FullReads

“He isn’t so black as he’s painted, personally. He’s a rash, inflammable sort of fellow, who has a way with the native–treats him well, too, I believe. Very flamboyant, doomed to failure, so far as his merit is concerned, but with an incredible luck. He gambled, and he lost a dozen times; and then gambled again, and won. That’s the truth, I fancy. No real stuff in him whatever.”

Their hostess put down her tea-cup, and looked at Dicky in blank surprise. Not a muscle in his face moved. She looked at Kingsley. He had difficulty in restraining himself, but by stooping to give her fox-terrier a piece of cake, he was able to conceal his consternation.

“I cannot–cannot believe it,” she said slowly. “The British Consul does not speak of him like that.”

“He is a cousin of the Consul,” urged Dicky. “Cousin–what cousin? I never heard–he never told me that.”

“Oh, nobody tells anything in Egypt, unless he’s kourbashed or thumb-screwed. It’s safer to tell nothing, you know.”

“Cousin! I didn’t know there were Kingsleys in that family. What reason could the Consul have for hiding the relationship?”

“Well, I don’t know, you must ask Kingsley. Flamboyant and garrulous as he is, he probably won’t tell you that.”

“If I saw Kingsley Bey, I should ask him questions which interest me more. I should prefer, however, to ask them through a lawyer–to him in the prisoner’s dock.”

“You dislike him intensely?”

“I detest him for what he has done; but I do not despise him as you suggest I should. Flamboyant, garrulous–I don’t believe that. I think him, feel him, to be a hard man, a strong man, and a bad man–if not wholly bad.”

“Yet you would put him in the prisoner’s dock,” interposed Kingsley musingly, and wondering how he was to tell her that Lord Selden and Kingsley Bey were one and the same person.

“Certainly. A man who commits public wrongs should be punished. Yet I am sorry that a man so capable should be so inhuman.”

“Your grandfather was inhuman,” put in Kingsley. “He owned great West Indian slave properties.

“He was culpable, and should have been punished–and was; for we are all poor at last. The world has higher, better standards now, and we should live up to them. Kingsley Bey should live up to them.”

“I suppose we might be able to punish him yet,” said Dicky meditatively. “If Ismail turned rusty, we could soon settle him, I fancy. Certainly, you present a strong case.” He peered innocently into the distance.

“But could it be done–but would you?” she asked, suddenly leaning forward. “If you would, you could–you could!”

“If I did it at all, if I could make up my mind to it, it should be done thoroughly–no half measures.”

“What would be the whole measures?” she asked eagerly, but with a certain faint shrinking, for Dicky seemed cold-blooded.

“Of course you never could tell what would happen when Ismail throws the slipper. This isn’t a country where things are cut and dried, and done according to Hoyle. You get a new combination every time you pull a string. Where there’s no system and a thousand methods you have to run risks. Kingsley Bey might get mangled in the machinery.”

She shrank a little. “It is all barbarous.”

“Well, I don’t know. He is guilty, isn’t he? You said you would like to see him in the prisoner’s dock. You would probably convict him of killing as well as slavery. You would torture him with prison, and then hang him in the end. Ismail would probably get into a rage–pretended, of course–and send an army against him. Kingsley would make a fight for it, and lose his head–all in the interest of a sudden sense of duty on the part of the Khedive. All Europe would applaud–all save England, and what could she do? Can she defend slavery? There’ll be no kid-gloved justice meted out to Kingsley by the Khedive, if he starts a campaign against him. He will have to take it on the devil’s pitchfork. You must be logical, you know.