To understand Kitty at this moment one must be able to understand the Irish; and nobody does or can or will. Consider her twenty-four years, her corpuscular inheritance, the love of drama and the love of adventure. Imagine possessing sound ideas of life and the ability to apply them, and spiritually always galloping off on some broad highway—more often than not furnished by some engaging scoundrel of a novelist—and you will be able to construct a half tone of Kitty Conover.
That civilization might be actually on its deathbed, that positively half of the world was starving and dying and going mad through the reaction of the German blight touched her in a detached way. She felt sorry, dreadfully sorry, for the poor things; but as she could not help them she dismissed them from her thoughts every morning after she had read the paper, the way most of us do here in these United States. You cannot grapple with the misery of an unknown person several thousand miles away.
That which had taken place during the past twenty-four hours was to her a lark, a blindman's buff for grown-ups. It was not in her to tremble, to shudder, to hesitate, to weigh this and to balance that. Irish curiosity. Perhaps in the original that immortal line read: “The Irish rush in where angels fear to tread,” and some proofreader had a particular grudge against the race.
When the elevator reached the seventeenth floor, the passengers surged forth. All except Kitty, who tarried.
“We don't carry to the eighteenth, miss.
“I am Miss Conover,” she replied. “I dared not tell you until we were alone.”
“I see.” The boy nodded, swept her with an appraising glance, and sent the elevator up to the loft.
“You understand? If any one inquires about me, you don't remember.”
“Yes, miss. The boss's orders.”
“And if any one does inquire you are to report at once.”
“That, too.”
The boy rolled back the door and Kitty stepped out upon a Laristan runner of rose hues and cobalt blue. She wondered what it cost Cutty to keep up an establishment like this. There were fourteen rooms, seven facing the north and seven facing the west, with glorious vistas of steam-wreathed roofs and brick Matterhorns and the dim horizon touching the sea. Fine rugs and tapestries and furniture gathered from the four ends of the world; but wholly livable and in no sense atmospheric of the museum. Cutty had excellent taste.
She had visited the apartment but twice before, once in her childhood and again when she was eighteen. Cutty had given a dinner in honour of her mother's birthday. She smiled as she recalled the incident. Cutty had placed a box of candles at the side of her mother's plate and told her to stick as many into the cake as she thought best.
“Hello!” said Cutty, emerging from one of the doors. “What the dickens have you been up to? My man has just telephoned me that he lost track of you in Wanamaker's.”
Kitty explained, delighted.
“Well, well! If you can lose a man such as I set to watch you, you'll have no trouble shaking the others.”
“It was Karlov, Cutty.”
“How did you learn?”
“Searched the morgue and found a half tone of him. Positively Karlov. How is the patient?”
“Harrison says he's pulling round amazingly. A tough skull. He'll be up for his meals in no time.”
“How do you do it?” she asked with a gesture.
“Do what?”
“Manage a place like this? In a busy office district. It's the most wonderful apartment in New York. Riverside has nothing like it. It must cost like sixty.”
“The building is mine, Kitty. That makes it possible. An uncle who knew I hated money and the responsibilities that go with it, died and left it to me.”
“Why, Cutty, you must be rich!”
“I'm sorry. What can I do? I can't give it away.”
“But you don't have to work!”
“Oh, yes, I do. I'm that kind. I'd die of a broken heart if I had to sit still. It's the game.”
“Did mother know?”
“Yes.”
With the toe of a snug little bronze boot Kitty drew an outline round a pattern in the rug.
“Love is a funny thing,” was her comment.
“It sure is, old-timer. But what put the thought into your head?”
“I was thinking how very much mumsy must have been in love with father.”
“But she never knew that I loved her, Kitty.”
“What's that got to do with it? If she had wanted money you wouldn't have had the least chance in the world.”
“Probably not! But what would you have done in your mother's place?”
“Snapped you up like that!” Kitty flashed back.
