“We had a friend of yours on board ship, Miss Thayer,” said Emory, speaking to his left-hand neighbor as they seated themselves.
“A friend of mine?” queried Inez. “I can’t think who it could be.”
“Ferdy De Peyster,” replied Emory.
Inez cast a quick glance at Helen. “Really?” she asked. “I thought he was going to spend the summer at Bar Harbor.”
“Changed his mind at the last moment,” he said. “Could not resist the charms of Italy. Do you know, Helen”—Emory addressed himself to his hostess—“De Peyster has developed a mania for art.”
Helen laughed. “No,” she replied, “that is news indeed. It is a side of Ferdy’s nature which even his best friends had not suspected. Is he coming to Florence?”
“Can’t say; but he is evidently planning to leave Rome. We left him at the Vatican, in the Pinacoteca, standing before Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration.’”
“With a Baedeker in his hand?” queried Jack.
“No, studying Cook’s Continental Time-table.”
“What a detective you would make, Mr. Emory,” suggested Mary Sinclair as the laughter subsided.