His mind was instantly made up, his plans formed to his purpose.

"Listen, Mahommed," he said to the Arab. "Listen to each word I say, as
though it were the prayer to take thee into Paradise. Go at once to
Selamlik Pasha. Carry this ring the Khedive gave to me--he will know it.
Do not be denied his presence. Say that it is more than life and death;
that it is all he values in the world. Once admitted, say these words:
'Donovan Pasha knows all, and asks an audience at midnight in this
palace. Until that hour Donovan Pasha desires peace. For is it not the
law, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Is not a market a place
to buy and sell?'"

Four times did Dicky make the Arab repeat the words after him, till they
ran like water from his tongue, and dismissed him upon the secret errand
with a handful of silver.

Immediately the Arab had gone, Dicky's face flushed with excitement, in
the reaction from his lately assumed composure. For five minutes he
walked up and down, using language scarcely printable, reviling Sowerby,
and setting his teeth in anger. But he suddenly composed himself, and,
sitting down, stared straight before him for a long time without stirring
a muscle. There was urgent need of action, but there was more urgent
need of his making no mistake, of his doing the one thing necessary, for
Sowerby could only be saved in one way, not many.

It was useless to ask the Khedive's intervention--Ismail dared not go
against Selamlik in this. Whatever was done must be done between
Selamlik Pasha, the tigerish libertine, and Richard Donovan, the little
man who, at the tail end of Ismail's reign, was helping him hold things
together against the black day of reckoning, "prepared for the devil and