“You cheerful little—little—”
“Liar. Say it!” Kitty laughed. “But am I a cheerful little liar? I don't know. It would be an awful temptation. Somebody to wait on you; heaps of flowers when you wanted them; beautiful gowns and thingummies and furs and limousines. I've often wondered what I should do if I found myself with love and youth on one side and money and attraction on the other. I've always been in straitened circumstances. I never spent a dollar in all my days when I didn't think I ought to have held back three or four cents of it. You can't know, Cutty, what it is to be poor and want beautiful things and good times. Of course. I couldn't marry just money. There would have to be some kind of a man to go with it. Someone interesting enough to make me forget sometimes that I'd thrown away a lover for a pocket-book.”
“Would you marry me, Kitty?”
“Are you serious?”
“Let's suppose I am.”
“No. I couldn't marry you, Cutty I should always be having my mother's ghost as a rival.”
“But supposing I fell in love with you?”
“Then I'd always be doubting your constancy. But what queer talk!”'
“Kitty, you're a joy! Lordy, my luck in dropping in to see you yesterday!”
“And a little whippersnapper like me calling a great man like you Cutty!”
“Well, if it embarrasses you, you might switch to papa once in a while.”
Kitty's laughter rang down the corridor. “I'll remember that whenever I want to make you mad. Who's here?”
“Nobody but Harrison and the nurse. Both good citizens, and I've taken them into my confidence to a certain extent. You can talk freely before them.”
“Am I to see the patient?”
“Harrison says not. About Wednesday your Two-Hawks will be sitting up. I've determined to keep the poor devil here until he can take care of himself. But he is flat broke.”
“He said he had money.”
“Well, Karlov's men stripped him clean.”
“Have you any idea who he is?”
“To be honest, that's one of the reasons why I want to keep him here. He's Russian, for all his Oxford English and his Italian gestures; and from his babble I imagine he's been through seven kinds of hell. Torches and hobnailed boots and the incessant call for a woman named Olga—a young woman about eighteen.”
“How did you find that out?”
“From a photograph I found in the lining of his coat. A pretty blonde girl.”
“Good heavens!”—recollecting her dream. “Where was it printed?”
“Amateur photography. I'll pick it up on the way to the living room.”
It was nothing like the blonde girl of her dream. Still, the girl was charming. Kitty turned over the photograph. There was writing on the back.
“Russian? What does it say?”
“'To Ivan from Olga with all her love.'”
Cutty was conscious of the presence of an indefensible malice in his tones. Why the deuce should he be bitter—glad that the chap had left behind a sweetheart? He knew exactly the basis of Kitty's interest, as utterly detached as that of a reporter going to a fire. On the day the patient could explain himself, Kitty's interest would automatically cease. An old dog in the manger? Malice.
“Cutty, something dreadful has happened to this poor young woman. That's what makes him cry out the name. Caught in that horror, and probably he alone escaped. Is it heartless to be glad I'm an American? Do they let in these Russians?”
“Not since the Trotzky regime. I imagine Two-Hawks slipped through on some British passport. He'll probably tell us all about it when he comes round. But how do you feel after last night's bout?”
“Alive! And I'm going on being alive, forever and ever! Oh, those awful drums! They look like dead eyes in those dim corners. Tumpitum-tump! Tumpitum-tump!” she cried, linking her arm in his. “What a gorgeous view! Just what I'm going to do when my ship comes in—live in a loft. I really believe I could write up here—I mean worth-while things I could enjoy writing and sell.”
“It's yours if you want it when I leave.”
“And I'd have a fine time explaining to my friends! You old innocent! ... Or are you so innocent?”
“We do live in a cramped world. But I meant it. Don't forget to whistle down to Tony Bernini when you get back home to-night.”
“I promise.
“Why the gurgle?”
“Because I'm tremendously excited. All my life I've wanted to do mysterious things. I've been with the audience all the while, and I want to be with the actors.”
“You'll give some man a wild dance.”
“If I do I'll dance with him. Now lead me to the cookies.”
She was the life of the tea table. Her wit, her effervescence, her whimsicalities amused even the prim Miss Frances. When she recounted the exploit of the camouflaged fan, Cutty and Harrison laughed so loudly that the nurse had to put her finger on her lips. They might wake the patient.
