We felt that our troubles were over when a tall bronzed Englishman in flannels and a Panama sauntered into the room.
We sprang instinctively to our feet, but he took no notice beyond looking at us out of the tail of his eye, and twisting his mouth into a curious little compromise between a smile and a query.
The clerk bowed him at once into an inner room. We waited and waited. I couldn't understand at all what they could have been talking about in there for so long.
But at last the soldier at the door beckoned us in. The vice-consul was sitting on a sofa in the background. With his head on one side, he shot a keen fixed glance out of his languid eyes, and bit his thumbnail persistently, as if in a state of extreme nervous perplexity.
I was swept by a feeling of complete humiliation. It was a transitory feverish flush ; and it left me more exhausted than ever.
The commissario swung his chair around to our saviour, and said something which evidently meant, "Please open fire."
" I'm the vice-consul here," he said. " I understand that you claim to be Sir Peter and Lady Pendragon."
" That's who we are," I replied, with a pitiful attempt at jauntiness.
" You'll excuse me, I'm sure," he said, " if I say that-to the eyes of the average Italian official-you don't precisely look the part. Have you your passports?"
The mere presence of an English gentleman had a good effect in pulling me together.
I said, with more confidence than before, that our courier had arranged to take us to see some of the shows in Naples that the ordinary tourist knows nothing about, and in order to avoid any possible annoyance, he had advised us to adopt this disguise
-and so on for the rest of the story.
The vice-consul smiled-indulgently, as I thought. " I admit we have some experience," he said slowly, " of young people like yourselves getting into various kinds of trouble. One can't expect every one to know all the tricks ; and besides, if I understand correctly, you're on your honeymoon."
I admitted the fact with a somewhat embarrassed smile. It occurred to me that honeymoon couples were traditionally objects of not unkindly ridicule from people in a less blessed condition.
"Quite so," replied the vice-consul. " I'm not a married man myself ; but no doubt it is very delightful. How do you like it in Norway?"
" Norway ? " I said, completely flabbergasted.
" Yes," he said. " How do you like Norway; the climate, the lax, the people, the fiords, the glaciers ?
There was some huge mistake somewhere.
"Norway ? " I said, with a rising inflection.
I was on the brink of hysteria.
"I've never been to the place in my life. And if it's anything like Naples, I don't want to go ! "
This is a rather more serious matter than you seem to suppose," returned the consul, " If you're not in Norway, where are you ? "
"Why, I'm here, confound it," I retorted with another weak flush of anger.
" Since when, may I ask ? " he replied.
Well, he rather had me there. I didn't know how long I'd been away from England. I couldn't have told him the day or the month on a bet.
Lou helped me out.
" We left Paris three weeks ago to-morrow," she said positively enough, though the tone of her voice was weak and weary, with a sub-current of irritation and distress. I hardly recognised the rich, full tones that had flooded my heart when she chanted that superb litany in the " Smoking Dog."
" We spent a couple of days here," she said, at the Museo-Palace Hotel. Since then, we've been staying at the Caligula at Capri; and our clothes, our passports, our money, and everything are there."
I couldn't help being pleased by the way in which she rose to the crisis ; her practical good sense, her memory of those details that are so important in business, though the male temperament regards them as a necessary nuisance.
These are the things that one needs in an official muddle.
" You don't know any Italian at all ? " asked the consul.
" Only a few words," she admitted, " though, of course, Sir Peter's knowledge of French and Latin help him to make sense out of the newspapers."
" Well," said the consul, rising languidly, " as it happens, that's just the point at issue."
" I know the big words," I said. " It's the particles that bother one."
" Perhaps then it will save trouble," said the consul, if I offer you a free translation of this paragraph in this morning's paper."
He reached across, took it from the commissario, and began a fluent even phrasing.
" England is always in the van when it comes to romance and adventure. The famous ace, Sir Peter Pendragon, V.C., K.B.E., who recently startled London by his sudden marriage with the leading society beauty, Miss Louise Laleham, is not spending his honeymoon in any of the conventional ways, as might be expected from the gentleman's bold and adventurous character. He has taken his bride for a season's guideless climbing on the Jostedal Brae, the largest glacier in Norway."
I could see that the commissario was drilling holes in my soul with his eyes. As for myself, I was absolutely stupefied by the pointless falsehood of the paragraph.
" But, good God ! " I exclaimed. This is all absolute tosh."
" Excuse me," said the consul, a little grimly, " I have not finished the paragraph. "
" I beg your pardon, sir," I answered curtly.
" Taking advantage of these facts," he continued to read, " and of a slight facial resemblance to Sir Peter and Lady Pendragon, two well-known international crooks have assumed their personalities, and are wandering around Naples and its vicinity, where several tradesmen have already been victimised."
He dropped the paper, put his hands behind his back, and stared me square in the eyes.
I could not meet his glance. The accusation was so absurd, so horrible, so unexpected ! I felt that guilt was written on every line of my face.
I stammered out some weakly, violent objurgation. Lou kept her head better than I.
" But please, this is absurd," she protested. " Send for our courier. He has known Sir Peter since he was a boy at school. The whole thing is shameful and abominable. I don't see why such things are allowed."
The consul seemed in doubt as to what to do. He played with his watch-chain nervously.
I had sunk into a chair-I noticed they hadn't offered us chairs when we came in-and the whole scene vanished from my mind. I was aware of nothing but a passionate craving for drugs. I wanted them physically as I had never wanted anything in my life before. I wanted them mentally, too. They, and they only, would clear my mind of its confusion, and show me a way out of this rotten mess. I wanted them most of all morally. I lacked the spirit to stand up under this sudden burst of drum fire.
But Lou stuck to it gamely. She was on her mettle, though I could see that she was almost fainting from the stress of the various circumstances.
" Send for our courier, Hector Laroche," she insisted. The consul shrugged his shoulders. " But where is he ? "
" Why," she said, " he must be looking for us all over the town. 'When he got to the Fauno Ebbrio and found we weren't there, and heard what had happened, he must have been very anxious about us."
" In fact, I don't see why he isn't here now," said the consul. " He must have known that you were arrested."
" Perhaps something's happened to him," suggested Lou. " But that would really be too curious a coincidence."
" Well, these things do happen," admitted the consul. He seemed somehow