Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 169, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1916 — The Red Mirage [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Red Mirage

A Story of the French Legion in Algiers

By I. A. R. WYLIE

(AH rights reserved. The Bobbs-Merrill Co.)

SYNOPSIS. When Sylvia Omney, a beautiful English girl, returns from a search in Algiers for her missing brother, her lover, Richard Farquhar, finds she has fallen In love •with Captain Arnaud of the Foreign Legion. In Captain Sower’s room Farquhar gets deliberately drunk, but when young Preston loses all his money to Lowe, a shady character, Farquhar forces Sower to have Preston’s I. O. U’s returned to him. Farquhar is helped to his rooms by Gabrielle Smith. Sower demands an apology. Refused, he forces Farquhar to resign his commission in return for possession of Farquhar’s father's written confession that he had murdered Sower’s father. Gabrielle saves Farquhar from suicide. Farquhar tells his mother that he Is going to find his rattier If the latter is alive. To shield Arnaud, Sylvia’s fiance, he professes to have stolen war plans and tells the real culprit why he did so. As Richard Nameless he joins the Foreign Legion and sees Sylvia, now Mme. Arnaud, meet Colonel Destinn. Farquhar meets Sylvia and Gabrielle, and’ learns from Corporal Goetz of the coroners cruelty. Arnaud becomes a drunkard and opium smoker. Sylvia becomes friendly with Colonel Destinn. Arnaud becomes jealous of Farquhar.

Why should Richard j; Nameless refrain from telling Sylvia the blunt truth about his great honor sacrifice for her sake? She lr a shallow woman who ruthlessly -threw him over for another. Do such women deserve the fine consideration the world owes Its best women?

CHAPTER Vl-MJontinued. Richard Nameless turned back to the desert The Arabs had risen and an elder was praying aloud, his aged, tremulous voice leading the richer unison of the worshipers behind him. “With my face to Mecca and with a sincere heart I offer my prayers to Allah—” Mirage! For those dark-faced desert children Mecca opened the gates of Paradise; for this dream of unknown happiness they waited and prayed, and when their time came passed through the great shadow with fearless, triumphant confidence. He went back to his work. With fierce, dogged energy he pulled away the deep-rooted weeds and brought a pathetic look of care and order Into his corner of the wilderness. For a moment be lingered over the grave which Goetz had tended. The bald yet eloquent Inscription touched him. He wondered vaguely who Philip Grey had been; if he, too, had paid a price and in the last hours of horror had still been satisfied. Two women had entered the cemetery. Their white-clad figures flashed gayly in between the dark graves, and a clear, silvery laugh mingled with the final Arab prayer—“La Ilaha Illa ’llahu!” The younger woman stopped an instant and pointed with the tip of her parasol at the broken remnant of a cross. “Look at these beads! Aren’t they ridiculous? And the inscription—just a number, like a convict’s.” She glanced back over her shoulder at her companion. “Miss Smith, I believe you are frightened. Do you think there are ghosts here? Well, perhaps there are, but I don’t mind.” As yet the man standing immobile, hidden amid the forest of crosses, had escaped her notice. But he had heard her now, and, shadowy and ghostlike enough in the dying light, awaited her approach. At the foot of the Englishman’s grave she hesitated. The inscription attracted her. With puckered brows she spelled out the badly cut letters, her soft voice touched with just the faintest Ironical Interest “Philip Grey—No. 3112 —Foreign Le- • glon.” , Then she looked up involuntarily and saw the man who watched her, his hand gripping the head of the cross. It was very quiet now. The Arab prayer was silenced, and the white figures of the worshipers had vanished in the long olive grove leading back to Sidl-bel-Abbes. Sylvia Arnaud’s voice, when she spoke at last sounded strained and harsh in the absolute quiet “Richard!” and then again, “Richard Farquhar!” He shook his head. ‘‘Not Richard Farquhar now," he answered. “Richard Nameless.” She seemed not to understand. Her lips were a little parted in the expression that he remembered. She looked piteously frightened and incredulous. -y! “I am sorry to have frightened you,” he said gently. “I did not mean that you shoiild ever see me—but you came so suddenly, and out in this desolate place you were the last person I expected. Forgive me.” “Yes—yes, itis a desolate place—it makes me frightened. But I was told it was something I ought to see—and a few minutes ago I wasn’t frightened at all. Now —I see ghosts everywhere.” “I am one of them,” he said. She brushed her hand over her forehead as though indeed trying to dispel some terrifying specter. Her feeble effort to regain her previous laughing courage failed. She was white and trembling. --- j

“I am No. 4005 of the Foreign Legion,” he said. “Is there anything else that you need understand?” “Yes —I must. I feel as though one of us two were mad. The Foreign Legion is just ttie last resort for all the riffraff of the world —criminals, gamblers, cheats —” “I am one of them.”

She was silent a moment, looking at him with large, thoughtful eyes, out of which the fear had passed. When she spoke again her voice was full of a smdthered tenderness. “I have thought of you so much lately, Richard. I couldn’t understand why it was. You haunted me. It was as though something in the place made me think of you. I remembered all your little movements, the way you looked. I seemed to see you in others. I grew almost —how shall I say?— homesick for you.” “You should have forgotten,” he interrupted roughly. “I have gone out of your life. Look upon me now as what I am now—a mere shadow.” “Richard, what have you done?” The tenderness had deepened. He clenched his hands in a movement of uncontrollable pain. “Hasn’t? your husband told you?" “No. We never mention your name. To me it is sacred.” • “For God’s sake, Sylvia— '* He straightened up, his black brows marking a straight line across bls face. “1 was turned out of the army for betraying my country’s secrets.” “You—-a traitor! Why?” The monosyllable was like the stab of a knife in the silence. “For 4 woman.” She drew back. Her eyes were dark pools in which he saw no expression. “What woman?” He bowed gravely. “Madame Arnaud, I have still honor enough left to remember the discretion Imposed upon honorable men.” She turned away from him. He could see nothing but her profile, the