“I am really interested in him,” went on Kitty. “I won't deny it. I want to see how it's going to turn out. He was very nice after I let him into the kitchen. A perfectly English manner and voice, and Italian gestures when off his guard. I feel so sorry for him. What strangers we races are to each other! Until the war we hardly knew the Canadians. The British didn't know us at all, and the French became acquainted with the British for the first time in history. And the German thought he knew us all and really knew nobody. All the Russians I ever saw were peasants of the cattle type; so that the word Russian conjures up two pictures—the grand duke at Monte Carlo and a race of men who wear long beards and never bathe except when it rains. Think of it! For the first time since God set mankind on earth peoples are becoming acquainted. I never saw a Russian of this type before.”.
“A leaf in the whirlpool.—Anyhow, we'll keep him here until he's on his feet. By the way, never answer any telephone call—I mean, go anywhere on a call—unless you are sure of the speaker.”
“I begin to feel important.”
“You are important. You have suddenly become a connecting link between this Karlov and the man we wish to protect. I'll confess I wanted you out of that apartment at first; but when I saw that you were bent on remaining, I decided to make use of you.”
“You are going to give me a part in the play?”
“Yes. You are to go about your affairs as always, just as if nothing had happened. Only when you wish to come here will you play any game like that of to-day. Then it will be advisable. Switch your route each time. Your real part is to be that of lure. Through you we shall gradually learn who Karlov's associates are. If you don't care to play the role all you have to do is to move.”
“The idea! I'm grateful for anything. You men will never understand. You go forth into the world each day—politics, diplomacy, commerce, war—while we women stay at home and knit or darn socks or take care of the baby or make over our clothes and hats or do household work or play the piano or read. Never any adventure. Never any games. Never any clubs. The leaving your house to go to the office is an adventure. A train from here to Philadelphia is an adventure. We women are always craving it. And about all we can squeeze out of life is shopping and hiding the bills after marriage, and going to the movies before marriage with young men our fathers don't like. We can't even stroll the street and admire the handsome gowns of our more fortunate sisters the way you men do. When you see a pretty woman on the street do you ever stop to think that there are ten at home eating their hearts out? Of course you don't. So I'm going through with this, to satisfy suppressed instincts; and I shan't promise to trot along as usual.”
“They may attempt to kidnap you, Kitty.”
“That doesn't frighten me.”
“So I observe. But if they ever should have the luck to kidnap you, tell all you know at once. There's only one way up here—the elevator. I can get out to the fire escape, but none can get in from that direction, as the door is of steel.”
“And, of course, you'll take me into your confidence completely?”
“When the time comes. Half the fun in an adventure is the element of the unexpected,” said Cutty.
“Where did you first meet Stefani Gregor?”
Captain Harrison laughed. He liked this girl. She was keen and could be depended upon, as witness last night's work. Her real danger lay in being conspicuously pretty, in looking upon this affair as merely a kind of exciting game, when it was tragedy.
“What makes you think I know Stefani Gregor?” asked Cutty, genuinely curious.
“When I pronounced that name you whirled upon me as if I had struck you.”
“Very well. When we learn who Two-Hawks is I'll tell you what I know about Gregor. And in the meantime you will be ceaselessly under guard. You are an asset, Kitty, to whichever side holds you. Captain Harrison is going to stay for dinner. Won't you join us?”
“I'm going to a studio potluck with some girls. And it's time I was on the way. I'll let your Tony Bernini know. Home probably at ten.”
Cutty went with her to the elevator and when he returned to the tea table he sat down without speaking.
“Why not kidnap her yourself,” suggested Harrison, “if you don't want her in this?”
“She would never forgive me.”
“If she found it out.”
“She's the kind who would. What do you think of her, Miss Frances?”
“I think she is wonderful. Frankly, I should tell her everything—if there is anything more to be told.”
When dinner was over, the nurse gone back to the patient and Captain Harrison to his club, Cutty lit his odoriferous pipe and patrolled the windows of his study. Ever since Kitty's departure he had been mulling over in his mind a plan regarding her future—to add a codicil to his will, leaving her five thousand a year, so Molly's girl might always have a dainty frame for her unusual beauty. The pity of it was that convention denied him the pleasure of settling the income upon her at once, while she was young. He might outlive her; you never could tell. Anyhow, he would see to the codicil. An accident might step in.
