"If he does it'll be in chains!" said Peaches. "You see, he shot a man at the depot—winged him as the train moved out. It was your friend of the black mustache whom you were visiting with last night!"
[VIII]
One of the most annoying things which the outbreak of the war of 1914 did was to completely ruin our tour of Europe.
We had planned to visit Belgium, where Mr. Pegg intended to launch some citrus project or other, and afterward make a tour of Germany. And, of course, that ungentlemanly, uncalled-for war entirely upset our plans. To say that it was an annoyance is to put it mildly. I was terribly provoked, especially as my collection of the flora of Europe was far from complete. I had been gathering specimens whenever opportunity afforded, pressing them, and pasting them in a blank book. Then I would write in the proper names, both Latin and popular, in a neat lettering of black ink picked out with red. It promised to be a most interesting souvenir of my trip and was intended as a gift for Euphemia. But the interruption of this small personal enterprise was, of course, only one of the many annoyances which the outbreak of the war occasioned.
It was terrible that Peaches should be cut off in the midst of her education, and terrible, too, that I should have the prospect of a return to Boston staring me in the face. Also Peaches needed diversion. Ever since the disappearance of the duke she had drooped like a—well like a eucalyptus tree, let us say, though she, who as a rule was so free in pouring out exact statements regarding her inmost emotions, was absolutely silent on this most interesting subject. I had fully expected that she would make a sort of confessor of me and postpone my nightly slumbers to the point of ultimate endurance upon every possible occasion, as she had during what I may call the chauffeur epoch, when she imagined herself in love with Richard. But from the day of the duke's disappearance she became singularly reticent about her emotions, and as is always the case with a woman who refuses to allow herself to talk, it made her quite ill, though she kept up and about and all that.
Mr. Pegg, Abby and myself consulted about what was the best course to take, and after failing utterly to elicit any information from the police regarding the crime, if any, of which our gallant Sandy was accused, we tried the government officials, the American consul, and even went so far as to drive to the homestead of the Monteventi, in hope of obtaining a clew as to what had caused this mysterious performance. But in no direction was any information to be gained.
The castle of the missing duke was closed—a desolate, half-ruined place it was—the villagers proved as dumb as the authorities, and we concluded that they were so for the same reason—to wit, because they knew nothing. If only some definite fact concerning Sandro could have been ascertained even though it had been to his detriment, Alicia's mind would have been given an opportunity at least of escaping the thought of him by a definite rejection. The terrible uncertainty of the cause of his action was what troubled her the most, I felt sure.
But having failed to gain any real information we had simply to conclude that either Sandro was mixed up in some private feud or that the police were just too reticent for anything. Foreign police are that way—not a bit like democratic America, where, Richard, the chauffeur, assured me, the police statements to the newspapers are the native criminals' most reliable source of information.