"Yes, sir, but too many of these religious celebrities are contaminated by Mahdism."
"Surely Mahdism is dead, my dear fellow."
"Not yet, sir! Only yesterday I saw a man kneeling by the Mahdi's tomb—so hard do religions die! As for this man, Ishmael, he may be preaching peace while he is gathering his followers, but wait till they're numerous enough to fight and you'll see what he will do. Besides, isn't there evidence enough already that the tranquillity of the Soudan has been disturbed?"
"What evidence do you mean?"
"I mean ... my informers all over the country tell me the people are no longer pleading poverty as an excuse for remission of taxation—they are boldly refusing to pay."
The Financial Secretary corroborated this statement, saying that the taxes due on the land and the date-trees had not yet been collected, and that he had heard from Cairo that the same difficulty was being met with in Egypt in respect of the taxes on berseem and wheat.
"You mean," said the Sirdar, "that a conspiracy of passive resistance against the Government has been set afoot?"
"It looks like it, sir," said the Inspector-General. "A pretty insidious kind of conspiracy it is, too, and I think all the signs are that Ishmael Ameer is at the head of it."
There was silence, for some minutes, during which the Sirdar was telling himself that, if this was so, the rule of England in Egypt was face to face with a most subtle enemy—subtler far than the Mahdi and immeasurably more dangerous.
"Well, the first thing we've got to do is to find out the truth," he said, and thereupon he gave the Zabit an order to summon the Ulema of Khartoum, the Cadi, the Notables, and Sheikhs to a meeting in the Palace.