The Pulaskian., 1916-07-07
CHAPTER V.
Colonel Destinn of the Legion.


 A thin-voiced chime from some hour-four o'clock.
 Colonel Destinn looked up. From where he sat he could see the barrack- yard and, beyond, the great stretch of ocher plain rolling to the horizon. A little to the right an Arab mosque lift ed it's white minarets against the sky, which hung progressively over the pant Ing, lifeless country.
 In the narrow, meanly furnished room the atmosphere was stifing. Colonel Destinn's guest drew back into the thin patch of shadow. Colonel Destinn himself smiled, and the thin lips under the iron-gray mustache be- came indescribably ruthless.
 ''Yes, you are quite right, MT. Lowe" {" he was saying in his suave French. T have something to sell-something quite valuable, in fact. But I do not choose to sell it to you, that is all.'' Stephen Lowe glanced up. His de- formity was very obvious at that mo- ment He looked old, and physical ex- haustion had stamped out the last trace of beauty from his thin features. Why not?' he asked.
 ''Is not that my affair.""
 Colonel Destinn brushed a speck of lust from his dolman. His slate-gray eyes flashed. He rose, and Lowe had no choice but to rise also.
 T have made you an indefinite offer, Colonel Destinn,' he said. "One day | may come with something different and perhaps then you will reconsider what you have said. No life can be bound up definitely anywhere, not even in desert. Colonel Destinn."
 The officer did not answer, appeared wen to have forgotten his guests ex- lstence. Stephen Lowe went out clos ing the door softly behind him.
 Someone tapped at Colonel Destinn's door.
 If you please, my colonel, yester- days batch from Oran."
 Colonel Destinn lifted his head
 Ut is we'll. You. will accompany ne, corporal. How many?"
 Fifty
 We shall need them.'
 He picked up his kepi and led the way down the passage, the corporal following close beside him, his features composed in military indifference.
 In the center of the yard a line of men had been drawn up. Neither the violent abuse of the sergeant nor the comments of a pale-faced lieutenant, much less the uniforms, had been able to transform them into soldiers. Only one thing was common to them all- misfortune. It was written in every haggard face in every language of de- spair, from reckless defiance to sullen resentment and stoic resignation. Colonel Destinn read the language with the rapidity of custom. Before each recruit he stopped an instant, his hard eyes picking out the broken refinement of the prodigai from the brutality of fugitive crime. And at each he Jerked out an imperative question.
 Your name?"
 Johann Harding, my colonel.'
 Profession? P
 Doctor
 Sergeant, keep an eye on him. He will sham like the devil, or poison you. And this man?" There was slight, scarcely perceptible change in the in- fection of his voice, note of some thing that might have been surprise or even more than that-uneasiness. The man whom he confronted held himself with a cool, undisturbed dig nity.
 "Richard.'
 Have you no surname?"
 "No."
 Destinn glanced at the lieutenant, who, after hurried glance to his note book, shrugged his shoulders.
 No. 4O05-calls himself Richard Nameless, my colonel"
 A nom de guerre, presume. Your last profession ?''