“So you see, Paul, it was your fault in a way,” Gerard urged. “Of course sooner or later Petras Tetarnis—damn his soul!—would have presented his ultimatum, as he did last night, but you were the occasion of it being done.”
“Then you must find her. You must do what you can, send her home, give her a chance. I’ll start searching myself this very night. But you have more time and better means of discovering her.”
Paul had knocked about Casablanca as a boy. He had many friends amongst the natives, and was accustomed to sit with them by the hour, drinking mint tea and exchanging jokes. He was a man of property besides in that town and could put out a great many feelers in different quarters.
“I have no doubt that I can discover where she is,” he said, “if she is still in Casablanca.”
“Where else can she be unless it’s in the sea!” cried Gerard. “But remember you have got to be quick. She had only the seven francs. God knows what has become of her!”
He stood gazing at the lamp as if he could read her whereabouts in that white flame as the gifted might do in a crystal; with his cap tilted on the back of his head and a look of grave trouble upon his face.
“I’ll find her, never fear,” said Paul Ravenel, touching his friend upon the arm. “And what I can do to keep her from harm that I will do.”
Gerard responded to the friendliness and the assurance in Paul’s voice. He shook off his dejection.
“Thank you, mon vieux,” he said and held out his hand. “Well, we shall meet in Fez.”
He had reached the door before he remembered the primary reason for his visit.
“By the way, I have a letter about you from some one in England, a Colonel Vanderfelt. Yes, he is anxious for news of you. He wrote to me because in your letters to him you had more than once spoken of me as your friend.”
A shadow darkened Paul’s face as he listened, and a look of pain came into his eyes. He took the letter from Gerard.
“No. It only reached me to-night. I must leave that to you.”
The door-keeper let Gerard out and he tramped through the now silent and empty streets the length of the town to the Market Gate; and so to his quarters in the camp at Ain-Bourdja. Some years were to pass before the two friends met again.
Paul stood for a long time just as Gerard had left him with Colonel Vanderfelt’s letter in his hand. The fragrance of an English garden seemed to him to sweeten this Moorish room. Though the lattices were wide open, he heard no longer the thunder of the great breakers upon the shore. The letter was magical and carried him back on this hot night of May to a country of cool stars. The garden, he remembered, would be white with lilac, the tulips would be in flower, the rhododendrons masses of red and mauve, against the house the wisteria would be hanging in purple clusters. And in the drawing room some very kindly people might at this moment be counting the date on which they could expect an answer to this letter.