He got out his chrysoprase. In one corner of the room there was a large portfolio such as artists use for their proofs and sketches; and from this he took a dozen twelve-by-fourteen-inch photographs of beautiful women, most of them stage beauties of bygone years. The one on top happened to be Patti. The adorable Patti!... Linda, Violetta, Lucia. Lord, what a nightingale she had been! He laughed laid the photograph on the desk, and dipped his hand into a canvas bag filled with polished green stones which would have great commercial value if people knew more about them; for nothing else in the world is quite so beautifully green.
He built tiaras above the lovely head and laid necklaces across the marvellous throat. Suddenly a phenomenon took place. The roguish eyes of the prima donna receded and vanished and slate-blue ones replaced them. The odd part of it was, he could not dissipate the fancied eyes for the replacement of the actual. Patti, with slate-blue eyes! He discarded the photograph and selected another. He began the game anew and was just beginning the attack on the problem uppermost in his mind when the phenomenon occurred again. Kitty's eyes! What infernal nonsense! Kitty had served merely to enliven his tender recollections of her mother. Twenty-four and fifty-two. And yet, hadn't he just read that Maeterlinck, fifty-six, had married Mademoiselle Dahon, many years younger?
In a kind of resentful fury he pushed back his chair and fell to pacing, eddies and loops and spirals of smoke whirling and sweeping behind him. The only light was centred upon the desk, so he might have been some god pacing cloud-riven Olympus in the twilight. By and by he laughed; and the atmosphere—mental—cleared. Maeterlinck, fifty-six, and Cutty, fifty-two, were two different men. Cutty might mix his metaphors occasionally, but he wasn't going to mix his ghosts.
He returned to his singular game. More tiaras and necklaces; and his brain took firm hold of the theme which had in the beginning lured him to the green stones.
Two-Hawks. That name bothered him. He knew he had heard it before, but never in the Russian tongue. It might be that the chap had been spoofing Kitty. Still, he had also called himself Hawksley.
The smoke thickened; there were frequent flares of matches. One by one Cutty discarded the photographs, dropping them on the floor beside his chair, his mind boring this way and that for a solution. He had now come to the point where he ceased to see the photographs or the green stones. The movements of his hands were almost automatic. And in this abstract manner he came to the last photograph. He built a necklace and even ventured an earring.
It was a glorious face—black eyes that followed you; full lipped; every indication of fire and genius. It must be understood that he rarely saw the photographs when he played this game. It wasn't an amusing pastime, a mental relaxation. It was a unique game of solitaire, the photographs and chrysoprase being substituted for cards; and in some inexplicable manner it permitted him to concentrate upon whatever problem filled his thoughts. It was purely accidental that he saw Patti to-night or recalled her art. Coming upon the last photograph without having found a solution of the riddle of Two-Hawks he relaxed the mental pressure; and his sight reestablished its ability to focus.
“Good Lord!” he ejaculated.
He seized the photograph excitedly, scattering the green stones. She! The Calabrian, the enchanting colouratura who had vanished from the world at the height of her fame, thirty-odd years gone! Two-Hawks!
Cutty saw himself at twenty, in the pit at La Scala, with music-mad Milan all about him. Two-Hawks! He remembered now. The nickname the young bloods had given her because she had been eternally guarded by her mother and aunt, fierce-beaked Calabrians, who had determined that Rosa should never throw herself away on some beggarly Adonis.
And this chap was her son! Yesterday, rich and powerful, with a name that was open sesame wherever he went; to-day, hunted, penniless, and forlorn. Cutty sank back in his chair, stunned by the revelation. In that room yonder!
For a long time Cutty sat perfectly motionless, his pipe at an upward angle—a fine commentary on the strength of his jaws—and his gaze boring into the shadows beyond his desk. What was uppermost in his thoughts now was the fateful twist of events that had brought the young man to the assured haven of this towering loft.
All based, singularly enough, upon his wanting to see Molly's girl for a few moments; and thus he had established himself in Kitty's thoughts. Instead of turning to the police she had turned to him. Old Cutty, reaching round vaguely for something to stay the current—age; hoping by seeing this living link 'twixt the present and the past to stay the afterglow of youth. As if that could be done! He, who had never paid any attention to gray hairs and wrinkles and time, all at once found himself in a position similar to that of the man who supposes he has an inexhaustible sum at the bank and has just been notified that he has overdrawn.
