Meanwhile, Captain Harrison of the Medical Corps entered the Conover apartment briskly.
“You old vagabond, what have you been up to? I beg pardon!”—as he saw Kitty emerge from behind Cutty's bulk.
“This is Miss Conover, Harrison.”
“Very pleased, I'm sure. Luckily my case was in the coat room at the club. I took the liberty of telephoning for Miss Frances, who returned on the same ship with me. I concluded that your friend would need a nurse. Let me have a look at him.”
Callously but lightly and skillfully the surgeon examined the battered head. “Escaped concussion by a hair, you might say. Probably had his cap on. That black eye, though, is an older affair. Who is he?”
“I suspect he's some political refugee. We don't know a thing about him otherwise. How soon can he be moved?”
“He ought to be moved at once and given the best of care.”
“I can give him that in my eagle's nest. Harrison, this chap's life is in danger; and if we get him into my lofty diggings they won't be able to trace him. Not far from here there's a private hospital I know. It goes through from one street to the next. I know the doctor. We'll have the ambulance carry the patient there, but at the rear I'll have one of the office newspaper trucks. And after a little wait we'll shoot the stretcher into the truck. The police will not bother us. I've seen to that. I rather believe it falls in with some of my work. The main idea, of course, is to rid Miss Conover of any trouble.”
“Just as you say,” agreed the surgeon. “That's all I can do for the present. I'll run down to the entrance and wait for The nurse.”
“Will he live?” asked Kitty.
“Of course he will. He is in good physical condition. Imagine he has simply been knocked out. Serious only if unattended. Your finding him probably saved him. Twelve hours will tell the story. May be on his feet inside a week. Still, it would be advisable to keep him in bed as long as possible. Fagged out, I should say, from that beard. I'll go down and wait for Miss Frances.”
“And ring three times when you return,” advised Cutty.
“All right. Did they try to strangle him or did he have something round his neck?”
“Hanged if I know.”
“All out of the room now. I want it dark. Just as soon as the nurse arrives I'll return. Three rings.” Harrison left the apartment.
Cutty spent a few minutes at the telephone, then he joined Kitty in the living room.
“Kitty, what was the stranger like?”
“Like a gorilla. He spoke English as if he had a cold.”
Cutty scowled into space. “Have a scar over an eyebrow?”
“Good gracious, I couldn't tell! Both his eyes were black and his nose banged dreadfully. Johnny Two-Hawks probably did it.”
“Bully for Two-Hawks! Kitty, you're a marvel. Not a flivver from the start. And those slate-blue eyes of yours don't miss many things.”
“Listen!” she interrupted, taking hold of his sleeve. “Hear it?”
“Only the Elevated.”
“Tumpitum-tump! Tumpitum-tump! Cutty, you hypnotized me this afternoon with your horrid drums.”
“The emeralds?” He managed to repress the start.
“I don't know what it is; drums, anyhow. Maybe it is the emeralds. Something has been happening ever since you told me about them—the misery and evil that follow their wake.”
“But the story goes that women are immune, Kitty.”
“Nonsense! No woman is immune where a wonderful gem is concerned. And yet I've common sense and humour.”
“And a lot more besides, Kitty. You're a raving, howling little beauty; and how you've remained out of captivity this long is a puzzler to me. Haven't you got a beau somewhere?”
“No, Cutty. Perhaps I'm one of those who are quite willing to wait patiently. If the one I want doesn't come—why, I'll be a jolly, philosophical old maid. No seconds or culls for me, as the magazine editor says.”
“Exactly what do you want?” Cutty was keenly curious, for some reason he could not define. He did not care for diamonds as stones; but he admired any personality that flashed differently from each new angle exposed.
“Oh, a man, among other things. I don't mean one of those godlike chromos in the frontispiece of popular novels. He hasn't got to be handsome. But he must be able to laugh when he's happy, when he's hurt. I must be his business in life. He must know a lot about things I know. I want a comrade who will come to me when he has a joke or an ache. A gay man and whimsical. The law can make any man a husband, but only God can make a good comrade.”
“Kitty,” said Cutty, his fine eyes sparkling, “I shan't have to watch over you so much as I thought. On the other hand, you have described me to a dot.”
