"You don't know much about me, but I know plenty about you," he began,
closing one eye and nodding wisely. "I hadn't been here very long before
I found out who was the real brains of that outfit up at the palace."
"Really, you know, we are not supposed to discuss the merits of our
ruler," said Popova, fairly startled at the candid tone of the other. He
lifted one hand in timid deprecation.
"Of course you're not. That's why some one who is simply a figurehead
goes on taking all the credit for tricks turned by a smart fellow who is
working for him. Now, if you lived in the dear old land of ready money,
where the accident of birth doesn't give any man the right to sit on
somebody else's neck, you'd be a big gun. You'd have money and a pull
and probably, before you got through, you'd be investigated. Over here,
you are deliberately kept in the background. You are the Patsy."
"The what?"
"The squidge--that means the fellow who does all the worrying and gets
nothing out of it. Now, before you return to what you call the palace,
and which looks to me like the main building of the Allegheny Brick
Works, will you do me the honor of going into that cave of gloom, known
as the American bar, and hitting up just one small libation?"
"I am not sure that I catch your meaning," said Popova, who felt himself
somewhat smothered by rhetoric.
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