“I'm afraid I must take an unceremonious leave of you, Monsieur le Professeur.”
“You must wait for the receipt,” cried the dwarf.
“Will you do me the honour of holding it for me until we meet again? Hi!” The interpellation was addressed to a cabman a few yards away. “Your conversation has made me neglect the flight of time. I shall only just catch my boat.”
“Your boat?”
“I am going to Algiers.”
“Where will you be staying, Monsieur? I ask in no spirit of vulgar curiosity.”
I raised a protesting hand, and with a smile named my hotel.
“I arrived here from Algiers yesterday afternoon,” he said, “and I proceed there again to-morrow.”
“I regret,” said I, “that you are not coming to-day, so that I could have the pleasure of your company on the voyage.”
My polite formula seemed to delight Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos enormously. He made a series of the most complicated bows, to the joy of the waiters and the passers-by. I shook hands with him and with the stolid Monsieur Saupiquet, and waving my hat more like an excited Montenegrin than the most respectable of British valetudinarians, I drove off to the Quai de la Joliette, where I found an anxious but dogged Rogers, in the midst of a vociferating crowd, literally holding the bridge that gave access to the Marechal Bugeaud.