"Our Consul will do nothing for us," they protested indignantly. "He will not receive us, nor will any German in Cartagena. We are poor people." And having protested, they disappeared in the night.
But a few days later the three had emerged again at Almeria, and at a mean café in one of the narrow, blue-washed Moorish streets of the old town. Peiffer was identified as one of the three--not the Peiffer who had practised frightfulness in Lisbon, but a new and wonderful Peiffer, who inveighed against the shamelessness of German officials on the coasts of Spain. At Almeria, in fact, Peiffer made a scene at the German Vice-Consulate, and, having been handed over to the police, was fined and threatened with imprisonment. At this point the story ended.
"What do you make of it?" asked Slingsby.
"First, that Peiffer is working south; and, secondly, that he is quarrelling with his own officials."
"Yes, but quarrelling with marked publicity," said Slingsby. "That, I think we shall find, is the point of real importance. Peiffer's methods are not merely infantile; they are elaborate. He is working down South. I think that I will go to Gibraltar. I have always wished to see it."
Whether Slingsby was speaking the truth, I had not an idea. But he went to Gibraltar, and there an astonishing thing happened to him. He received a letter, and the letter came from Peiffer. Peiffer was at Algeciras, just across the bay in Spain, and he wanted an interview. He wrote for it with the most brazen impertinence.
"I cannot, owing to this with-wisdom-so-easily-to-have-been-avoided war, come myself to Gibraltar, but I will remain at your disposition here."
"_That_," said Slingsby, "from the man who was making frightfulness at me a few weeks ago, is a proof of some nerve. We will go and see Peiffer. We will stay at Algeciras from Saturday to Monday, and we will hear what he has to say."
A polite note was accordingly dispatched, and on Sunday morning Peiffer, decently clothed in a suit of serge, was shown into Slingsby's private sitting-room. He plunged at once into the story of his wanderings. We listened to it without a sign that we knew anything about it.
"So?" from time to time said Slingsby, with inflections of increasing surprise, but that was all. Then Peiffer went on to his grievances.