"That's the last place I can think of," said the consul, wiping his brow as they emerged from the court-yard, for he had grown very warm with walking so much.
"Oh, all right," said the colonel languidly.
"But we won't give it up. Let's go in here and get some coffee, and think it over a bit." They were near one of the principal cafés, which was full of people smoking, and drinking the Viennese _mélange_ out of tumblers.
"By all means," assented Colonel Kenton with inconsequent courtliness, "think it over. It's all that's left us."
Matters did not look so dark, quite, after a tumbler of coffee with milk, but they did not continue to brighten so much as they ought with the cigars. "Now let us go through the facts of the case," said the consul, and the colonel wearily reproduced his original narrative with every possible circumstance. "But you know all about it," he concluded. "I don't see any end of it. I don't see but I'm to spend the rest of my life in hunting up a hotel that professes to be the Kaiserin Elisabeth, and isn't. I never knew anything like it."
"It certainly has the charm of novelty," gloomily assented the consul: it must be owned that his gloom was a respectful feint. "I have heard of men running away from their hotels, but I never did hear of a hotel running away from a man before now. Yes--hold on! I have, too. Aladdin's palace--and with Mrs. Aladdin in it, at that! It's a parallel case." Here he abandoned himself as usual, while Colonel Kenton viewed his mirth with a dreary grin. When he at last caught his breath, "I beg your pardon, I do, indeed," the consul implored. "I know just how you feel, but of course it's coming out right. We've been to all the hotels I know of, but there must be others. We'll get some more names and start at once; and if the genie has dropped your hotel anywhere this side of Africa we shall find it. If the worst comes to the worst, you can stay at my house to-night and start new to-m--Oh, I forgot!--Mrs. Kenton! Really, the whole thing is such an amusing muddle that I can't seem to get over it." He looked at Kenton with tears in his eyes, but contained himself and decorously summoned a waiter, who brought him whatever corresponds to a city directory in Vienna. "There!" he said, when he had copied into his note-book a number of addresses, "I don't think your hotel will escape us this time;" and discharging his account he led the way to the door, Colonel Kenton listlessly following.