"It might perhaps be thought that you, of all others, had least reason
to be grateful to the Power that took the _courbash_ out of your hands,
and deprived you of the advantages of forced labour; but you do not want
to regain the powers you once held over the great unmoving masses of the
people; you are willing to see all false ledgers showing unjust debts
burnt in the public squares with your whips and instruments of the
bastinado. Therefore, gentlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you."
Finally, looking down the middle table to where the Chancellor of El
Azhar sat with his Bedouin friend beside him, he said--
"And your Eminences of the Ulema, I thank you also. Your enemies
sometimes say that you continue to live in the Middle Ages, but you are
much too keenly alive to your interests in the present hour not to
realise how necessary it is to you to be assured for the future against
the possible recurrence of Mahdist raids and revolutions. You know that
the hydra-headed monster called fanaticism would destroy you and your
class, and therefore you support with all the loyalty of your eager
hearts the Power which in the interests of true religion would crush and
quell it. Gentlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you."
The effect of the speech was paralysing. As, one by one, the
Consul-General spoke to the classes represented by his guests, there was
not a response, not a sound, nothing but silence in the room, with white
faces and quivering lips on every side.
At length the Consul-General raised his glass and, in a last passage of
withering sarcasm, called on the company to drink to the great sovereign
of the great nation which, with the cordial sympathy and united help of
the whole community, as represented by those who were there present, had
done so much for civilisation and progress in the East--"The King!"
They could not help themselves--they rose, a lame, halting,
half-terrified company, getting up irregularly, with trembling hands and
pallid cheeks, and repeated after the toast-master in nervous,
faltering, broken voices, "The King!"
After the speaker sat down there was a subdued murmur which rose by
degrees to a sort of muffled growl. The Consul-General heard it, and his
keen eyes flashed around the company. Down to this moment he had done
no more than he intended to do, but now, carried away by the excitement
created within himself by his own speech, he wished to throw off all
disguise, and fling out at everybody.
"Better be calm, though," he thought, remembering the Sirdar's advice,
and at the next moment the Sirdar himself, whom he had missed from his
side, returned and said, in a whisper--
"Afraid I must go. Just heard that some of the Egyptian soldiers have
been knocking down the officers who were sent to remove their
ammunition."
At that news, which appeared to confirm predictions and to be the
beginning of everything he had been led to expect, the Consul-General
lost all control of himself.
"Wait! Wait a little and we'll go together," he whispered back, and
then, calling for silence, he rose to his feet again and faced full upon
his guests.
"Your Highness, your Eminences, your Excellencies, and Gentlemen," he
said in a loud voice, "I have one more toast. I have given you the
health of the King, and now I give you 'Confusion to his Enemies.'"
If a bomb had fallen in the dining-hall it could scarcely have made more
commotion. The Consul-General saw this and smiled.
"Yes, gentlemen, I say his enemies, and when I speak of the King's
enemies, I refer to his enemies in Egypt, his enemies in this room."
The sensation produced by these words was compounded of many emotions.
To such of the guests as were entirely innocent of conspiracy it seemed
plainly evident that a kind of mental vertigo had seized the
Consul-General. One of them looked round for a doctor, another rose
from his seat with the intention of stepping up to the speaker, while a
third took out his gold pencil-case and began to scribble a note to the
Sirdar, asking him, as the best friend of their host, to remove the
Consul-General from the room.
On the other hand, the persons who were actually participating in
conspiracy had, by operation of that inscrutable instinct which compels
guilty men to expose themselves, risen to their feet, and were loudly
shouting their protests.
"Untrue!" "Disgraceful!" "False!" "Utterly false!"
"False, is it?" said the Consul-General. "We shall see."
Then glancing over them one by one as they stood about him, his eye
fixed itself first upon a foreign representative whose breast was
covered with decorations, and he said--
"Baron, did you not say in the Salon of a certain Princess that out of
your Secret Service money you were providing arms for the Egyptian
populace?"
The Baron gave a start of surprise, made some movement of the lips as if
trying to reply, and sank back to his seat. Then the Consul-General
turned to one of two Egyptian Ministers who, with faces as red as their
tarbooshes, were standing side by side, and said--
"Pasha, will you deny that as recently as yesterday you sent somebody to
me in secret to say that while you were innocent of conspiracy against
British rule, your colleague, who stands at your right, was deeply
guilty?"