exquisite, almost flawless profile, cut against a background of mingling gold and emerald. Her hands rested crossed on the handle of her parasol. She had grovyn suddenly very calm and deliberate, “I told you that I had thought of you, Richard,” she said quietly. “I did not tell you how I thought of you. Do you remember our last meeting, or has that been eclipsed by other more lovely memories?” “Silvia, be silent! I dare not listen to you. You don’t know what you are saying—” “I know what I am saying, and you must listen. When a man destroys something, it is no more than just that be should see what he has done. You have destroyed something—an ideal, a dream, my faith in honesty and goodness. You were the one man I believed and trusted. And now you are like the rest —nothing—nothing.” She turned away. “I wish to God I had not met you, Richard.” He did not attempt to detain her. He stood there like a man struck to death by a treacherous blow, and she went on down the path to the gate where her companion waited for her. There she paused for a moment. “I want you to go back to that man,” she said carelessly. “He is an old acquaintance who went wrong, and it might be rather unpleasant for my husband if he grew importunate.- Tell ■"him that on no account must he speak to me again. It is very regrettable, but mistakes of that sort bring their own punishment Yop understand, Miss Smith?” i “Yes, Madame Arnaud.” “Thank you. I will wait for you outside the public cemetery. It is getting dark—” Miss Smith went slowly back along the narrow gravel path. The man had not moved. He waa gazing out on to

the fiery waste now dying beneath the extinguishing mantle of the night, and neither heard nor saw. She touched him on the arm. J “Mr. Farquhar!” .... He turned slowly and stared at her. Though he recognized her, his face was blank and hard and terrible. “Miss Smithr l “Yea, Gabrielle Smith. You see, after all, we have met again. Won’t yon shake hands?” His eyes wandered past her down the path. “No. You ought not to be speaking to me. A respectable woman does not speak to a common soldier of the Legjon. “Doesn’t she? How interesting! One is always learning in this wonderful civilization of ours. Only as lt’ happens I am not respectable. I told you that once before.” Her cool irony brought a flash of Insane laughter to his eyes. - “Who the devil are you, then?” be asked savagely. “Dear me, you have quite lost your nice English indifference, Mr. Farquhar. I’m not sure it isn’t an improvement Who I am? Well, you know my name, and at the present moment I am companion to Madame Arnaud—helping her to forget that she isn’t English any more. English people think it’s wrong to admire foreigners. It’s their idea of patriotism. Madame Arnaud assures me she must have a bit of dear old England about her, and lam the bit. That’s all.” - “Why did you come?” He was looking at her again. Through the dusk she saw the white, tortured suspense on the hard face. She wore a rose in the severe corsage of her dress. She took it and handed it to him. “She sent you this—in token of remembrapce.” He took her hand and kissed it “You have come like an angel into my life,” he said. He watched her until her small, energetic figure had disappeared among the shadows. In the distance a bugle called a melancholy retreat v He lifted the rose reverently to his lips.

CHAPTER VII. A Meeting. In Sidl-bel-Abbes there is a pleasant avenue, shaded by silver birch and redolent of all the sweet perfumes of the East, where the local potentates gather In a select exclusive circle. In the courtyard of one such of these houses Colonel Destinn sat and Smoked an after-tea cigarette. His kepi lay on the broad balustrade beside him, and his head was thrown back in an attitude of easy contentment. “You pour out tea charmingly, madarne,” he said. “A second cup would stifle the last regret that I should have gone so far against my principles as to drink a first.” She looked up at him. The soft reflection from the low, white walls around them enhanced her ethereal beauty and added the subtle glamour with which the eastern light surrounds the least and most lovely object Very delicately she obeyed his request, the soft rich lace sleeve of her teagown slipping back to reveal the rounded arm and slender over-fragile wrist “Do your principles compel you to live only for your soldiers?’ she asked lightly. He laughed. “ ‘Living for them’ is perhaps too much of a euphem.lsm,” he said. “They would be more grateful if I did the other thing. But otherwise it is true. I have not put my foot under a hospitable roof for twenty years.” “Had you no one who—” She hesitated, a sudden color in her cheeks, and he leaned forward, his hands loosely interlocked between his knees, his handsome, ruthless face grave and Intent “No, I hadn’t anyone, Madame Arnaud.” Her gaze faltered under his steady, piercing eyes. “What Is your country, Colonel Destinn?”

“I do not know, madame. I have forgotten.” There'was a little silence, in which the fountain played a silvery intermezzo, and then he went on in an altered tone: “You are the first per* son who has made wish to remember.” She was looking up at him again with a studied frankness, behind which there lurked something hypnotized, fascinated. He turned carelessly from her. “Ah, Arnaud, you there? You see. I have been breaking up the principles of years to entertain ypur wife..- ;If you leave her too much alone you will find these English roses fade very quickly in this dreary place. Man, don’t look as if you had seen the devil.” The young officer, hesitating on the edge of the low veranda, recovered himself with an effort “My colonel —I was taken aback. I had not expected—but I am delighted and most honored. I beg of you to let me enjoy the pleasure—” “No, no, Arnaud. We see enough of each other "elsewhere, and, moreover, I have a pressing engagement with three deserters from the Eleventh company. Au revoir, madame —and thank you

How soon do you think that Sylvia’s flirting with Colonel Destinn will cause Tragedy to stalk abroad In the Foreign Legion. It seems plain that Mme. Arnaud knows she Is playing with fire. &ss!ssssssssss!s!s!sssssss!sssssssssss* (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“You a Traitor! Why?"