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.