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All such visions vanished instantly at the first sight of the official's face, as he met me in the door-way; no good tidings for anyone were written there; I knew that some grave disaster had occurred, before my eye lighted on the table, strewn with papers, letters, and bank-notes all dabbled with the dull, red blots that marked the hand of Cain.
He saw the slip of a figure in black talking to the stationmaster, and it was hardly necessary to hear that official's last words in order to divine what had happened. "Weel, miss," he overheard the stationmaster say, "I'm sorry ye're disappointed, but it's no me that has stoppit the train. It's aff for the winter. If ye turn to the left ye'll fin' the hotel."
Governors of provinces who retain their position in consequence of having sent satisfactory tribute to the Shah, and ruled with at least a semblance of justice, get presents of new robes on New Year's Day, and those who have been unfortunate enough to lose the royal favor get removed: New Year's Day brings either sorrow or rejoicing to every Persian official's house.
Then came the official's voice again, in sharp and peremptory command. "Down, slave!" he cried. "Make obeisance to your sovereign!" I looked up, attracted by the tone of the man's voice, to see a single, straight, slim figure standing erect in the center of the line of prostrate girls, her arms folded across her breast and little chin in the air.
"No one nearer than the British Embassy, except to be sure " he suddenly thought of Anatole, who still waited outside, and who came in at the summons of his friend. "Oh, you are with Monsieur?" The official's face brightened the moment he saw Anatole. "It is all right, then. Give the gentleman the certificate.
The latter came to time sulkily. "I didn't say they couldn't." Mackenzie drifted from this unfriendly atmosphere to the courthouse. He found Sheriff Bolt in his office. It was that official's busy day, but he found time not only to see the owner of the Fiddleback, but to press upon him cordially an invitation to sit down and smoke.
This is a summons.... If any one does not appear in court who is thus ordered, criminal warrants of arrest are issued against him." There is much more of this style in the letter which is worth producing, but I have given enough to illustrate the writer's meaning. Let me turn for a while to this official's record during Martial Law.
You can afford to give me back 10 per cent., can't you?" The official's face hardened. He looked a man who could be obdurate as well as benevolent. "I regret," he replied in English, "that it is impossible to give any such sum. Nothing like it has ever been granted, not even to those who have lost great fortunes. If the Casino made such presents it would cease to exist.
No disclosures damaging to a harassed autocracy, complete fidelity to the secrets of the miserable arcana imperii deposited in his patriotic breast, a display of bureaucratic stoicism in a Russian official's ineradicable, almost sublime contempt for truth; stoicism of silence understood only by the very few of the initiated, and not without a certain cynical grandeur of self-sacrifice on the part of a sybarite.
Slowly, and with his eyes still on the official's smiling face, he edged his chair away from it, an inch at a time. His progress was slow enough not to attract Quiroz's attention. "Then," asked the governor slowly, "you refuse, señor?" "Yo'-all are a fine guessah, sah!" snapped the Texan, alert as a steel spring. The governor moved his knee.
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