I had never seen a more offensive personality, although at the first glance he did not arouse actual dislike.  Distaste for him dawned, and grew.  He was certainly not physically attractive, although the Syrian Arab costume made him picturesque.  The first thing I noticed was the fatness of his hands—­those of a giver of dishonest gifts.  When he shook hands you felt in some subtle way that he was sure your conscience was for sale, that he would purchase it for any reasonable figure, and that he believed he had plenty of money with which to buy you and all your relatives.

He was a little puffy under the eyes, had a firm mouth, rather thick lips, and his small black moustache was turned up like the Kaiser’s, which gave him a cockily self-assured appearance.  For the rest, he was a rather military-looking person, although his flowing robe partly concealed that; stockily rather than heavily built; and of rather more than middle height.  He wore one ring—­a sapphire of extraordinary brilliance, of which he was immensely proud.  When I noticed it he said at once that it had been given him by the late Sultan Abdul Hamid.

He spoke German from choice, so we conversed in German, which annoyed ben Nazir, who could not understand a word of it.  And from first to last throughout that interview, and subsequently to the point where Jimgrim out-maneuvered and out-played him, he relied on the German philosophy of self-assertion that teaches how to get and keep the upper hand by making yourself believe in your own super-intelligence and then speaking, acting, making plans in logical accord with that belief.  It works finely until somebody spoils the whole thing by pricking the super-intelligence bladder and letting out all the wind.

Although he spoke German, he was not by any means pro-German in his motives.  He was at pains to make that clear.  Evidently he had been pro-German once, until he saw the writing on the wall.  He was conscious of the need to offset past prejudices before suggesting his enormous ability along advanced lines.

“You come at an interesting time,” he said.  “You find us in transition.  Before the War, and almost until the end of it, most Arabs believed in the German destiny.  English gold commanded the allegiance of an Arab army, but every last man in that army was ready to follow the German standard at the proper time.  That only shows how ignorant these people are.  As soon as it became evident that the Arab destiny lies in the hands of Arabs themselves most of them immediately began to clamour for an American mandate, because that would give them temporary masters who could protect them, yet at the same time who would be too ignorant of real conditions to prevent secret preparations for a pan-Arabian revolt.  All very absurd, of course.”

He had no idea how absurd he himself appeared.  He launched into a tirade designed to make him seem a super-statesman in the eyes of a stranger who did not care what he was.  The more he talked himself into a delirium of self-esteem the less his character impressed me.  I even ran into the danger of under-estimating him because he liked himself so much.