“Quite possibly. Vanity has its uses. It keeps us in contact with bathtubs and nice clothes. I imagine that you would make both husband and comrade; or you would have, twenty years ago”—without intentional cruelty. Wasn't Cutty fifty-two?
“Kitty, you've touched a vital point. It took those twenty years to make me companionable. Experience is something we must buy; it isn't left in somebody's will. Let us say that I possess all the necessary attributes save one.”
“And what is that?”
“Youth, Kitty. And take the word of a senile old dotard, your young man, when you find him, will lack many of the attributes you require. On the other hand, there is always the possibility that these will develop as you jog along. The terrible pity of youth is that it has the habit of conferring these attributes rather than finding them. You put garlands on the heads of snow images, and the first glare of sunshine—pouf!”
“Cutty, I'm beginning to like you immensely”—smiling. “Perhaps women ought to have two husbands—one young and handsome and the other old and wise like yourself.”
Cutty wished he were alone in order to analyze the stab. Old! When he knew that mentally and physically he could take and break a dozen Two-Hawks. Old! He had never thought himself that. Fifty-two years; they had piled up on him without his appreciation of the fullness of the score. And yet he was more than a match for any ordinary man of thirty in sinew and brain; and no man met the new morning with more zest than he himself met it. But to Kitty he was old! Lavender and oak leaves were being draped on his door knob. He laughed.
“Why do you laugh?”
“Oh, because—Hark!”
The two of them ran to the bedroom door.
“Olga! Olga!” And then a guttural level jumble of sounds.
Kitty's quick brain reached out for a similitude—water rushing over ragged boulders.
“Olga!” she whispered. “He is a Russian!”
“There are Serbian Olgas and Bulgarian Olgas and Rumanian Olgas. Probably his sweetheart.”
“The poor thing!”
“Sounds like Russian,” added Cutty, his conscience pricking him. But he welcomed that “Olga.” It would naturally put a damper on Kitty's interest. “There's Harrison with the nurse.”
Quarter of an hour later the patient was taken down to the ambulance and conveyed to the private hospital. Cutty had no way of ascertaining whether they were followed; but he hoped they would be. The knowledge that their victim was in a near-by hospital would naturally serve to relax the enemy vigilance temporarily; and this would permit safely and secretly the second leg of the journey—that to his own apartment.
He decided to let an hour go past; then Two-Hawks was taken through the building to the rear and transferred to the truck. Cutty sat with the driver while Captain Harrison and the nurse rode inside with the patient.
On the way Cutty was rather disturbed by the deep impression Kitty Conover had made upon his heart and mind. That afternoon he had looked upon her with fatherly condescension, as the pretty daughter of the two he had loved most. From the altitude of his fifty-two he had gazed down upon her twenty-four, weighing her as like all young women of twenty-four—pleasure-loving and beau-hunting and fashion-scorched; and in a flash she had revealed the formed mind of a woman of thirty. Altitude. He had forgotten that relative to altitudes there are always two angles of vision—that from the summit and that from the green valley below. Kitty saw him beyond the tree line, but just this side of the snows—and matched his condescension with pity! He chuckled. Doddering old ass, what did it matter how she looked at him?
Beautiful and young and full of common sense, yet dangerously romantical. To wait for the man she wanted, what did that signify but romance? And there was her Irish blood to consider. The association of pretty nurse and interesting patient always afforded excellent background for sentimental nonsense, the obligations of the one and the gratitude of the other. Well, he had nipped that in the bud.
And why hadn't he taken this Two-Hawks person—how easy it was to fall into Kitty's way of naming the chap!—why hadn't he taken him directly to the Roosevelt? Why all this pother and secrecy over a total stranger? Stefani Gregor, who lived opposite Kitty and who hadn't prospered particularly since the day he had exhibited the drums of jeopardy—he was the reason. These were volcanic days, and a friend of Stefani Gregor—who played the violin like Paganini—might well be worth the trouble of a little courtesy. Then, too, there was that mark of the thong—a charm, a military identification disk or something of value. Whatever it was, the rogues had got it. Murder and loot. And as soon as he returned to consciousness the young fellow would be making inquiries.
Perhaps Kitty's point of view regarding a certain duffer aged fifty-two was nearer the truth than the duffer himself realized. Second childhood! As if the drums of jeopardy would ever again see light, after that tempest of fire and death—that mud volcano!
