In such a quandary the Chief Organizer and confidential friend, Ahmed,
upon whom the business already largely depended, and who was so
circumstanced that he could draw almost at will upon the balances,
imagined a most intelligent way of escaping from the difficulties that
would arise when the death of the principal was known.

He caused a quantity of hay, of straw, of dust and of other worthless
materials to be stuffed into a figure of canvas; this he wrapped round
with the usual clothes that Mahmoud's-Nephew had worn in the office, he
shrouded the face with the hood which his chief had commonly worn during
life, and having so dressed the lay figure and secretly buried the real
body, he admitted upon the morning after the death those who first had
business with his master.

He met them at the door with smiles and bows, saying: "You know,
gentlemen, that like most really successful men, my chief is as silent
as his decisions are rapid; he will listen to what you have to say, and
it will be a plain yes or no at the end of it."

These gentlemen came with a proposal to sell to the firm for the sum of
one million dinars a barren rock in the Indian Sea, which was not even
theirs, and on which indeed not one of them had ever set eyes. Their
claim to advance so original a proposal was that to their certain
knowledge two thousand of the wealthiest citizens of their town were
willing to buy the rock again at a profit from whoever should be its
possessor during the next few weeks in the fond hope of selling it once
again to provincials, clerics, widows, orphans, and in general the
uninstructed and the credulous--among whom had been industriously spread
the report that the rock in question consisted of one solid and flawless