"I did, sir—I thought it would be a good experiment to try the effect of a little moral influence."
"Of course the experiment was justified?"
"Perfectly justified—the people dispersed quietly, and there has not been a single arrest since."
"But you had a battalion of soldiers on the spot?"
"I had—it was only right to be ready for emergencies."
The old man laughed bitterly. "I'm surprised at you. Don't you see how you've been hoodwinked? The man was warned of your coming—warned from Cairo, from El Azhar, which I find you were so foolish as to visit before you left for Alexandria. Everything was prepared for you. A trick, an Eastern trick, and you were so simple as to be taken in. I'm ashamed of you—ashamed of you before my servants, my secretaries."
Gordon coloured up to his flickering steel-blue eyes and said—
"Father, I must ask you to begin by remembering that I am no longer a child and not quite a simpleton. I know the Egyptians. I know them better than all your people put together."
"Better than your father himself, perhaps?"
"Yes, sir, better than my father himself because—because I love them, whereas you—you have hated them from the first. They've never deceived me yet, sir, and, with your permission, I'm not going to deceive them."