The White Prophet, Volume II (of 2). Sir Hall Caine
was already coming to pass. It was to be open conspiracy now, not passive conspiracy any longer. The man Ishmael was falling a victim to the most fatal of all mental maladies. The Mahdist delusion was taking possession of him, and he was throwing himself into the Government's hands.
Hurriedly ringing his bell, the Consul-General committed Mosie to Ibrahim's care, whereupon the small black boy, in his soiled clothes, with his dirty face and hands, strutted out of the room in front of the Egyptian servant, looking as proud as a peacock and feeling like sixteen feet tall. Then the Consul-General called for one of his secretaries and sent him for the Commandant of Police.
The Commandant came in hot haste. He was a big and rather corpulent Englishman, wearing a blue-braided uniform and a fez – naturally a blusterous person with his own people, but as soft-voiced as a woman and as obsequious as a slave before his chief.
"Draw up your chair, Commandant – closer; now listen," said the Consul-General.
And then in a low tone he repeated what he had already learned from Helena's letter, and added what he had instantly divined from it – that Ishmael Ameer was to return to Cairo; that he was to come back in the disguise of a Bedouin Sheikh; that his object was to draw off the allegiance of the Egyptian army in order that a vast horde of his followers might take possession of the city; that this was to be done during the period of the forthcoming festivities, while the British army was still in the provinces, and that the conspiracy was to reach its treacherous climax on the night of the King's Birthday.
The Commandant listened with a gloomy face, and, looking timidly into the flashing eyes before him, he asked if his Excellency could rely on the source of his information.
"Absolutely! Infallibly!" said the Consul-General.
"Then," said the Commandant nervously, "I presume the festivities must be postponed?"
"Certainly not, sir."
"Or perhaps your Excellency intends to have the British army called back to Cairo?"
"Not that either."
"At least you will arrest the 'Bedouin'?"
"Not yet at all events."
The policy to be pursued was to be something quite different.
Everything was to go on as usual. Sports, golf, cricket, croquet, tennis-tournaments, polo-matches, race-meetings, automobile-meetings, "all the usual fooleries and frivolities" – with crowds of sight-seers, men in flannels and ladies in beautiful toilets – were to be encouraged to proceed. The police-bands were to play in the public gardens, the squares, the streets, everywhere.
"Say nothing to anybody. Give no sign of any kind. Let the conspiracy go on as if we knew nothing about it. But – "
"Yes, my lord? Yes?"
"Keep an eye on the 'Bedouin.' Let every train that arrives at the railway-station and every boat that comes down the river be watched. As soon as you have spotted your man, see where he goes. He may be a fanatical fool, miscalculating his 'divine' influence with the native soldier, but he cannot be working alone. Therefore find out who visit him, learn all their movements, let their plans come to a head, and, when the proper time arrives, in one hour, at one blow we will crush their conspiracy and clap our hands upon the whole of them."
"Splendid! An inspiration, my lord!"
"I've always said it would some day be necessary to forge a special weapon to meet special needs, and the time has come to forge it. Meantime undertake nothing hurriedly. Make no mistakes, and see that your men make none."
"Certainly, my lord."
"Investigate every detail for yourself, and above all hold your tongue and guard your information with inviolable secrecy."
"Surely, my lord."
"You can go now. I'm busy. Good-morning!"
"Wonderful man!" thought the Commandant, as he went out at the porch. "Seems to have taken a new lease of life! Wonderful!"
The Consul-General spent the whole of that day in thinking out his scheme for a "special weapon," and when night came and he went upstairs – through the great echoing house that was like the bureau of a department of state now, being so empty and so cheerless, and past the dark and silent room whereof the door was always closed – he felt conscious of a firmer and lighter step than he had known for years.
Fatimah was in his bedroom, for she had constituted herself his own nurse since his wife's death. She was nailing up on the wall the picture of the little boy in the Arab fez, and, having her own theory about why he had taken it down in the library, she said —
"There! It will be company for your lordship, and nobody will ask questions about it here."
When Fatimah had gone the Consul-General could not but think of Gordon. He always thought of him at that hour of the night, and the picture of his son that rose in his mind's eye was always the same. It was a picture of Gordon's deadly white face with its trembling lower lip, as he stood bolt upright while his medals were being torn from his breast, and then said, in that voice which his father could never forget: "General, the time may come when it will be even more painful to you to remember all this than it has been to me to bear it."
Oh, that Gordon could be here now and see for himself what a sorry charlatan, what a self-deceived quack and conspirator, was the man in whose defence he had allowed his own valuable life to rush down to a confused welter of wreck and ruin!
As the Consul-General got into bed he was thinking of Helena. What a glorious, courageous, resourceful woman she was! It carried his mind back to Biblical days to find anything equal to her daring and her success. But what was the price she had paid for them? He remembered something the Sirdar had said of "a marriage, a sort of betrothal," and then he recalled the words of her first letter: "I know exactly how far I intend to go, and I shall go no farther. I know exactly what I intend to do, and I shall do it without fear or remorse."
What had happened in the Soudan? What was happening there now? In what battle-whirlwind had that splendid girl's magnificent victory been won?
CHAPTER XIX
Meantime Helena in Khartoum was feeling like a miserable traitress.
She had condemned an innocent man to death! Ishmael had not killed her father, yet she had taken such steps that the moment he entered Cairo he would be walking to his doom!
One after another sweet and cruel memories crowded upon her, and in the light of the awful truth as Gordon had revealed it, she began to see Ishmael with quite different eyes. All she had hitherto thought evil in his character now looked like good; what she had taken for hypocrisy was sincerity; what she had supposed to be subtlety was simplicity. His real nature was a rebuke to every one of her preconceived ideas. The thought of his tenderness, his modesty, his devotion, and even the unselfishness which had led to their betrothal, cut her to the heart. Yet she had doomed him to destruction. The letter she had written to the Consul-General was his death-warrant.
That night she could fix her mind on nothing except the horror of her position, but next morning she set herself to think out schemes for stopping the consequences of her own act.
The black boy was gone; it was not possible to overtake him; there was no other train to Egypt for four days, but there was the telegraph – she could make use of that.
"I'll telegraph to the Consul-General to pay no attention to my letter," she thought.
Useless! The Consul-General would ask himself searching questions and take his precautions just the same.
"I'll telegraph that my letter is a forgery," she thought.
Madness! The Consul-General would ask himself how, if it was a forgery, she could know anything about it.
"I'll go across to the Sirdar and tell him everything, and leave him to act for both of us as he thinks best!"
Impossible! How could she explain her position to the Sirdar without betraying Gordon's identity and thereby leading to his arrest?
That settled everything. There was no escape from the consequences of her conduct, no way to put