The Pasha stammered out some confused words and collapsed.
Then the Consul-General faced down to one of the Ulema, the Grand Mufti,
who, in his white turban and graceful robes, was trying his best to
smile, and said--
"Your Eminence, can it be possible that you were not present at the
house of the Chancellor of El Azhar when a letter was sent to a certain
visionary mummer then in the Soudan, asking him to return to Cairo in
order to draw off the allegiance of the Egyptian army?"
The smile passed in a flash from the Grand Mufti's face, and he, too,
dropped back to his seat. Then one by one the others who had been
standing, slithered down to their places, as if each of them was in fear
that some secret he had whispered in the salon, the harem or the mosque,
would in like manner be blurted from the housetops.
The Consul-General swept the whole company with a look of triumph and
said--
"You see, gentlemen, I know everything, and it is useless to deny. In
order to overthrow the authority of England in Egypt you have
condescended to the arts of anarchists--you have joined together to
provoke rebellion against law and order."
All this time the Sirdar's face had been stamped with an expression of
sadness, and now he was seen to be addressing the Consul-General in a
few low-toned words, but his warning, if such it were, seemed to be
quite unheeded. With increasing excitement and intense bitterness the
Consul-General turned hotly upon the foreign representatives and said--
"Gentlemen of the diplomatic corps, joint trustees with me of peace and
civilisation in a backward country, you thought you were using the
unrest of the Egyptians to serve your own ends, but listen, and I will
tell you what you were really doing."
Then, more fiercely than ever, his face aflame, his hoarse voice
breaking into harsh cries, he disclosed his knowledge of the Egyptian
plot as he understood it to be--how the final aim, the vast and luminous
fact to which all Moslem energies were directed, was the establishment
of an Arab Empire which should have for its first purpose to resist the
Christian nations; how this Empire had originated in the mind of the
Khedive, who wished to put himself at the head of it; and how, since it
was necessary in an Eastern country to give a religious colour to
political intriguing, Ishmael Ameer, the mock Mahdi, the
fanatic-hypocrite, had been employed to intimidate the British
authorities by bringing up the scourings of the Soudan to their very
doors.
This fell on the whole company, innocent and guilty, like a thunderclap.
The great Proconsul, the strong and practical intellect which had
governed the State so long, had been deceived on the main issue, had
been fooled, and was fighting a gigantic phantom!
"Is this news to you, gentlemen of the diplomatic corps? Ask your
friends, the Ulema! Is it news to you, too, gentlemen of El Azhar? Ask
your Grand Cadi! But that is not all. You have had no scruples, no
shame! In hitting at England you have not hesitated to hit at England's
servant--myself. You have hit me where I could least bear the blow. By
lies, by hypocrisies, by false pretences you have got hold of my son, my
only son, my only relative, all that was left to me ... the one in whom
my hopes in life were centred and----"
Here the old man's voice faltered, and it was afterwards remembered that
at this moment the Bedouin Sheikh rose in obvious agitation, made some
steps forward, and then stopped.
At the next instant the Consul-General had recovered himself, and, with
increasing strength and still greater ferocity, was hurling his last
reproaches upon his enemies.
[Illustration: The Consul-General was hurling his last reproaches upon
his enemies]
"But you are mistaken, gentlemen. I may be old but I am not yet
helpless. In the interests not only of England but of Europe I have
made all necessary preparations to defeat your intrigues, and now--now I
am about to put them into execution."
Saying this he left his seat and directed his steps towards the door.
Nearly the whole of the company rose at the same moment, and all stood
aside to let him pass. Nobody spoke, nobody made a gesture. In that
room there were now no longer conspirators and non-conspirators. There
were only silent spectators of a great tragedy. Everybody felt that an
immense figure was passing from the world's stage, and none would have
been more surprised if the Pyramid of Gizeh had crumbled before their
eyes.
On reaching the door the Consul-General stopped and spoke again, but
with something of his old courageous calm.
"I understand," he said, "that it was part of the plan that to-night at
midnight, while the British army was expected to be on the Delta, and I
and my colleagues were to be held prisoners on Ghezirah, the horde of
armed fanatics now lying outside on the desert were to enter and occupy
the city. That was a foolish scheme, gentlemen, such as could only have
been conceived in the cobwebbed brains of El Azhar. But whatever it was
I must ask you to abide by its consequences. In the interests of peace
and of your own safety you will remain on this island until to-morrow,
and in the morning you shall see ... what you shall see!"
