The General Morel was supposed to do the distance between Marseilles and Algiers in twenty-four hours, but on this trip she had an unusually good excuse to be late. The storm had delayed her, and every one was thankful that it was only half-past three when the ship steamed into the old "pirate city's" splendid harbour.
Max Doran and Sanda DeLisle stood together watching the Atlas mountains turning from violet blue to golden green, and the clustered pearls on hill and shore transform themselves into white domes. The two landed together, also, and Sanda let Max go with her in a big motor omnibus to the Hotel Saint George, the hotel of her patron saint, whose name Max remembered well because of postcards picturing its beautiful terrace and garden, sent him long ago by Rose when he was a cadet at West Point. They discovered that the first train in which Sanda could leave for Sidi-bel-Abbés would start at nine o'clock that evening, so the proposed dinner became possible; and Sanda, by the advice of Max, took a room at the hotel for the rest of the day, inviting him to have tea with her on the terrace at five, if he were free to come back.
He waited until the girl had disappeared with a porter and her hand-luggage, and then inquired of the concierge whether the Hotel-Pension Delatour still existed. He put the question carelessly, as though it meant nothing to him, adding, as the man paused to think, that he had looked in vain for the name in the guide-book.
"Ah, I remember now, sir," said the concierge. "There used to be a hotel of that name, close to the old town—the Kasbah; quite a little place, for commercants, and people like that. Why, yes, to be sure! But the name has been changed, five or six years ago it must be. I think it is the Hotel-Pension Schreiber now."
"Oh, and what became of Delatour?" Max heard himself ask, still in that carefully careless tone which seemed to his ears almost too well done.
"I'm not sure, sir, but I rather think he died. Yes, now I recall reading something in La Depeche Algerienne, at the time. He'd been a brave soldier, and won several medals. There was a paragraph, yes, with a mention of his family. He came from the aristocracy, it said. Perhaps that's why he didn't turn out a good man of business. Or maybe he drank too much or took to drugs. These old retired soldiers who've seen hard fighting in the South often turn that way."
"Did he leave a widow and children?" Max went on, his throat rather dry.
"That I can't tell you, sir; but Delatour's successor might know. I could send there, if——"
"Thank you. I'll go myself," said Max.
The concierge advised a cab, although there was of course the tram which would take him close to the Hotel Schreiber, and then he could inquire his way. Max chose the tram. He had thought it not unfair to pay the expenses of his quest for the Doran heiress with Doran money, since he had little left that he could call his own. But he had not spent an extra dollar on luxuries; and after a journey from New York to Paris, Paris to Algiers, second-class, a tram as a climax seemed more suitable than a cab.