Gerard remained for a moment or two looking at the sleeper, and the nurse watched him curiously.
“It will do him no harm if I wake him up,” she suggested.
Gerard roused himself from an abstraction into which he had fallen.
“No,” he answered, with a laugh. “If I was a general, I would say, yes. But sleep is a better medicine than a crack with a mere colonel. What is his name?”
“Ahmed Ben Larti,” said the nurse, and with a careless “So?” Gerard de Montignac moved along to the next bed. But before he passed out of the ward he jerked his head towards the sleeper and asked:
“Will he be fit for service again?”
“Certainly,” she answered. “In a month, I should think.”
Gerard left the hospital, and the next morning was back in Baumann’s office in Paris.
“I have found the man I want,” he said.
“Who is he?”