“‘If you hear me, my friends, come. This is Souchard. I have run fast to get to this little instrument. It is a raid. I think they are white. I think they are Athensians, and——’”
Dramatically, sensing the breathless interest of his auditors, Frank paused.
“And,” he said slowly, “that was all. No, not really all, for there was a sudden sharp crash that almost broke my ear drums. Then silence.”
He stopped. They continued to gaze at him. Nobody spoke for a long minute. Every face was pale. Every one of Frank’s three white auditors breathed faster. Even the Arab guards, bunched in the background, unable to understand Frank’s rapid narrative in English, still understood something was amiss. Only Ali paid no attention.
“This is terrible, Frank,” said Mr. Hampton, breaking the weighty silence. “You’re sure you could not have been mistaken?”
Frank shrugged his shoulders under the flowing burnoose such as they all wore, finding it more effectual to keep out the heat and wind-whipped sand than any European costume.
“Just as I told you, Mr. Hampton,” he said. “The Professor’s voice might have been coming from no farther than you.”
“Ah, I thought so.”
The interruption came from Ali, whose command of English was fluent. Ali was a cosmopolitan from the teeming streets of Cairo, a man of many languages.
Now he turned to Mr. Hampton, pointing off to the west, straight into the eye of the sinking sun, which now was half below the horizon.