still to be reckoned
with. And they aren't so squeamish, either in novels or in life. Look at
what they have done in their 'sphere.' They have roads, they have
Cossacks, they have the Shah under their thumb. And whenever they choose
they shut the Baghdad train against your caravans--yours, with whom they
have an understanding! A famous understanding! You don't even understand
how to make the most of your own sphere. You have had the Karun in your
hands for three hundred years, and what have you done with it? Why, in
heaven's name, didn't you blast out that rock at Ahwaz long ago? Why
haven't you made a proper road to Isfahan? Why don't you build that
railroad to Khorremabad that you are always talking about, and finish it
before the Germans get to Baghdad? Ah! If they had been here in your
place you would have seen!"

"It strikes me," retorted Matthews, with less coolness than he had yet
shown, "that you are here already--from what the Father of the Swords
told me." And he looked straight at the man who had told him that an
Englishman couldn't call a spade a spade. But he saw anew how that man
could ignore an advantage of position.

Magin returned the look--frankly, humorously, quizzically. Then he said:

"You remind me, by the way, of a question I came to ask you. Would you
object to telling me what you are up to here?"

"What am I up to?" queried Matthews, in astonishment. The cheek of the
bounder was really beyond everything! "What do you mean?"

Magin smiled.

"I am not an Englishman. I mean what I say."

"No you're not!" Matthews threw back at him. "No Englishman would try to
pass himself off for a Brazilian."

Magin smiled again.

"Nor would a German jump too hastily at conclusions. If I told you I was
from Brazil, I spoke the truth. I was born there, as were many
Englishmen I know. That makes them very little less English, and it has
perhaps made me more German. Who knows? As a philosopher sitting with
you amidst the ruins of empires I am at least inclined to believe that
we take our mother country more seriously than you do yours! But to
return to our point: what are you doing here?"

"I'm attending to my business. Which seems to me more than you are
doing, Mr. Magin."

Matthews noticed, from the reverberation of the room, that his voice
must have been unnecessarily loud. He busied himself with the bowl of
his pipe. As for Magin, he got up and began walking to and fro, drawing
at his cigar. The re