn, forbidding, and
grim, who never used two words where one would suffice; his cold grey
eye looking through, or over, those who surrounded him; his iron-grey
hair and moustache, his iron-firm chin and mouth, suggesting the iron
that had entered into his soul and made him the hard, cold, bitter
person that he was, lonely, aloof, and self-sufficing. (Perhaps Lady
Brandon of Brandon Abbas, alone of women, knew the real man and what he
might have been; and perhaps half a dozen men liked him as greatly as
all men respected him.)

The other, a shorter, stouter, more genial person, socially inclined, a
fine type of French soldier, suave, courtly, and polished, ruddy of face
and brown of eye and hair, and vastly improved by the removal, before
Madeira, of a three years’ desert beard. He was obviously much attached
to the Englishman. . . .

It appeared these two had something on their minds, for day by day, and
night by night, save for brief intervals for eating, sleeping, and
playing bridge, they interminably discussed, or rather the Frenchman
interminably discussed, and the Englishman intently listened,
interjecting monosyllabic replies.

When the Englishman contributed to the one-sided dialogue, a listener
would have noted that he spoke most often of a bareheaded man and of a
paper, speculating as to the identity of the former and the authorship
of the latter.

The Frenchman, on the other hand, talked more of a murder, a
disappearance, and a fire. . . .

“How long is it since you heard from Lady Brandon, Jolly?” enquired
George Lawrence, one glorious and invigorating morning, as the _Appam_
ploughed her steady way across a blue and smiling Bay of Biscay.

“Oh, years and years,” was the reply. “I was at Brandon Abbas for a week
of my leave before last. That would be six or seven years ago. I haven’t
written a line since the letter of thanks after the visit. . . . Do you
correspond with her at all regularly?”

“Er—no. I shouldn’t call it regular correspondence exactly,” answered
George Lawrence. “Are you going to Brandon Abbas this leave?” he
continued, with a simulated yawn.

“Well—I feel I ought to go, _mon vieux_, and take that incredible
document, but it doesn’t fit in with my plans at all. I could post it to
her, of course, but it would mean a devil of a long letter of
explanation, and I loathe letter-writing ‘fatigues’ more than anything.”

“I’ll take it if you like,” said Lawrence. “I shall be near Brandon
Abbas next week. And knowing Michael Geste, I confess I am curious.”

Major de Beaujolais was conscious of the fact that “curious” was not
exactly the word he would have used. His self-repressed, taciturn, and
unemotional friend had been stirred to the depths of his soul, and had
given an exhibition of interest and emotion such as he had never
displayed before in all de Beaujolais’ experience of him.

What touched Lady Brandon evidently touched him—to an extent that
rendered “curious” a curious word to use. He smiled to himself as he
gravely replied:

“But excellent, _mon vieux_! That would be splendid. It will save me
from writing a letter a mile long, and Lady Brandon cannot feel that I
have treated the _affaire_ casually, and as if of no importance. I
explain the whole matter to you, her old friend, give you the document,
and ask you to lay it before her. You could say that while supposing the
document to be merely a _canard_, interesting only by reason of how and
where it was found, I nevertheless think that she ought to have it, just
in case there is anything I can do in the matter.”

“Just that,” agreed Lawrence. “Of course ‘Beau’ Geste never stole the
sapphire, or anything else; but I suppose, as you say, a document like
that ought to go to her and Geste, as their names are mentioned.”

“Certainly, _mon ami_. And if the stone _has_ been stolen, the paper
might be an invaluable clue to its recovery. Hand-writing, for example,
a splendid clue. She could please herself as to whether she put it in
the hands of your Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard and
asked them to get in touch with our police. . . . Assure her of my
anxiety to do absolutely anything I can in the matter—if either the
jewel or Michael Geste should be missing.”

“Righto, Jolly,” was the reply. “I’ll drop in there one day. Probably
the first person I shall see will be ‘Beau’ Geste himself, and probably
I shall see the ‘Blue Water’ the same evening.”

“No doubt, George,” agreed de Beaujolais, and added, “Do you know
Michael Geste’s handwriting?”

“No. Never saw it to my knowledge,” was the reply. “Why do you ask? You
don’t suppose that Beau Geste wrote that, do you?”

