Utterly bewildered, he stepped forward in the direction of Helena's boudoir, and then he realised that that was the room the voices came from. After a moment of uncertainty he knocked, whereupon somebody shouted to him in Arabic to enter, and then he opened the door.
Helena's servants, being paid off, and required to leave the house in the morning, had invited certain of their friends and made a feast for them. Squatting on the floor around a huge brass tray, which contained a lamb roasted whole and various smaller dishes, they were now regaling themselves after the manner of their kind with the last contents of the General's larder, washed down by many pious speeches and by stories less devotional.
"A little more, O my brother?" "No, thanks be to God, I have eaten well." "Then by the beard of the Prophet (to whom prayer and peace!), coffee and cigarettes, and the tale of the little dancing girl."
At the height of their deafening merriment the door of the room opened and a man in Bedouin dress stood upon the threshold, and then there was silence.
Gordon stood for a moment in amazement at sight of this coarse scene on a spot associated with so many delicate memories. Then he said—
"You don't happen to know if ... if the boy Mosie is about?"
"Gone!" shouted several voices at once.
"Gone?"
"Yes, gone, O Sheikh," said one of the men—he was the cook—pausing to speak with a piece of meat between his finger and thumb, half way to his mouth. "Mosie has gone to England with the lady Helena. They left here at six o'clock to catch the night train to Alexandria, so as to be in good time for to-morrow's steamer."
Gordon stood a moment longer, looking down at the grinning yellow faces about the tray, and then, with various apologies and after many answering salaams, he closed the door behind him, whereupon he heard the buzz of renewed conversation within the room, followed by another but more subdued burst of laughter.