The Great Game Read Online Free Page A

the right of the shop door displayed a teapot that might have been silver, a sackbut that was assuredly brass, and a violin case that might or might not contain a violin. Three brass balls no larger than olives set into the masonry above the window served as a device for the shop. A small sign tacked to the side of the door read: LEVI DAVOUD--MONEY LOANED ON OBJECTS OF WORTH.
     
                  Paul opened the shop door. The interior was lit by one oil lamp which swung from the ceiling. A counter with a barred window separated the clients of the establishment from the proprietor—or, in this case the proprietor's assistant: a small, swarthy lad with alert eyes who wore a dark brown caftan and looked as though he was attempting to grow a beard.
     
                  "Good afternoon, Joseph," Paul said cheerily, stamping his feet on the outer sill to dislodge the mud caked to his shoes before entering the shop and closing the door behind him. "Is the old man in?"
     
                  "It's hard to say, Herr Donzhof," the lad replied. "Sometimes he is, and sometimes he isn't. I'll go see."
     
                  Joseph retreated into the back of the shop leaving Paul to ponder over the array of items on the shelves behind the counter. Many were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string; anonymous bundles lying dormant, awaiting the return of their owners to redeem them and bring them back to life. But some were not wrapped, or were identifiable by their shape through the wrapping. Paul made out a set of carpenter's tools in a wooden box, a dressmaker's dummy, an artificial leg, a pair of lady's shoes with silver buckles, several table lamps, a brace of walking sticks, and an assortment of hats and caps. There were also, in the corner, a harp and a tuba.
     
                  "Ah, Herr Donzhof," the proprietor said, appearing in the back doorway and advancing toward the counter. Levi Davoud was a short, pear-shaped, elderly man with eyes deeply set in his round, wrinkled face, and a bulbous nose that seemed to ride on top of his carefully-trimmed white beard. Paul was accustomed to seeing the elderly moneylender in the shapeless gray housecoat he usually wore around the shop, but today he was dressed for the street, and a much finer street than the one outside his door. A gray silk four-in-hand scarf was tied precisely around his white wing collar and tucked neatly into a black Chesterfield overcoat, and he was carrying a pair of black kid gloves, an ebony cane, and a black silk top hat.
     
                  "Good afternoon, Herr Davoud," Paul said. "I commend you on a degree of elegance that I imagine is seldom seen within the sound of the Petruskirche bells. I assume that Petruskirche has bells, although come to think of it, I don't remember ever hearing them. Are you coming or going?"
     
                  "Oh, returning, I assure you, returning. I have just been about the tiresome business of having yet another young rapscallion twig of the nobility explain to me why he was willing to allow me to loan him a considerable sum of money." Davoud set the gloves, cane, and hat down and took his coat off; carefully fitting it onto a hanger, pulling out its shoulders and smoothing down the velvet collar before hanging it out of sight behind the back doorway. "Come," he said, opening the door in the counter, "come in the back and have with me a cup of black tea."
     
                  "Just the thing, Herr Davoud," Paul said, and followed the shopkeeper into a small room in the back. The lighting in this room came from an inverted V-shaped skylight with twelve panes of glass and a web of iron bars beneath to make sure nothing but the light came through.
     
                  "They were stolen," Davoud commented, settling into one of a pair of overstuffed armchairs. "Take off your coat and hat and hang them over there. Joseph, my boy, put