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Fielding Had An Orderly
by
Dicky had got his cue. To him that whisper was as loud and clear as the “La ilaha illa-llah!” called from the top of a mosque. He understood Ibrahim the Orderly now; he guessed all–rebellion, anarchy, massacre. A hundred thoughts ran through his head: what was Ibrahim’s particular part in the swaggering scheme was the first and the last of them.
Ibrahim answered for himself, for at that moment he entered the burning circle. A movement of applause ran round, then there was sudden silence. The dancing-girls were bid to stop their dancing, were told to be gone. The ghazeeyeh spat at them in an assumed anger, and said that none but swine of Beni Hassan would send a woman away hungry. And because the dancing-girl has power in the land, the Sheikh-el-beled waved his hand towards the cafe, hastily calling the name of a favourite dish. Eyes turned unconcernedly towards the brown clattering ankles of the two as they entered the cafe and seated themselves immediately behind where the Sheikh-el-beled squatted. Presently Dicky listened to as sombre a tale as ever was told in the darkest night. The voice of the tale-teller was that of Ibrahim, and the story was this: that the citadel at Cairo was to be seized, that the streets of Alexandria were to be swept free of Europeans, that every English official between Cairo and Kordofan was to be slain. Mahommed Ibrahim, the spy, who knew English as well as Donovan Pasha knew Arabic, was this very night to kill Fielding Bey with his own hand!
This night was always associated in Dicky’s mind with the memory of stewed camel’s-meat. At Ibrahim’s words he turned his head from the rank steam, and fingered his pistol in the loose folds of his Arab trousers. The dancing-girl saw the gesture and laid a hand upon his arm.
“Thou art one against a thousand,” she whispered; “wait till thou art one against one.”
He dipped his nose in the camel-stew, for some one poked a head in at the door–every sense in him was alert, every instinct alive.
“To-night,” said Mahommed Ibrahim, in the hoarse gutturals of the Bishareen, “it is ordered that Fielding Bey shall die–and by my hand, mine own, by the mercy of God! And after Fielding Bey the clean-faced ape that cast the evil eye upon me yesterday, and bade me die. ‘An old man had three sons,’ said he, the infidel dog, ‘one was a thief, another a rogue, and the third a soldier–and the soldier died first.’ ‘A camel of Bagdad,’ he called me. Into the belly of a dead camel shall he go, be sewn up like a cat’s liver in a pudding, and cast into the Nile before God gives tomorrow a sun.”
Dicky pushed away the camel-stew. “It is time to go,” he said.
The ghdzeeyeh rose with a laugh, caught Dicky by the hand, sprang out among the Arabs, and leapt over the head of the village barber, calling them all “useless, sodden greybeards, with no more blood than a Nile shad, poorer than monkeys, beggars of Beni Hassan!” Taking from her pocket a handful of quarter-piastres, she turned on her heels and tossed them among the Arabs with a contemptuous laugh. Then she and Dicky disappeared into the night.
II
When Dicky left her house, clothed in his own garments once more, but the stains of henna still on his face and hands and ankles, he pressed into the ghazeeyeh’s hand ten gold-pieces. She let them fall to the ground.
“Love is love, effendi,” she said. “Money do they give me for what is no love. She who gives freely for love takes naught in return but love, by the will of God!” And she laid a hand upon his arm.
“There is work to do!” said Dicky; and his hand dropped to where his pistol lay–but not to threaten her. He was thinking of others.