Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 180, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1916 — The Red Mirage [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Red Mirage

A Story of the French Legion in Algiers

By I. A. R. WYLIE

(All right, reserved. Tbs Bobbs-Merrill Co.)

SYNOPSIS. ——l2 f Svlrla Omney, her lover, Richard Fareuhar, finds, has fallen In love with Capitaln JLrnaud of the Foreign Legion. In Captain Sower’s room Farquhar forces Mower to havs Preston’s 1 O U s re•turned to him. Farquhar Is helped to his rooms by Gabrielle Smith. Sower demands an apology. Refused, he forces Farquhar to resign his oom mission in return for possession of Farquhar's father s written confession that he had murdered Sower’s father. Gabrielle eaves Farauhar from suicide. To shield Arnaud, Sylvias fiance, Farquhar profeseea 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 Destlnn. Farquhar meets Sylvia and Gabrielle, ana learns from Corporal Goetz of the colonel’s cruelty. Arnaud becomes a drunKerd and opium smoker. Sylvia becomes friendly with Colonel Destlnn. Arnaud becomes Jealous of Farquhar. Farquhar, on guard at a villa where a dance is in progress, is shot down by Arnaud. Arnaud Justifies his Insanely Jealous action to Colonel Destlnn. Arnaud goes to a dancing girl who loves him for comfort. Gabrleile meets Lowe, for whom she had sacrificed position and deputation, and tells him she Is free from him. Sylvia meets Destlnn behind the mosque.

A hearties* wife sees her husband going mad because she does not love him, but she refuses to give him even a friendly smile. She refuses to make amends even when ah? learns that he Is killing by torture the man she really lovea. la such a woman worth any man’s affections?

CHAPTER XII —Continued. “What is it, Desire? Had we not better wait until another time?” “What I have to say Is said quickly. A volunteer corps is being formed for Tonkin. I have offered for service. If I am accepted you will accompany me.” “I refuse.” “On what grounds?” “I simply cannot Yon are absurd and melodramatic. Desire. I have given you my answer. Have you anything more to say?” He got up quietly. ‘^Nothing.” She hesitated, then glanced at Gabrielle Smith with a pretty expressive shrug of the shoulders, and passed calmly out of the room. But the little appeal had been ignored. Gabrielle was watching the man standing motionless in the lamplight After a moment she came up to him and placed a cup on the table near him. “Your tea, Captain Arnaud.” He started nervously. tea —oh, thank you. I bad forgotten. You are very good—a sort of administering and practical angel.” He tried to laugh. “Does nothing ever upset you? I believe in the middle of an earthquake you would still come up to me and say in your quiet, hobgoblin sort of way, ‘Your tea, Captain Arnaud,’ and make me feel that earthquakes were the most trivial occurrences possible.” „

“They are at least more frequent than the seismographs would have us suppose, Captain Amaud.” “What does that mean?” He turned his heavy lightless eyes to her face. She met the Interrogation quite calmly, her hands clasped in front of her with prim precision. “I mean that I know something of what has happened,” she said. “For instance?" “I know what happened at the Villa Bernotto’s.” It was very silent in the shadowy room. Amaud had not moved. But over his white, vice-marked features there quivered the first signal of reawakened consciousness. “How did you know?” he asked quietly. “I can’t tell you. I guessed. Something you said made me understand, that you hated Mr. Farquhar.” “You know his name?” “I know him." “Well?” “1 was In the dark —I am still. But I was almost sure of one thing. And it was I who warned the patrol.” “You wanted to trap me?” “I wanted to save you both.” He turned away from her then with a trembling gesture of incredulity. “You wanted to save me from what -—from murder? Was it worth while? Don’t you know what I am? Ask my wife. She c*n tell you—a drunkard, an opium-smoker, a dissolute —”

“A madman, Captain Arnaud.” “How do yon know that? I have been trying to hide It from everyone. But yon are right. I am mad —obsessed. They say people suffer tortures from the knowledge of their madness. I am like that. I know that I am tpad, and I am in hell. I can see the days that are to come—horrid misshapen horrors, crowding along the path and waiting to spring on me." He caught bold of her by the hand, and his quiet, terrible voice dropped to a whisper. “Today was a red-faced devil—you know, like the one you saw that night. I drugged myself so that X should not wake until it had gone. Bht you cannot cheat the devil with

opium. I went out on to the plateau. Farquhar was there. Poor Farquhar I My heart was sick for him. They had torn my bullet out of his shoulder, and he held himself like a man. I wanted to let him go, but I knew it was no good to try, so I sent him and a dozen others over the plateau at the double. You understand —it was a mile or more, and he looked as though there wasn’t a drop of blood in him. He fainted —over the body of a comrade whom he had tried to help. I marveled that he had gone so far. The sergeant ordered him up, but he did not move. He was unconscious. But that did not count; he had disobeyed orders. We are very severe with that sort of thing in the Legion. I had him strung up in the crapaudine. Dp you know what that is, mademoiselle? We strap a man’s wrists and ankles-to-gether behind his back and leave him like that for a day or two, out of doors, with a quarter of an hour’s interval here and there to break the monotony. It used to be a very favorite punishment in the Legion. The good General Negrier abolished it, but now and again we revive it. I revived it. Richard Farquhar is out there now, on the plateau, and perhaps he will not live to see the morning. And he saved me —he saved—” The terrible dry whisper ended suddenly. Arnaud put his hands to his head with a movement of pathetic helplessness. “Miss Smith —I—l am afraid I have been wandering—talking nonsense. You —you don’t think I am altogether mad, do yon?” “No, no—Captain Arnaud—only worn out—exhausted. Come, I want you to lie down on this sofa here, and I shall put the lights out. You must promise me to try and sleep. On your word of honor.” “My word of honor? Oh, I don’t think that’s worth much nowadays. But I’ll do anything you ask.” “I only ask of you to sleep and forget,” she answered. He nodded, yielding to her like a sick child, his eyes following her movements with an humble gratitude. She

arranged the pillows beneath his head, and he took her hand and kissed it, diffidently, apologetically. “I hope you don’t mind. I expect If you knew what I was—what I had done, you would shrink from me.” “No, Captain Arnaud, if you were the devil himself I should not shrink from you.”

