“Why art thou here? For what hast thou come? Do the spirit voices give thee that counsel?” he snarled.
“I am come to ask Prince Harrik to repair the wrong he has done. When the Prince Pasha came to know of thy treason—”
Harrik started. “Kaid believes thy tale of treason?” he burst out.
“Prince Kaid knows the truth,” answered David quietly. “He might have surrounded this palace with his Nubians, and had thee shot against the palace walls. That would have meant a scandal in Egypt and in Europe. I besought him otherwise. It may be the scandal must come, but in another way, and—”
“That I, Harrik, must die?” Harrik’s voice seemed far away. In his own ears it sounded strange and unusual. All at once the world seemed to be a vast vacuum in which his brain strove for air, and all his senses were numbed and overpowered. Distempered and vague, his soul seemed spinning in an aching chaos. It was being overpowered by vast elements, and life and being were atrophied in a deadly smother. The awful forces behind visible being hung him in the middle space between consciousness and dissolution. He heard David’s voice, at first dimly, then understandingly.
“There is no other way. Thou art a traitor. Thou wouldst have been a fratricide. Thou wouldst have put back the clock in Egypt by a hundred years, even to the days of the Mamelukes—a race of slaves and murderers. God ordained that thy guilt should be known in time. Prince, thou art guilty. It is now but a question how thou shalt pay the debt of treason.”
In David’s calm voice was the ring of destiny. It was dispassionate, judicial; it had neither hatred nor pity. It fell on Harrik’s ear as though from some far height. Destiny, the controller—who could escape it?
Had he not heard the voices in the night—“The lions are loosed upon thee”? He did not answer David now, but murmured to himself like one in a dream.
David saw his mood, and pursued the startled mind into the pit of confusion. “If it become known to Europe that the army is disloyal, that its officers are traitors like thee, what shall we find? England, France, Turkey, will land an army of occupation. Who shall gainsay Turkey if she chooses to bring an army here and recover control, remove thy family from Egypt, and seize upon its lands and goods? Dost thou not see that the hand of God has been against thee? He has spoken, and thy evil is discovered.”
He paused. Still Harrik did not reply, but looked at him with dilated, fascinated eyes. Death had hypnotised him, and against death and destiny who could struggle? Had not a past Prince Pasha of Egypt safeguarded himself from assassination all his life, and, in the end, had he not been smothered in his sleep by slaves?