"I came to the conclusion, sir, that you were mistaken in this matter." "Really!" "Possibly misinformed——" "Indeed!" "By British officials who don’t know what they are talking about or by native scoundrels who do." Not for forty years had anybody in Egypt spoken to the Consul-General like that, but he only said— "Don’t stand there like a parson in a pulpit. Sit down and tell me all about it," whereupon Gordon took a seat by the desk. "The only riot I witnessed in Alexandria, sir, was due simply to the bad feeling which always exists between the lowest elements of the European and Egyptian inhabitants. Ishmael Ameer had nothing to do with it. On the contrary he helped to put it down." "You heard what he had said in the mosques?" "I had one of his sermons reported to me, sir, and it was teaching such as would have had your own sympathy, being in line with what you have always said yourself about the corruptions of Islam, and the necessity of uplifting the Egyptian woman as a means of raising the Egyptian man." "So you decided, it seems——" "I decided, Father, that to arrest Ishmael Ameer as one who was promulgating sedition, and inciting the people to rebellion, would be an act of injustice which you could not wish me to perpetrate in your name." The Consul-General put up his glasses, looked for a letter which lay on the desk, glanced at it, and said— "I see you say that before you arrived in Alexandria it was known that you were to come." "That is so, sir." "And that after the riot you counselled the Governor to consent to the man’s request that he should preach in public." "I did, sir—I thought it would be a good experiment to try the effect of a little moral influence." "Of course the experiment was justified?" "Perfectly justified—the people dispersed quietly, and there has not been a single arrest since." "But you had a battalion of soldiers on the spot?" "I had—it was only right to be ready for emergencies." The old man laughed bitterly. "I’m surprised at you. Don’t you see how you’ve been hoodwinked? The man was warned of your coming—warned from Cairo, from El Azhar, which I find you were so foolish as to visit before you left for Alexandria. Everything was prepared for you. A trick, an Eastern trick, and you were so simple as to be taken in. I’m ashamed of you—ashamed of you before my servants, my secretaries." Gordon coloured up to his flickering steel-blue eyes and said— "Father, I must ask you to begin by remembering that I am no longer a child and not quite a simpleton. I _know_ the Egyptians. I know them better than all your people put together." "Better than your father himself, perhaps?" "Yes, sir, better than my father himself because—because I love them, whereas you—you have hated them from the first. They’ve never deceived me yet, sir, and, with your permission, I’m not going to deceive them."