I saw him sit back in his chair and remain looking straight in front of him.
"Yes," he said thoughtfully, and he turned over the report to me, pointing to a passage. It was written some months before, at Melilla, on the African side of the Mediterranean, and it ran like this:
"Peiffer frequents the low houses and cafés, where he spends a good deal of money and sometimes gets drunk. When drunk he gets very arrogant, and has been known to boast that he has been three times in Bordeaux since the war began, and, thanks to his passports, can travel as easily as if the world were at peace. On such occasions he expresses the utmost contempt for neutral nations. I myself have heard him burst out: 'Wait until we have settled with our enemies. Then we will deal properly with the neutral nations. They shall explain to us on their knees. Meanwhile,' and he thumped the table, making the glasses rattle, 'let them keep quiet and hold their tongues. We shall do what we like in neutral countries.'"
I read the passage.
"Do you see that last sentence? 'We shall do what we like in neutral countries.' No man ever spoke the mind of his nation better than Peiffer did that night in a squalid café in Melilla."
Slingsby looked out over the harbour to where the sun was setting on the sierras. He would have given an arm to be sure of what Peiffer had set on foot behind those hills.
"I wonder," he said uneasily, and from that day he began to sleep badly.
Then came another and a most disquieting phase of the affair. Peiffer began to write letters to Slingsby. He was not comfortable. He was not being treated as an officer should be. He had no amusements, and his food was too plain. Moreover, there were Germans and Austrians up in the camp who turned up their noses at him because their birth was better than his.
"You see what these letters mean?" said Slingsby. "Peiffer wants to be sent away from the Rock."
"You are reading your own ideas into them," I replied.