There was no date to the screed nor was it signed; yet the Count put it to his forehead and lips. He knew the writing as he knew his own hand.
"O Ali!" he said, his eyes aglow. "Hereafter thou shalt be Ali the Faithful, son of Abed-din the Faithful."
Ali replied with a rueful look: "It is well. What a time I have had waiting for you! Much I fear my bones will never void the damps blown into them by the winter winds, and I perched on the cross-sticks of a floating dallyan.... I have money for you, O Emir! and the keeping it has given me care more than enough to turn another man older than his mother. I will bring it to-morrow; after which I shall say twenty prayers to the Prophet—blessed be his name!—where now I say one."
"No, not to-morrow, Ali, but the day after when thou bringest me another supply of fish. There is danger in coming too often—and for that, thou must go now. Staying too long is dangerous as coming too often.... But tell me of our master. Is he indeed the Sultan of Sultans he promised to be? Is he well? Where is he? What is he doing?"
"Not so fast, O Emir, not so fast, I pray you! Better a double mouthful of stale porpoise fat, with a fin bone in it, than so many questions at once."
"Oh, but I have been so long in the slow-moving Christian world without news!"
"Verily, O Emir, Padishah Mahommed will be greatest of the Gabour eaters since Padishah Othman—that to your first. He is well. His bones have reached their utmost limit, but his soul keeps growing—that to your second. He holds himself at Adrianople. Men say he is building mosques. I say he is building cannon to shoot bullets big as his father's tomb; when they are fired, the faithful at Medina will hear the noise, and think it thunder—that to your third. And as to his doing—getting ready for war, meaning business for everybody, from the Shiek-ul-Islam to the thieving tax-farmers of Bagdad—to the Kislar-Jinn of Abad-on with them. He has the census finished, and now the Pachas go listing the able-bodied, of whom they have half a million, with as many more behind. They say the young master means to make a sandjak of unbelieving Europe."
"Enough, Ali!—the rest next time."
The Count went to the table, and from a secret drawer brought a package wrapped in leather, and sealed carefully.
"This for our Lord—exalted be his name! How wilt thou take it?"