Captain Laguessière’s Report
On the twenty-first of April, three days later, Gerard de Montignac rode
into Fez at ten o’clock of the morning behind General Moinier. He was
lodged at the Auvert Hospital and as he came out of his room he passed
in the corridor a face which he remembered. He turned on the instant.
“Baumann!”
Baumann was that short stockish Alsatian belonging to the Department of
Native Affairs, whom Gerard many months before had sought at the Villa
Iris. He shook Gerard’s hand with deferential warmth.
“Captain de Montignac! How can I serve you?”
The sight of Gerard always made Baumann think of the Bois de Bologne and
brought to his nostrils a smell of Paris. “Stylish” was Baumann’s
epithet for this slim razor-like being.
“You can tell me for a second time how it goes with my _grand serieux_,
and where he is to be found.”
Baumann was enchanted by the familiar allusion. It made him out as an
intimate of Captain de Montignac. But he was baffled too.
“The name would help,” he said, hesitating.
“Oh, Paul Ravenel, of course,” replied Gerard impatiently, and Baumann’s
face lengthened. He fidgeted uncomfortably on his feet. Yes, Paul
Ravenel, to be sure! Captain de Montignac had been uneasy about Paul
Ravenel in Casablanca, when there was really no occasion for uneasiness.
This time, however, the case was very different.
“Alas, my Captain, I can give you no news of your friend at all. Many
officers were caught at a disadvantage. We are afraid—yes, we are all
very much afraid.”
Gerard, with his legs apart and his hands thrust into the pockets of his
riding-breeches, looked at his twittering companion for a moment. Then
he said abruptly:
“Let me hear!”
Baumann had an uncomfortable little story to tell. Late on the night of
the sixteenth, the night before the massacres openly began, Captain
Ravenel had ridden up to the door of the hospital with a native servant
carrying a lantern in front of him. He was labouring under a great
anxiety and distress. Baumann himself received Captain Ravenel and heard
his story. Captain Ravenel had assured him that the Askris would revolt
immediately, and that there would be a massacre of the white people
throughout the city.
“And you didn’t believe Paul Ravenel?” thundered Gerard de Montignac.
Baumann was in a haste to exculpate himself.
“I waked up the two Intelligence Officers, Colonel Renaud and Captain
Brouarre,” he said. “They came down in their pyjamas. We went into the
room on the right of the entrance here, and the Captain told us all
again many bad things which have since been fulfilled.”
“And you wouldn’t believe Paul Ravenel!” Gerard looked at Baumann with a
bitter amazement. “He gave you the warning, he, the wise one, and you
thought he was exaggerating like some panic-stricken rich Fasi.”
“We hoped he was exaggerating,” said the unhappy Baumann. “You see, our
hands were tied. Reports that disturbances were likely had gone to the
Embassy before and had been not very civilly received. It was an order
that no similar reports should be presented. It was late at night. We
could do nothing.”
Gerard could read into the halting sentences all that Baumann was not
the man to say.
“Well?” he asked, curtly. “What of Paul?”
Paul, very disappointed, had mounted his horse again and ridden off to
the Bab Segma on his way to the camp at Dar-Debibagh.
“But he never reached the camp. He has not been seen since. We are all
very much afraid.”
It was quite clear that Baumann had no hope at all that Paul Ravenel
would ever be seen again.
“Most of our people scattered through Fez have been accounted for,” he
added. “Many were rescued and brought here to safety. The bodies of
others, too, but not of all. There has been no means of making
enquiries.”
“That of course I understand,” said Gerard de Montignac, as he turned
sorrowfully away.
Gerard was a monarchist. Some day the French would have a king again,
when there was a claimant worth his salt. Meanwhile he was heart and
soul for France, whatever its régime. So his first grief now was for the
loss to France of the great soldier that was surely to be—nay, that was
already beginning to be. He had lost a good comrade and friend too.
These losses must be paid for—as soon as there was leisure to exact
payment—and paid for in full.
Meanwhile he went about his work. On the twenty-second the troops
occupied the city. The two following days were taken up in the
disarmament of the population. Yet other two days were given to
pleadings and arguments and exhortations to Paris and the Civil
Authorities for permission to declare a state of siege. Only when this
permission was reluctantly granted and the order made, could any of the
General’s staff unbutton their tunics and give a little time to their
own affairs.
Gerard’s first move was to ride out to the camp at Dar-Debibagh, whither
Paul’s battalion of tirailleurs had now returned. There he found the
little Praslin now in command of Paul’s company, and the little Praslin
had information of importance to give to him.
