The Winding Stair

by A. E. W. Mason

Marguerite peered out between the curtains which overhung the entrance to the room. She saw him move, calm and smiling, across the court to an alcove and point to a corner.

“The Frenchman came to my house once too often. Look! He sought refuge here last night. He was not wise to seek refuge in the house of Ben Sedira the Meknasi. For to-day his body rolls in the river—” Paul threw open a small door in the back wall and showed them the Karouein River tumbling, swollen with the rain, past the walls of his house. Then he pointed to the alcove: “And his livery lies there.”

There was a rush into the alcove, and the shouts of exultation broke out again. A blue tunic, on the breast of which medals glinted and rattled, was tossed out high amidst the throng. The tunic was gashed and all cluttered and stained with blood which had dried. Paul’s gold-lace cap spun through the air, was caught, and clapped upon the head of a boy, his breeches and boots and accoutrements were flung from hand to hand and shared out amidst laughter and cheering. And once more there was a surge of men, and the court was empty and silent. No, not quite empty. Paul was talking in a gentle voice to one wild man who was now wearing over a ragged caftan Paul’s uniform tunic. Paul held him firmly by the elbow, and was speaking in a curiously soft, smooth voice, than which Marguerite had never heard anything more menacing.

“You will leave that tunic, good friend. You will take it off at once and leave it here. It is my trophy. Have I not earned it?”

The man protested, and sought to disengage himself, but Paul still held him firmly.

“It shall hang in my house,” he continued, “that my children may remember how once there were Frenchmen befouling the holy ground of Morocco.”

Once more Marguerite heard the rattle of the medals as the coat was restored, and the Moor cried out: “There will be none alive in Fez this night. Salam aleikum, O man of Meknes!” And a little afterwards the door was slammed and barred.

Paul returned to the court, holding the tunic in his hands. The peril of the last few moments was swept altogether out of his mind. For a moment Marguerite herself was forgotten. He was holding the badge of many years of honourable service, and the shining medals which proved that the service had been of real value to the country he served. All was now wasted and foregone.

“I should make the sacrifice again,” he said obstinately to himself, “if it were to make again. I should! I should!”

But he had not borne to see the tunic and its medals paraded in triumph on the back of one of these assassins through the streets of Fez. When he stopped the Moor and held him back from his companions, his hand had gripped close the revolver hidden in his waistband. Had the man clung to the tunic, Paul would have killed, whatever the risk. The traditions and the whole training of his life had forced his hand. He knew that, as he stood in the silent sunlit patio fondling the stuff of the coat between his fingers, and his heart aching as though some little snake had slipped into his bosom and was feeding there.