Then saying something in a low voice to the Commandant of Police who was
standing near, he passed out of the dining-hall and the door was closed
behind him.
*CHAPTER XVII*
A few minutes afterwards the military band in the garden was playing
again, red and white rockets were shooting into the dark sky from the
grounds of the Khedivial Sports Club, and the Consul-General was
entering the little insular telephone office of Ghezirah, which was
under the same roof as the Pavilion.
"Call me up the Colonel commanding at Abbassiah and ask him to hold the
line."
"Yes, my lord."
While the attendant put in the plug of his machine and waited for a
reply, the Consul-General walked nervously to and fro between the
counter and the door. He was expecting the Commandant of Police to come
to him in a moment with news of the arrest of Ishmael Ameer. Without
this certainty (though he had never had an instant's doubt of it) he
could not allow himself to proceed to the last and most serious
extremity.
"Not got him yet?"
"Not yet, my lord," said the attendant, and he plugged his machine
afresh.
The Consul-General resumed his restless perambulation. He was by no
means at ease about the unpremeditated developments of the scene in the
dining-hall, but he had always intended to make sure that his enemies
were safely housed on the island, and thereby cut off from the power of
making further mischief, before he ordered the army into the city. The
plugging of the machine was repeated.
"Not got him even yet, boy?"
"Cannot get an answer from the Central in Cairo, my lord."
"Try yet another line. Quick!"
The Consul-General thought the Commandant was long in coming, but no
doubt the police staff had removed the supposed "Bedouin" to a private
room, so that in making his arrest, and in stripping off his disguise to
secure evidence of his identity, there might be no unnecessary
commotion, no vulgar sensation. The plugging of the machine ceased.
"Got him at last?"
"No, my lord. Think there must be something wrong with the wires."
"The wires?"
"They seem to have been tampered with."
"You mean--cut?"
"Afraid they are, my lord."
"Then the island--so far as the telephone goes--the island is isolated?"
"Yes, my lord."
The old man's face, which had been flushed, became deadly pale, and his
stubborn lower lip began to tremble.
"Who can have done this? Who? Who?"
The attendant, terrified by the fierce eye that looked into his face,
was answering with a vacant stare and a shake of the head when the
Sirdar entered the office, accompanied by the Commandant of Police, and
both were as white as if they had seen a ghost.
"Well, what is it now?" demanded the Consul-General, whereupon the
Sirdar answered--
"The Commandant's men have got him, but----"
"But--what?"
"It is not Ishmael Ameer."
"Not Ishma ... you say it is not Ish----"
The Consul-General stopped, and for a long moment he stared in silence
into the blanched faces before him. Then he said sharply, "Who is it?"
The Commandant dropped his head and the Sirdar seemed unwilling to
reply.
"Who is it, then?"
"It is ... it is a British officer."
"A British ... you say a British----"
"A Colonel."
The old man's lips moved as if he were repeating the word without
uttering it.
"His tunic was torn where his decorations had been. He looked like ...
like a man who might have been degraded."
The Consul-General's face twitched, but in a fierce, almost ferocious
voice he said, "Speak! Who is it?"
There was another moment of silence, which seemed to be eternal, and
then the Sirdar replied--
"Nuneham, it is your own son."
*CHAPTER XVIII*
"_From the Slave of the Most High, Abdul Ali, Chancellor of El Azhar, to
Ishmael Ameer, the Messenger of God--Praise be to Him, the Exalted One!_
"A word in haste to say that he who came here as your missionary and
representative has within the hour been arrested by the officials of the
Government, having, so far as we can yet learn and surmise, been most
treacherously and maliciously betrayed into their hands by means of a
letter to the English lord from one who stands near to you in your camp.
"In sadness and tears, with faces bowed to the earth and ashes on our
heads, we send our sympathy to you and to your stricken followers,
entreating you on our knees, in the name of the Compassionate, not to
attempt to carry out your design of coming into Cairo, lest further and
more fearful calamities should occur.
"This by swift and trusty messenger to your hands at Sakkara.--The Slave
of your Virtues,
"ABDUL ALI."