“Captain Ravenel rode back with me to the camp from the Sultan’s Palace
on the evening of the sixteenth, after the great storm,” said Praslin.
“He was very glad that the storm had delayed for three days the
departure of the Mission.”
“He knew already, then, that afternoon, that the massacres were coming!”
said Gerard.
“No! I should say not. He was quite frank about the whole position of
affairs here, as he saw it. If he had imagined that Fez itself was going
to rise he would have said so, I am sure. What he did believe was that a
serious attack would be made upon the Mission out in the bled, on its
way to the coast.”
“He was afraid that the escort was not strong enough?”
“He certainly thought that,” replied Praslin, slowly, and in a voice
which suggested that he did not consider this explanation at all
adequate to explain Paul’s satisfaction at the postponement of the
march. “But fear doesn’t enter into the matter at all. There was
something more. I got the impression that he just hated the idea of
going down to the coast if only for a few weeks. He wanted to stay on
here in Fez. An attack on the line of march! That he would have
considered as in the day’s work. No. He didn’t want to leave Fez.
Curious! Wasn’t it?”
Gerard glanced sharply at Lieutenant Praslin.
“Oho!” he exclaimed, softly. “Curious? Yes! But then Paul Ravenel was
never like the rest of us.”
He remained silent for a little while, turning some quite new thought
over and over uneasily in his mind.
“Well?” he said, waking up again.
“After we had returned here, he changed into a dry uniform, for we were
both wet through, and told me that he was going to dine with a friend in
Fez,” Praslin resumed. “I reminded him that there was a battalion parade
at six the next morning.”
“Yes?”
“He answered that he had not forgotten and rode off.”
“And that was the last you heard of him?” asked Gerard de Montignac.
“No!”
“Oh?”
“It was the last I saw of him,” Praslin corrected.
“What do you mean?” asked Gerard de Montignac.
“Five minutes after Captain Ravenel had gone, a native came to the camp
and asked for him. He carried a letter.”
Gerard’s face lit up.
“A letter? What became of it?”
“It was taken by Captain Ravenel’s orderly and placed on the table in
his tent.”
“Yes?”
“The next morning I saw it there and took charge of it. It was addressed
in Arabic.”
“You have got it still?”
“Yes!”
“Let me see it!”
Gerard reminded the little Praslin of some lean sharp-nosed pointer
which somewhere in the stubble has picked up a scent. Praslin led him to
his tent, unlocked a leather satchel and tipped out a number of letters
on to his bed.
“Here it is!”
He handed a paper, not an envelope, folded and sealed and superscribed
in Arabic characters, to Gerard. Gerard almost snatched at it. But once
he had it in his hands, he was no longer so sure. He twiddled it between
his fingers and gingerly. He sat down in Praslin’s camp chair and looked
at Praslin and looked at the letter. He seemed to be afraid of what he
might read in it. Finally, in a burst, he cried:
“I shall open it.”
“But of course,” said the little Praslin.
Gerard broke the seal and read. Praslin wondered what he had dreaded to
find written upon that paper, so evident was his relief now. It was the
letter from Si El Hadj Arrifa which had just missed Paul Ravenel on the
night of the sixteenth. It began with the usual flowery protestations
and ended with an apologetic request that Paul should not come into Fez
that night.
“This makes everything easier,” said Gerard, springing up from his
chair. “I shall keep this letter, Praslin.”
He returned with it in his pocket and at once made inquiries as to what
was known of Si El Hadj Arrifa. The warning on the face of it was a sign
of goodwill to France. Yes, but some of these Fasi were very foxy
people. This letter arriving at the camp just too late to save Paul
Ravenel’s life, but in heaps of time to establish Si El Hadj Arrifa’s
good name for loyalty, might easily have been despatched with those two
objects. It was all quite in keeping with the sly furtive character of
the men of Fez. However, Gerard was soon satisfied on that point. Si El
Hadj Arrifa was of the real friends. Gerard accordingly knocked upon his
door that very night.
He was received with much ceremony and a great warmth of welcome; not to
be wondered at, since the Moor had been sitting cowering behind his
stoutly-barred door ever since the night of the sixteenth. Gerard made
haste to put the timid man at his ease.
“All the weapons have been collected. All the gates are held by armed
posts. A state of siege is proclaimed so that violence can be dealt with
sternly and at once,” he said. But even then he must not put the
questions burning on his tongue. France was to remain in Morocco. Very
well! Then even in small things must the ways of the country be
respected. Gerard had the patience which is the kernel and centre of
good manners. He sat through the five brewings of green tea,
ceremoniously conversing. Only then did he come to the reason of his
visit.
