“You are kind, Monsieur Ratichon,” resumed the beauteous creature more calmly. “But indeed you will require all the ingenuity of your resourceful brain in order to help me in this matter. I am struggling in the grip of a relentless fate which, if you do not help me, will leave me broken-hearted.”
“Command me, Madame,” I riposted quietly.
From out the daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very greasy and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief request: “Read this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon.” I took the paper. It was a clumsily worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for five thousand francs, failing which sum the thing which Madame had lost would forthwith be destroyed.
I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client.
“My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon,” she said in reply to my mute query.
“Carissimo?” I stammered, yet further intrigued.
“My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely hours,” she rejoined, once more bursting into tears. “If I lose him, my heart will inevitably break.”
I understood at last.
“Madame has lost her dog?” I asked.
She nodded.