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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,