“It has been my good fortune, O, Si El Hadj Arrifa, to bring you
excellent news to-night. Would that I could hear news as excellent from
you! My friend and your friend, Captain Ravenel, dined with you one
night and rode away from your door, and that night he disappeared.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa struck a bell which stood by his side and spoke a word
to the negress who answered it. He turned again to Gerard.
“I have sent for my servant Mohammed, who carried the lantern in front
of His Excellency’s horse. He shall tell you the story with his own
lips.”
Mohammed duly appeared and told the truth—with omissions; how the
Captain had fallen behind in the tunnel, how the startled horse had
dashed past him, how he had returned and found no sign of the Captain at
all, how two men had appeared and he had fled in a panic. But there was
no mention of any small door in the angle of the wall.
“We will look at that tunnel by daylight,” said Gerard, when the man had
finished, “if, O, Si El Hadj Arrifa, you will lend me your servant.”
He spoke dispiritedly. There seemed very little chance that he would
find any trace of his _grand serieux_. He had been and he was not. No
doubt these two men at the mouth of the tunnel had seen their
opportunity and seized it. Paul Ravenel had been the first victim of the
massacre, no doubt. Yet Paul—to be taken unawares—with Si El Hadj
Arrifa’s earnest invitation to remain sheltered in his house only within
this hour uttered—Paul, in a word, warned! That was not like the Paul
Ravenel he knew, at all! And on the next morning, following Paul’s route
with Mohammed for a guide, and a patrol of soldiers, he discovered the
little door.
With a thrill of excitement he ran his hands over the heavy nails.
“Open! Open!” he cried, beating upon the panel with his fists; and
pressing his ear against it afterwards, he heard the racket echo emptily
through the house.
“Open! Open!” he cried again, and, turning to the sergeant of the
patrol, bade him find a heavy beam. Even with that used as a battering
ram it took the patrol a good half hour to smash in the little door, so
stout it was, so strong the bolts and bars. But the work was done at
last. Gerard darted in and found himself in a house, small but exquisite
in its decorations, its thick cushions of linen worked with the old silk
embroideries of Fez, its white-tiled floors spread with carpets of the
old Rabat patterns. But from roof to court the house was empty.
Gerard went through every room with the keen eye of a possible tenant
with an order to view; and found precisely nothing. Had he come a week
ago, he would have discovered on the upper floors furniture of a
completely European make. All that, however, was safely lodged now in a
storehouse belonging to Si El Hadj Arrifa, and the upper floors were
almost bare. Gerard had left the patio to the last, and whilst he
stepped here and there he heard a tinkling sound very familiar to his
ears.
“What’s that?” he cried, swinging round.
In a corner of an alcove the sergeant was bending down.
“What’s that, Beauprè?” Gerard cried again, and the sergeant stood up
and faced him. He was holding in his hands the blue tunic of an officer;
and on the breast of it a row of the big French medals tinkled and
glinted.
Gerard took the tunic reverently from the sergeant’s hands. It was all
cluttered with blood, and stabbed through and through. It had the badges
of Paul’s rank, and still discernible on a linen label inside the collar
was Paul’s name. It was here, then, in this house, that Paul Ravenel had
been done to death. The tunic which Gerard held in his hand was the
conclusive proof. He stood in the centre of the patio, so pleasant, so
quiet now, with the shafts of bright sunlight breaking upon the tiles.
Who had lived here? What dreadful scene had been staged in this empty
house? Gerard shivered a little as he thought upon it. The knives at
their slow work—the man, his friend, slowly losing, whilst the heart
still beat and the nerves stabbed, all the semblance of a man!
“But they shall pay,” he said aloud, in a bellowing voice; and while he
shouted, a perplexity began to trouble him. He opened the door leading
from the court into the outer passage. This passage was cumbered with
the splintered panels, the bolts, the heavy transverse bars which the
patrol’s battering ram had demolished. How was it that in this empty
house the door was still barricaded from within? He returned into the
court and saw that the sergeant had pushed aside a screen at the back,
and in a recess had discovered a second door. This door was merely
locked, and there was no key in the lock. It was quickly opened. The
Karouein river raced and foamed amidst its boulders, and between the
river and the house wall there ran a tiny path.
Gerard crossed to the door.
“Yes, that way they went. When, I wonder? Perhaps when we were actually
beating on the door.”
