Late at night, when the vast following which Ishmael had brought into the city had to be housed, messengers ran through the streets asking for lodgings for the pilgrims, and people answered from their windows and balconies, "I'll take one," "I'll take two." Twenty thousand slept in the courtyard and en the roofs of El Azhar; the rest in the houses round about.
The trust in God, which had seemed to be slain the night before, awoke to a new life, and when at length the delirious city lay down to sleep, the watchmen walked through the deserted thoroughfares crying, "Wahhed! Wahhed!" (God is One!)
In the dead, hollow, echoing hours of early morning a solitary coach passed through the streets in the direction of the outlying stations of the railway to Port Said. Its blinds were down. It was empty. But on the box seat beside the coachman sat a nervous, watchful person with an evil face, wearing the costume of a footman.
It was the Grand Cadi. He had been the supreme orthodox authority of the Moslem faith, sent from Constantinople as representative and exponent of the spiritual authority vested in the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph of Islam, but he was stealing out of Cairo like a thief.
CHAPTER XIII
A general Court-Martial was fixed for the following morning, and Helena was for going to it just as she was, in the mixed Eastern and Western costume which she had worn on the desert, but the Princess would not hear of that. She must wear the finest gown and the smartest Paris hat that could be obtained in Cairo, in order that Gordon might see her at her best.
"He may be a hero," said the Princess, "but he is a man, too, God bless him, and he'll want to see the woman he loves look lovely."
So the milliners and dressmakers were set to work immediately, and bound by endless pledges.
"Of course they'll promise you the stars at noonday," said the Princess, "but if they don't come up to the scratch they get no money. Keep your cat hungry and she'll catch the rat, you know."
In due time the costume was ready, and when Helena had put it on—a close-fitting silver-grey robe and a large black hat—the Princess stood off from her and said—