“I’m going to ask for your help,” he said, pretending he didn’t know he was blushing. “I’m going to tell you the whole foolish thing. If you laugh, I’ll—You won’t laugh, will you?”
“If it’s funny I probably will, but that needn’t keep me from helping you.”
“Yes, do laugh! It’s silly! You ought to laugh!” He took a deep breath. “Did you ever—did you ever think you’d like to be a”—he stopped, looked at me with a desperate sort of shyness, pulled himself together, and almost shouted the last word—“king?”
“Maybe. I’ve thought of a lot of things I’d like to be, and that might be one of ’em.”
“I met Mahmoud at an embassy ball in Constantinople,” he dashed into the story, dropping his words quickly as if glad to get rid of them. “He was President Semich’s secretary. We got quite friendly, though I wasn’t especially fond of him. He persuaded me to come here with him, and introduced me to Colonel Einarson. Then they—there’s really no doubt that the country is wretchedly governed. I wouldn’t have gone into it if that hadn’t been so.
“A revolution was being prepared. The man who was to lead it had just died. It was handicapped, too, by a lack of money. Believe this—it wasn’t all vanity that made me go into it. I believed—I still believe—that it would have been—will be—for the good of the country. The offer they made me was that if I would finance the revolution I could be—could be king.
“Now wait! The Lord knows it’s bad enough, but don’t think it sillier than it is. The money I have would go a long way in this small, impoverished country. Then, with an American ruler, it would be easier—it ought to be—for the country to borrow in America or