Where the Arab town—old and secret, and glimmering pale as a whited sepulchre—huddled away from contact with Europe, a narrow street ran like a bridge connecting West with East, to-day with yesterday. Near the entrance to this street, where it started from a fine open place of great shops and cafés, the Hotel Schreiber stood humbly squeezed in between two dull buildings as shabby as itself.
"In a few minutes I shall know," Max said to himself, as he walked into a cheaply tiled, dingy hall, smelling of cabbage-soup and beer.
Commercial travellers' sample boxes and trunks were piled in the dim corners, and a fat, white little man behind a window labelled "Bureau" glanced up from some calculations, with keen interest in a traveller who for once looked uncommercial.
His eyes glazed again when he understood that Monsieur wished only to make inquiries, not to engage a room. He was civil, however, and glib in French with a South-German accent. Madame Delatour had sold her interest in the hotel to him, Anton Schreiber. Unfortunately there had been a mortgage. The widow was left badly off, and broken-hearted at her husband's death. With what little money she had, she had gone to Oran, and through official influence had obtained a concession for a small tobacconist business, selling also postcards and stamps. She ought to have done well, for there were many soldiers in Oran. They all wanted tobacco for themselves and postcards for their friends. But Madame lost interest in life when she lost Delatour—a fine fellow, well spoken of, though never strong since some fever he had contracted in the far South. A friend in Oran had written Schreiber the last news of poor Madame Delatour. That broken heart had failed. She had died suddenly about two years ago, and the girl (yes, there was a daughter, a strange young person) had been engaged through the influence of Schreiber's Oran friends, to assist the proprietor of the Hotel Splendide at Sidi-bel-Abbés. She was, Schreiber believed, still there, in the position of secretary; unless she'd lately married. It was some months since he'd heard.
Sidi-bel-Abbés.... Home of the Foreign Legion; home perhaps, of Sanda DeLisle!...
It was all over, then. The blow had fallen, and Max thought that he must be stunned by it, for he felt nothing, except a curious thrill which came with the news that he must go to Sidi-bel-Abbés. The Arab name rang in his ears like the sound of bells—fateful bells that chime at midnight for birth or death. It seemed to him that Something had always been waiting, hidden behind a corner of life, calling him to Sidi-bel-Abbés, calling for good or evil, for sorrow or happiness, who could tell? but calling. And his whole past, with its fun and popularity and gay adventure, its one unfinished love story, its one tragic episode, had been a long road leading him on toward this day—and Sidi-bel-Abbés.
The temptation to go back, to forget his mission, a temptation which had come to life many times after it had first been "scotched, not killed," did not now lift its head. Max had found out within less than an hour after landing that which would make him penniless and nameless; yet his most pressing wish seemed to be to get back in time for his appointment with Sanda DeLisle, and tell her that he, too, was going to Sidi-bel-Abbés.