One thing was certain—there would be no more cat-napping. The game was on again. He was assured of that side of it.
Green stones, the sunlight breaking against the flaws in a shower of golden sparks; green as the pulp of a Champagne grape; the drums of jeopardy! Murder and loot; he could understand.
Immediately after the patient was put to bed Cutty changed. A nondescript suit of the day-labourer type and a few deft touches of coal dust completed his make-up.
“I shan't be back until morning,” he announced. “Work to do. Kuroki will be at your service through the night, Miss Frances. Strike that Burmese gong once, at any hour. Come along, Harrison.”
“Want any company?” asked Harrison, with a belligerent twist to his moustache.
Cutty laughed. “No. You run along to your lambs. I'm running with the wolves to-night, old scout, and you might get that spick-and-span uniform considerably mussed up. Besides, it's raining.”
“But what's to become of Miss Conover? She ought not to remain alone in that apartment.”
“Well, well! I thought of that, too. But she can take care of herself.”
“Those ruffians may call up the hospital and learn that we tricked them.
“And then?”
“Try to force the truth from Miss Conover.”
“That's precisely the wherefore of this coal dust. On your way!”
Eleven o'clock. Kitty was in the kitchen, without light, her chair by the window, which she had thrown up. She had gone to bed, but sleep was impossible. So she decided to watch the Gregor windows. Sometimes the mind is like a movie camera set for a double exposure. The whole scene is visible, but the camera sees only half of it. Thus, while she saw the windows across the court there entered the other side of her mind a picture of the immaculate Cutty crossing the platform with Johnny Two-Hawks thrown over his shoulder. The mental picture obscured the actual.
She had called him old. Well, he was old. And no doubt he looked upon her as a child, wanting her to spend the night at a hotel! The affair was over. No one would bother Kitty Conover. Why should they? But it took strength to shoulder a man like that. What fun he and her father must have had together! And Cutty had loved her mother! That made Kitty exquisitely tender for a moment. All alone, at the age when new friendships were impossible. A lovable man like that going down through life alone!
Census taker of alien undesirables; a queer occupation for a man so famous as Cutty. Patriotism—to plunge into that seething revolutionary scum to sort the dangerous madmen from the harmless mad-men. Courage and strength and mental resource; yes, Cutty possessed these; and he would be the kind to laugh at a joke or a hurt.
One thing, however, was indelibly printed on her mind. Stefani Gregor—either Cutty had met and known the man or he had heard of him.
Suddenly she became conscious that she was blinking as one blinks from mirror-reflected sunlight. She cast about for the source of this phenomenon. Obliquely from between the interstices of the fire-escape platform came a point of moving white light. She craned her neck. A battery lamp! The round spot of light worked along the cement floor, vanished occasionally, reappeared, and then vanished altogether. Somebody was down there hunting for something. What?
Kitty remained with her head out of the window for some time, unmindful of the spatter of rain. But nothing happened. The man was gone. Of course the incident might not have the slightest bearing upon the previous adventures of this amazing night; still, it was suggestive. The young man had worn something round his neck. But if his enemies had it why should this man comb the court, unless he was a tenant and had knocked something off a window ledge?
She began to appreciate that she was very tired, and decided to go back to bed. This time she fell asleep. Her disordered thoughts rearranged themselves in a dazzling dream. She found herself wandering through a glorious translucent green cavern—a huge emerald. And in the distance she heard that unmistakable tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! It drew her irresistibly. She fought and struggled against the fascinating sound, but it continued to draw her on. Suddenly from round a corner came the squat man, his hair a la Fuzzy-Wuzzy. He caught her savagely by the shoulder and dragged her toward a fire of blazing diamonds. On the other side of that fire was a blonde young woman with a tiara of rubies on her head. “Save me! I am Olga, Olga!” Kitty struggled fiercely and awoke.
The light was on. At the side of her bed were two men. One of them was holding her bare shoulder and digging his fingers into it cruelly. They looked like coal heavers.
“We do not wish to harm you, and won't if you're sensible. Where did they take the man you brought?”
Kitty did not wrench herself loose at once. She wasn't quite sure that this was not a continuance of her nightmare. She knew that nightmares had a way of breaking off in the middle of things, of never arriving anywhere. The room looked natural enough and the pain in her shoulder seemed real enough, but one never could tell. She decided to wait for the next episode.
