Gerard de Montignac sat back in his chair and ran his fingers through his sleek hair.
“Of course, it’s quite out of the question,” he assured himself. But none the less he rose abruptly and, leaving the report on his desk, went into another office inconveniently crowded. At the far end of the room was seated at a desk the man for whom he was looking.
“Baumann!” he called. “Can you spare me a minute?”
Baumann rose and followed Gerard back to his room.
“Take a chair there.” He pointed to one at the side of his desk.
“Do you remember telling me some time ago at Casablanca that you once met Captain Ravenel close to Volubilis?”
“Yes,” said Baumann. “I didn’t recognise him. He twirled a great staff round his head and frightened me out of my life.”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Gerard. “A little thing in one of these reports reminded me of your story. I wanted to be sure of it. Thank you.”
Baumann rose to go and stopped with his hand upon the door-knob.
“A great loss, Captain Ravenel. There is no news of him, I suppose?”
“Is it known whom he dined with that last night he was seen?”
“Si El Hadj Arrifa was one of Captain Ravenel’s closest friends in Fez. But there’s another closer still of whom you might enquire.”
“I will. Give me his name,” said Gerard eagerly, and he drew a slip of paper towards him.
But he did not write upon it. For Baumann answered: “Si Ahmed Driss.”
Gerard dropped his pencil and looked swiftly up.
Gerard set his elbows on the arms of his chair and joined his hands under his chin.
“So Paul was a great friend of Si Ahmed Driss, was he?” he said ever so softly.
“Yes. It was as a servant in the train of Si Ahmed Driss of Ouezzan that Captain Ravenel travelled through the Zarhoun country, and visited the Holy Cities.”
Gerard de Montignac was swimming in deep waters. He was not imaginative but he had imagination. He comprehended, though he did not feel, the call and glamour of the East; and nowhere in the world is there a land more vividly Eastern in its spirit, its walled cities, its nomad tribes, and its wide spaces, than this northwestern corner of Africa. Gerard had lived long enough in it to see men yield to it, as to a drug, forsake for it all that is lovely and of good repute. Was this what had happened to his friend? He wondered sorrowfully. Paul was friendly, cheerful, gay, but none the less really and truly a man of terrific loneliness. Walled about always. Gerard tried to think of an intimate confidence which Paul had ever made him. He could not remember one. He was the very man to whom the strange roads might call with the voices of the Sirens. It might be . . . it might be. Gerard de Montignac never sought again for traces of his lost friend. He left the search to the Administration and the Administration had other work to do.