Tobermory had been Appin's one successful pupil, and he
was destined to have no successor. A few weeks later an
elephant in the Dresden Zoological Garden, which had shown
no previous signs of irritability, broke loose and killed an
Englishman who had apparently been teasing it. The victim's
name was variously reported in the papers as Oppin and
Eppelin, but his front name was faithfully rendered
Cornelius.
``If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor
beast,'' said Clovis, ``he deserved all he got.''
MRS. PACKLETIDE'S TIGER
It was Mrs. Packletide's pleasure and intention that she should
shoot a tiger. Not that the lust to kill had suddenly descended on
her, or that she felt that she would leave India safer and more
wholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wild
beast per million of inhabitants. The compelling motive for her sudden
deviation towards the footsteps of Nimrod was the fact that
Loona Bimberton had recently been carried eleven miles in an
aeroplane by an Algerian aviator, and talked of nothing else; only a
personally procured tiger-skin and a heavy harvest of Press photographs
could successfully counter that sort of thing.
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