“Answer!” cried the spokesman of the two, twisting Kitty's shoulder. “Where did they take him?”
Awake! Kitty wrenched her shoulder away and swept the bedclothes up to her chin. She was thoroughly frightened, but her brain was clear. The spark of self-preservation flew hither and about in search of expediencies, temporizations. She must come through this somehow with the vantage on her side. She could not possibly betray that poor young man, for that would entail the betrayal of Cutty also. She saw but one avenue, the telephone; and these two men were on the wrong side of the bed, between her and the door.
“What do you want?” Her throat was so dry she wondered whether the words were projected far enough for them to hear.
“We want the address of the wounded man you brought into this apartment.”
“They took him to a hospital.”
“He was taken away from there.”
“He was?”
“Yes, he was. You may not know where, but you will know the address of the man who tricked us; and that will be sufficient.”
“The army surgeon? He was called in by chance. I don't know where he lives.”
“The man in the dress suit.”
“He was with the surgeon.”
“He came first. Come; we have no time to waste. We don't want to hurt you, and we hope you will not force us.
“Will you step out of the room while I dress?”
“No. Tell us where the man lives, and you can have the whole apartment to yourself.”
“You speak English very well.”
“Enough! Do you want us to bundle you up in the bedclothes and carry you off? It will not be a pleasant experience for a pretty young woman like yourself. Something happened to the man you knew as Gregory. Will that make you understand?”
“You know what abduction means?”
“Your police will not catch us.”
“But I might give you the wrong address.”
“Try it and see what happens. Young lady, this is a bad affair for a woman to be mixed up in. Be sensible. We are in a hurry.”
“Well, you seem to have acquired at least one American habit!” said a gruff voice from the bedroom doorway. “Raise your hands quickly, and don't turn,” went on the gruff voice. “If I shoot it will be to kill. It is a rough game, as you say. That's it; and keep them up. Now, then, young lady, slip on your kimono. Get up and search these men. I'm in a hurry, too.”
Kitty obeyed, very lovely in her dishevelment. Repugnant as the task was she disarmed the two men and flung their weapons on the bed.
“Now something to tie their hands; anything that will hold.”
Kitty could see the speaker now. Another coal heaver, but evidently on her side.
“Tie their hands behind them... I warn you not to move, men. When I say I'll shoot I mean it. Don't be afraid of hurting them, miss. Very good. Now bandage their eyes. Handkerchiefs.”
But Kitty's handkerchiefs did not run to the dimensions' required; so she ripped up a petticoat. Torn between her eagerness to complete a disagreeable task and her offended modesty, Kitty went through the performance with creditable alacrity. Then she jumped back into bed, doubled her knees, and once more drew up the bedclothes to her chin, content to be a spectator, her eyes as wide as ever they possibly could be.
Some secret-service man Cutty had sent to protect her. Dear old Cutty! Small wonder he had urged her to spend the night at a hotel. The admiration of her childhood returned, but without the shackles of shyness. She had always trusted him absolutely, and to this trust was now added understanding. To have him pop into her life again in this fashion, all the ordinary approaches to intimacy wiped out by these amazing episodes; the years bridged in an hour! If only he were younger!
“Watch them, miss. Don't be afraid to shoot. I'll return in a moment”—still gruffly. The secret-service man pushed his prisoners into chairs and left the bedroom.
Kitty did not care how gruff the voice was; it was decidedly pleasant in her ears. Gingerly she picked up one of the revolvers. Kitty Conover with shooting irons in her hands, like a movie actress! She heard a whistle. After this an interval of silence, save for the ticking of the alarm clock on the stand. She eyed the blindfolded men speculatively, swung out of bed, and put on her stockings and sandals; then she sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the sequence. Kitty Conover was going to have some queer recollections to tell her grandchildren, providing she had any. That morning she had risen to face a humdrum normal day. And here she was, at midnight, hobnobbing with quiescent murder and sudden death! To-morrow Burlingame would ask her to hustle up the Sunday stuff, and she would hustle. She wanted to laugh, but was a little afraid that this laughter might degenerate into incipient hysteria.
