"It is ever so," said one of them, "you may ever know the greatest men
by their silence."
"You are right," said another, "he is not one to be easily deceived."
The manager in a moment or two rejoined them at the door. "Gentlemen,"
he said, smiling, "my chief has heard your arguments and has expressed
his assent to your conditions."
They went out, delighted at the success of their mission, and
congratulated Ahmed upon the financier's genius.
"He does not," said the manager, laughing in hearty agreement, "bestow
himself as a present upon all and sundry. Nor is he often caught
indulging in short bouts of sleep, nor are flies diabolically left to
repose undisturbed upon his features--but you must excuse me, I hear the
Holy Men," and indeed from the inner room came a noise of speechifying
in that doleful sing-song which is associated in Bagdad with the
practice of religion.
The gentlemen who had thus had the luck to interview Mahmoud's-Nephew
with such success in the matter of the Diamond Island, soon spread about
the news, and confirmed their fellow-citizens in the certitude that a
great financier is neither talkative nor vivacious. "Still waters run
deep," they said, and all those to whom they said it nodded in a wise
acquiescence. Nor had the Manager the least difficulty in receiving one
set of customers after another and in negotiating within three weeks an
infinite amount of business, all of which confirmed those who had the
pleasure of an audience with the stuffed dummy that great fortunes were
made and retained by reticence and a contempt for convivial weakness.
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