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Updated: June 21, 2025
"Is that the untamed Persian you were telling me of?" she asked, pointing to a cage from which a ferocious gigantic animal more like a woolly tiger than a tom-cat looked out with expressionless yellow eyes. "Will you let Mr. de Gex try to make friends with it?" "Your will is law, meine Konigin," replied Professor Papadopoulos, bowing low. "But Hephaestus is as fierce as the flames of hell."
"Permit me to present my friend Monsieur Achille Saupiquet Monsieur de Gex, a great English statesman and a friend of that gnadigsten Engel, Madame Lola Brandt." Monsieur Saupiquet and I saluted each other formally. I took a seat. Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos moved a bundle of papers tied up with pink ribbon from in front of me, and ordered coffee and cognac.
It was a torture to her generous soul that she could not grieve for him. She could only shudder at the tragedy. In her heart she grieved more for Anastasius Papadopoulos, and in so doing she was, in her feminine way, self-accusative of callous lack of human feeling.
"I shall be quite protected," said I, "by the dynamic qualities of your acquaintance, Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos, with whom I have promised to spend the evening." "You had better have the revolver," said the Colonel. And so bent was he on the point, that after dinner he came to me in the lounge and laid a loaded six-shooter beside my coffee-cup. The younger Miss Bostock grew pale.
Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos broke upon this pleasing fancy by remarking again that Monsieur Saupiquet was a friend of Madame Brandt. "He was with her at the time of her great bereavement." "Bereavement?" I asked forgetfully. "Her horse Sultan." He whispered the words with solemn reverence. I must confess to being tired of the horse Sultan and disinclined to treat his loss seriously.
She had taken Anastasius's cats and proposed to work them in the music-halls abroad and send the proceeds to be administered for the little man's comfort at the Maison de Sante. As both her name and the Papadopoulos troupe of cats were well known in the "variety" world, it would be a simple matter to obtain engagements. She had already opened negotiations for a short season somewhere abroad.
I rapidly sketched the whole absurd history, from my encounter with Anastasius Papadopoulos in Marseilles to my parting with him on the previous night. I softened down, as much as I could, the fleshiness of Captain Vauvenarde and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck, but I portrayed the villainous physiognomies of his associates very neatly.
With an irresistible touch of mockery I said: "Professor Papadopoulos, I will be happy to follow you blindfold to the lair of whatever fire-breathing dragon you may want me to help you destroy." He rose and grasped his hat and made me a profound bow. "You will not find me wanting in courage, Monsieur. There is another small favour I would ask of you. Will you bring some of your visiting-cards?"
She sheds it on me hourly with a lavishness which scares me. But for her tireless devotion, the doctor tells me, I should not have lived. But for her selfish forbearance, sympathy, and compassion I should have gone as crazy as Anastasius Papadopoulos. Yet the burden of my debt lies iceberg cold on my heart.
"Why in the world," I cried, "should you not be a lady? You have the instincts of one. How many of my fair friends in Mayfair and Belgravia would have made their drawing-rooms unspeakable just for the sake of not hurting the feelings of Anastasius Papadopoulos?" She put aside her work and, leaning over the arm of the chair, her chin in her hands, looked at me gratefully.
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