The Toys of Peace | Page 9

an outbreak of cattle plague.
"And now tell me why you have come to see me," said Rhoda suddenly.
"You arouse not merely my curiosity but my business instincts. I hope
you've come about hats. I heard that you had come into a legacy the
other day, and, of course, it struck me that it would be a beautiful and
desirable thing for you to celebrate the event by buying brilliantly
expensive hats for all your sisters. They may not have said anything
about it, but I feel sure the same idea has occurred to them. Of course,
with Goodwood on us, I am rather rushed just now, but in my business
we're accustomed to that; we live in a series of rushes--like the infant
Moses."
"I didn't come about hats," said her visitor. "In fact, I don't think I really
came about anything. I was passing and I just thought I'd look in and
see you. Since I've been sitting talking to you, however, rather
important idea has occurred to me. If you'll forget Goodwood for a
moment and listen to me, I'll tell you what it is."
Some forty minutes later James Cushat-Prinkly returned to the bosom
of his family, bearing an important piece of news.
"I'm engaged to be married," he announced.
A rapturous outbreak of congratulation and self-applause broke out.
"Ah, we knew! We saw it coming! We foretold it weeks ago!"
"I'll bet you didn't," said Cushat-Prinkly. "If any one had told me at
lunch-time to-day that I was going to ask Rhoda Ellam to marry me and

that she was going to accept me I would have laughed at the idea."
The romantic suddenness of the affair in some measure compensated
James's women-folk for the ruthless negation of all their patient effort
and skilled diplomacy. It was rather trying to have to deflect their
enthusiasm at a moment's notice from Joan Sebastable to Rhoda Ellam;
but, after all, it was James's wife who was in question, and his tastes
had some claim to be considered.
On a September afternoon of the same year, after the honeymoon in
Minorca had ended, Cushat-Prinkly came into the drawing-room of his
new house in Granchester Square. Rhoda was seated at a low table,
behind a service of dainty porcelain and gleaming silver. There was a
pleasant tinkling note in her voice as she handed him a cup.
"You like it weaker than that, don't you? Shall I put some more hot
water to it? No?"

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CRISPINA UMBERLEIGH

In a first-class carriage of a train speeding Balkanward across the flat,
green Hungarian plain two Britons sat in friendly, fitful converse. They
had first foregathered in the cold grey dawn at the frontier line, where
the presiding eagle takes on an extra head and Teuton lands pass from
Hohenzollern to Habsburg keeping--and where a probing official beak
requires to delve in polite and perhaps perfunctory, but always tiresome,
manner into the baggage of sleep- hungry passengers. After a day's
break of their journey at Vienna the travellers had again foregathered at
the trainside and paid one another the compliment of settling
instinctively into the same carriage. The elder of the two had the
appearance and manner of a diplomat; in point of fact he was the
well-connected foster-brother of a wine business. The other was
certainly a journalist. Neither man was talkative and each was grateful
to the other for not being talkative. That is why from time to time they
talked.
One topic of conversation naturally thrust itself forward in front of all
others. In Vienna the previous day they had learned of the mysterious
vanishing of a world-famous picture from the walls of the Louvre.
"A dramatic disappearance of that sort is sure to produce a crop of
imitations," said the Journalist.

"It has had a lot of anticipations, for the matter of that," said the
Wine-brother.
"Oh, of course there have been thefts from the Louvre before."
"I was thinking of the spiriting away of human beings rather than
pictures. In particular I was thinking of the case of my aunt, Crispina
Umberleigh."
"I remember hearing something of the affair," said the Journalist, "but I
was away from England at the time. I never quite knew what was
supposed to have happened."
"You may hear what really happened if you will respect it as a
confidence," said the Wine Merchant. "In the first place I may say that
the disappearance of Mrs. Umberleigh was not regarded by the family
entirely as a bereavement. My uncle, Edward Umberleigh, was not by
any means a weak-kneed individual, in fact in the world of politics he
had to be reckoned with more or less as a strong man, but he was
unmistakably dominated by Crispina; indeed I