“I don’t believe you would. You’d comfort him —you’d tell him there was hope for him yet—that he wasn’t altogether bad. My wife —” He faltered, and her grasp on his powerless hand grew firmer. ‘‘Your wife is very young, Captain Arnaud. One day soon she will understand as I do.” “If that were true—possible—then I could sleep—” His eyes closed. A weak tremulous sigh quivered at the corners of his mouth. Noiselessly she turned out the lights and left him. Sylvia Arnaud’s room lay at the farther end of the corridor. Gabrlelle knocked and Immediately entered. Her manner, from that of quiet good humor, had hecqme alert and hard. Her eyes were very bright, her mouth set in lines that for once betrayed no trace of humor. “Your husband is very ill, Madame Arnaud,” she said. “He is on the brink of a nervous breakdown —perhaps worse—and only you can save him. I came to warn you—” “You are very Miss Smith.” “This is not the time to exchange commonplaces. When he awakes you must go to him. You mus|;, tell him that you will accompany him to Tonkin. But you must act at once —before it is too late.” . .

Sylvia Arnaud drew back, white and trembling, the first indulgent good humor turned to an incredulous anger. “Miss Smith, are you forgetting—” “That I am your paid companion? No. But it is In your or my power to make oar status into that of absolute equality—this moment if you wish. Do you wish it?” Sylvia stared blankly at the stem white face of the woman confronting her. Her anger had burned out like straw, and she was now only frightened and a little resentful. "I—l don’t want to lose yon, Miss Smith,” she stammered. “I know that you do not care for me; hot in your strange way you have been friendly—and I—l am very alone. I have confidence in yon. I am prepared to overlook the evening’s outbreak.” “That’s what yon cannot and shall not do,” was the grim answer. “Yon have driven your hnsband to the verge of madness, Madame Arnaud, and through madness to crime—to the.murder of a man who sorely was once dear to yon.” "Whom do yon mean?” “Richard Farquhar.” “I forbid you—you are beside yourself—”

Garbielle interrupted the Indignant protest with a quiet decision tinged with irony. “We are always beside ourselves when we tell the truth, Madame Arnaud. But fortunately I have not much more to say. Go to your husband—tell him that Richard Farquhar never was and never could be his rival in your affections —tell him whom it web you went to meet in the grove that night—” “I cannot —what you ask is absurd.” The gray, neat little figure came closer. “You are very lovely, Madame Arnaud,” Gabrielle Smith said very gently and almost reverently, “One understands why men suffer so much and patiently for you. A man’s life Is in your power. Whatever he has done he loved you. He still looks up to you as a saint in heaven. Madame Arnaud, such loyalty is rare. You dare not kill it!” Sylvia laughed carelessly. “That all comes too late,” she said. ‘You cannot plead to me for pity. And justice! W'hat justice dare you claim for an outcast —a cheat, a man whom all honest men shrink from —or for a dissolute roue who has not shrunk from murder? They have earned their fate.” Sylvia rose instinctively to her feet, and they faced each other in the silence of unrelenting antagonism. The little gray-clad woman turned and went quietly toward the door. For the first time Sylvia’s voice sounded breathless and anxious. “What are yon going to do?” "I am going to act for you.” The door closed. Sylvia Arnnqd ran to it and, turning the key, set her back against it as though shutting out an unreasoned, nameless terror.

CHAPTER XIII. Dreams. Therq were dreams on the great plateau—unreal shapes which took their airy substance from the stars and from the white translucency of the Arabian night. Richard Farquhar saw them distinctly. In the first hours of twilight he had believed them the pigments of his own pulsing, fever-driven brain. And he had rolled over, hiding his face against the hard soil, and had bitten his lips bloody. The melancholy hour between life and death was over, and slowly, with all the mysterious majesty of the East, night led out her shining myriads from the darkness into the waiting solitudes. Only the sentinel of the hour stood out as something living, a tall rigid shadow magnified by the silver ghostly light of the stars.

The sentry had turned and became suddenly an Immense shadow. The shadow bent over him and whispered: “Are you awake, comrade?” “Yes, of course I am awake,” he said. “How are you? Are you in great pain? Perhaps I could loosen the cord a little. Shall I try?” “No, you will get yourself into trouble. I am all right—” “Mother of God! Your wrists are covered with blood. The devils! See, here is water. It will refresh you. You are a brave man. You have not cried out. If you had cried out they would have gagged you. They gagged a countryman of mine out there in Madagascar, and in the morning he was dead. There, drink!” Farquhar turned his head away. Hitherto he had not been conscious of pain; now he knew it had been there throughout, at the back of his consciousness—a white-hot? searing of his muscles, a frightful crushing weight; a hand that seemed to hold him by the throat, choking the breath from him. “I cannot drink—” He could not hear his own voice. He was not even sure that he had spoken at all. The shadow of the sentry seemed to envelop the whole earth, blotting out its own- shape. But the whisper went on. It sounded so close to him that It seemed to have crept into his very brain.

The soldiers are In deepest X sympathy with Farquhar. If he X should organize a revolt they X would follow him. Will he do X so, after this torture, or will he X heed the stern inner call of duty X and honor? What woul<T''y©u o do? Q (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“I’m Going to Act for You.”