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I also thought, with an enjoyable spice of malice, of what the retired Colonels and elderly maiden ladies would have to say about Lola when she arrived. They should have a gorgeous time. So light-hearted did I become that, the next evening, while I was dressing for dinner, I did not frown when the chasseur brought me up the huge trilingual visiting-card of Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos.
Rogers opened it and admitted Papadopoulos, who forthwith began to execute his usual manoeuvres of salutation. Rogers stood staring and open-mouthed at the apparition. It took all his professional training in imperturbability to enable him to make a decent exit. This increased my good humour. I grasped the dwarf's hand. "My dear Professor, I am delighted to see you.
Yet, in spite of my determination, and in spite of one of Monsieur Lenotre's fascinating monographs on the French Revolution, on which I had counted to beguile the tedium of the journey, I could not get Anastasius Papadopoulos out of my head. He stayed with me the whole of a storm-tossed night, and all the next morning. He has haunted my brain ever since.
And I have in my mind the unforgettable and awful picture of Anastasius Papadopoulos disregarded in a corner of the room, with his absurd silk hat on some reflex impulse had caused him to pick it up and put it on his head sitting on the floor amid a welter of documents relating to the death of the horse Sultan, one of which he was eagerly perusing. After this my memory is clear.
It was sad, wistful, soothing, and gave me the idea of a noble woman making a senseless sacrifice. "There is no earthly reason to do this on account of Dale," I protested. "Dale has nothing to do with it." "Then who has?" "Anastasius Papadopoulos," she said with undisguised irony. "I beg your pardon," I said rather stiffly, "for appearing to force your confidence.
As Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos was himself again, and as I began to sneeze for the night was chilly I rose and suggested that we might adjourn this conference till the morrow. He acquiesced, saying that all was not lost and that he still had time to mature his combinations. We crossed the road, and I hailed a cab standing by the Cafe d'Alger.
Had she been summoned, for any reason, to the Maison de Sante, where Anastasius Papadopoulos was incarcerated? If so, why this secrecy? Why should Lola of all people side with Destiny and make a greater Tom Fool of me than ever? This could be no other than the final jest. I do not care to remember what I did and said in the privacy of my little room.
I feel inclined to go up to the retired Colonels and elderly maiden ladies, who seem to form the majority of my fellow-guests, and pinch them and ask them whether they are real, or, like Papadopoulos and Saupiquet, the gentler creatures of a nightmare. Well, I have written to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs at Tlemcen, which is away down by the Morocco frontier.
What would have happened next Heaven alone knows for we could not have gone on gazing at each other until I backed myself out at the door by way of leave-taking had not Anticlimax arrived in the person of Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos in his eternal frock-coat. But his gloves were black. As usual he fell on his knees and kissed his lady's hand. Then he rose and greeted me with solemn affability.
After that I grew better, and drew up a merry little Commination Service. A plague on the little pain inside. A plague on Lady Kynnersley for weeping me into my rash undertaking. A plague on Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos for aiding and abetting Lady Kynnersley.
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