Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings — John Shaqi
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
Many of the representatives of these eager sections of humanity
walked on the Quai du Mont Blanc on this fine Sunday afternoon
and listened to the band, and buttonholed delegates and their
secretaries, and chatted, and spat. The Czecho-Slovakians spat
hardest, the Costa-Ricans loudest, the Unprotected Armenians most
frequently, and the Serb-Croat-Slovenes most accurately, but the
Assyrio-Chaldeans spat farthest. The Zionists did not walk on the
Quai. They were holding meetings together and drawing up hundreds
of petitions, so that the Assembly might receive at least one an
hour from to-morrow onwards. Zionists do these things thoroughly.
Motor-cars hummed to and fro between the hotels and the Secretariat,
and inside them one saw delegates. Flags flew and music played, and
the _jet d'eau_ sprang, an immense crystalline tree of life, a snowy
angel, up from the azure lake into the azure heavens.
Henry gave a little sigh of pleasure. He liked the scene.
"Will there be treats?" he asked his companion. "I like treats."
"Treats? Who for? The delegates get treats all right, if you mean
that."
"For us, I meant."
"Oh, yes, the correspondents get a free trip or a free feed now and
then too. I usually get out of them myself; official beanos bore me.
The town's very good to us; it wants the support of the press against
rival claimants, such as Brussels."
"I should enjoy a lake trip very much," said Henry, beginning to feel
that it was good to be there.
"Well, don't forget to hand in your address then, so that it gets on
the list."
Henry was damped. 24 Allée Petit Chat, Saint Gervais--it sounded
rotten, and would sound worse still to the Genevan syndics, who knew
just where it was and what, and were even now engaged in plans for
pulling down and rebuilding all the old wharfside quarter. No; he
could not hand in that address....
"I suppose you've got to crab the show, whatever it does, haven't
you," said the _Daily Sale_ man presently. "Now I'm out to pat it on
the back--this year. I like that better. It's dull being disagreeable
all the time; so obvious, too."
"My paper _is_ obvious," Henry owned gloomily. "Truth always is. You
can't get round that."
"Oh, well, come," the other journalist couldn't stand that--"it's a
bit thick for one of your lot to start talking about truth. The lies
you tell daily--they have ours beat to a frazzle. Why, you couldn't
give a straight account of a bus accident!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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