"Tell the Sirdar I will be down presently."
*CHAPTER VII*
Besides the Grand Cadi with his pock-marked cheeks and base eyes, and
the Sirdar with his ruddy face (suddenly grown sallow), the plump person
of the Commandant of Police was waiting in the library.
The Grand Cadi in his turban and silk robes sat in the extreme corner of
the room, opposite to the desk; the Sirdar, in his full-dress uniform,
stood squarely on the hearth-rug with his back to the empty fireplace,
and the Commandant, in his gold-braided blue, stood near to the door.
No one spoke. There was a tense silence such as pervades a surgeon's
consulting-room immediately before a serious operation.
When the Consul-General came in, still wearing his court-dress, it was
plainly apparent to those who had seen him as recently as half-an-hour
before that he was a changed man. Although perfectly self-possessed and
as firm and implacable as ever, there was an indefinable something about
his eyes, his mouth, and his square jaw which seemed to say that he had
gone through a great struggle with his own heart and conquered
it--perhaps killed it--and that henceforth his affections were to be
counted as dead.
The Sirdar saw this at a glance, and thereby realised the measure of
what he had come to do. He had come to fight this father for his own
son.
Answering the salute of the Commandant, the salutation of the Sirdar,
and the salaam of the Cadi with the curtest bow, the old man stepped
forward to his desk, and seating himself in the revolving chair behind
it, he said brusquely--
"Well, what is the matter now?"
"Nuneham," said the Sirdar, with an oblique glance in the direction of
the Cadi, "the Commandant and I wish to speak to you in private on a
personal and urgent matter."
"Does it concern my son?" asked the Consul-General sharply.
"I do not say it concerns your son," said the Sirdar, with another
oblique glance at the Cadi. "I only say it is personal and urgent and
therefore ought to be discussed in private."
"Humph! We'll discuss it here. I'll have no secrets on that subject."
"In that case," said the Sirdar, "you must take the consequences."
"Go on, please."
"In the first place, the Commandant finds himself in a predicament."
"What is it?"
"The warrant he holds is for the arrest of Ishmael Ameer, but the
prisoner he has taken to-night is ... another person."
"Well?"
"The Commandant wishes to know what he is to do."
"What is it his duty to do?"
"That depends on circumstances, and the circumstances in the present
case are peculiar."
"State them precisely, please."
The Sirdar hesitated, glanced again at the Cadi, this time with an
expression of obvious repugnance, and then said--
"The peculiar circumstances in this case are, my dear Nuneham, that
though the prisoner cannot possibly be held under the warrant by which
he was arrested, he is wanted by the military courts for other
offences."
"Therefore----"
"Therefore the Commandant has come with me to ask you whether the man he
has taken to-night is to be handed over to the military authorities
or----"
"Or what?"
"Or allowed to go free."
The Consul-General swung his chair round until he came face to face with
the Sirdar, and said, with withering bitterness--
"So you have come to me--British Agent and Consul-General--to ask if I
will connive at your prisoner's escape! Is that it?"
The Sirdar flinched, bit the ends of his moustache for a moment, and
then said, with a faint tremor in his voice--
"Nuneham, if the prisoner is handed over to the authorities he will be
court-martialled."
"Let it be so," said the Consul-General.
"As surely as he is court-martialled his sentence will be death."
The old man swung his chair back and answered huskily: "If his offences
deserve it, what matter is that to me?"
"His offences," said the Sirdar, "were insubordination, refusal to obey
the orders of his General, and----"
"Isn't that enough?" asked the Consul-General, whereupon the Sirdar drew
himself up and said--
"I plead no excuses for insubordination. I am myself a soldier. I
think discipline is the backbone of the army. Without that everything
must fall into chaos. But the General who exacts stern compliance with
military discipline on the part of his officers has it for his sacred
duty to see that his commands are just and that he does not provoke
disobedience by outrageous and illegal insults."
The old man's face twitched visibly, but still he stood firm.
"Provoked or not provoked, your prisoner disobeyed the orders of his
recognised superior--what more is there to say?"
"Only that he acted from a sense of right, and that he was right----"
"What?"
"I say he _was_ right, as subsequent events proved, and if his
conscience----"
"Conscience! What has a soldier to do with conscience? My servant
Ibrahim, perhaps, any fellah, may have a right to exercise what he is
pleased to call his conscience, but the first and only duty of an
English soldier is to obey."
"Then God help England! If an English soldier is only a machine, a
human gun-waggon, with no right to think about anything but his rations
and his pay, and how to use his rifle, he is a butcher and a hireling,
not a hero. No, no, some of the greatest soldiers and sailors have
resisted authority when authority has been in the wrong. Nelson did it,
and General Gordon did it, and if this one----"