There was still in her mind a vivid recollection of her dream—the fire of diamonds and the blonde girl with the tiara of rubies. Olga, Olga! Russian; the whole affair was Russian. She shivered. Always that land and people had appeared to her in sinister aspect; no doubt an impression acquired from reading melodramas written by Englishmen who, once upon a time, had given Russia preeminence as a political menace. Russia, in all things—music, art, literature—the tragic note. Stefani Gregor and Johnny Two-Hawks had roused the enmity of some political society with this result. Nihilist or Bolshevist or socialist, there was little choice; and Cutty sensibly did not want her drawn into the whirlpool.
What a pleasant intimacy hers and Cutty's promised to be! And if he hadn't casually dropped into the office that afternoon she would have surrendered the affair to the police, and that would have been the end of it. Amazing thought—you might jog along all your life at the side of a person and never know him half so well as someone you met m a tense episode, like that of the immaculate Cutty crossing the fire escape with Two-Hawks on his shoulders!
She heard the friendly coal heaver going down the corridor to the door. When he returned to the bedroom two men accompanied him. Not a word was said. The two men marched off with the prisoners and left Kitty alone with her saviour.
“Thank you,” she said, simply.
“You poor little chicken, did you believe I had deserted you?” The voice wasn't gruff now.
“Cutty?” Kitty ran to him, flinging her arms round his neck. “Oh, Cutty!”
Cutty's heart, which had bumped along an astonishing number of million times in fifty-two years, registered a memorable bump against his ribs. The touch of her soft arms and the faint, indescribable perfume which emanates from a dainty woman's hair thrilled him beyond any thrill he had ever known. For Kitty's mother had never put her arms round old Cutty's neck. Of course he understood readily enough: Molly's girl, flesh of her flesh. And she had rushed to him as she would have rushed to her father. He patted her shoulder clumsily, still a little dazzled for all the revelation in the analysis. The sweet intimacy of it! The door of Paradise opened for a moment, and then shut in his face.
“I did not recognize you at all!” she cried, standing off. “I shouldn't have known you on the street. And it is so simple. What a wonderful man you are!”
“For an old codger?” Cutty's heart registered another sizable bump.
Kitty laughed. “Never call yourself old to me again. Are you always doing these things?”
“Well, I keep moving. I suspected something like this might happen. Those two will go to the Tombs to await deportation if they are aliens. Perhaps we can dig something out of them relative to this man Gregor. Anyhow, we'll try.”
“Cutty, I saw a man in the court with a pocket lamp before I went to bed. He was hunting for something.”
“I didn't find anything but a lot of fresh food someone had thrown out.”
“It was you, then?”
“Yes. There was a vague possibility that your protege might have thrown out something valuable during the struggle.”
“What?”
“Lord knows! A queer business, Kitty, you've lugged me into—my own! And there is one thing I want you to remember particularly: Life means nothing to the men opposed, neither chivalry nor ethics. Annihilation is their business. They don't want civilization; they want chaos. They have lost the sense of comparisons or they would not seek to thrust Bolshevism down the throats of the rest of the world. They say democracy has failed, and their substitute is murder and loot. Kitty, I want you to leave this roost.”
“I shall stay until my lease expires.”
“Why? In the face of real danger?”
“Because I intend to, Cutty—unless you kidnap me.”
“Have you any good reason?”
“You'll laugh; but something tells me to stay here.”
But Cutty did not laugh. “Very well. Tomorrow an assistant janitor will be installed. His name is Antonio Bernini. Every night he will whistle up the tube. Whistle back. If you are going out for the evening notify him where you intend to go and when you expect to be back. A wire from your bed to his cot will be installed. In danger, press the button. That's the best I can do for you, since you decide to stick. I don't believe anything more will happen to-night, but from now on you will be watched. Never come directly to my apartment. Break your journey two or three times with taxis. Always use Elevator Four. The boy is mine; belongs to the service. So our Bolshevik friends won't gather anything about you from him.”
As a matter of fact, Cutty had now come to the conviction that it would be well to let Kitty remain here as a lure. He had urged her to leave, and she had refused, so his conscience was tolerably clear. Besides, she would henceforth be guarded with a ceaseless efficiency second only to that which encompasses a President of the United States. Always some man of the service would be watching those who watched her. This was going to develop into a game of small nets, one or two victims at a time. Because these enemies of civilization lacked coherence in action there would be slim chance of rounding them up in bulk. But from now on men would vanish—one here, a pair there, perhaps on occasion four or five. And those who had known them would know them no more. The policy would be that employed by the British in the submarine campaign—mysterious silence after the evanishment.
