Further Foolishness, Stephen Leacock [pdf ebook reader .TXT] 📗

"More than that further," went on the Prussian quite undisturbed, "you state hereby your fixed resolve, rather than give in, to cast yourself from the highest pinnacle of the topmost minaret of this palace."

"Oh, not the highest; don't make it the highest," moaned Abdul.

"Your purpose is fixed. Nothing can alter it. Unless the Allied Powers withdraw from their advance on Constantinople you swear that within one hour you will fill your mouth with mud and burn yourself alive."

"Just Allah!" cried the Sultan. "Does it say all that?"

"All that," said Von der Doppelbauch. "All that within an hour. It is a splendid defiance. The Kaiser himself has seen it and admired it. 'These,' he said, 'are the words of a man!'"

"Did he say that?" said Abdul, evidently flattered. "And is he too about to hurl himself off his minaret?"

"For the moment, no," replied Von der Doppelbauch sternly.

"Well, well," said Abdul, and to my surprise he began picking up the pen and making ready. "I suppose if I must sign it, I must." Then he marked the paper and sprinkled it with sand. "For one hour? Well, well," he murmured. "Von der Doppelbauch Pasha," he added with dignity, "you are permitted to withdraw. Commend me to your Imperial Master, my brother. Tell him that, when I am gone, he may have Constantinople, provided only"—and a certain slyness appeared in the Sultan's eye—"that he can get it. Farewell."

The Field-Marshal, majestic as ever, gathered up the manifesto, clicked his heels together and withdrew.

As the door closed behind him, I had expected the little Sultan to fall into hopeless collapse.

Not at all. On the contrary, a look of peculiar cheerfulness spread over his features.

He refilled his narghileh and began quietly smoking at it.

"Toomuch," he said, quite cheerfully, "I see there is no hope."

"Alas!" said the secretary.

"I have now," went on the Sultan, "apparently but sixty minutes in front of me. I had hoped that the intervention of the United States might have saved me. It has not. Instead of it, I meet my fate. Well, well, it is Kismet. I bow to it."

He smoked away quite cheerfully.

Presently he paused.

"Toomuch," he said, "kindly go and fetch me a sharp knife, double-edged if possible, but sharp, and a stout bowstring."

Up to this time I had remained a mere spectator of what had happened. But now I feared that I was on the brink of witnessing an awful tragedy.

"Good heavens, Abdul," I said, "what are you going to do?"

"Do? Why kill myself, of course," the Sultan answered, pausing for a moment in an interval of his cheerful smoking. "What else should I do? What else is there to do? I shall first stab myself in the stomach and then throttle myself with the bowstring. In half an hour I shall be in paradise. Toomuch, summon hither from the inner harem Fatima and Falloola; they shall sit beside me and sing to me at the last hour, for I love them well, and later they too shall voyage with me to paradise. See to it that they are both thrown a little later into the Bosphorus, for my heart yearns towards the two of them," and he added thoughtfully, "especially perhaps towards Fatima, but I have never quite made up my mind."

The Sultan sat back with a little gurgle of contentment, the rose water bubbling soothingly in the bowl of his pipe.

Then he turned to his secretary again.

"Toomuch," he said, "you will at the same time send a bowstring to Codfish Pasha, my Chief of War. It is our sign, you know," he added in explanation to me—"it gives Codfish leave to kill himself. And, Toomuch, send a bowstring also to Beefhash Pasha, my Vizier—good fellow, he will expect it—and to Macpherson Effendi, my financial adviser. Let them all have bowstrings."

"Stop, stop," I pleaded. "I don't understand."

"Why surely," said the little man, in evident astonishment, "it is plain enough. What would you do in Canada? When your ministers—as I think you call them—fail and no longer enjoy your support, do you not send them bowstrings?"

"Never," I said. "They go out of office, but—"

"And they do not disembowel themselves on their retirement? Have they not that privilege?"

"Never!" I said. "What an idea!"

"The ways of the infidel." said the little Sultan, calmly resuming his pipe, "are beyond the compass of the true intelligence of the Faithful. Yet I thought it was so even as here. I had read in your newspapers that after your last election your ministers were buried alive—buried under a landslide, was it not? We thought it—here in Turkey—a noble fate for them."

"They crawled out," I said.

"Ishmillah!" ejaculated Abdul. "But go, Toomuch. And listen, thou also—for in spite of all thou hast served me well—shalt have a bowstring."

"Oh, master, master," cried Toomuch, falling on his knees in gratitude and clutching the sole of Abdul's slipper. "It is too kind!"

"Nay, nay," said the Sultan. "Thou hast deserved it. And I will go further. This stranger, too, my governess, this professor, bring also for the professor a bowstring, and a two-bladed knife! All Canada shall rejoice to hear of it. The students shall leap up like young lambs at the honour that will be done. Bring the knife, Toomuch; bring the knife!"

"Abdul," I said, "Abdul, this is too much. I refuse. I am not fit. The honour is too great."

"Not so," said Abdul. "I am still Sultan. I insist upon it. For, listen, I have long penetrated your disguise and your kind design. I saw it from the first. You knew all and came to die with me. It was kindly meant. But you shall die no common death; yours shall be the honour of the double knife—let it be extra sharp, Toomuch—and the bowstring."

"Abdul," I urged, "it cannot be. You forget. I have an appointment to be thrown into the Bosphorus."

"The death of a dog! Never!" cried Abdul. "My will is still law. Toomuch, kill him on the spot. Hit him with the stool, throw the coffee at him—"

But at this moment there were heard loud cries and shouting as in tones of great gladness, in the outer hall of the palace, doors swinging to and fro and the sound of many running feet. One heard above all the call, "It has come! It has come!"

The Sultan looked up quickly.

"Toomuch," he said eagerly and anxiously, "quick, see what it is. Hurry! hurry! Haste! Do not stay on ceremony. Drink a cup of coffee, give me five cents—fifty cents, anything—and take leave and see what it is."