"Tramp was slowly drawing nearer to the cage."
"Two days before we were to sail for America I was sitting at my desk arranging some of the last details of shipment, when the door burst open and a well-dressed, handsome woman rushed in, followed by the artist who had sold me the bear. She was in a tearing rage and jabbering excitedly in a language which I did not understand, while the artist was trying to quiet her. She pushed him aside, and opening a purse which was well stuffed with banknotes, she asked in French, which she spoke with a marked foreign accent, for how much I would sell Mephisto. The artist protested, but she turned on him and gave him a tongue lashing of which I could guess the meaning, although the words were unintelligible to me. I couldn't quite grasp the situation, but the strange hypnotic power which the bear apparently exercised over cats had excited my curiosity, and I wished to investigate it at my leisure, so I politely but positively refused to name a price, and told her the animal was not for sale. The artist seemed relieved and she was very much disappointed, but she quieted down and asked me what I intended to do with the animal. I told her that I was taking it to America, where it would be put in a mixed group which Rey was to train, and after inquiring when we were to sail, they left the office.
"I regretted that I had not taken the opportunity to find out something about the history of the animal, and looked over the audience to try to locate the couple, but they had left the building. One of the keepers told me that she had screamed when she recognized the bear and called it by name. She was trying to bribe him to let her go into the cage when the artist came up and expostulated with her, and they had an awful row before coming to my office. I heard nothing more from them and we shipped the animals at Havre the following day. The traveling dens were placed in the 'tween decks, which is not a pleasant place to be when the ship is tossing about, and I was surprised the second day out to find the woman who had tried to purchase Mephisto standing in front of his cage in that smelly place, talking to the bear as if it were a child. She laughed when I came up to her, and told me that as I would not part with the bear I would have to take her with the show. I, too, laughed, for I have a large family of daughters, and I knew that the simple traveling gown which she wore had cost more than two months' salary of my best trainer, but to my great surprise she was in dead earnest, and asked me seriously if I would not let her train a group of animals."
The Press Agent grew very attentive, but the Proprietor told him that he was not talking for publication, and that a name which occupied several pages of the Almanach de Gotha was sacred, even from an American promoter of publicity.
"And she does carry that name and was born to it," he continued, "but I can't tell you what it is. She didn't tell it to me and it was not on the passenger list, but the ambassador from a great European nation came on from Washington to see her and remonstrate with her and to influence me to exclude her from the show. I wouldn't consent to that, but I am afraid that the accident of the bear's going blind will be the cause of my losing an act which promised to be sensational."
"The bear sat comfortably on the seat beside me."
"You have kept it quiet enough," said the Press Agent with a trace of resentment in his voice. "It sounds to me as if it ought to be good for a front-page column in every New York paper."