“It's all so exciting!” said Kitty. “But that poor old man Gregor! He had a wonderful violin, Cutty; and sometimes I used to hear him play folklore music—sad, haunting melodies.”
“We'll know in a little while what's become of him. I doubt there is a foreign organization in the city that hasn't one or more of our men on the inside. A word will be dropped somewhere. I'm rarely active on this side of the Atlantic; and what I'm doing now is practically due to interest. But every active operative in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago is on the lookout for a man who, if left free, will stir up a lot of trouble. He has leadership, this Boris Karlov, a former intimate here of Trotzky's. We have reason to believe that he slipped through the net in San Francisco. Probably under a cleverly forged passport. Now please describe the man who came in with the policeman. I haven't had time to make inquiries at the precinct, where they will have a minute description of him.”
“He made me think of a gorilla, just as I told you. His face was pretty well banged up. Naturally I did not notice any scar. A dreadfully black beard, shaven.”
“Squat, powerful, like a gorilla. Lord, I wish I'd had a glimpse of him! He's one of the few topnotchers I haven't met. He's the spark, the hand on the plunger. The powder is all ready in this land of ours; our job is to keep off the sparks until we can spread the stuff so it will only go puff instead of bang. This man Karlov is bad medicine for democracy. Poor devil!”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I'm honestly sorry for them. This fellow Karlov has suffered. He is now a species of madman nothing will cure. He and his kind have gained their ends in Russia, but the impetus to kill and burn and loot is still unchecked. Sorry, yes; but we can't have them here. They remind me of nothing so much as those blind deep-sea monsters in one of Kipling's tales, thrown up into air and sunlight by a submarine volcano, slashing and bellowing. But we can't have them here any longer. Keep those revolvers under your pillow. All you have to do is to point. Nobody will know that you can't shoot. And always remember, we're watching over you. Good-night.”
“Mouquin's for lunch?”
“Well, I'll be hanged! But it can't be, Kitty. You and I must not be seen in public. If that was Karlov you will be marked, and so will any one who travels with you.”
“Good gracious!”
“Fact. But come up to the roost—changing taxis—to-morrow at five and have tea.”
Down in the street Cutty bore into the slanting rain, no longer a drizzle. With his hands jammed in his side pockets and his gaze on the sparkling pavement he continued downtown, in a dangerously ruminative frame of mind, dangerous because had he been followed he would not have known it.
Molly Conover's girl! That afternoon it had been Tommy Conover's girl; now she was Molly's. It occurred to him for the first time that he was one of those unfortunate individuals who are always able to open the door to Paradise for others and are themselves forced to remain outside. Hadn't he introduced Conover to Molly, and hadn't they fallen in love on the spot? Too old to be a hero and not old enough to die. He grinned. Some day he would use that line.
Of course it wasn't Kitty who set this peculiar cogitation in motion. It wasn't her arms and the perfume of her hair. The actual thrill had come from a recrudescence of a vanished passion; anyhow, a passion that had been held suspended all these years. Still, it offered a disquieting prospect. He was sensible enough to realize that he would be in for some confusion in trying to disassociate the phantom from the quick.
Most pretty young women were flitter-flutters, unstable, shallow, immature. But this little lady had depth, the sense of the living drama; and, Lord, she was such a beauty! Wanted a man who would laugh when he was happy and when he was hurt. A bull's-eye—bang, like that! For the only breed worth its salt was the kind that laughed when happy and when hurt.
The average young woman, rushing into his arms the way she had, would not have stirred him in the least. And immediately upon the heels of this thought came a taste of the confusion he saw in store for himself. Was it the phantom or Kitty? He jumped to another angle to escape the impasse. Kitty's coming to him in that fashion raised an unpalatable suggestion. He evidently looked fatherly, no matter how he felt. Hang these fifty-two years, to come crowding his doorstep all at once!
He raised his head and laughed. He suddenly remembered now. At nine that night he had been scheduled to deliver a lecture on the Italo-Jugoslav muddle before a distinguished audience in the ballroom of a famous hotel! He would have some fancy apologizing to do in the morning.
