"Human nature is a curious business," went on the Count. "There are several points at which it is vulnerable. I have made a special point of studying human nature, and this I have seen."
"I don't quite follow you."
"I don't speak in riddles, my friend. Take a strong character like Faversham, and consider it. What is likely to appeal to it? As I understand the case, there are three main channels of appeal. First, money, and all that money means. Next there is ambition, greed for power, place, position, dominance. Then there is the eternal thing—the Senses. Drink, gluttony, drugs, women. Generally any one of these things will master a man, but bring them altogether and it is certain he will succumb."
"Yes, yes, I see."
"Money, and all that money brings, is not enough in Faversham's case. That I know. But he is intensely ambitious—and—and he is young."
"That is why you told me to introduce him to Olga?"
"A woman can make a man do what, under ordinary circumstances, he would scorn to do. If you advocated Bolshevism to him, even although you convinced him that he could be Lenin and Trotsky rolled into one, and that he could carry the Democracy of Britain with him, he would laugh at you. I saw that yesterday after your conversation with him. He was attracted for an hour, but I saw that he laughed at your proposals. That was why I told you to let him see and hear Olga. Now, tell me of their meeting."
Mr. Brown described in correct detail Dick's experiences in the East of London.
"Never did I believe a woman could be such a siren," Mr. Brown concluded. "She charmed, she magnetised, she fascinated."
"Is he in love with her?" asked the Count.