The stealthy air of enjoyment that was hovering about Coverdale's rubicund visage seemed to deepen.
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" he said, with a cheerful puff, "but it seems it is not quite so easy as you'd suppose."
I confessed to surprise.
"You see, Arbuthnot, even in a country like ours, kings are entitled to a measure of respect. The reigning family of Illyria—under the favour of our distinguished friend"—the Chief Constable bowed to Fitz with a solemn unction that to my mind was indescribably comic—"has ties of blood with nearly all the royal houses of Europe; the Illyrian Embassy is by no means a negligible quantity at the Court of Saint James, for if Illyria is not very large it is devilish well connected; and again, as the Commissioner assures me, an embassy is sacred earth which lies outside his jurisdiction."
"He seems to have come up against rather a tough proposition."
"He is the first to admit it. Here we have a flagrant outrage committed upon the personal property of a law-abiding Englishman, under his own vine and fig-tree, in his own little county; the perpetrators of the outrage sit unconcerned in Portland Place; yet there seems to be no machinery in this admirably governed and highly constitutional island which can redress this flagrant hardship."
"But surely, Coverdale, a way can be found?"
"The Commissioner declined point-blank to undertake anything on his own responsibility. Accordingly we went to the Foreign Office and had an interview with an Official. The Official didn't seem to know what the practice of the Office was in such cases, for the simple reason that it was the first time that the Office appeared to have acquired any practice in them. But upon one point he was perfectly clear. It was that the Commissioner would do well to return without delay to his fingermarks and his photographs of notorious criminals, and contrive to forget that "L'Affaire Fitz" had been brought to his notice."
"But that is absurd."
"That is how the matter stands at all events," said Coverdale with an air of detachment.