He stepped into a doorway, then peered out cautiously. There was not a single pedestrian in sight. No need of hiking any further in this rain; so he hunted for a taxi. To-morrow he would set the wires humming relative to old Stefani Gregor. Boris Karlov, if indeed it were he, would lead the way. Hadn't Stefani and Boris been boyhood friends, and hadn't Stefani betrayed the latter in some political affair? He wasn't sure; but a glance among his 1912 notes would clear up the fog.
But that young chap! Who was he? Cutty set his process of logical deduction moving. Karlov—always supposing that gorilla was Karlov—had come in from the west. So had the young man. Gregor's inclinations had been toward the aristocracy; at least, that had been the impression. A Bolshevik would not seek haven with a man like Gregor, as this young man had. But Two-Hawks bothered him; the name bothered him, because it had no sense either in English or in Russian. And yet he was sure he had heard it somewhere. Perhaps his notes would throw some light on that subject, too.
When he arrived home Miss Frances, the nurse, informed him that the patient was babbling in an outlandish tongue. For a long time Cutty stood by the bedside, translating.
“Olga!... Olga!... And she gave me food, Stefani, this charming American girl. Never must we forget that. I was hungry, and she gave me food.... But I paid for it. You, gone, there was no one else.... And she is poor.... The torches!... I am burning, burning!... Olga!”
“What does he say?” asked the nurse.
“It is Russian. Is it a crisis?” he evaded.
“Not necessarily. Doctor Harrison said he would probably return to consciousness sometime to-morrow. But he must have absolute quiet. No visitors. A bad blow, but not of fatal consequence. I've seen hundreds of cases much worse pull out in a fortnight. You'd better go to bed, sir.”
“All right,” said Cutty, gratefully. He was tired. The ball did not rebound as it used to; the resilience was petering out. But look alive, there! Big events were toward, and he must not stop to feel of his pulse.
Three o'clock in the morning.
The man in the Gregor bedroom sat down on the bed, the pocket lamp dangling from his hairy fingers. Not a nook or cranny in the apartment had he overlooked. In every cupboard, drawer; in the beds and under; the trunks; behind the radiators and the pictures; the shelves and clothes in the closets. What he sought he had not found.
His vengeance would not be complete without those green stones in his hands. Anna would call from her grave. Pretty little Anna, who had trusted Stefani Gregor, and gone to her doom.
All these thousands of miles, by hook and crook, by forged passports, by sums of money, sleepless nights and hungry days—for this! The last of that branch of the breed out of his reach, and the stones vanished! A queer superstition had taken lodgment in his brain; he recognized it now for the first time. The possession of those stones would be a sign from God to go on. Green stones for bread! Green stones for bread! The drums of jeopardy! In his hands they would be talismanic.
But wait! That pretty girl across the way. Supposing he had intrusted the stones to her? Or hidden them there without her being aware of it?
Kitty Conover ate in the kitchen. First off, this statement is likely to create the false impression that there was an ordinary grain here, a wedge of base hemlock in the citron. Not so. She ate in the kitchen because she could not yet face that vacant chair in the dining room without choking and losing her appetite. She could not look at the chair without visualizing that glorious, whimsical, fascinating mother of hers, who could turn grumpy janitors into comedians and send importunate bill collectors away with nothing but spangles in their heads.
So long as she stayed out of the dining room she could accept her loneliness with sound philosophy. She knew, as all sensible people know, that there were ghosts, that memory had haunted galleries, and that empty chairs were evocations.
Her days were so busily active, there were so many first nights and concerts, that she did not mind such evenings as she had to spend alone in the apartment. Persons were in and out of the office all through the day, and many of them entertaining. For only real persons ever penetrated that well-guarded cubby-hole off the noisy city room. Many of them were old friends of her mother. Of course they were a little pompous, but this was less innate than acquired; and she knew that below they were worth while. She had come to the conclusion that successful actors and actresses were the only people in America who spoke English fluently and correctly.
Yes, she ate in the kitchen; but she would have been a fit subject for the fastidious Fragonard. Kitty was naturally an exquisite. Everything about her was dainty, her body and her mind. The background of pans and dishes, gas range and sink did not absorb Kitty; her presence here in the morning lifted everything out of the rut of commonplace and created an atmosphere that was ornamental. Pink peignoir and turquoise-blue boudoir cap, silk petticoat and stockings and adorable little slippers. No harm to tell the secret! Kitty was educating herself for a husband. She knew that if she acquired the habit of daintiness at breakfast before marriage it would become second nature after marriage. Moreover, she was determined that it should be tremendous news that would cause a newspaper to intervene. She had all the confidence in the world in her mirror.
