Henry was getting to know Miss Wembley very well. It seemed to him as if he had always known her, as, indeed, he had. He knew the things she would say before she said them. He knew which were the subjects she would expand on, and which would land her, puzzled and uninterested, in inward non-comprehension and verbal assent. She was a nice girl, a jolly girl, an efficient girl, and a very pretty girl. She liked Henry, whom she thought amusing, shabby, and queer.
They began, of course, by talking of the fresh disappearances.
“We've got bets in the Secretariat on who will be the next,” she told him. “I've put my money on Branting. I don't know why, but I somehow feel he'll go soon. But some people say it'll be the S.G. himself.... Isn't it too awful for their wives, poor things? Poor little Madame Chang! They say she's being simply wonderful.”
“Wonderful,” repeated Henry. “That's what widows are, isn't it? But is it, I wonder, enough to make one wonderful that one's husband should disappear alive? You see, they may not be dead, these poor delegates; they may exist, hidden away somewhere.”
“Oh, dear, yes, I hope so. Isn't it all too weird? Have you any theories, Mr. Beechtree?”
Henry looked non-committal and said that doubtless every one in Geneva had their private suspicions (often, for that matter, made public), and that he was no exception. He then turned the conversation on to Wilbraham's father-in-law, who was staying so privately in Geneva, and they had much fruitful talk on this and other subjects.
[27]
The Assembly, having elected the committee, and listened to a long speech from a Persian prince about the horrors of modern warfare, and a poem of praise from an eminent Italian Swiss on the beauties of the poet Dante, whose birthday was approaching, broke up for lunch.
The committee (which was to be called Committee 9) was to meet at the Secretariat that afternoon and consider what steps should next be taken. It was a rather large committee, because nearly every one had been anxious to be on it. It consisted of delegates from France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Central Africa, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Albania, Serbia, Brazil, Chili, Bolivia, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Greece, Poland, Lithuania, and Haiti. Its sessions were to be in private, in spite of the strongly expressed contrary desire of Lord John Lester. The chairman was the delegate for Paraguay. It was expected that he would carefully and skilfully guide the lines on which the committee should work so that the regrettable suspicions which had accidentally fallen on certain Latin Americans should be diverted into other and more deserving channels.