"No doubt your Excellency is asking yourself why he comes in this disguise, and if your Excellency will deign to give me your attention I will tell you."
"I am listening."
"Ishmael Ameer pretends to be a reformer intent upon the moral and intellectual regeneration of Islam, and he preaches the coming of a golden age in which unity, peace and brotherhood are to reign throughout the earth.
"Well?"
"With this ridiculous and impracticable propaganda he has appealed to many wild and ardent minds, so that a vast following of half-civilised people whom he has gathered up in the Soudan are to start soon—may have started already—for this city, which they believe to be the Mecca of the new world."
"Well?"
"Ishmael Ameer pretends to have come to Cairo in advance of his followers to prepare for that millennium."
"And what has he really come for?"
"To establish a political State."
Down to that moment the Consul-General had been leaning back in his chair in the attitude of one who was listening to something he already knew, but now he sat up sharply.