‘What are all those palookas so het-up over?’ ‘The Prime Minister!’ gasped the Duke. ‘He’s been assassinated by the Iron Guard. It happened this morning.’ ‘Now we are in a muddle!’ Simon’s head jerked in a nervous spasm. ‘What time did it happen? We must try to find out.’ They turned in their tracks and hurried back to the station entrance. The Duke bought a paper, and the other two peered over his shoulders at the black banner headlines and the apparently incomprehensible script underneath. The Rumanians are now a mixture of many races, but their purest stock comes from the Roman Legions that were left stranded in the ancient Province of Dacia after the fall of Rome. When the nations of the west were still semi-barbarous tribes Rumania was already a civilised country with Latin as her most commonly used form of speech; and through all the centuries the Roman influence has never been entirely submerged. In consequence, although de Richleau could speak only a few phrases of Rumanian, his knowledge of Latin and Italian enabled him to get the rough sense of the front-page news.
