"Seal it up and send it--quick!" I ordered him.
He obeyed and Jeremy called the servant.
"Summon Francois," said the banker, and the servant disappeared again.
Francois must remain a mystery. He was insoluble. Dressed in a pair of
baggy Turkish pants, with a red sash round his middle, knotted loosely
over a woollen jersey that had wide horizontal black and yellow strips,
with a grey woollen shawl over the lot, and a new tarboosh a size or two
too small for him perched at an angle on his head, he stood shifting
from one bare foot to the other and moved a toothless gap in his lower
face in what was presumably a smile.
He had no nose that you could recognize, although there were two blow-
holes in place of nostrils with a hideous long scar above them. One ear
was missing. He had no eyebrows. But the remaining ear was pointed at
the top like a satyr's, and his little beady eyes were as black as a
bird's and inhumanly bright.
The banker spoke to him in the voice you would use to a rather spoilt
child when obedience was all-important, using Arabic with a few French
words thrown in.
"Ah, here is Francois. Good Francois! Francois, mon brave, here is a
letter, eh? You know where to take it--eh? Ha-ha! Francois knows,
doesn't he! Francois doesn't talk; he tells nobody; he's wise, is
Francois! He runs, eh? He runs through the rain and the night; and he
hides so that nobody can see him; and he delivers the letter; and
somebody gives Francois money and tobacco and a little rum; and
Francois comes running back to the nice little, dark little hole where
he sleeps.
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