“I think that it’s time we had news of him,” she said. “There’s a friend he has mentioned several times in his letters. He was with him at St. Cyr and met him again at Casablanca—Gerard de Montignac.”
Colonel Vanderfelt went in search of Paul Ravenel’s letters. They were kept in a drawer of the writing-table in his bedroom and made a big bundle by now.
“De Montignac. That was the fellow’s name. Let’s look at the last ones for his rank. He’s a captain of the Chasseurs d’Afrique. I’ll write to Casablanca to-night, my dear, on the chance of his still being there.”
Colonel Vanderfelt was easier in his mind after he had posted the letter.
“That was a good idea of mine, Millie,” he said to his wife. “We shall get some news now.”
Gerard de Montignac was still in Casablanca, but at the time when Colonel Vanderfelt was writing to him, he was himself just as anxious as the Colonel about the safety of Paul Ravenel.
CHAPTER V
The Villa Iris
“There’s not the slightest reason for alarm,” Gerard de Montignac declared testily in much the same tone which Colonel Vanderfelt was using to his wife nearly two thousand miles away. De Montignac was dining at the “popote” of his battalion in the permanent camp of Ain-Bourdja outside the walls of Casablanca, and more than once of late Ravenel’s long absence had cropped up in the conversation with a good deal of shaking of heads. “Paul is a serious one,” continued Gerard. “Too serious. That is his fault. He will not pack up and return until the last possible observation is taken, the last notes of value written down in his little book. But then he will. I am not afraid for him, no, not the least bit in the world. And who should be, I ask you, if I am not?”
He glanced round the mess but not one of his companions accepted his challenge. It was not, however, because they shared his confidence. Indeed every one was well aware that more than half of it was assumed. They respected a great friendship sealed nearly three years before on the bloody slopes of R’Fakha. De Montignac, with his squadron of Chasseurs, had ridden in that desperate charge by means of which alone the crest of the plateau had been held until the infantry arrived. The charge had been made down a hillside seamed with tiny gullies invisible until they gaped beneath the horses’ feet; and the difficulties of the ground had so split the small force of cavalry that the attack became a series of scattered tourneys in which each overmatched trooper drove at a group of Moors armed with rifles and many of them mounted. There had been but ten minutes of the unequal fight, but those minutes were long enough for each man who fell wounded to pray with all his soul that the wound might be swift and mortal and do its work before the mutilating knife flashed across his face. Gerard de Montignac lay half way down the slope with a bullet in his shoulder and his thigh pinned to the ground beneath the weight of his grey charger. The Moors were already approaching him when Paul’s company of Tirailleurs doubled up to the crest and Paul recognised the horse. His rescue of his friend was one of twenty such acts done upon that day, but the memory of them all lived and stopped many an argument as it did to-night. If Gerard de Montignac chose to cry obstinately: “Some day Paul Ravenel will walk in upon us. He is my friend. I know,” it was the part of friendliness to acquiesce. There were other topics for dispute, enough in all conscience; such as the new dancing girl who had come that week to Madame Delagrange’s Bar, the Villa Iris, and about whom young Ollivier Praslin was raving at the other end of the table.