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"Here, here," interrupted the Sultan impatiently, "cut all that stuff out, please. That ancient courtesy business won't do, not if this country is to reconstruct itself and come abreast of the great modern democracies. Say to me simply 'What's the trouble?" Toomuch bowed, and Abdul continued. "Look in your tablets and see how much our public debt amounts to in American dollars."
Fortune spun himself with relief to his desk and applied his lips to a flexible speaking tube. "Yes?" He dodged the tube to his ear, then to his lips again. "Beg Canon Toomuch to step up to my room." He laid down the tube. Sabre roused himself and stood up abruptly. "Ah, well! All right, sir." He moved towards his door. "Sabre," inquired Mr. Fortune, "you get on well with Twyning, I trust?"
"I've reconstructed him a little, as you see." "The Peace of Allah be upon thine head," said Toomuch Koffi to the Sultan, commencing a deep salaam. "What wish sits behind thy forehead that thou shouldst ring the bell for this humble creature of clay to come into the sunlight of thy presence? Tell me, O Lord, if perchance "
"Toomuch," he said, "take our inquisitive friend out into the town; take him to the Bosphorous; take him to the island where the dogs are; take him anywhere." He paused to whisper a few instructions into the ear of the Secretary. "You understand," he said, "well, take him. As for me," he gave a great yawn as he shuffled away, "I am about to withdraw into my Inner Harem. Goodbye.
"Look on the tablets, Toomuch, and see." The aged Secretary bowed, turned over the leaves of his "tablets," which I now perceived on a closer view to be merely an American ten cent memorandum book. Then he read: "The following, O all highest, still work the beggars, the poets, the missionaries, the Salvation Army, and the instructors of the Youths of Light in the American Presbyterian College."
Here we are, bankrupt pass me the champagne, Toomuch, and sit down with us the very first nation of the lot. It's a great feather in the cap of our financiers. It gives us a splendid start for the new era of reconstruction that we are beginning on. As you perhaps have heard we are all hugely busy about it.
Are you coming into the New League of Nations?" The Sultan shook his head. "No," he said, "we're not coming in. We are starting a new league of our own." "And who are in it?" "Ourselves, and the Armenians and let me see the Irish, are they not, Toomuch and the Bulgarians are there any others, Toomuch?" "There is talk," said the Secretary "of the Yugo-Hebrovians and the Scaroovians "
"But, dear me, Abdul," I exclaimed, "surely this situation is desperate? What can your nation subsist on in such a situation?" "Pooh, pooh," said the Sultan. "The interest on our debt alone is two billion a year. Everybody in Turkey, great or small, holds bonds to some extent. At the worst they can all live fairly well on the interest. This is finance, is it not, Toomuch Koffi?"
I mean since you spoke of it." Mr. Fortune tugged strongly at his watch by its gold chain and looked at the watch rather as though he expected to see the extent of the good time there recorded. He forced it back with both hands rather as though it had failed of this duty and was being crammed away in disgrace. "I am expecting Canon Toomuch."
He touched a bell and at the sound of it there came shuffling into the room my venerable old acquaintance Toomuch Koffi, the Royal Secretary. But to my surprise he no longer wore his patriarchal beard, his flowing robe and his girdle. He was clean shaven and close cropped and dressed in a short jacket like an American bell boy. "You remember Toomuch, I think," said Abdul.
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