"I cannot say," I responded. "The last I saw of any of the detectives was a week ago. The man who called upon me then admitted that no clue had, so far, been obtained."
"Then all I have to say is that it's a public scandal!" Benjamin Keppel cried angrily. "The authorities here seem to entertain absolutely no regard for the personal safety of their visitors. It appears to me that in Nice year by year prices have gone up until hotel charges have become unbearable, and people are being driven away to Algiers and Cairo. And I don't blame them. During these past two years absolutely no regard has been paid by the Nice authorities to the comfort of the visitors who bring them their wherewithal to live. Look at the state of the streets this season! They're all up for new trams, new paving, new watermains and things, until they are absolutely impassable. Even the Promenade des Anglais has been up! Why they can't do it in summer, when there are no visitors here, is a mystery. Again, within the last eight or ten years the price of everything has doubled, while the sanitary defects have become a disgrace. Why, down at Beaumettes there were, until quite recently, houses which actually drained into a cave! And then they are surprised at an outbreak of typhoid! The whole thing's preposterous!"
"An English newspaper correspondent who had the courage to tell the truth about Nice was served with a notice threatening his expulsion from France!" observed Gerald. "A nice way to suppress facts!"
"Oh! that's the French way," observed Ulrica, with a laugh. "It is, however, certain that if Nice is to remain healthy and popular, there must be some very radical changes."
"If there are not, I shall sell this place," said the old millionaire decisively. "I shall take the newspaper correspondent's advice and pitch my quarters in Cairo, where English-speaking visitors are protected, properly treated, and have their comfort looked after."
"Why not try San Remo?" I suggested.
"San Remo!" he cried, with an air of disgust. "Why, it's the most snobbish place on the whole Riviera. The persons who have villas there are mostly those whom we taboo in society at home. One interesting person has had the audacity to name his villa after a royal palace. It's like a fellow putting up 'Buckingham Palace' upon his ten-roomed house at Streatham Hill. No, Miss Rosselli, save me from San Remo! The hotels there are ruinous, and mostly of the fourth class, while the tradespeople are as rapacious a set of sharks as can be found outside Genoa. And the visitors are of that angular, sailor-hatted type of tea and lawn-tennis Englishwoman who talks largely at home of what she calls 'wintering abroad,' and hopes by reason of a six-weeks' stay in a cheap pension, shivering over an impossible fire, to improve her social status on her return to her own local surroundings. San Remo, dull, dear, and dreary, has ever been a ghastly failure, and ever will be, as long as it is frequented by its present clientele of sharks and spongers. What the newspaper correspondent said about Nice was the truth—the whole truth," he went on. "I know Nice as well as most people, and I bear out every charge put forward. The Riviera has declined terribly these past five years. Why, the people here actually hissed the Union Jack at the last Battle of Flowers!"
"Disgraceful!" said Ulrica, rather amused at the old fellow's warmth. "If Nice declines in the popular favour, then the Niçois have only themselves to blame."
"Exactly. Foreigners are looked upon here as necessary evils, while in Italy, except on the Riviera, they are welcomed. I built this place and spent a fairish sum upon it, but if things don't improve, I'll sell it at auction and cart my traps down to Sicily, or over to Cairo. Upon that I'm determined."
"The guv'nor's disgusted," Gerald laughed across to me. "He's taken like this sometimes."