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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