In the summer of that same year, the thundercloud burst over Europe, and France, at her moment of need, reaped the fine harvest of her colonial policy. Black men and brown mustered to the call of her bugle as men having their share of France. Gerard de Montignac scrambled like his brother officers to get to the zone of battles. He was seconded in the autumn, was promoted colonel a year later, and was then summoned to Paris. In a little room upon the first floor in a building adjacent to the War Office Gerard discovered Baumann, of the Affaires Indigènes, but an uplifted Baumann, a Baumann who had grown a little supercilious towards colonels.
“Ah, De Montignac!” he said, with a wave of the hand. “I have been expecting you. Yes. Will you sit down for a moment?”
Gerard smiled and obeyed contentedly. There were so many Baumanns about nowadays, and he never tired of them. Baumann frowned portentously over some papers on his desk for a few moments, and then, pushing them aside, smoothed out his forehead with the palm of his hand.
“Yours is a simpler affair, De Montignac. I am happy to say,” he said, with a happy air of relief. “The Governor-General is in Paris. You will see him after this interview. He wants you again in Morocco.”
“It is necessary?” Gerard asked, unwillingly.
“Not a doubt of it, my dear fellow. You can take that from me. The Governor-General is holding the country with the merest handful of soldiers, and there are—annoyances.”
“Serious ones?”
“Very. Bartels, for instance.”
“Bartels?” Gerard repeated. “I never heard of him.”
Far away from the main shock of the battles, many curious and romantic episodes were occurring, many strange epics of prowess and adventure which will never find a historian. Bartels was the hero of one, and here in Baumann’s clipped phrases are the bare bones of his exploit.
“He was a non-commissioned officer in the German army . . . enlisted on his discharge in our Foreign Legion—was interned in August, 1914, and got away to Melilla.”
“In the Spanish zone, on the coast. Yes,” said Gerard.
“He was safe there and on the edge of the Riff country. He got into touch with a more than usually turbulent chieftain of those parts, Abd-el-Malek, and also with a German official in Spain. From the German officials Bartels received by obscure routes fifteen thousand pounds a month in solid cash, minus, of course, a certain attrition which the sum suffers on the way.”
“Of course,” said Gerard.
“With the fifteen thousand—call it twelve—with the twelve thousand pounds a month actually received, and Abd-el-Malek’s help, Bartels has built himself a walled camp up in the hills close to the edge of the French zone, where he maintains two thousand riflemen well paid and well armed.”
Gerard leaned forward quickly.
“But surely a protest has been made to Spain?”
Baumann smiled indulgently.
“How you rush at things, my dear De Montignac!”
“It will be ‘Gerard’ in a moment,” De Montignac thought.
“Of course a protest has been lodged. But Spain renounces responsibility. The camp is in a part of the country which she has officially declared to be not yet subdued. On the other hand, it is in the Spanish zone—and we have enough troubles upon our hands as it is, eh?”
Gerard leaned back in his chair.
“That has always been our trouble, hasn’t it? The unsubdued Spanish zone,” he said, moodily. “What does Bartels do with his two thousand riflemen?”
“He wages war. He comes across into French Morocco, and raids and loots and burns and generally plays the devil. And, mark you, he gets information; he chooses his time cleverly. When we are just about to embark fresh troops to France, that’s his favourite moment. The troops have to be retained, rushed quickly up country—and he, Bartels, is snugly back on the Spanish side of the line and we can’t touch him. Bartels, my dear De Montignac”—and here Baumann, of the Affaires Indigènes, tapped the table impressively with the butt of his pencil—“Bartels has got to be dealt with.”
“Yes,” Gerard replied. “But how, doesn’t seem quite so obvious, does it?”
Baumann gently flourished his hand.
“We leave that with every confidence to you, my dear Colonel.”
Gerard pushed his chair back.
“Oh, you do, do you! I don’t know that I’ve the type of brain for that job,” he said, and thought disconsolately how often he had jeered at the officers who simply passed everything that wasn’t in “the book.” He would very much have liked to take the same line now. “How does this fellow Bartels get his twelve thousand pounds?”
“Through Tetuan probably. We don’t quite know,” said Baumann.
“And where exactly is his camp on the map?” Gerard asked next.
“We are not sure. We can give you, of course, a general idea.”
“We have nobody amongst his two thousand men, then?”
“Not a soul. So, you see, you have a clear field.”
“Yes, I see that, and I need hardly say that I am very grateful,” said De Montignac.
Baumann was not quick to appreciate irony even in its crudest form. He smiled as one accepting compliments.
“We do our best, my dear Gerard,” and Gerard beamed with satisfaction. He had heard what he had wanted to hear, and he would not spoil its flavour. He rose at once and took up his cap.
“I will go and see the Governor-General.”
“You will find him next door,” said Baumann. “We keep him next door to us whilst he is in Paris, so far as we can.”
“You are very wise,” said Gerard, gravely, and he went next door, which was the War Office. There he met his chief, who said:
“You have seen Baumann? Good! Take a little leave, but go as soon as you can. Ten days, eh? I will see you in a fortnight at Rabat,” and the Governor-General passed on to the Elysée.
Gerard de Montignac did not, however, take his ten days. He knew his chief, a tall, pre?minent man, both in war and administration, who, with the utmost good-fellowship, expected much of his officers. Gerard spent one day in Paris and then travelled to Marseilles. At Marseilles he had to wait two days, and visited in consequence a hospital where a number of Moorish soldiers lay wounded, men of all shades from the fair Fasi to the coal-black negro from the south. Their faces broke into smiles as Gerard exchanged a word or a joke with them in their own dialects.
He stopped a little abruptly at the foot of one bed in which the occupant lay asleep with—a not uncommon sight in the ward—a brand-new medaille militaire pinned upon the pillow.
“He is badly hurt?” Gerard asked.
“He is recovering very well,” said the nurse who accompanied him. “We expect to have him out of the hospital in a fortnight.”
Gerard remained for a moment or two looking at the sleeper, and the nurse watched him curiously.
“It will do him no harm if I wake him up,” she suggested.
Gerard roused himself from an abstraction into which he had fallen.
“No,” he answered, with a laugh. “If I was a general, I would say, yes. But sleep is a better medicine than a crack with a mere colonel. What is his name?”
“Ahmed Ben Larti,” said the nurse, and with a careless “So?” Gerard de Montignac moved along to the next bed. But before he passed out of the ward he jerked his head towards the sleeper and asked:
“Will he be fit for service again?”
“Certainly,” she answered. “In a month, I should think.”
Gerard left the hospital, and the next morning was back in Baumann’s office in Paris.
“I have found the man I want,” he said.
“Who is he?”
“Ahmed Ben Larti. He is in hospital at Marseilles. He has the medaille militaire.”
Baumann shrugged his shoulders. “Who has it not?” he seemed to say.
“I had better see the Governor-General,” said Gerard.
Baumann became mysterious, as befitted a high officer of Intelligence.
“Difficult, my young friend,” he began.
“Excellent, Baumann, excellent,” interrupted Gerard, with a chuckle.
Baumann pouted.
“I don’t quite understand,” he said.
“And there’s no reason that you should,” Gerard answered, politely.
Baumann was not very pleased. It was his business to do the mystifying.
“It’s practically impossible that you should see the Governor-General again. He is so occupied,” he said, firmly.
Gerard got up from his chair.
“Where is he?&rdquo............