Chapter II

Next night at the time when all good légionnaires should be in barracks, Schneider failed to answer the roll call.

In such a case the Legion officials, disregarding the half-dozen different causes that may make a man break his leave, look upon him as a deserter.

By morning, Schneider's description had been telegraphed to Oran, eighty miles away, and the railway officials and road patrols notified, also the Arab police.

Schneider did not turn up next day. He had deserted or else he was dead.

Jacques believed that he must have done away with himself. Schneider, being his friend, would have told him had he intended to make his escape; then there was a matter of the letter to the girl, a farewell letter. Yes, there could be no doubt--he had committed suicide and was hidden away in some ditch somewhere.

He mourned for his friend all day, and in the evening, strolling into the town, he spent five centimes on the _Echo d'Oran_, thinking there might be some news of his vanished friend. Later on, he strolled into the shop of a friend of his, Moccata by name, a Jew clothier, rag and rubbish dealer and fence.

I do not accuse Jacques of using Moccata in the latter capacity, I simply state the fact that this gentleman was a fence; he was also a most picturesque individual, with the grey beard of a prophet.

Despite his many and shady activities, he always had time for a chat with Jacques if the latter called. He had a kindness for Jacques, who had once done him a service, and Jacques in return had a great respect for Moccata's astuteness and knowledge of the highways and byways of Sidi-bel-Abbès.

He had come to ask him his opinion of the Schneider business.

"The man has made his escape," said Moccata, "without any manner of doubt--you are quite wrong. If he had committed suicide, the body would have been found. Bless you, there's no hiding anything away in Sidi-bel-Abbès, what with the police always hunting for runaways and criminals and the Arab boys poking about in every lane and ditch for bits of old metal and rubbish-- Ah, ha!"

He struck himself on the knee as though he had remembered something all of a sudden. Then he rose up and went into a corner of the shop, searched amongst the rubbish there and produced a bundle.

He unrolled it, exposing a blue full-dress légionnaire's coat, red trousers and sash.

"I was coming home last night," said Moccata, "with a sack containing some old clothes, when I stumbled against a bundle. It was in the lane opening from Mustapha Street; the things were rolled up and tied together with the sash. I popped them in the sack. It was stupid of me to touch them. You know the law is heavy on anyone helping a légionnaire to escape, and to be in possession of a légionnaire's uniform might cast suspicion on one, but to tell the truth, my friend, I could not let the things lie; all my life I have been dealing in old clothes; it is not the profit I make from them, but the feeling I have for them that prevents me from leaving even an old hat lying in the street if I can pick it up. My father dealt in old clothes before me and his father before him, it runs in the family. So there you are. I picked the things up. I could not let them lie, and now I do not know what to do with them."

"You had better hide them," said Jacques. Then he went off.

There was no doubt in his mind now. Schneider was not dead, he had escaped. The only thing to account for a uniform cast away like that was an escaped légionnaire, and no other légionnaire had escaped or attempted escape.

Schneider had been playing a part all along. Jacques, as he walked back to the barracks, revolved matters in his mind. He remembered how, several months ago, Schneider had suddenly made friends with him; he remembered those conversations about escape, and he saw how artfully this scamp had pumped him on the matter; then came the question of the girl.

The girl and the old lady had come to Sidi-bel-Abbès to help in the business, and he blushed to think of the part he, Jacques, had played; he remembered that speech of his, honest and spoken from the heart, and the way in which the girl had received it, rushing from the room to hide her merriment, and remembering this, Jacques swore a great oath to be revenged. Schneider had played him false, that was bad; he had placed him in a ridiculous position, that was worse.

Then as he drew near the barrack gate, an idea struck him. He went straight to the officers' quarters, and the colonel happening to be in, Jacques had a five minutes' interview with him.

At ten minutes past ten he left the colonel, carrying with him a written order that made him virtual master of all the outlets of Algeria; he went to his room, fetched his blue overcoat, and going to the garage, secured a motor-car. A few minutes later he was being driven to Oran, where he arrived shortly before one o'clock in the morning.

He went to the Police Bureau and found that the boat for Marseilles was due to start at nine o'clock, and at eight o'clock he had taken his stand on the quay, close to the gangway of the steamer.

It was the ill-fated _General Chanzy_, and the last of the cargo was going on board to the tune of the winch pawls and the shouting of the red-fezzed negro stevedores. The quay presented a brilliant spectacle beneath the intense blue of the morning sky; a company of Spahis bound for Senegal were lining up by the troopship that was to take them, the crying of the Arab children at play answered the crying of the gulls fishing in the harbour, and here came the first of the passengers for the Marseilles boat, a stout, bearded Frenchman, who might have been Tartarin of Tarascon himself, in tweeds, wearing a sun helmet and followed by two negro porters carrying his luggage. After him came a French family, two American ladies in blue veils and a tall Englishman with side whiskers, a rare bird to find nowadays, and recalling to mind the "typical" Englishman who used to figure in the old Palais Royal farces. Then came some Germans, and lastly what Jacques was waiting for.

Madame Seraskier, Mademoiselle Seraskier and their maid. The women were all veiled and the maid was carrying a dressing-bag. There was no sign of Schneider. Jacques was not looking for him.

He drew close to the gangway, and as Madame Seraskier placed her hand upon the rail, he advanced, raised his _képi_ and said:

"I see, madame, that you have changed your maid."

The stout Frenchman, who had taken his place on the boat deck of the _General Chanzy_, and who was in the act of lighting a cigar, was treated to a spectacle. He saw the légionnaire corporal raise his hat to an old lady, the old lady fall in a faint, and the old lady's maid drop the dressing-bag she was carrying, pick up her skirts and run, pursued by the légionnaire. He saw her captured and handcuffed, and then he saw the old lady and her daughter led off by the police.

Then the boat started, carrying him off, to wonder for ever what could have been the meaning of it all and how it all ended.

It ended in a court-martial at Oran, where Schneider was condemned to a year of the penal battalion, not for having run away, but for having lost his uniform, and Jacques, who knew where that uniform was, said nothing. Wicked of him, perhaps, but with that I have nothing to do. I am simply telling this story to cast a sidelight on the character of Jacques.

As for the character of Schneider, the regimental surgeon, a hard-bitten French colonial officer with a terrible eye for the truth of things, summed it up for me:

"Schneider joined the Legion, as we discovered at the court-martial, for no reason. He was suffering from the European disease that afflicts, mostly, well-to-do men, and which is confined almost entirely to the continent of Europe, the disease that makes a man go off and commit suicide or join the Legion--for no reason. He is tired of life. These men are nearly always of high intelligence, but they have no belief in a God, and as in the case of Schneider, they often keep no faith with a friend. They are very crafty. We have had several of them in the service and I speak from knowledge.

"When Schneider, after a couple of months of Algeria, began to dislike the business, he determined to make an end of it; but knowing that it was next to impossible to escape by ordinary ways, he enlisted his old mother and his sister in his service. No heart, you see.

"I believe what is wrong with men like him is a brain that tires of ordinary stimuli and seeks for new sensations; well, he is receiving plenty of them in the criminal battalion, building roads down there in the south. It is a remedy that will cure him, if it does not kill him."

THE LITTLE PRINCE