A half-hour later Dicky entered the room where the Mudir sat on his divan drinking his coffee. The great man looked up in angry astonishment—for Dicky had come unannounced-and his fat hands twitched on his breast, where they had been folded. His sallow face turned a little green. Dicky made no salutation.
“Dog of an infidel!” said the Mudir under his breath.
Dicky heard, but did no more than fasten his eyes upon the Mudir for a moment.
“Your business?” asked the Mudir.
“The business of the Khedive,” answered Dicky, and his riding-whip tapped his leggings. “I have come about the English girl.” As he said this, he lighted a cigarette slowly, looking, as it were casually, into the Mudir’s eyes.
The Mudir’s hand ran out like a snake towards a bell on the cushions, but Dicky shot forward and caught the wrist in his slim, steel-like fingers. There was a hard glitter in his eyes as he looked down into the eyes of the master of a hundred slaves, the ruler of a province.
“I have a command of the Khedive to bring you to Cairo, and to kill you if you resist,” said Dicky. “Sit still—you had better sit still,” he added, in a soothing voice behind which was a deadly authority.
The Mudir licked his dry, colourless lips, and gasped, for he might make an outcry, but he saw that Dicky would be quicker. He had been too long enervated by indulgence to make a fight.
“You’d better take a drink of water,” said Dicky, seating himself upon a Louis Quinze chair, a relic of civilisation brought by the Mudir from Paris into an antique barbarism. Then he added sternly: “What have you done with the English girl?”
“I know nothing of an English girl,” answered the Mudir.