She got her breakfast this morning, singing. She was happy. She had found a door out of monotony; theatrical drama had given way to the living. She had opened the book of adventure and she was going straight through to finis. That there was an undertow of the sinister escaped her or she ignored it.
In all high-strung Irish souls there is a bit of the old wife, the foreteller; the gift of prescience; and Kitty possessed this in a mild degree. Something held her here, when for a dozen reasons she should have gone elsewhere.
She strained the coffee, humming a tune out of The Mikado, the revival of which she had seen lately:
My object all sublimeI shall achieve in timeTo make the punishment fit the crime.The punishment fit the crime.And make the prisoner pentUnwillingly representA source of innocent merriment.Of innocent merriment!
And there you were! To make the punishment fit the crime. Wall in the Bolsheviki, the I.W.W.'s, the Red Socialist, the anarchists—and let them try it for ten years. Those left would be glad enough to embrace democracy and sanity. The poor benighted things, to imagine that they were going forward there in Russia! What kind of mentality was it that could conceive a blessing to humanity in the abolition of baths and work? And Cutty felt sorry for them. Well, as for that, so did Kitty Conover; and she would continue feeling sorry for them so long as they remained thousands of miles away. But next door!
“Grapefruit, eggs on toast, and coffee; mademoiselle is served!” she cried, gayly, sitting down and attacking her breakfast with the zest of healthy youth.
Often the eyes are like the lenses of a camera minus the sensitized plate; they see objects without printing them. Thus a dozen times Kitty's glance absently swept the range and the racks on each side of the stovepipe, one rack burdened with an empty pancake jug and the other cluttered with old-fashioned flatirons; but she saw nothing.
She was carefully reviewing the events of the night before. She could not dismiss the impression that Cutty knew Stefani Gregor or had heard of him; and in either case it signified that Gregor was something more than a valet. And decidedly Two-Hawks was not of the Russian peasantry.
By the time she was ready to leave for the office the Irish blood in her was seething and bubbling and dancing. She knew she would do crazy, impulsive things all day. It was easy to analyze this exuberance. She had reached out into the dark and touched danger, and found a new thrill in a humdrum world.
The Great Dramatist had produced a tremendous drama and she had watched curtain after curtain fall from the wrong side of the lights. Now she had been given a speaking part; and she would be down stage for a moment or two—dusting the furniture—while the stars were retouching their make-up. It was not the thought of Cutty, of Gregor, of Johnny Two-Hawks, of hidden treasure; simply she had arrived somewhere in the great drama.
When she reached the office she had a hard time of it to settle down to the day's work.
“Hustle up that Sunday stuff,” said Burlingame. Kitty laughed. Just as she had pictured it. She hustled.
“I have it!” she cried, breaking a spell of silence.
“What—St. Vitus?” inquired Burlingame, patiently.
“No; the Morgue!”
“What the dickens—!”
But Kitty was no longer there to answer.
In all newspaper offices there is a department flippantly designated as the Morgue. Obituaries on ice, as it were. A photograph or an item concerning a great man, a celebrated, beauty or some notorious rogue; from the king calibre down to Gyp-the-Blood brand, all indexed and laid away against the instant need. So, running her finger tip down the K's, Kitty found Karlov. The half tone which she eventually exhumed from the tin box was an excellent likeness of the human gorilla who had entered her rooms with the policeman. She would be able to carry this positive information to Cutty that afternoon.
When she left the office at four she took the Subway to Forty-second Street. She engaged a taxi from the Knickerbocker and discharged it at the north entrance to the Waldorf, which she entered. She walked through to the south entrance and got into another taxi. She left this at Wanamaker's, ducking and dodging through the crowded aisles. She selected this hour because, being a woman, she knew that the press of shoppers would be the greatest during the day. Karlov's man and the secret-service operative detailed by Cutty both made the same mistake—followed Kitty into the dry-goods shop and lost her as completely as if she had popped up in China. At quarter to five she stepped into Elevator Number Four of the building which Cutty called his home, very well pleased with herself.