"I'm an interior decorator," I said to Major Schoot. "I've told you
that a dozen times, too. I don't wish to conduct a hotel in Switzerland
or Greenland or Coney Island or any other land! I do not desire either
to possess kine or to deprive them of their milk. Moreover, I do not
wish to bottle spring water. Why then am I not permitted to sell this
bunch of Swiss scenery and go home? What about my perfectly harmless
business?"
Major Schoot rolled his solemn fish-blue eyes: "The laws of the canton
and of the Federal Government," he began in his weak tenor voice,
"require that any alien inheriting property in the Swiss Republic, shall
reside upon that property and administer it for the period of not less
than one year before offering the said property for sale or rent----"
He already had told me that a dozen times; and a dozen times I had
resisted, insisting that there must be some way to circumvent such a
ridiculous Swiss law. Of what use are laws unless one can circumvent
them, as we do?
I now gazed at him with increasing animosity. In his uniform of Major
of Swiss Gendarmes he appeared the personification of everything
officially and Teutonically obtuse.
"Do you realize," I said, "that my treatment by the Swiss Confederation
and by the Federal police has been most extraordinary? A year ago when
my uncle's will was probated, and that German attorney in Berne notified
me in New York that I had inherited this meaningless mess of house and
landscape, he also wrote that upon coming here and complying with the
Swiss law, I could immediately dispose of the property if I so desired?
Why the devil did he write that?"
"That was a year ago," nodded Major Schoot. Captain Schey regarded me
owlishly. "A new law," he remarked, "has been since enacted."
"I have suspected," said I fiercely, "that this brand new law enacted in
such a hellofa hurry was enacted expressly to cover this case of mine.
Why? Why does your government occupy itself with me and my absurd
property up here in these picture-book Alps? What difference does it
make to Switzerland whether I sell it or try to run it? And another
thing!--" I continued, madder than ever at the memory of recent
wrongs--"Why do your police keep visiting me, inspecting me and my
papers, trailing me around? Why do large, moon-faced gentlemen seat
themselves beside me in restaurants and cafes and turn furtive eyes upon
me? Why do they open newspapers and punch holes in them to scrutinize
me? Why do they try to listen to my conversation addressed to other
people? Why do strange ladies lurk at my elbow when hotel clerks hand
me my mail? Dammit, why?"
Major Schoot and Captain Schey regarded me in
tweedle-dum-and-tweedle-dee-like silence: then the Major said: "Under
extraordinary conditions extraordinary precautions are necessary." And
the Captain added: "These are war times and Switzerland must observe an
impartial neutrality."
"You mean a German neutrality," I thought to myself, already
unpleasantly aware that all the banks and all the business of
Switzerland are owned by Teutons and that ninety per cent of the Swiss
are German-Swiss, and speak German habitually.
And still at the same time I realized that, unless brutally menaced and
secretly coerced by the boche the Swiss were first of all passionately
and patriotically Swiss, even if they might be German after that fact.
They wished to be let alone and to remain a free people. And the Hun
was blackmailing them.
Smith had now roamed away through the uncut grass, smoking a cigarette
and probably cursing me out--a hungry, disconsolate figure against the
background of deserted buildings.