The Great Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

word—"more interesting. You allow those you deal with to assume things about you—unspoken things—that they believe they have discovered on their own. But these things, I believe, are not so."
     
                  Paul leaned back in his chair, his eyes wide. "Really?" he drawled. "What sort of things?"
     
                  Davoud patted the air with his hand in a calming gesture. "Do not be alarmed. I have no desire to give you away. Besides, I would have no idea to whom to give you or what they would want with you. I have not discovered who you are, merely who you are not."
     
                  "Do go on!"
     
                  Davoud laced his hands together over his belly and rested his chin on his thumbs. "What I know about you is little," he said contemplatively. "You are a good conversationalist, highly intelligent, well-educated, gem ü tlich, and generally agreeable."
     
                  "How can I deny any of it?" Paul asked, smiling.
     
                  "You are also of the upper class, a fact which you do your best to disguise, but which comes through in your air of natural superiority and your complete ease in dealing with servants. I have noticed that only born aristocrats treat servants completely naturally; either as equals, as children, or as furniture according to their nature. The middle classes treat their servants with arrogance or suspicion." He peered at Paul, who remained silent.
     
                  "Also your German, while excellent, is not native. There is something indefinably foreign that lingers about it. Most people would not notice, I grant you, but the accent is nonetheless there."
     
                  "I went to school in Italy and England," Paul offered.
     
                  "Perhaps. Now let us look at our—what shall I say?—business relationship. You approached me last May—"
     
                  "Was it that long ago?"
     
                  "I keep a diary. May twelfth of last year it was. You were interested in the names of my clients—"
     
                  "The politically or socially important, I believe I said. "
     
                  " You did. And military officers of staff rank and above. "
     
                  " Indeed."
     
                  "And you declined to tell me what you intended to do with the information, but you did assure me that my name would never be disclosed."
     
                  "Just so."
     
                  "I thought you were some sort of high-class criminal. "
     
                  " Is that so? You never told me. "
     
                  " It would have been impolite."
     
                  "Ah! But what would I—if I were a crook—want with the names of people who need your services? They would obviously have little to steal, having pledged everything of value to you."
     
                  "But if you were a clever crook, and even at the time I could see you were clever, you might wish to use some distressed member of upper-class society as entree into the houses of the rich. Once there—"
     
                  "How clever of me," Paul commented. "But you didn't," Davoud continued. "Ah!"
     
                  "Or then again you might offer to advance large sums of money to some of these wastrels against their future inheritance. And then, after a discreet length of time, a carefully arranged fatal accident to the relative with the money would bring a nice profit to you."
     
                  "Why Herr Davoud, you have a criminal mind!"
     
                  "I do, I confess it. I came up with a total of, I believe it was, twelve different schemes that you might have been engaged in. And I find that, as far as I can tell, you are pursuing none of them." Davoud wiggled an accusatory