Cutty knew that life wasn't really coordination and premeditation so much as it was coincident. Trivials. Nothing was absolute and dependable but death; between birth and death a series of accidents and incidents and coincidents which men called life.
He tapped his pipe on the ash tray and stood up. He gathered the chrysoprase and restored the stones to the canvas bag. Then he carefully stacked the photographs and carried them to the portfolio. The green stones he deposited in a safe, from which he took a considerable bundle of small notebooks, returning to the desk with these. Denatured dynamite, these notebooks, full of political secrets, solutions of mysteries that baffle historians. A truly great journalist never writes history as a historian; he is afraid to. Sometimes conjecture is safer than fact. And these little notebooks were the repository of suppressed facts ranging over twenty-odd years. Gerald Stanley Lee would have recognized them instantly as coming under the head of what he calls Sh!
An hour later Cutty returned the notebooks to their abiding place, his memory refreshed. The poor devil! A dissolute father and uncle, dissolute forbears, corrupt blood weakened by intermarriage, what hope was there? Only one—the rich, fiery blood of the Calabrian mother.
But why had the chap come to America? Why not England or the Riviera, where rank, even if shorn of its prerogatives, is still treated respectfully? But America!
Cutty's head went up. Perhaps that was it—to barter his phantom greatness for money, to dazzle some rich fool of an American girl. In that case Karlov would be welcome. But wait a moment. The chap had come in from the west. In that event there should be an Odyssey of some kind tucked away in the affair.
Cutty resumed his pacing. The moment his imagination caught the essentials he visualized the Odyssey. Across mountains and deserts, rivers and seas, he followed Two-Hawks in fancy, pursued by an implacable hatred, more or less historical, of which the lad was less a cause than an abstract object. And Karlov—Cutty understood Karlov now—always span near, his hate reenergizing his faltering feet.
There was evidently some iron in this Two-Hawks' blood. Fear never would have carried him thus far. Fear would have whispered, “Futility! Futility!” And he would have bent his head to the stroke. So then there was resource and there was courage. And he lay in yonder room, beaten and penniless. The top piece in the grim irony—to have come all these thousands of miles unscathed, to be dropped at the goal. But America? Well, that would be solved later.
“By the Lord Harry!” Cutty stopped and struck his hands together. “The drums!”
From the hour Kitty had pronounced the name Stefani Gregor an idea had taken lodgment, an irrepressible idea, that somewhere in this drama would be the drums of jeopardy. The mark of the thong! Never any doubt of it now. Those magnificent emeralds were here in New York, The mob—the Red Guard—hammering on the doors, what would have been Two-Hawks' most natural first thought? To gather what treasures the hand could be laid to and flee. Here in New York, and in Karlov's hands, ultimately to be cut up for Bolshevik propaganda! The infernal pity of it!
The passion of the gem hunter blazed forth, dimming all other phases of the drama. Here was a real game, a man's game; sport! Cutty rubbed his hands together pleasurably. To recover those green flames before they could be broken up; under the ancient ruling that “Findings is keepings.” The stones, of course, meant nothing to Karlov beyond the monetary value; and upon this fact Cutty began developing a plan. He stood ready to buy those stones if he could draw them into the open. Lord, how he wanted them! Murder and loot, always murder and loot!
The thought of those two incomparable emeralds being broken up distressed him profoundly. He must act at once, before the desecration could be consummated. Two-Hawks—Hawksley hereafter, for the sake of convenience—had an equity in the gems; but what of that? In smuggling them in—and how the deuce had he done it?—he had thrown away his legal right to them. Cutty kneaded his conscience into a satisfactory condition of quiescence and went on with his planning. If he succeeded in recovering the stones and his conscience bit a little too deeply for comfort—why, he could pay over to Hawksley twenty per cent. of the price Karlov demanded. He could take it or leave it. In a case like this—to a bachelor without dependents—money was no object. All his life he had wanted a fine emerald to play with, and here was an opportunity to acquire two!
