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"For the rest, your daughter asked what I was ready to offer such help as, in my new official position, I can give to Claridge Pasha in Egypt. As a neighbour, as Minister in the Government, I will do what I can to aid him." Silent and embarrassed, the old man tried to find his way. Presently he said tentatively: "David Claridge has a title to the esteem of all civilised people."
"This, Mr. Claridge, is Mr. Martin Hewitt, who has been kind enough to come with me here at a moment's notice. With the police on the one hand and Mr. Hewitt on the other we shall certainly recover that cameo, if it is to be recovered, I think." Mr. Claridge bowed, and beamed on Hewitt through his spectacles. "I'm very glad Mr. Hewitt has come," he said.
Claridge Pasha has saved himself in the past; and he may do so now, even though it is all ten times worse. Then, there is another way. Nahoum Pasha can save him, if he can be saved. And I am going to Egypt to Nahoum." Faith's face blanched. Something of the stark truth swept into her brain. She herself had suffered her own life had been maimed, it had had its secret bitterness.
He did not associate her with the girl for whom David Claridge had killed Foorgat Pey, and he sent his own carriage to bring her to the Palace. No time had been lost, for it was less than twenty-four hours since she had arrived in Cairo, and very soon she would know the worst or the best.
One letter, written from Bagdad, he made her read twice. The faded sheet had in it the glow and glamour of the East; it was like a heart beating with life; emotion rose and fell in it like the waves of the sea. Once the old man interrupted Faith. "Davy it is as though Davy spoke. It is like Davy both Claridge, both Claridge," he said. "But is it not like Davy?
It was the face of Faith Claridge, the sister of the woman in the graveyard, whose soul was "with the Lord," though she was but one year older and looked much younger than her nephew, David. "Speak, David," she said softly. "Speak now. Doth not the spirit move thee?"
"I have but one master, Excellency," Ebn Ezra answered quietly at last, "and I have served him straightly. Hast thou done likewise?" "What is straight to thee might well be crooked to me, effendi." "Thou art crooked as the finger of a paralytic." "Yet I have worked in peace with Claridge Pasha for these years past, even until yesterday, when thou didst leave him to his fate."
"You did not do your duty, and I think that you are not alone responsible. That is why I hope the Government will be influenced by public feeling." She came a step nearer to him. "I ask you to relieve Claridge Pasha at any cost. He is your father's son. If you do not, when all the truth is known, you will find no shelter from the storm that will break over you." "You will tell the truth?"
Loosening it, she read two or three sentences with a gasp. They contained Tom Lacey's appeal for David. She lifted Hylda's head to her shoulder with endearing words, and chafed the cold hands, murmuring to herself the while. "What has thee come to say?" Sitting in his high-backed chair, Luke Claridge seemed a part of its dignified severity.
Since this man entered the laboratory fifty reasons for his coming had flashed across his mind; he had prepared himself at many corners for defence, he had rallied every mental resource, he had imagined a dozen dangerous events which his father and Luke Claridge shared with the balance against his father; but this thing was beyond all speculation.
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