The man, an earnest fellow with brown hair and eager eyes in a round face, patted her hand awkwardly. “Now don’t give up hope yet!” he said, even though his face told her that he didn’t have any hope at all that the imaginary Nikolas would have survived. “A tiny thing like you survived, there’s plenty of hope for him.”
“But I am all alone!” she wailed. “All alone, and I have nothing and no one—”
All of that was true enough, and gave force to her fear and grief. “That will be enough of that for now, Mr. Barrett,” the doctor said with authority. “Let her sleep. The powder I put into her brandy should be working any moment now.”
And indeed, even as she raised her hand to wipe the tears away with a corner of the soft, soft sheet she lay under, the room did a kind of spin, and she found her eyes closing all by themselves.
Nigel Barrett was in his element, reporters clustered about him, shouting questions at him. This was a good setting for him too, the opulent sitting room of his apartment, fitted out in the latest and most expensive style. He beamed at them all, impartially. Not only were reporters from the Blackpool, Liverpool, and Manchester papers here, there was even a man come up from London. London! There was nothing, nothing that he could have concocted that could have produced this windfall of publicity!
Knowing a good yarn when he heard one, Nigel had rung up the papers once he knew the little dancer was going to be all right. The story of the wreck and its lovely survivor had spread rapidly thanks to the telegraph and the telephone. Everyone wanted to hear the story first hand. Nigel and Arthur had concocted something that they thought would suit—be romantic enough and plausible enough to pass muster. Because certainly they couldn’t tell the truth. . . .
Instead, the cat, Thomas, had been, much to his disgust, imbued with all the qualities of the most devoted of dogs. Some of the reporters were even considering having their papers give him a lifesaving medal. At least one probably would.
Now the story ran that the cat had run up to them as they paused the auto for a moment near the piers to wait for someone to cross the street. Never mind that their real route would have taken them nowhere near the piers; Nigel had conveniently not mentioned why they were out at that hour in the first place. The cat supposedly had jumped onto the hood of the motor, and when Nigel had gotten out to chase him off, had jumped down and grabbed Nigel’s trouser-leg in his teeth. Then, doglike, he had tugged until Nigel followed them, leading them to the girl. No, the cat hadn’t then been the girl’s pet—all of them had reckoned that having a cat swim to shore from a sinking yacht would be rather too much to be believed. Yes, she was adopting her savior—that was to forestall any newspaper scheme of having the cat adopted by a reader lottery. Yes, he was watching over her now, it was immensely touching—that, of course, was to strike the proper note of sentiment. Yes, they intended to offer Miss Tchereslavsky their hospitality until she was well enough to decide what she wanted to do—true enough on all counts.
Finally when he thought they had all heard enough, he ushered the reporters out with orders to his butler to make sure they all got a good brandy before they left “to ward off the cold.”
Only then did he return to his sitting room where Arthur and Wolf were waiting for him.
“Did it pass muster?” Arthur asked anxiously, as he closed the door behind him.
“No reason why it shouldn’t,” Nigel replied, settling into his favorite armchair and propping his feet on the fire grate. He accepted a brandy from Arthur with a sigh of satisfaction. “Good gad, old man, Americans couldn’t have manufactured something this sensational! Wolf, do you think you can write music for a dancer instead of a singer?”
The parrot snorted, and took a dainty bite out of a hothouse grape. “At least it will be slightly more of a challenge than writing music to fit: “Charlie, my Charlie, oh do tell me true / Am I still your sweetheart, your dear Alice Blue? / Will you take me to church, will you take me to town / In my dear little Alice-blue, Alice-blue gown?”
“That was a hit!” Nigel reminded him, and the parrot groaned. “The costermongers and newsboys were whistling it in the street!” he continued. “You must have sold thousands of copies of the sheet music!”
“A bit, a bit,” Arthur said complacently. “Kept you in fresh peas, Wolf.”
But already nebulous plans were unfolding in Nigel’s fertile imagination. He remembered a production of Shakespeare—The Tempest it was—and the sensational effects managed on the stage as the curtain rose. He could do that. They could do that. “We’ll have to manage to get a shipwreck into the plot,” Nigel said aloud, causing both of them to stare at him.
“Whyever for?” Arthur said after a moment. “That would be a dreadfully expensive set to create.”
“Because we’re going to have the dancer that was saved from a shipwreck as our star turn!” Nigel shook his head at their surprise. Couldn’t they see it? It was a fine thing to capitalize on saving her in the first place, but better to remind the public of the great story in two or three months and capitalize on it all over again. “Half of our publicity is already done for us, and the locals and the holiday people alike will fill the stalls to see the ‘shipwreck girl’ saved all over again.”
“You don’t even know that she’ll stay with us,” Arthur protested mildly. “Nor that she will be in the least interested in performing in a mere musical show.”
“This is a ballet dancer, Nigel,” the parrot said, drawing himself up with great dignity and looking down his beak at the music-hall entrepreneur. “And a prima donna to boot. An artiste. She’ll be looking for a ballet company, mark my words—”
“You mark mine. First, she’s indebted to us. Second, she’s the daughter of an Elemental Master—where else would she go for people who won’t think she’s balmy for talking to a cat? Third—” he grinned. “Ballet dancers like money too. Loie Fuller wasn’t too high-nosed to appear at the Moulin Rouge. She’ll make a lot more money with us than with some ballet company.” He stood up and began to pace. “Elemental Master—that gives me an idea. We need a story with magic in it. That way we can hire old Jonathon, who has the Kung Chow act—always good to have another of the company about—”
“Kung Chow?” Wolf said in dismay. “I am not going to substitute for one of his wretched doves again! Really, Nigel, this is going too far—”
“No one is asking you to substitute for a dove, Wolf,” Nigel said, pacing faster. “We should make this a real Arabian Nights story. Shipwreck our girl in Arabia, have her taken to a harem, that way we can bring in all the variety acts as things to entertain the sultan! And have an excuse to put her in as little as we can convince her to wear. And there are plenty of girls in our chorus who wouldn’t blanch at doing a harem dance. Have her escape with the Court Magician’s help—”
“Oh good lord, why don’t you just steal the plot and music from my Abduction from the Seraglio and have done with it?” Wolf said in disgust.
“Why don’t I—Wolf! That’s brilliant!” Nigel turned towards the parrot and conductor with a smile lighting up his face. “Perfect! You adapt the music for our show, we can tout it as ‘Based on Abduction from the Seraglio by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.’ Make the print just large enough that the punters won’t notice and the high-minded will. The punters will get their nautch dances, and the high-toned will tell each other how fine it is to listen to classical music while they gawk at the nautch dances from behind their pince-nezes. It’s brilliant! I love you!” As Wolf growled in startlement, Nigel swooped him up, kissed his beak, and put him back down on his stand again.