“Pardon. Not to me. Not at all. Shall we make a detective story out of it? When is the last time you saw your passport?”
Port thought for a moment. “When I arrived in Ain Krorfa,” he said finally.
“Aha!” cried the lieutenant. “In Ain Krorfa! And yet you accuse Monsieur Abdelkader, without hesitating. How do you explain that?”
“Yes, I accuse him,” Port said stubbornly, nettled by the lieutenant’s voice. “I accuse him because logic indicates him as the only possible thief. He’s absolutely the only native who had access to the passport, the only one for whom it would have been physically possible.”
Lieutenant d’Armagnac raised himself a little higher in bed. “And why precisely do you demand it be a native?”
Port smiled faintly. “Isn’t it reasonable to suppose it was a native? Apart from the fact that no one else had the opportunity to take it, isn’t it the sort of thing that would naturally turn out to have been done by a native-charming as they may be?”
“No, monsieur. To me it seems just the kind of thing that would not have been done by a native.”
Port was taken aback. “Ah, really?” he said. “Why? Why do you say that?”
The lieutenant said: “I have been with the Arabs a good many years. Of course they steal. And Frenchmen steal. And in America you have gangsters, I believe?” He smiled archly. Port was impassive: “That was a long time ago, the era of gangsters,” he said. But the lieutenant was not discouraged. “Yes, everywhere people steal. And here as well. However, the native here,” he spoke more slowly, emphasizing his words, “takes only money or an object he wants for himself. He would never take anything so complicated as a passport.”
Port said: “I’m not looking for motives. God knows why he took it.” His host cut him short. “But I am looking for motives!” he cried. “And I see no reason for believing that any native has gone to the trouble of stealing your passport. Certainly not in Bou Noura. And I doubt very much in Ain Krorfa. One thing I can assure you, Monsieur Abdelkader did not take it. You can believe that.”
“Oh?” said Port, unconvinced.
“Never. I have known him for several years—”
“But you have no more proof that he didn’t than I have that he did!” Port exclaimed, annoyed. He turned up his coat collar and huddled in his chair.
“You aren’t cold, I hope?” said the lieutenant in surprise.
“I’ve been cold for days,” answered Port, rubbing his hands together.
The lieutenant looked at him closely for an instant. Then he went on: “Will you do me a favor if I do you one in return?”
“I suppose so. What?”
“I should be greatly obliged if you would withdraw your complaint against Monsieur Abdelkader at once—today. And I will try one thing to get you your passport back. On ne sait jamais. It may be successful. If your passport has been stolen, as you say, the only place for it logically to be now is Messad. I shall telegraph Messad to have a thorough search made of the Foreign Legion barracks.”
Port was sitting quite still, looking straight ahead of him. “Messad,” he said.
“You were not there, too, were you?”
“No, no!” There was a silence.
“And so, are you going to do me this favor? I shall have an answer for you as soon as the search has been carried out.”
“Yes,” said Port. “I’ll go this afternoon. Tell me: there is a market for such things at Messad, then?”
“But of course. Passports bring high prices in Legion posts. Especially an American passport! Oh, la, la!” The lieutenant’s spirits were soaring: he had attained his object; this could offset, at least partially, the damaging effects of the Yamina case to his prestige. “Tenez,” he said, pointing to a cupboard in the corner, “you are cold. Will you hand me that bottle of cognac over there? We shall each have a swallow.” It was not at all what Port wanted, but he felt he scarcely could refuse the hospitable gesture.
Besides, what did he want? He was not sure, but he thought it was merely to sit quietly in a warm, interior place for a long time. The sun made him feel colder, made his head burn, seem enormous and top-heavy. If he had not had his normal appetite he would have suspected that perhaps he was not well. He sipped the cognac, wondering if it would make him warmer, or if he would regret having drunk it, for the heartburn it sometimes produced in him. The lieutenant appeared to have divined his thoughts, for he said presently: “It’s fine old cognac. It won’t hurt you.”
“It’s excellent,” he replied, choosing to ignore the latter part of the remark,
The lieutenant’s impression that here was a young man unhealthily preoccupied with himself was confirmed by Port’s next words. “It’s strange,” he said with a deprecatory smile, “how, ever since I discovered that my passport was gone, I’ve felt only half alive. But it’s a very depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are, you know.”
The lieutenant stretched forth the bottle, which Port declined. “Perhaps after my little investigation in Messad you will recover your identity,” he laughed. If the American wished to extend him such confidences, he was quite willing to be his confessor for the moment.
“You are here with your wife?” asked the lieutenant. Port assented absently. “That’s it,” said the lieutenant to himself “He’s having trouble with his wife. Poor devil!” It occurred to him that they might go together to the quartier. He enjoyed showing it off to strangers. But as he was about to say: “Fortunately my wife is in France—” he remembered that Port was not French; it would not be advisable.
While he was considering this, Port rose and politely took his leave—a little abruptly, it is true, but he could hardly be expected to remain by the bedside the whole afternoon. Besides, he had promised to stop by and withdraw the complaint against Abdelkader.
As he walked along the hot road toward the walls of Bou Noura he kept his head down, seeing nothing but the dust and the thousands of small sharp stones. He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking. He knew how things could stand bare, their essence having retreated on all sides to beyond the horizon, as if impelled by a sinister centrifugal force. He did not want to face the intense sky, too blue to be real, above his head, the ribbed pink canyon walls that lay on all sides in the distance, the pyramidal town itself on its rocks, or the dark spots of oasis below. They were there, and they should have pleased his eye, but he did not have the strength to relate them, either to each other or to himself, he could not bring them into any focus beyond the visual. So he would not look at them.
On arriving back at the pension, he stopped by the little room that served as office, and found Abdelkader seated in a dark corner on the divan, playing dominoes with a heavily turbaned individual. “Good day, monsieur,” said Port. “I have been to the authorities and withdrawn the accusation.”
“Ah, my lieutenant has arranged it,” murmured Abdelkader.
“Yes,” said Port, although he was vexed to see that no credit was to be given him for acceding to Lieutenant d’Armagnac’s wishes.
“Bon, merci.” Abdelkader did not look up again, and Port went on upstairs to Kit’s room.
There he found that she had ordered all her luggage brought up and was unpacking it. The room looked like a bazaar: there were rows of shoes on the bed, evening gowns had been spread out over the footboard as if for a window display, and bottles of cosmetics and perfumes lined the night table.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” he cried.
“Looking at my things,” she said innocently. “I haven’t seen them in a long time. Ever since the boat I’ve been living in one bag. I’m so sick of it. And when I looked out that window after lunch,” she became more animated as she pointed to the window that gave onto the empty desert, “I felt I’d simply die if I didn’t see something civilized soon. Not only that. I’m having a Scotch sent up and I’m opening my last pack of Players.”