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 A bargee, could he but have understood, would have listened to them in awe and withdrawn from competition.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.