“I speak but badly, but I can understand and reply,” said Harry.
“It is well,” said the Bey; “and if you have a message for the Governor it is best delivered without an interpreter.”
“I have no message; neither, though a merchant, have I come to trade,” said Harry, when after a few observations on fleets, armies, and Mr Gladstone—in which the Bey evidently tried to pump him—he thought he saw an opening. “My business is a private one. A man named Daireh, a native of Alexandria, went to England as a boy, and was brought up to be a lawyer. He has fled with documents, for the want of which I cannot obtain property which is mine by right, and I have traced him to Khartoum; and I request your Highness’s omnipotent aid to find him, and induce him to make restitution of what is valueless to him, but of great importance to me.”
The Bey smoked a little while in silence, and then said—
“If these documents are of no use to him, why has he taken them?”
“He took them to extort money for their recovery,” replied Harry. “But he had committed other crimes which obliged him to fly the country in a hurry, and before he had time to make profit of the papers.”
Another long pause of silent smoking, and the Bey observed—
“It is a difficult matter, and he will be hard to find.”
Harry was prepared for objections, and had learned the best arguments for their removal. He placed a purse containing the sum which his friends in Cairo had estimated sufficient on the divan, and said—
“I know that legal expenses are great in all countries, and it is only just that I should bear the charge.”