d waved it
in the air. Some one in front of him whispered one startling word to a
camel-driver.

Dicky had got his cue. To him that whisper was as loud and clear as the
"La ilaha illa-llah!" called from the top of a mosque. He understood
Ibrahim the Orderly now; he guessed all--rebellion, anarchy, massacre.
A hundred thoughts ran through his head: what was Ibrahim's particular
part in the swaggering scheme was the first and the last of them.

Ibrahim answered for himself, for at that moment he entered the burning
circle. A movement of applause ran round, then there was sudden silence.
The dancing-girls were bid to stop their dancing, were told to be gone.
The ghazeeyeh spat at them in an assumed anger, and said that none but
swine of Beni Hassan would send a woman away hungry. And because the
dancing-girl has power in the land, the Sheikh-el-beled waved his hand
towards the cafe, hastily calling the name of a favourite dish. Eyes
turned unconcernedly towards the brown clattering ankles of the two as
they entered the cafe and seated themselves immediately behind where the
Sheikh-el-beled squatted. Presently Dicky listened to as sombre a tale
as ever was told in the darkest night. The voice of the tale-teller was
that of Ibrahim, and the story was this: that the citadel at Cairo was
to be seized, that the streets of Alexandria were to be swept free of
Europeans, that every English official between Cairo and Kordofan was to
be slain. Mahommed Ibrahim, the spy, who knew English as well as Donovan
Pasha knew Arabic, was this very night to kill Fielding Bey with his own
hand!

This night was always associated in Dicky's mind with the memory of
stewed camel's-meat. At Ibrahim's words he turned his head from the rank
steam, and fingered his pistol in the loose folds of his Arab trousers.
The dancing-girl saw the gesture and laid a hand upon his arm.

"Thou art one against a thousand," she whispered; "wait till thou art
one against one."

He dipped his nose in the camel-stew, for some one poked a head in at
the door--every sense in him was alert, every instinct alive.

"To-night," said Mahommed Ibrahim, in the hoarse gutturals of the
Bishareen, "it is ordered that Fielding Bey shall die--and by my hand,
mine own, by the mercy of God! And after Fielding Bey the clean-faced
ape that cast the evil eye upon me yesterday, and bade me die. 'An old
man had three sons,' said he, the infidel dog, 'one was a thief, another
a rogue,