Seekers after
knowledge are unpopular even in organisations so far removed from the
Circumlocution Office as the French _Ministere de la Guerre_. However,
he had put me on the trail of my man.
During my homeward drive through the rain I reflected. I might, of
course, write to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Regiment at Tlemcen,
and wait for his reply. But even if he answered by return of post, I
should have to remain in Paris for nearly a week.
"That," said I, wiping from my face half a teacupful of liquid mud
which had squirted in through the cab window--"that I'll never do. I'll
proceed at once to Algiers. If I can get no news of him there, I'll go
to Tlemcen myself. In all probability I shall learn that he is residing
here in Paris, a stone's throw from the Madeleine."
So I started for Algiers. The next morning, before the sailing of the
_Marechal Bugeaud_, one of the quaint churns styled a steamship by the
vanity of the French Company which undertakes to convey respectable folk
across the Mediterranean, I ate my bouillabaisse below an awning on the
sunny quay at Marseilles.
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