He unpinned the medals from his friend’s blood-stained tunic and wrapped
them up in a handkerchief. There might be somewhere a woman who would
love to keep them bright. Paul Ravenel talked little about his own
affairs. Who could tell? If there were no one, he could treasure them
himself in memory of a good comrade.
Meanwhile there was an immediate step to take. A crowd had gathered in
the gateway and about the door in the dark tunnel.
“Whose is this house?” Gerard asked, and there were many voices raised
at once with the answer:
“Si Ahmed Driss of Ouezzan.”
Gerard de Montignac was taken aback by the answer. Si Ahmed Driss was
one of the great Shereefian family of Ouezzan, which exercised an
authority and a power quite independent of the Sultan. From the first,
moreover, it had been unswervingly loyal to the French. Si Ahmed Driss
himself during the days of massacre had given shelter in the sanctuary
of his own residence to all the Europeans whom he could reach. Gerard de
Montignac went straight now to where he lived in the Tala and begged an
audience.
“I have broken into a house which I now learn belongs to you, Si Ahmed
Driss, whom may God preserve,” he said.
Si Ahmed Driss was a tall, dignified old gentleman with a white beard
flowing over his chest.
“It is forgiven,” he said, gently. “In these days many strange things
are done.”
“Yet this was not done without reason,” Gerard protested, and he told Si
Ahmed Driss of the finding of the tunic and the story of Mohammed the
servant.
Si Ahmed Driss bowed his head.
“That this should have happened in my house puts me to shame,” he said.
“I let it many months ago to Ben Sedira—a man of Meknes whom . . .” and
a flow of wondrous curses was invoked upon Ben Sedira himself and his
ancestors and descendants to the remotest degrees of consanguinity, by
the patriarch. A bargee, could he but have understood, would have
listened to them in awe and withdrawn from competition. The old
gentleman, however, in uttering them lost none of his dignity.
“Ben Sedira of Meknes,” Gerard repeated. “We will see if we can find
that man.”
But he had very little hope of succeeding. There had been two clear days
between the end of the revolt and the arrival of Moinier’s column,
during which surveillance could not be exercised. There were not
sufficient French soldiers to hold the town gates and question all who
went in and out. The moment the French tricolours floated so gaily upon
all the house-tops of Fez, Ben Sedira would have known the game was up.
He would have gone and gone quickly; nor would Meknes in the future
house any one of his name.
Thus, Gerard de Montignac reasoned, the affair would remain a mystery.
Official enquiries would be made. But the great wheels of Administration
could not halt for ever at the little door in the roofed alley. Paul
Ravenel would become a case, one of the infinite enigmas of Mohammedan
Africa. So he thought during the next fortnight.
But Gerard was on General Moinier’s staff, and many reports came under
his eyes. Amongst them, one written by a Captain Laguessière, giving an
account of an unsuccessful attempt to relieve a little post at the Bab
Fetouh on the afternoon of the seventeenth, the second day of the
revolt. Gerard was reading the report in his office not overcarefully
when a passage leaped out on the written page and startled him. He sat
for a moment very still. Then he shook or tried to shake some
troublesome thought from his shoulders.
“It couldn’t be, of course!” he said, but he read the passage again.
And here is what he read:
“I met with no trouble until I had passed the lime-kilns and crossed a
bridge over the Oued el Kebir. Here further progress was stopped by
three strong groups of Moors armed with rifles. It was clear to me that
I could not force a way through with my twenty men and retain any hope
of relieving the post. I determined, therefore, to make a detour and try
to advance by way of the Bab Jedid. As I recrossed the bridge I was
violently attacked from the rear, from in front of me and from a street
upon my left; whilst from a house upon my right I saw a number of the
Askris pour out. I ordered a charge, and, leading ‘_au pas
gymnastique_,’ I brought my men into a narrow turning, whence we were
able to clear the street by repeated volleys. I had two men killed and
six wounded. I received great assistance from a tall Moor who, jumping
from the crowd, charged with my men. He was armed only with a big heavy
pole, but he swung it about him with so much vigour and skill that he
cleared a space for us. I tried to find this Moor when I had re-formed
my men, but he had disappeared as suddenly as he had come.”
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?”
Gerard shook his head.
“None.”
“Is it known whom he dined with that last night he was seen?”
“Yes. Si El Hadj Arrifa.”
Baumann nodded.
“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.
“Of the Sheereefs of Ouezzan?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure?”
“Quite.”
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.”
“I see. Thank you, Baumann.”
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.