know about Zinderneuf, Becque?" I asked.
His bitter sneering laugh was unpleasant to hear.
"Oh, you poor fool," he replied. "I know this much about Zinderneuf--that you nearly stepped into your grave there. . . . Into the grave that I dug for you there. . . . However, this place will do equally well."
With my mind back in Zinderneuf, I absently replied:
"You think I shall find my grave here, do you, Becque?"
"I most earnestly hope so," replied Becque. "I truly hope, and firmly believe, this Emir will do to you and your women what I have urged him--and tried to bribe him--to do."
I kept silent, for the man was dying.
"You are not out of the wood yet, Beautiful de Beaujolais, Beau Sabreur," the cruel, bitter voice went on. . . . "My colleague has a brain--if he hasn't much guts--and he has money too. And the power to put down franc for franc against you or anybody else, and then double it. . . . Oh, we shall win. . . . And I'd give my soul to survive to see the hour of success--and you impaled living on a sharpened palm-trunk and your Secret Service women given to the Soudanese soldiers. . . ."
I bit my lips and kept silence, for the man was surely dying.
§ 4
In spite of the considered opinion of which Miss Vanbrugh had delivered herself, I am a humane man, and if I fight my foe as a soldier should fight him, I try to be sans rancune when the fight is over.
While Becque was awake and conscious, I would sit with him, bear with his vileness, and do what I could to assuage the sufferings of his last hours. . . . Sometimes men change and relent and repent on their death-beds. . . . I am not a religious man, but I hold tenaciously to what is good and right, and if approaching death brought a better frame of mind to Becque, I would do everything in my power to encourage and develop it. . . . I would meet him more than half-way, and if his change of heart were real, I would readily forgive him, in the name of France and of Mary Vanbrugh. . . .
"Well, Becque," I said, "I shall do my best against your colleague--and I would give a great deal to survive to see the hour of success, and you, not impaled living, but speeded on your way, with a safe conduct, back to whence you came."
"You mealy-mouthed liar," replied my gentleman "You have killed me, and there you sit and gloat. . . ."
"Nonsense, Becque," I replied. "I am glad I won the fight--but I'd do anything I could to help or ease or comfort you, poor chap. . . ."
"Another lie, you canting hypocrite and swine," Becque answered me.
"No," I said. "The simple truth."
"Prove it, then," was the quick answer.
"Well?" I asked, and rose to get him anything he wanted or to do anything that he might desire.
"Look you, de Beaujolais," he said, "you are a soldier. . . . So am I. . . . We have both lived hard--and my time has come. . . . Nothing can possibly save me--here in the desert without surgeons, anæsthetics, oxygen, antiseptics--and I may linger for days--wounded as I am. . . . I know that nothing on God's earth can save me--so do you. . . . Then let me die now and like a soldier. . . . Not like a sick cow in the straw. . . . Shoot me, de Beaujolais. . . ."
"I can't," I replied.
"No--as I said--you are a mealy-mouthed liar, and a canting hypocrite, full of words and words . . ." answered Becque; and then in bitter mockery he mimicked my "I'd do anything I could for you, poor chap! . . ."
"I can't murder you, Becque," I said.
"You have," he replied. "Can't you complete your job? . . . No. . . . The Bold-and-Beautiful de Beaujolais couldn't do that--he could only gloat upon his handiwork and spin out the last hours of the man he had killed. . . . You and your Arab-debauching women from the stews of Paris. . . ." And he spat.
"One of those women worked over you like a nurse or a mother, Becque," I said. "She lavished her tiny store of cognac, eau-de-Cologne, antiseptics and surgery stuff on you----"
"As I said," he interrupted, "to keep me alive and gloat. . . ."
Silence fell in that hot, dimly-lighted tent, and I sat and watched this Becque.
After a while he spoke again.
"De Beaujolais," he said, "I make a last appeal as a soldier to a soldier. . . . Don't keep me alive, in agony, for days--knowing that I shall be a mortifying mass of gangrene and corruption before I die. . . . Knowing that nothing can save me. . . . I appeal to you, to you on whose head my blood is, to spare me that. . . . Put your pistol near me--and let Becque die as he has lived, with a weapon in his hand. . . ."
I thought rapidly.
". . . Come, come, de Beaujolais, it is not much to ask, surely. It leaves your lily-white hands clean and saves your conscience the reproach that you let me suffer tortures that the Arabs themselves would spare me. . . ."
I came to a decision.
"De Beaujolais--if I have the ghost of a chance of life, refuse my request. . . . If I have no chance, and you know I have none--as surely as you know the sun will rise--then, if you are a man, a human creature with a spark of humane feeling in you--put your pistol by my hand. . . . You can turn your back if you are squeamish. . . . Do it, de Beaujolais, and I will die forgiving you and repenting my sins. . . ."
His voice broke, and I swallowed a lump in my throat as I rose and went to where my revolver hung to the tent-pole. My sword had passed below his lungs and had penetrated the liver and stomach and probably the spinal cord. He would never leave that bed, nothing upon earth could save him, and his long lingering death would be a ghastly thing. . . . It was the one thing I could do for him. . . .
I put the pistol beside his right hand.
"Good-bye, Becque," I said. "In the name of France and Mary Vanbrugh I forgive the evil you tried to do to them both. . . . Personally I feel no hate whatsoever. . . . Good-bye, brave man--good-bye, old chap. . . ." And I touched his hand and turned my back.
* * *
The bullet cut my ear.
I sprang round and knocked the pistol from Becque's hand.
"You treacherous devil!" I cried.
"You poor gullible fool!" he answered, with the wry smile that showed the gleaming fang.
The sentry raised the door flap and looked in, and Mary Vanbrugh rushed from the anderun half of the tent, as I picked up my revolver.
"Oh! What is it?" she asked breathlessly.
"An accident," replied Becque. "One of the most deplorable that ever happened. . . . I shall regret it all my life. . . ." And he laughed.
There was no denying the gameness and stout heart of this dear Becque.
"More Duty, I thought, perhaps, Major de Beaujolais," observed the girl.
