Reserved for the Cat

“Nina Tchereslavsky, yes. I am a dancer, a ballet dancer. So many Russian dancers have had great success in the West, and I am tired of the snow of St. Petersburg. I asked my friend Nikolas—” it was the only Russian name she could think of “—if he would take me on his pretty little boat to England. I thought I could find a good company here. My reputation—” here she raised her chin a little, in haughty imitation of La Augustine “—should more than suffice.” Now she faltered. “But there was a terrible storm. A terrible storm. The boat began to break apart. We went into the water and I lost Nikolas—”

Unbidden, the memory of her Maman lying, slowly dying, wasting away with fever in the cold of the garret came to her mind, and she burst into tears.

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.