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?  He had met the Twinklers, so it was reported, on a steamer coming over from England.  Of course.  All arranged by the German Government.  That was the peculiar evil greatness of this dangerous people, announced the serious section of Acapulco, again with the drinking-fountain-presentation air, that nothing was too private or too petty to escape their attention, to be turned to their own wicked uses.  They were as economical of the smallest scraps of possible usefulness as a French cook of the smallest scraps and leavings of food.  Everything was turned to account.  Nothing was wasted.  Even the mosquitoes in Germany were not wasted.  They contained juices, Germans had discovered, especially after having been in contact with human beings, and with these juices the talented but unscrupulous Germans made explosives.  Could one sufficiently distrust a nation that did things like that? asked the serious section of Acapulco.