“Not a doubt of it.”
“You see, beforehand it would strike one as the simplest thing in the world to locate a woman like your sister-in-law. But this case is peculiar. It’s going on four years that nobody has heard from her. Clear back in January, 1881, she was somewhere in Vienna. But since then she’s had the leisure to travel around the world a dozen times. She may be in Australia, California, Brazil—or not a mile away from us, here in New York. She may have changed her name. She may have married again. She may have died.—The point I’m driving at is that you mustn’t attribute it to a lack of diligence on my part, if we shouldn’t obtain any satisfactory results for a long while.”
“Oh, certainly not, certainly not,” protested Peixada, making the words very large, and waving his hand deprecatingly. “I’m a man of common sense, a business man. I don’t need to be told that it’s going to be slow work. I knew that. Otherwise I shouldn’t have hired you. I could have managed it by myself, except that I hadn’t the time to spare.”
“Well, then,” said Arthur, undismayed by Peixada’s frankness, “my idea of the tactics to be pursued is to begin with Vienna, January, ’81, and proceed inch by inch down to the present time. There are two methods of doing this.”
“Which are——?”
“One is to enlist the services of the United States consuls. I can write to Vienna, to our consul, and ask him to find out where Mrs. Peixada went when she left there; then to the consul at the next place—and so on to the end. But this method is cumbrous and uncertain. The trail is liable to be lost at any point. At the best, it would take a long, long time. Besides, the consuls would expect a large remuneration.”
“Well, the other method?”
“I propose it reluctantly. It is one which, so far as my personal inclinations are concerned, I should prefer not to take. I—I might myself go to Vienna and conduct the investigation on the spot.”
“Hum,” reflected Peixada.—After a pause, “That would be still more expensive,” he said.
“Perhaps.”