listened; and he came to the conclusion that either there
was a quite incredible amount of stupidity about the Twist party, or
that there was something queer.

What he didn't know, and what nobody knew, was that the house being got
ready with such haste was to be an inn. He, like the rest of the world,
took the newspapers _ventre-a-terre_ theory of the house for granted,
and it was only the expectation of the arrival of that respectable lady,
the widowed Mrs. Twist, which kept the suspicions a little damped down.
They smouldered, hesitating, beneath this expectation; for Teapot
Twist's family life had been voluminously described in the entire
American press when first his invention caught on, and it was known to
be pure. There had been snapshots of the home at Clark where he had been
born, of the home at Clark (west aspect) where he would die--Mr. Twist
read with mild surprise that his liveliest wish was to die in the old
home--of the corner in the Clark churchyard where he would probably be
entombed, with an inset showing his father's gravestone on which would
clearly be read the announcement that he was the Resurrection and the
Life. And there was an inset of his mother, swathed in the black symbols
of ungluttable grief,--a most creditable mother. And there were accounts
of the activities of another near relative, that Uncle Charles who
presided over the Church of Heavenly Refreshment in New York, and a
snapshot of his macerated and unrefreshed body in a cassock,--a most
creditable uncle.

These articles hadn't appeared so very long ago, and the impression
survived and was general that Mr. Twist's antecedents were
unimpeachable. If it were true that the house was for his mother and she
was shortly arriving, then, although still very odd and unintelligible,
it was probable that his being there now with the two Germans was after
all capable of explanation. Not much of an explanation, though. Even the
moderates who took this view felt this. One wasn't with Germans these
days if one could help it. There was no getting away from that simple
fact. The inevitable deduction was that Mr. Twist couldn't help it. Why
couldn't he help it? Was he enslaved by a scandalous passion for them, a
passion cold-bloodedly planned for him by the German Government, which
was known to have lists of the notable citizens of the United States
with photographs and details of their probable weaknesses, and was
exactly informed of their movements