ttle peace now."

"How about me?" Bransome grumbled. "Haven't I been worried to death,
too?"

The Prince, who had just finished describing to Lady Grace a typical
landscape of his country, turned toward Bransome.

"I think that I heard you say something about a discovery in connection
with those wonderful murder cases," he said. "Has any one actually been
arrested?"

"My paper was an early edition," Bransome answered, "but it spoke of a
sensational denouement within the next few hours. I should imagine that
it is all over by now. At the same time it's absurd how the Press give
these things away. It seems that some fellow who was bicycling saw a man
get in and out of poor Dicky's taxi and is quite prepared to swear to
him."

"Has he not been rather a long time in coming forward with his
evidence?" the Prince remarked. "I do not remember to have seen any
mention of such a person in the papers before."

"He watched so well," Bransome answered, "and was so startled that he
was knocked down and run over. The detective in charge of the case found
him in a hospital."

"These things always come out sooner or later," the Prime Minister
remarked. "As a matter of fact, I am inclined to think that our police
wait too long before they make an arrest. They play with their victim so
deliberately that sometimes he slips through their fingers. Very often,
too, they let a man go who would give himself away from sheer fright if
he felt the touch of a policeman upon his shoulder."

"As a nation," Bransome remarked, helping himself to the entree, "we
handle life amongst ourselves with perpetual kid gloves. We are always
afraid of molesting the liberty of the subject. A trifle more brutality
sometimes would make for strength. We are like a dentist whose work
suffers because he is afraid of hurting his patient."

Somerfield was watching his fiancee curiously.

"Are you really very pale tonight, Penelope," he asked, "or is it those
red flowers which have drawn all the color from your cheeks?"

"I believe that I am pale," Penelope answered. "I am always pale when I
wear black and when people have disagreed with me. As a matter of fact,
I am trying to make the Prince feel homesick. Tell me," she asked him
across the round table, "don't you think that I remind you a little
tonight of the women of your country?"

The Prince returned her gaze as though, indeed, something were passing
between them of greater significance than that hal