G. A. Birmingham

“ The Prime Minister and the Commander of the Forces and the Admiral arrived at Salissa one day in the Navy. That was the end of Otto.”
“I hope,” said Gorman, “that the inhabitants of Salissa aren’t a bloodthirsty lot. I wouldn’t like to think of Miss Daisy being murdered. Besides, there’d be complications. The assassination of an odd prince doesn’t much matter to any one. But an American millionaire! The sudden death of a man like Donovan would mean a panic in Wall Street, and there’d have to be a fuss.” ”

“ He has a weak heart and has come over to Europe for rest and quiet. He won’t want to be bothered with the politics and revolutions and complications which will be sure to arise in a large tract of land like Megalia.”
“A revolution,” said the King, “arises there regularly. A revolution is biennial in Megalia.”
“In a really small island,” said Gorman, “that would not happen. A man like Donovan would feed the inhabitants until they got too fat for revolutions. Now the question is, do you own an island of that kind?”
“There is,” said the King, “Salissa. There is certainly Salissa. ”

“ That she cannot have. We are at a dying—no, a dead lock.”
“Somehow,” said Madame, “we must have the money. If that girl, that miss, who is more imbecile than all other jeunes filles—if she obtains that rope of pearls from Goldsturmer, those pearls which ought to be mine, I shall go mad and take poison, very terrible poison, and die in front of your eyes, Konrad.”
With a view to showing how mad she could go if she tried, she threw her brandy glass on the floor and hacked at it with the heel of her shoe. The carpets in Beaufort’s hotel have the softest and deepest pile of any carpets in Europe. ”