The Consul-General returned to his seat at the desk, and, digging his elbows into the blotting-pad, rested his head on his hands. The Sirdar stood sideways with one arm on the chimney-piece. The Cadi sat in his smug silence with his claw-like hands still clasped in front of his breast.
They heard the Commandant's heavy step and the click of his spurs as he walked across the marble floor of the hall. They heard the front door close with a bang. Still no one spoke, and the silence seemed to be everlasting.
Then they heard the outer bell ringing loudly. They heard the front door opened and then closed again, as if somebody had been admitted. At the next moment, Ibrahim, looking as if he had just seen a ghost, had come, with his slippered feet, into the library, and was stammering—
"If you please, your Excellency ... if you please, your Ex——"
"Speak out, you fool—who is it?" said the Consul-General.
"It is ... it is Miss ... Miss Helena, your Excellency."
The Consul-General's face contracted for an instant as if he were trying to recover the plain sense of where he was and what was going on. Then he rose and went out of the room, Ibrahim following him.
The Sirdar and the Grand Cadi were left together. They did not speak nor exchange a sign. The Sirdar felt that the Cadi's presence had contributed to the late painful scene—that it had been a silent, subtle devilish influence against Gordon—and he was conscious of an almost unconquerable desire to take the man by the throat and wring his neck as he would wring the neck of a bird of prey.
A quarter of an hour passed. Half-an-hour. Still the two men did not speak. And the Consul-General did not return.
CHAPTER VIII