Simon the Jester Part 22

"Have you no suggestion, Monsieur, to offer?" I asked, "whereby I may obtain this essential information concerning Captain Vauvenarde?"

"His old comrades in the regiment might know, Monsieur."

"And the regiment?"

He opened the _Annuaire Officiel de l'Armee Francaise_, just as I might have done myself, and said:

"There are six regiments. One is at Blidah, another at Tlemcen, another at Constantine, another at Tunis, another at Algiers, and another at Mascara."

"To which regiment, then, did Captain Vauvenarde belong?" I inquired.

He referred to one of the dossiers that the orderlies had brought him.

"The 3rd, Monsieur."

"I should get information, then, from Tlemcen?"

"Evidently, Monsieur."

I thanked him and withdrew, to his obvious relief. Seekers after knowledge are unpopular even in organisations so far removed from the Circ.u.mlocution Office as the French _Ministere de la Guerre_. However, he had put me on the trail of my man.

During my homeward drive through the rain I reflected. I might, of course, write to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Regiment at Tlemcen, and wait for his reply. But even if he answered by return of post, I should have to remain in Paris for nearly a week.

"That," said I, wiping from my face half a teacupful of liquid mud which had squirted in through the cab window--"that I'll never do. I'll proceed at once to Algiers. If I can get no news of him there, I'll go to Tlemcen myself. In all probability I shall learn that he is residing here in Paris, a stone's throw from the Madeleine."

So I started for Algiers. The next morning, before the sailing of the _Marechal Bugeaud_, one of the quaint churns styled a steamship by the vanity of the French Company which undertakes to convey respectable folk across the Mediterranean, I ate my bouillabaisse below an awning on the sunny quay at Ma.r.s.eilles. The torrential rains had ceased. I advised Rogers to take equivalent sustenance, as no lunch is provided on day of sailing by the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique. I caught sight of him in a dark corner of the restaurant--he is too British to eat in the open air on the terrace, or perhaps too modest to have his meal in my presence--struggling grimly with a beefsteak, and, as he is a teetotaller, with an unimaginable, horrific liquid which he poured out from a vessel vaguely resembling a teapot.

My meal over, and having nearly an hour to spare, I paid my bill, rose and turned the corner of the quay into the Cannebiere, thinking to have my coffee at one of the cafes in that thoroughfare of which the natives say that, if Paris had a Cannebiere, it would be a little Ma.r.s.eilles. I suppose for the Ma.r.s.eillais there is a magic in the sonorous name; for, after all, it is but a commonplace street of shops running from the quays into the heart of the town. It is also deformed by tramcars. I strolled leisurely up, thinking of the many swans that were geese, and Paradises that were building-plots, and heroes that were dummies, and solidities that were shadows, in short, enjoying a gentle post-prandial mood, when my eyes suddenly fell on a scene which brought me down from such realities to the realm of the fantastic. There, a few yards in front of me, at the outer edge of the terrace of a cafe, clad in his eternal silk hat, frock coat, and yellow gloves, sat Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos in earnest conversation with a seedy stranger of repellent mien. The latter was clean-shaven and had a broken nose, and wore a little round, soft felt hat. The dwarf was facing me. As he caught sight of me a smile of welcome overspread his Napoleonic features. He rose, awaited my approach, and, bareheaded, made his usual sweeping bow, which he concluded by resting his silk hat on the pit of his stomach. I lifted my hat politely and would have pa.s.sed on, but he stood in my path. I extended my hand. He took it after the manner of a provincial mayor receiving royalty.

"_Couvrez-vous, Monsieur, je vous en prie_," said I.

He covered his head. "Monsieur," said he, "I beseech you to be seated, and do me the honour of joining me in the coffee and excellent cognac of this establishment."

"Willingly," said I, mindful of Lola's tale of the long knife which he carried concealed about his person.

"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.

"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.

"Monsieur has also done my cats the honour of attending a rehearsal.

He has seen Hephaestus, and his tears have dropped in sympathy over the irreparable loss of my beautiful Santa Bianca."

"I hope the talented survivors," said I, "are enjoying their usual health."

"My daily bulletin from my pupil and a.s.sistant, Quast, contains excellent reports. _Prosit_, Signore."

It was only when I found myself at the table with the dwarf and his broken-nosed friend that I collected my wits sufficiently to realise the probable reason of his presence in Ma.r.s.eilles. The grotesque little creature had actually kept his ridiculous word. He, too, had come south in search of the lost Captain Vauvenarde. We were companions in the Fool Adventure. There was something mediaeval in the combination; something legendary. Put back the clock a few centuries and there we were, the Knight and the Dwarf, riding together on our quest, while the Lady for whose sake we were making idiots of ourselves was twiddling her fair thumbs in her tower far beyond the seas.

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.

"Monsieur Saupiquet," said I, "doubtless offered her every consolation."

"He used to travel with her and look after Sultan's well-being. He was her----"

"Her Master of the Horse," I suggested.

"Precisely. You have the power of using the right word, Monsieur de Gex.

It is a great gift. My good friend Saupiquet is attached to a circus at present stationed in Toulon. 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 wondered whether these important affairs concerned the whereabouts of Captain Vauvenarde; but the dwarf's air of mystery forbade my asking for his confidence. Besides, what should a groom in a circus know of retired Captains of Cha.s.seurs? I said:

"You're a very busy man, Monsieur le Professeur."

He tapped his domelike forehead. "I am never idle. I carry on here gigantic combinations. 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.

"To the temperament of the artist," continued the modest Papadopoulos, "I join the intellect of the man of affairs and the heart of a young poet. I am always young; yet as you see me here I am thirty-seven years of age."

He jumped from his chair and struck an att.i.tude of the Apollo Belvedere.

"I should never have thought that you were of the same age as a bettered person like myself," said I.

"The secret of youth," he rejoined, sitting down again, "is enthusiasm, the worship of a woman, and intimate a.s.sociation with cats."