Mohammed must return and find out. Quaking with alarm he retraced his steps, throwing the light of his lantern on one side of the passage after the other. But so far the passage was empty. No doubt the Captain would be lying on the ground beyond the angle where the tunnel turned. But here too he searched in vain. The Captain had disappeared: somewhere between the two outlets in this black place. He had gone!
Mohammed lifted the lantern above his head, swinging it this way and that so that the light flickered and danced upon the walls. Then his arm grew steady. Opposite it to him in the darkest corner there was a little door studded with great nails—a door you never perceived though you passed through the tunnel ten times a day. Mohammed crossed to it, touched it, shook it. It was locked and bolted. He was debating whether he should knock upon it or no. But he dared not. This was the beginning of that Holy War which was to free El Magreb from the clutch of the Christians,—the stealthy beginning. To-morrow there would not be one of them alive in Fez, and outside Fez the land would be one flame of vengeance. If the French Captain were behind that little door he must be praying for a swift death!
Mohammed drew back and suddenly the mouth of the tunnel was obscured and he saw the figures of two men. Panic had been hovering about Mohammed these many minutes since. It took him by the throat and the heart now. With a cry he dashed his lantern on the ground and fled leaping, past the two men. He was not followed.
This is the story which Mohammed told to Si El Hadj Arrifa in the room with the clocks and the brass bedstead and the silver candelabra.
“That is the gate by Karouein Mosque?” said the master, when his servant had done.
“Yes.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa nodded his head thoughtfully. He did not believe that the Captain had been captured or slain in this noiseless fashion. He himself had been bidden not to open that big envelope locked away upstairs until he was very certain that Paul Ravenel was dead. The Captain had his plans into which it was no business of his friend to pry.
“As to that little door, Mohammed,” he said. “It will be well to forget it.”
“It is forgotten, Master,” answered Mohammed, and far away but very clear and musical in the silence of the night the voice of a mueddin on a lofty minaret called the Faithful to their prayers.