What vision was this? Might I aspire even to displace mine ancient enemy, in all the splendor of two close rows of bright, brass buttons, and pace majestically back and forth with the sang-froid of a lion tamer, above the common horde I had so lately quitted? What folly to keep silent concerning those acquirements that especially fitted me to serve a cosmopolitan clientèle, while fickle fortune was holding forth this golden prize! I broke in upon the manager’s brown study with a deluge of German. He opened wide his eyes. I addressed him in French. He sputtered with astonishment. I continued in Italian. He waved his hands above his head like a swimmer about to go down for the third time. I added a savoring of Spanish and Arabic for good measure, and he clutched weakly at a hotel pillar.
Gradually, strength returned to his trembling limbs. He rubbed his astonished gorge with a ham-like hand and dislodged an imprisoned shriek:—“Aber, mein lieber Kerl! Speaking all those langvages and out of a job—and in rhags! Why—you—you—you must haf been up to some crhooked business, yes?” He glanced fearfully about him at the silver ornaments of the office. “I—I—I am very sorry, we haf not now a single vacancy. But—but you vill not haf the least trouble—mit so viel’ Sprachen—in getting a position, not the slightest! I gif you a note—to Cook and Son.”
I wandered sadly away across the city and stumbled upon the American legation. Long battle won me admittance to the office of the secretary. Beyond that I could not force my way. The secretary heard my case, and, eager to be off to some afternoon function, thrust an official sheet into his typewriter and set forth in a “to-whom-it-may-concern” the half-dozen trades I mentioned; and several others to which I had never aspired. A second sheet he ruined with a score of addresses, and bade me be gone. If there was any corner of Cairo from Heliopolis to Masr el Attika which I had not already visited, these documents soon repaired the oversight. Two days the new task required, and it brought no reward, save one. The head of the Egyptian railway system promised me a pass to the coast when I chose to leave the country. I did not choose at once, and, returning on the third day to the legation, fought my way into the sanctum of the consul-general himself.
“If you are looking for work of a specific character,” said that gentleman, “I can do no more than has already been done—give you more addresses. If you are merely looking for work, I can give you employment at once.”
I pleaded indifference to qualifying adjectives.
The consul chose a card from his case, turned it over, and wrote on the back:—“Tom;—Let Franck do it.”
“Take this,” he said, “to my residence; it is opposite that of Lord Cromer, near the Nile, and give it to my butler.”
“Tom,” the commander-in-chief of the servant body of a vast establishment, proved to be a young American of the pleasantest type. I came upon him dancing blindly around the ballroom of Mr. Morgan’s residence, and shouting himself hoarse with the Arabic variation of “Get a move on!” The consul, it transpired, was to give a dinner, with dancing, to the lights of society wintering in the city. In the two days that remained before the eventful evening the ballroom floor must be properly waxed. Twelve native workmen, lured thither by the extraordinary wage of twenty-five cents a day, had been holding down the aforementioned floor since early morning. About them was spread powdered wax. In their hands were long bottles. Above them towered the dancing butler.
“Put some strength into it,” he bellowed, by way of variation, as I stepped across the room towards him. For the three succeeding strokes, the dozen bottles, moving in unison, to the chant of a thirteenth “workman” who had been hired to squat in a far corner and furnish vocal inspiration, nearly crushed the powdered wax under them. But this unseemly display of energy was of short duration.
I delivered the cabalistic message. The Arabs bounded half across the room at sound of the shriek emitted by its addressee:—“I’ll fire ’em!” bellowed Tom. “I’ll fire ’em now. An American? I’m delighted, old man! Get on the job while I kick these niggers down the stairs. Had any experience at this game?”