Daniel Lane was a philosopher by inclination and by education, and his great common sense was the definite consequence of careful reasoning.
He believed that Right was an unconquerable force which needed no display of manners or sounding of trumpets to signal its movement; and so long as he did not offend against the laws formulated by his philosophy, he did not look for difficulties or defeat.
Nor was he a man who could be terrorized by any threats; and though Lord Blair had warned him that assassination was a likely end to a political career in Cairo, he was not in the slightest degree troubled by the thought. Very reluctantly he consented to profit by the activities of the Secret Service; and he determined to dispense with their aid as soon as he had made himself acquainted with the ramifications of native intrigue.
He began his work at the Residency, therefore, without trepidation; and on the first morning of his official employment he inaugurated a procedure which before nightfall was the talk of many in the native quarter.
In a secluded corner of the garden, at the end of a short terrace at the edge of the Nile, there was a luxuriant group of palms, in the shade of which stood a marble bench of Arabic design, built in a half-circle upon a base of Damascus tiles. A mass of shrubs and prolific rose bushes shut it off from the main grounds; while from passing boats it was screened by a low parapet covered by a wild tangle of flowering creepers. This sheltered and peaceful alcove was promptly appropriated by Daniel, and in this setting he made his appearance in the political life of Cairo.
His first visitor was a wealthy, silk-robed land-owner from Upper Egypt, who desired to lay certain complaints before the British authorities, in regard to the hostile actions of a native inspector of Irrigation. The man had been shown into the waiting-room in the Residency, where he had been filled with anxiety by the ticking of the typewriters in the adjoining room, the constant ringing of telephone bells, and the hurried passage to and fro of clerks and liveried servants. He had wondered whether he knew sufficient English to make himself understood without the aid of an interpreter, and whether, if the interpreter’s services were required, he would have to give him very handsome _backshish_ to render his tongue persuasive.