“I have given up supposing, my friend,” said de Beaujolais. “But I shall
open my next letter from you with some alacrity. Either this ‘Blue
Water’ is stolen or it is not. In either case that paper, in a dead
man’s hand, at Zinderneuf, is uniquely interesting. But if it _has_ been
stolen, it will be of practical as well as unique interest; whereas if
it has not been stolen, the unique interest will be merely theoretical.”

“Not very practical from the point of view of recovery, I am afraid. It
looks as though the thief and the jewel and the story all ended together
in the burning of Zinderneuf fort,” mused Lawrence.

“_Mon Dieu!_ I never thought of it before. The biggest and finest
sapphire in the world, valued at three-quarters of a million francs, may
be lying at this moment among the rubble and rubbish of the burnt-out
ruins of Zinderneuf fort!” said de Beaujolais.

“By Jove! So it may!” agreed Lawrence. “Suppose it has been
stolen. . . . If I wired to you, could anything be done about making a
search there, do you think?”

For a moment George Lawrence had visions of devoting his leave to
jewel-hunting, and returning to Brandon Abbas with three-quarters of a
million francs’ worth of crystallised alumina in his pocket.

“That will require prompt and careful consideration, directly we learn
that the stone has gone, George,” said de Beaujolais, and added: “This
grows more and more interesting. . . . A treasure hunt at Zinderneuf!
Fancy the Arabs if the information got about! Fancy the builders of the
new fort, and the garrison! Zinderneuf would become the most popular
outpost in Africa, instead of the least—until the sapphire was found.
If it _is_ there, I suppose the surest way to lose it for ever would be
to hint at the fact . . . No, we should have to keep it very quiet and
do all the searching ourselves, if possible. . . . Good heavens above
us! More complications!” He smiled whimsically.

George Lawrence pursued his vision and the two fell silent for a space.

“Supposing that stone had actually been in the pocket of a man on that
roof, when it collapsed into the furnace below,” said de Beaujolais as
he sat up and felt for his cigarette case, “would the jewel be destroyed
when the body of the man was cremated? Does fire affect precious
stones?”

“Don’t know,” replied Lawrence. “We could find that out from any
jeweller, I suppose. I rather think not. Aren’t they, in fact, formed in
the earth by a heat greater than any furnace can produce?”

“Of course,” agreed de Beaujolais. “You could make as many diamonds as
you wanted if you could get sufficient heat and pressure. They are only
crystallised carbon. Fire certainly wouldn’t hurt a diamond, and I don’t
suppose it would hurt any other precious stone.”

“No,” he mused on. “If the Blue Water has been stolen, it is probably
safe and sound at this moment in Zinderneuf, adorning the charred
remains of a skeleton” . . . and George Lawrence day-dreamed awhile, of
himself, Lady Brandon, and the sacrifice of his leave to the making of a
great restoration. Of his leave? Nay, if necessary, of his career, his
whole life.

(“Describe me a man’s day-dreams and I will describe you the man,” said
the Philosopher. He might have described George Lawrence as a romantic
and quixotic fool-errant, which he was not, or perhaps merely as a man
in love, which he was. Possibly the Philosopher might have added that
the descriptions are synonymous, and that therefore George Lawrence was
both.)

He was awakened from his reverie by the voice of de Beaujolais.

“Queer, that it never got into the papers, George,” mused that
gentleman.

“Yes. It is,” agreed Lawrence. “I should certainly have seen it if it
had. I read my _Telegraph_ and _Observer_ religiously. . . . No, I
certainly should never have missed it. . . . Probably the damned thing
was never stolen at all.”

“Looks like it,” said his friend. “Every English paper would have had an
account of the theft of a famous jewel like that. . . . Though it is
just possible that Lady Brandon hushed it up for some reason. . . . What
about an _aperitif_, my old one?”

And, his old one agreeing, they once more dropped the subject of Beau
Geste, the “Blue Water,” Zinderneuf, and its secret.

On parting in London, Major de Beaujolais handed a document to George
Lawrence, who promised to deliver it, and also to keep his friend
informed as to any developments of the story.

The Major felt that he had the middle of it, and he particularly desired
to discover its beginning, and to follow it to the end.