If this plan failed to draw Karlov into the open, then every jeweller and pawnbroker in town would be notified and warned. What with the secret-service operatives and the agents of the Department of Justice on the watch for Karlov—who would recognize his limitations of mobility—it was reasonable to assume that the Bolshevik would be only too glad to dicker secretly for the disposal of the stones. Now to work. Cutty looked at his watch.
Nearly midnight. Rather late, but he knew all the tricks of this particular kind of game. If the advertisement appeared isolated, all the better. The real job would be to hide his identity. He saw a way round this difficulty. He wrote out six advertisements, all worded the same. He figured out the cost and was delighted to find that he carried the necessary currency. Then he got into his engineer's—dungarees, touched up his face and hands to the required griminess, and sallied forth.
Luck attended him until he reached the last morning newspaper on the list. Here he was obliged to proceed to the city room—risky business. A queer advertisement coming into the city room late at night was always pried into, as he knew from experience. Still, he felt that he ought not to miss any chance to reach Karlov.
He explained his business to the sleepy gate boy, who carried the advertisement and the cash to the night city editor's desk. Ordinarily the night city editor would have returned the advertisement with the crisp information that he had no authority to accept advertisements. But the “drums of jeopardy” caught his attention; and he sent a keen glance across the busy room to the rail where Cutty stood, perhaps conspicuously.
“Humph!” He called to one of the reporters. “This looks like a story. I'll run it. Follow that guy in the overalls and see what's in it.”
Cutty appreciated the interlude for what it was worth. Someone was going to follow him. When the gate boy returned to notify him that the advertisement had been accepted, Cutty went down to the street.
“Hey, there; just a moment!” hailed the reporter. “I want a word with you about that advertisement.”
Cutty came to a standstill. “I paid for it, didn't I?”
“Sure. But what's this about the drums of jeopardy?”
“Two great emeralds I'm hunting for,” explained Cutty, recalling the man who stood on London Bridge and peddled sovereigns at two bits each, and no buyer.
“Can it! Can it!” jeered the reporter. “Be a good sport and give us the tip. Strike call among the city engineers?”
“I'm telling you.”
“Like Mike you are!”
“All right. It's the word to tie up the surface lines, like Newark, if you want to know. Now, get t' hell out o' here before I hand you one on the jaw!”
The reporter backed away. “Is that on the level?”
“Call up the barns and find out. They'll tell you what's on. And listen, if you follow me, I'll break your head. On your way!”
The reporter dashed for the elevator—and back to the doorway in time to see Cutty legging it for the Subway. As he was a reporter of the first class he managed to catch the same express uptown.
On the way uptown Cutty considered that he had accomplished a shrewd bit of work. Karlov or one of his agents would certainly see that advertisement; and even if Karlov suspected a Federal trap he would find some means of communicating with the issuer of the advertisement.
The thought of Kitty returned. What the dickens would she say—how would she act—when she learned who this Hawksley was? He fervently hoped that she had never read “Thaddeus of Warsaw.” There would be all the difference in the world between an elegant refugee Pole and a derelict of the Russian autocracy. Perhaps the best course to pursue would be to say nothing at all to her about the amazing discovery.
Upon leaving Elevator Four Cutty said: “Bob, I've been followed by a sharp reporter. Sheer him off with any tale you please, and go home. Goodnight.”
“I'll fix him, sir.”
Cutty took a bath, put on his lounging robe, and tiptoed to the threshold of the patient's room. The shaded light revealed the nurse asleep with a book on her knees. The patient's eyes were closed and his breathing was regular. He was coming along. Cutty decided to go to bed.
Meantime, when the elevator touched the ground floor, the operator observed a prospective passenger.
“Last trip, sir. You'll have to take the stairs.”
“Where'll I find the engineer who went up with you just now?”
“The man I took up? Gone to bed, I guess.”
“What floor?”
“Nothing doing, bo. I'm wise. You're the fourth guy with a subpoena that's been after him. Nix.”
“I'm not a lawyer's clerk. I'm a reporter, and I want to ask him a few questions.”
“Gee! Has that Jane of his been hauling in the newspapers? Good-night! Toddle along, bo; there's nothing coming from me. Nix.”
“Would ten dollars make you talk?” asked the reporter, desperately.
“Ye-ah—about the Kaiser and his wood-sawing. By-by!”
