When he woke again it was to find at his bedside a kavass from Imshi Pasha at Cairo. He shrank inwardly. The thought of the Pasha merely nauseated him, but to the kavass he said: “What do you want, Mahommed?”
The kavass smiled; his look was agreeably mysterious, his manner humbly confidential, his tongue officially deliberate.
“Efendina chok yasha—May the great lord live for ever! I bring good news.”
“Leave of absence, eh?”—rejoined Dimsdale feebly, yet ironically; for that was the thing he expected now of the Minister, who had played him like a ball on a racquet these three years past.
The kavass handed him a huge blue envelope, salaaming impressively.
“May my life be thy sacrifice, effendi,” he said, and salaamed again. “It is my joy to be near you.”
“We have tasted your absence and found it bitter, Mahommed,” Dimsdale answered in kind, with a touch of plaintive humour, letting the envelope fall from his fingers on the bed, so little was he interested in any fresh move of Imshi Pasha. “More tricks,” he said to himself between his teeth.
“Shall I open it, effendi? It is the word that thy life shall carry large plumes.”
“What a blitherer you are, Mahommed! Rip it open and let’s have it over.”
The kavass handed him a large letter, pedantically and rhetorically written; and Dimsdale, scarce glancing at it, sleepily said: “Read it out, Mahommed. Skip the flummery in it, if you know how.”