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."