"No, not strained, ze Turkish coffee," he cried eagerly; "eet has ze grounds."
"So have I," I told him; "we will call it the Macedonian coffee. It is you who insisted in obtruding these international relations on my simple lunch, and I mean to do the thing thoroughly. Better a dish of Croat Serbs where love is than a bifteck Petrograd—Never mind, go and get the thing."
When he returned with it I fell to, but my thoughts remained with the waiter. What a man! With his dispassionate judgment, his calm sane outlook on men and affairs, shaken a little perhaps in 1914, but since then undisturbed, was he not cut out above all others to settle the vexed frontier lines of Europe? I wondered whether Lord Robert Cecil might not possibly make use of him. I was tempted to try him still further.
"Have you ever heard of Mr. J.M. Keynes?" I asked him when he brought me the Bessarabian coffee.
"Mr. Keynes I not know. He not come here, I zink."
"Or the Treaty of London?"
"I vill ask ze manager."
"Or President Wilson?"
A brilliant smile of illumination lit up his features.
"American, is he not?" he said. "Ver reech, ze Americans."