"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.
"You can't have it both ways. If he is to be punished, it must be after the custom of the place. This isn't England."
She shuddered slightly, and Dicky went on: "Then, when his head's off, and his desert-city and his mines are no more, and his slaves change masters, comes a nice question. Who gets his money? Not that there's any doubt about who'll get it, but, from your standpoint, who should get it?"
She shook her head in something like embarrassment.
"Money got by slavery—yes, who should get it?" interposed Kingsley carefully, for her eyes had turned to him for help. "Would you favour his heirs getting it? Should it go to the State? Should it go to the slaves? Should it go to a fund for agitation against slavery? . . . You, for instance, could make use of a fortune like his in a cause like that, could you not?" he asked with what seemed boyish simplicity.