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millionaire could not but impress the politicians as it had already impressed the financial world.
"He does not waste his breath in tub-thumping," said one, looking reverently at the sealed figure.
"No," another would reply, "they may ridicule our old-fashioned, honest, quiet Mohammedan country gentlemen, but for common sense I will back them against all the brilliant paradoxical young fellows of our day."
"They say he is very kind at heart and lovable," a third would then add, upon which a fourth would bear his testimony thus:
"Yes, and though he says nothing about it, his charitable gifts are enormous."
By the second meeting of the council the lay figure had achieved a reputation of so high a sort that the Caliph himself insisted upon making him a domestic adviser, one of the three who perpetually associated with the Commander of the Faithful and directed his policy. For the universal esteem in which the new councillor was held had affected that Prince very deeply.
Here there arose a crux from which there could be no escape, as one of the three chief councillors, Mahmoud's-Nephew, must speak at last and deliver judgments!
The Manager, first considering the whole business, and next adding up his private gains, which he had carefully laid out in estates of which the firm and its employ��s knew nothing, decided that he could afford to retire. What might happen to the general business after his withdrawal would not be his concern.
He first gave out, therefore, that the millionaire was taken exceedingly ill, and that his life was despaired of: later, within a few hours, that he was dead.
So far from attempting to allay the panic which ensued, Ahmed frankly admitted the worst.
With cries of despair and a confident appeal to the justice of Heaven against such intrigues, the honest fellow permitted the whole of the vast business to be wound up in favour of newcomers, who had not forgotten to reward him, and soothing as best he could the ruined crowds of small investors who thronged round him for help and advice, he retired under an assumed name to his highly profitable estates, which were situated in the most distant provinces of the known world.
As for Mahmoud's-Nephew, three theories arose about him which are still disputed to this day:
The first was that his magnificent brain with its equitable judgment and its power of strict secrecy, had designed plans too far advanced for his time, and that his bankruptcy was due to excess of wisdom.
The second theory would have it that by "going into politics" (as the phrase runs in Bagdad) he had dissipated his energies, neglected his business, and that the inevitable consequences had followed.
The third theory was far more reasonable. Mahmoud's-Nephew, according to this, had towards the end of his life lost judgment; his garrulous indecision within the last few days before his death was notorious: in the Caliph's council, as those who should best know were sure, one could hardly get a word in edgewise for his bombastic self-assurance; while in matters of business, to conduct a bargain with him was more like attending a public meeting than the prosecution of negotiations with a respectable banker.
In a word, it was generally agreed that Mahmoud's-Nephew's success had been bound up with his splendid silence, his fall, bankruptcy, and death, with a lesion of the brain which had disturbed this miracle of self-control.

The Inventor
I had a day free between two lectures in the south-west of England, and I spent it stopping at a town in which there was a large and very comfortable old posting-house or coaching-inn. I had meant to stay some few hours there and to take the last train out in the evening, and I had meant to spend those hours alone and resting; but this was not permitted me, for just as I had taken up the local paper, which was a humble, reasonable thing, empty of any passion and violence and very reposeful to read, a man came up and touched my left elbow sharply: a gesture not at all to my taste nor, I think, to that of anyone who is trying to read his paper.
I looked up and saw a man who must have been quite sixty years of age. He had on a soft, felt slouch hat, a very old and greenish black coat; he stooped and shuffled; he was clean-shaven, with long grey hair, and his eyes were astonishingly bright and piercing and set close together.
He said, "I beg your pardon."
I said, "Eh, what?"
He said again "I beg your pardon" in the tones of a man who almost commands, and having said this he put his hat on the table, dragged a chair quite close to mine, and pulled a folded bunch of foolscap sheets out of his pocket. His manner was that of a