"But how did he know that--that I was being deceived? What right had he
to say so?"
"Listen," said Helena, and she read Gordon's account of his visit to the
Grand Cadi, when the "oily scoundrel" had called his father "the slave
of power," "the evil-doer," "the adventurer," and "the great assassin."
"Then why didn't he come like a man and tell me himself?" asked the
Consul-General.
"Listen again, sir," said Helena, and she read what Gordon had said of
his impulse to go to his father, in order to disclose the Grand Cadi's
duplicity, and then of the reasons restraining him, being sure that his
father was aiming at a _coup_, and that, acting from a high sense of
duty, the Consul-General would hand him over to the military authorities
before the work he had come to do had been done.
"But didn't he see what he was doing himself--aiding and abetting a
conspiracy?"
"Listen once more, please," said Helena, and she read what Gordon had
said of Ishmael's pilgrimage--that while his father thought the Prophet
was bringing up an armed force, he was merely leading a vast multitude
of religious visionaries, who were expecting to establish in Cairo a
millennium of universal faith and empire.
"But, even so, was it necessary to do what he did?" demanded the
Consul-General.
"Listen for the last time, sir," said Helena, and then in her soft,
earnest, pleading voice, she read--
"'It is necessary to prevent the massacre which I know (and my father
does not) would inevitably ensue; necessary to save my father himself
from the execrations of the civilised world; necessary to save Ishmael
from the tragic consequences of his determined fanaticism; necessary to
save England----'"
"Give them to me," said the Consul-General, taking--almost
snatching--the letters out of Helena's hands in the fierce nervous
tension which left him no time to think of courtesies.
Then drawing a chair up to the table, and fixing his eyeglasses over his
spectacles, he turned the pages one by one and read passages here and
there. Helena watched him while he did so, and in the changing
expression of the hitherto hard, immobile, implacable face she saw the
effect that was being produced.
"I cannot say how hard it is to me to be engaged in a secret means to
frustrate my father's plans--it is like fighting one's own flesh and
blood, and is not fair warfare....
"Neither can I say what a struggle it has been to me as an English
soldier to make up my mind to intercept an order of the British army--it
is like playing traitor, and I can scarcely bear to think of it....
"But all the same I know it is necessary. I also know _God_ knows it is
necessary, and when I think of that my heart beats wildly....
"I am willing to give my life for England, whatever name she may know me
by ... and I am willing to die for these poor Egyptians, because...
"This may be the last letter I shall write to you....
"May the great God of Heaven bless and protect you...."
The Consul-General was overwhelmed. The Grand Cadi's duplicity stifled
him; Ishmael's innocence of conspiracy humiliated him, but his son's
heroism crushed him, and made him feel like a little man.
Yet he had just now denounced his son as a traitor, handed him over to
the military authorities, and, in effect, condemned him to death!
As the old man read Gordon's letters his iron face seemed to decompose.
Helena could not bear to look at him any longer, and she had to turn her
face away. At length she became conscious that he had ceased to read,
and that his great, sad, humid eyes were looking at her.
"So you came here to plead with me for the life of my boy?" he said,
and, as well as she could for the tears that were choking her, she
answered--
"Yes."
He hesitated for a moment as if trying to summon courage to tell her
something, and then, in a voice that was quite unlike his own, he said--
"Permit me to take these letters away for a few minutes."
And rising unsteadily, he left the room.
*CHAPTER IX*
When the Consul-General returned to the library he looked like a feeble
old man of ninety. It was just as if twenty years of his life had been
struck out of him in half-an-hour. The Sirdar stepped up to him in
alarm, saying--
"What has happened?"
"Read these," he answered, handing to the Sirdar the letters he carried
in his hand.
The Sirdar took the letters aside, and standing by the chimney-piece he
looked at them. While he did so, his face, which had hitherto been
grave and pale, became bright and ruddy, and he uttered little sharp
cries of joy.
"I knew it!" he said. "Although I was at a loss to read the riddle of
Gordon's presence at Ghezirah I knew there must be some explanation. If
he had acted with a sense of conscience in the one case, he must have
done so in the other.... Thank God! Splendid! Bravo! ... Of course you
will stop the Commandant?"
The Consul-General, who had returned to his seat at the desk, did not
reply, and the Sirdar, thinking to anticipate his objection, said
eagerly--
"Why not? The Commandant will act as for himself, and nobody will know
that you have been consulted.... That is to say," he added, with another
oblique glance in the direction of the Grand Cadi, "nobody outside this
room, and if anybody here should ever whisper a word about it, I'll ...
I'll ... well, never mind; nobody will, nobody dare."
Then in the fever of his impatience the Sirdar proposed to call up the
Commandant of Police on the telephone and tell him to consider his
orders cancelled.
"Don't stir," he said. "I'll do it. Your Secretary will show me the
box."
When, with a light step and a hopeful face, the Sirdar had gone out of
the room on this errand the Cadi began for the first time to show signs
of life. He coughed, cleared his throat, and made other noises
indicative of a desire to speak, but the Consul-General, still sitting
at the desk with the look of a shattered man, seemed to be unconscious
of his presence. At length he said, in the hushed voice of one who was
habitually afraid of being overheard--
"I regret ... sincerely regret ... that I have been again compelled to
approach your Excellency's honourable person ... especially at a time
like this, ... but a certain danger ... personal danger ... made me
think that perhaps your Excellency would deign----"
Before he could say any more the Sirdar had returned to the library,
with a long face and a slow step.
"Too late!" he said. "I called up the Commandant at his office, and
they said he had gone to the Citadel. Then I called him up there,
thinking I might still be in time. But no, the thing was over. Gordon
was under arrest."
After that, there was silence for some moments while the Sirdar looked
again at the letters which he was still holding in his hands. At one
moment he raised his eyes, and turning to the Consul-Gencral he said--
"You'll not call down the troops from Abbassiah?"
"No."
"And you'll allow this man Ishmael and his visionary followers to come
into Cairo if they've a mind to?"
The Consul-General bent his head.
"Good!" said the Sirdar. "At all events that will shut the mouths of
the fine birds who must be getting ready to crow."
But a look of alarm came into the Grand Cadi's eyes, such as comes into
the eyes of a hawk when an eagle is about to pounce upon it.
"Surely," he said, "his Excellency does not intend to allow this horde
of fifty thousand fanatics to pour themselves into the capital?"