Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular HappeningsMacaulay, Rose
General
Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings
Macaulay, Rose
Detective and mystery stories; Geneva (Switzerland) -- Fiction
Anyhow, thought Henry, anyhow delegates became News the moment they
disappeared. If you do wrong you are News, and if you have a bad
accident, you are News, but if you mysteriously disappear, you are
doubly and trebly News. To be News once in one's life--that is
something for a man. Though sometimes it comes too late to be
enjoyed.
36
In and out of the maze of ancient streets that are Old Geneva, to and
fro along the alleys that lead through balconied, leaning houses, up
and down obscure and sudden flights of stone steps, Henry wandered
under the September moon. All day he had, with the help of Charles
Wilbraham's unwitting secretary, tracked Charles Wilbraham. He knew
how Charles had begun the morning by dictating proud and ponderous
documents in his proud and ponderous voice, and talking to people who
came in and out of his room; how he had then gone to the Assembly Hall
and chatted in the lobby to every one of sufficient importance to be
worth his while, including ex-Cardinal Franchi, who had of late been
making friends with him, and with whom he had dined last night at the
Château Léman; how then Charles had lunched with two Russians, a
Greek, and a Pole, and Sir John Levis, his father-in-law, at the Café
du Nord, hatching Henry did not know what (for the Nord was much too
expensive for him) of anti-League mischief and crime; how after lunch
Charles had attended the meetings of the sub-committees on the
Disappearance of Delegates, going from one to another looking
business-like and smug and as if he were at strictly private
meetings, as indeed he was. Then up to his room for his tea (Charles
never missed this meal) and down again to see how Sub-Committee 5
("Consideration of Various Suspicions based on Reason and Common
Sense") was getting on, and then up again to do some more work. (For
there was this about Charles, as even Henry had to admit--he worked
hard. Ambition, the last infirmity of noble minds, offensive and
irritating quality as it is, has at least this one good fruit.) Then
Charles had been to a large dinner given by the Canadian delegation to
members of the Secretariat, and had made a facetious speech; and now,
at eleven-thirty, he was walking about the old city, followed at some
distance by Henry Beechtree.
Charles was not alone. He had with him M. Kratzky from Russia, Sir
John Levis, and a small, quiet Calvinist minister, whom Henry had
lately seen about Geneva.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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