The Sultan's Daughter by Dennis Wheatley Page A

no alternative but to have you confined in the guardroom.’
    Roger bowed. ‘Major, I am deeply grateful to you for acceding so promptly to my request, and for your courtesy. I have only one more boon to ask. This morning I was given no breakfast; so I am terribly hungry. Could I perhaps be brought something to eat while I am in the guardroom, and a pallet on which to lie, with several blankets, for I am both cold and desperately tired.’
    â€˜Certainly you shall be provided with these things,’ the Major agreed. Turning to an Orderly Sergeant who was standing by the door, he gave him the necessary instructions.
    Under a guard of soldiers Roger was marched away to the guardroom. Ten minutes later, his hands untied, he was making a hearty meal of stew, followed by bread-and-cheese. He then lay down on a straw-filled mattress and drew a single blanket over himself. There was no need for more, since the room was heated by a roaring brazier.
    At last the awful fears which had harrowed him since morning were lifted from his mind. Although a civilian himself, he had spent so much of his time with military men that he always felt at home with them. Once the young Major had grasped the facts of the case he had treated him with consideration and kindness. Even if there were no great number of men in the cantonment who had served with the Army of Italy there must be a dozen or more. A single one who could identify him would be enough to get him out of all his troubles. Confident that by evening he would be a free man again, he dropped asleep.
    It was soon after three o’clock when the Sergeant of the Guard roused him and escorted him between two privates back to the headquarters building. They marched him through the room in which he had been interviewed and into a larger one next door. Standing there were Tardieu, Citizen Prosecutor Corbiel and the young Major. Behind a large desk sat an elderly man with a slightly pockmarked chin and grey hair that fell in lank strands on either side of his face. Obviously he was General Desmarets, and Roger put him down as an N.C.O. of the old Royal Army who had risen,owing to the Revolution, by years of conscientious but unspectacular service, to this minor Command.
    Giving a nod in the direction of Tardieu and Corbiel, the General said in a gruff voice to Roger, ‘These Citizens have told me about you. Three worthy Citizen magistrates have heard all you have to say and have decided that you are guilty of charges that merit death. You have advanced a preposterous claim to be one of General Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp, and say that you served with him in the Army of Italy. We shall soon learn how much truth there is in that.’
    His tone and attitude were ominous, but Roger remained optimistic. A door to a passage was opened by the Major and nine men filed into the room. Six of them were officers and the other three senior N.C.O.S Eagerly Roger’s glance ran from face to face. Then his heart sank a little; not one of them was familiar to him. But he could still hope that some of them might have noticed him while he was in attendance on their hero, the General-in-Chief.
    Briefly Desmarets questioned each of them about his service in Italy. All of them had fought there and had later been granted leave, on one ground or another, to transfer to the Army of the North. Roger had not joined Bonaparte in Italy until three months after the Armistice of Leoben was signed, and all but two of the men had left Italy before he arrived there. Of the remaining two, only one had visited the General-in-Chief’s headquarters at Montebello. He firmly declared that he had never heard of a Colonel Breuc. All of them agreed that Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp during the Italian campaign had been Marmont, Junot, Duroc, Lavalette and Sulkowsky.
    General Desmarets shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘There we are, then. I thought from the beginning this would prove a farce.’ He