“My paper was an early edition,” Bransome answered, “but it spoke of a sensational denouement within the next few hours. I should imagine that it is all over by now. At the same time it’s absurd how the Press give these things away. It seems that some fellow who was bicycling saw a man get in and out of poor Dicky’s taxi and is quite prepared to swear to him.”
“Has he not been rather a long time in coming forward with his evidence?” the Prince remarked. “I do not remember to have seen any mention of such a person in the papers before.”
“He watched so well,” Bransome answered, “and was so startled that he was knocked down and run over. The detective in charge of the case found him in a hospital.”
“These things always come out sooner or later,” the Prime Minister remarked. “As a matter of fact, I am inclined to think that our police wait too long before they make an arrest. They play with their victim so deliberately that sometimes he slips through their fingers. Very often, too, they let a man go who would give himself away from sheer fright if he felt the touch of a policeman upon his shoulder.”
“As a nation,” Bransome remarked, helping himself to the entree, “we handle life amongst ourselves with perpetual kid gloves. We are always afraid of molesting the liberty of the subject. A trifle more brutality sometimes would make for strength. We are like a dentist whose work suffers because he is afraid of hurting his patient.”
Somerfield was watching his fiancee curiously.
“Are you really very pale tonight, Penelope,” he asked, “or is it those red flowers which have drawn all the color from your cheeks?”
“I believe that I am pale,” Penelope answered. “I am always pale when I wear black and when people have disagreed with me. As a matter of fact, I am trying to make the Prince feel homesick. Tell me,” she asked him across the round table, “don’t you think that I remind you a little tonight of the women of your country?”
The Prince returned her gaze as though, indeed, something were passing between them of greater significance than that half-bantering question.
“Indeed,” he said, “I think that you do. You remind me of my country itself—of the things that wait for me across the ocean.”