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I should have been a lawyer. I can spread nets that no one sees, and then pst! I draw the rope and the victim is in the toils of Anastasius Papadopoulos. Hast du nicht das bemerkt, Saupiquet?" "Bien sur," said Saupiquet again. He seemed perfectly conversant with the dwarf's polyglot jargon.
As secrecy seemed to be a vital element in his fifteen-cent scheme, I showed no embarrassing curiosity. Indeed, I felt but little, though I was certain that the adventure was connected with the world-cracking revelations of Monsieur Saupiquet, and was undertaken in the interest of his beloved lady, Lola Brandt.
I can't get anything out of him, but his fifteen sous. And the carissima signora doesn't owe it to him. She can't owe it to him. Voyons, Saupiquet, if you don't renounce your miserable pretensions you will drive me mad, you will make me burst into tears, you will make me throw you out into the street, and hold you down until you are run over by a tramcar.
He came over, at my request, to see me on affairs of the deepest importance" he waved the bundle of papers "the very deepest importance. Nicht wahr, Saupiquet?" "Bien sur," murmured Saupiquet, who evidently did not count loquacity among his vices.
I described in fuller detail my adventure with Anastasius and Saupiquet, and we laughed over the debt of fifteen sous and the elaborate receipt. "Anastasius," she said, "is childish in many ways the doctors have a name for it." "Arrested development." "That's it; but he is absolutely cracked on one point the poisoning of my horse Sultan.
Even the stolid Saupiquet, dragged from Toulon, gave evidence as to the five-franc bribe and the debt of fifteen sous, and identified the horse Sultan by the crumpled photograph. Lola and I have been racked day after day with questions some, indeed, prompted by the suspicion that Vauvenarde might have met his death directly by our hand instead of that of Anastasius.
I shook hands with him and with the stolid Monsieur Saupiquet, and waving my hat more like an excited Montenegrin than the most respectable of British valetudinarians, I drove off to the Quai de la Joliette, where I found an anxious but dogged Rogers, in the midst of a vociferating crowd, literally holding the bridge that gave access to the Marechal Bugeaud. "Thank Heaven, you've come, sir!
"Monsieur Saupiquet also knows Madame Brandt," he explained. "Bien sur," said Monsieur Saupiquet. "She owes me fifteen sous." Papadopoulos turned on his sharply. "Will you be silent!" The other grumbled beneath his breath. "I hope Madame is well," said Papadopoulos. I said that she appeared so, when last I had the pleasure of seeing her. The dwarf turned to his friend.
"The secret of youth," he rejoined, sitting down again, "is enthusiasm, the worship of a woman, and intimate association with cats." Monsieur Saupiquet received this proposition without a gleam of interest manifesting itself in his dull blue eyes. His broken nose gave his face a singularly unintelligent expression.
What has Saupiquet to do with his quest? What revelation was he about to make on the payment of his fifteen sous? It is all so grotesque, so out of relation with ordinary life.
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