It was early November and the Herr Ludwig von Fell Circus had come to Oshawa. The moment the circus came to town an ominous shadow seemed to have descended upon Oshawa, or at least that was how it seemed to Alexander.
Alexander was a one-year-old Northern caracal from Egypt, a medium-sized cat with a robust build, long legs, a short face, long, black tufted ears and long canine teeth. His coat was uniformly reddish-tan with the ventral parts being lighter with small reddish markings and as a male he stood twenty inches at the shoulder, had a head-and-body length of forty-three inches and a bushy tail of thirteen inches.
Alexander had been out hunting on the estate that he lived upon. The estate was home to a monumental country house called Quebec Castle and it was heavily forested with a great river running through it. This was his home in Canada and he was hardly a lonely creature. Besides his mate Roxana, his master Captain Kull Smith, his family and the staff, Quebec Castle was both a museum of Egyptology and a boarding school and so there were currently forty students, twenty boys and twenty girls, all of them ten years of age, as well as their teachers. Other animals included the wolfdog Cnut and his mate the rough collie Emma, the American quarter horse Peter and his mate Catherine and the great horned owls Herod and Cleopatra, both falconry owls.
Chasing that annoying goose Lucifer, Alexander soon found himself chased by a rather large turkey when that ominous shadow suddenly fell over the estate. Little did he know what such a thing would mean.
Little did he know where that would bring him.
Herr von Fell was many things. Back in Germany he had been able to get away with the murders of his father and three brothers until his murder of his daughter's suitor, a member of the Imperial family, caused him to be exiled. He would have been executed, but he was wise enough to get out of the country. Having been a Canadian citizen for the past seven years, the Exiled Herr had been quick to get into the inner circle of men who could keep him free, but it had only been five years prior that he had been able to get into the inner circle of the Prime Minister of Canada. He was good friends with Robert Borden, an evil-hearted man who would keep Herr von Fell out of prison or from being executed, and so, the Exiled Herr was able to get away with the abduction of children or even murder if he so felt like it.
That day Herr von Fell's game was abduction. Captain Smith had rescued Roxana from his ownership and so Herr von Fell had made his retaliation, months later, but a retaliation nonetheless. His victim was not Captain Smith's daughter Hippolyta, nor either of his nephews Alan Carter or Ian Smith, nor even any of the students, which Ian was one of. When they last met on Halloween, Herr von Fell had said to Gemma Cook, daughter of the gardener Robert Cook: "You would be marvellous in my circus."
Thus, Gemma was his victim.
While Captain Smith called upon the aid of Oshawa's police, Alan went forth from Quebec Castle with Alexander by his side. They would rescue Gemma from the Herr Ludwig von Fell Circus and Alexander knew well that he would at last come to blows with Herr von Fell's albino chimpanzee Beelzebub.