“Understand who had played this joke upon me,” returned Baumann. “It was Captain Ravenel.”

Gerard de Montignac was startled.

“You are sure?” he cried. “He was there in Mulai Idris, one of them!” and Baumann suddenly exclaimed:

“Hush! Don’t turn round. There’s a man behind you. He has been creeping along the edge of the verandah. This town is full of spies.”

Gerard did not turn, but Ratenay, from where he sat, could see. The black figure crouching well away behind them on the edge of the raised floor had slipped quietly towards them, whilst Baumann had been telling his story. He was now close behind Gerard, squatting low upon the plank, with his feet in the garden, a ragged and dusty Jew with a mass of greasy ringlets struggling from beneath his skull cap.

Gerard de Montignac turned swiftly round upon him.

“What do you want here?” he cried angrily.

“A whiskey and soda!” replied Paul Ravenel. For that once insular drink had become lately known with favour to the officers of France.

A William Fox Production.   The Winding Stair.

A William Fox Production.

The Winding Stair.

A CHANCE MEETING IN THE ARABIAN MARKET PLACE.

CHAPTER VI

The Order

Paul Ravenel reported to the General and then betook himself to the house by the sea-wall in which he had spent so much of his boyhood. He had a month’s furlough and an account of his wanderings to write. At the end of a week he had got the stain from his skin and the dye out of his hair, but he had not got far with his report, not liking the look of the words as he wrote them down, and composing the page again to find it no better done than it had been before. He was sitting despondently at his writing-table at ten o’clock on one of these evenings, his hair all rumpled and a chaos of notes spread about him, when Gerard de Montignac 

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