FullReads

“I wonder if you can’t help us,” said the consul. “My friend here is the victim of a curious annoyance;” and he stated the case in language so sympathetic and decorous as to restore some small shreds of the colonel’s self-respect.

“Ah,” said their new acquaintance, who was mercifully not a man of humor, or too polite to seem so, “that’s another trick of those scamps of fiacre-drivers. He took you purposely to the wrong hotel, and was probably feed by the landlord for bringing you. But why should you make yourselves so much trouble? You know Colonel Kenton’s landlord had to send his name to the police as soon as he came, and you can get his address there at once.”

“Good-by!” said the consul very hastily, with a crestfallen air. “Come along, Kenton.”

“What did he send my name to the police for?” demanded the colonel, in the open air.

“Oh, it’s a form. They do it with all travellers. It’s merely to secure the imperial government against your machinations.”

“And do you mean to say you ought to have known,” cried the colonel, halting him, “that you could have found out where I was from the police at once, before we had walked all over this moral vineyard, and wasted half a precious lifetime?”

“Kenton,” contritely admitted the other, “I never happened to think of it.”

“Well, Davis, you’re a pretty consul!” That was all the colonel said, and though his friend was voluble in self-exculpation and condemnation, he did not answer him a word till they arrived at the police office. A few brief questions and replies between the commissary and the consul solved the long mystery, and Colonel Kenton had once more a hotel over his head. The commissary certified to the respectability of the place, but invited the colonel to prosecute the driver of the fiacre in behalf of the general public,–which seemed so right a thing that the colonel entered into it with zeal, and then suddenly relinquished it, remembering that he had not the rogue’s number, that he had not so much as looked at him, and that he knew no more what manner of man he was than his own image in a glass. Under the circumstances, the commissary admitted that it was impossible, and as to bringing the landlord to justice, nothing could be proved against him.

“Will you ask him,” said the colonel, “the outside price of a first-class assault and battery in Vienna?”

The consul put as much of this idea into German as the language would contain, which was enough to make the commissary laugh and shake his head warningly.

“It wouldn’t do, he says, Kenton; it isn’t the custom of the country.”

“Very well, then, I don’t see why we should occupy his time.” He gave his hand to the commissary, whom he would have liked to embrace, and then hurried forth again with the consul. “There is one little thing that worries me still,” he said. “I suppose Mrs. Kenton is simply crazy by this time.”

“Is she of a very–nervous–disposition?” faltered the consul.

“Nervous? Well, if you could witness the expression of her emotions in regard to mice, you wouldn’t ask that question, Davis.”

At this desolating reply the consul was mute for a moment. Then he ventured: “I’ve heard–or read, I don’t know which–that women have more real fortitude than men, and that they find a kind of moral support in an actual emergency that they wouldn’t find in–mice.”

“Pshaw!” answered the colonel. “You wait till you see Mrs. Kenton.”

“Look here, Kenton,” said the consul seriously, and stopping short. “I’ve been thinking that perhaps–I–I had better dine with you some other day. The fact is, the situation now seems so purely domestic that a third person, you know–“

“Come along!” cried the colonel. “I want you to help me out of this scrape. I’m going to leave that hotel as soon as I can put my things together, and you’ve got to browbeat the landlord for me while I go up and reassure my wife long enough to get her out of that den of thieves. What did you say the scoundrelly name was?”