The operator, secretly enjoying the reporter's discomfiture, shut off the lights, slammed the elevator door to the latch, and walked to the revolving doors, to the tune of Garry Owen.
The reporter did not follow him but sat down on the first step of the marble stairs to think, for there was a lot to think about. He sensed clearly enough that all this talk about street-railway strikes and subpoenas was rot. The elevator man and the engineer were in cahoots. There was a story here, but how to get to it was a puzzler. He had one chance in a hundred of landing it—tip the mail clerk in the business office to keep an eye open for the man who called for “Double C” mail.
Eventually, the man who did call for that mail presented a card to the mail clerk. At the bottom of this card was the name of the chief of the United States Secret Service.
“And say to the reporter who has probably asked to watch—hands off! Understand? Absolutely—off!”
When the reporter was informed he blew a kiss into air and sought his city editor for his regular assignment. He understood, with the wisdom of his calling, that one didn't go whale fishing with trout rods.
Early the next morning in a bedroom in a rooming house for aliens in Fifteenth Street, a man sat in a chair scanning the want columns of a newspaper. Occasionally he jotted down something on a slip of paper. This man's job was rather an unusual one. He hunted jobs for other men—jobs in steel mills, great factories, in the textile districts, the street-car lines, the shipping yards and docks, any place where there might be a grain or two of the powder of unrest and discontent. His business was to supply the human matches.
No more parading the streets, no more haranguing from soap boxes. The proper place nowadays was in the yard or shop corners at noontime. A word or two dropped at the right moment; perhaps a printed pamphlet; little wedges wherever there were men who wanted something they neither earned nor deserved. Here and there across the land little flares, one running into the other, like wildfire on the plains, and then—the upheaval. As in Russia, so now in Germany; later, England and France and here. The proletariat was gaining power.
He was no fool, this individual. He knew his clay, the day labourer, with his parrotlike mentality. Though the victim of this peculiar potter absorbs sounds he doesn't often absorb meanings. But he takes these sounds and respouts them and convinces himself that he is some kind of Moses, headed for the promised land. Inflammable stuff. Hence, the strikes which puzzle the average intelligent American citizen. What is it all about? Nobody seems to know.
Once upon a time men went on a strike because they were being cheated and abused. Now they strike on the principle that it is excellent policy always to be demanding something; it keeps capitalism where it belongs—on the ragged edge of things. No matter what they demand they never expect to give an equivalent; and a just cause isn't necessary. Thus the present-day agitator has only one perplexity—that of eluding the iron hand of the Department of Justice.
Suddenly the man in the chair brought the newspaper close up and stared. He jumped to his feet, ran out and up the next flight of stairs. He stopped before a door and turned the knob a certain number of times. Presently the door opened the barest crack; then it was swung wide enough to admit the visitor.
“Look!” he whispered, indicating Cutty's advertisement.
The occupant of the room snatched the newspaper and carried it to a window.
Will purchase the drums of jeopardy at top price. No questionsasked. Address this office.Double C.
“Very good. I might have missed it. We shall sell the accursed drums to this gentleman.”
“Sell them? But—”
“Imbecile! What we must do is to find out who this man is. In the end he may lead us to him.”
“But it may be a trap!”
“Leave that to me. You have work of your own to do, and you had best be about it. Do you not see beneath? Who but the man who harbours him would know about the drums? The man in the evening clothes. I was too far away to see his face. Get me all the morning newspapers. If the advertisement is in all of them I will send a letter to each. We lost the young woman yesterday. And nothing has been heard of Vladimir and Stemmler. Bad. I do not like this place. I move to the house to-night. My old friend Stefani may be lonesome. I dare not risk daylight. Some fool may have talked. To work! All of us have much to do to wake up the proletariat in this country of the blind. But the hour will come. Get me the newspapers.”
Karlov pushed his visitor from the room and locked and bolted the door. He stepped over to the window again and stared down at the clutter of pushcarts, drays, trucks, and human beings that tried to go forward and got forward only by moving sideways or worming through temporary breaches, seldom directly—the way of humanity. But there was no object lesson in this for Karlov, who was not philosophical in the peculiar sense of one who was demanding a reason for everything and finding allegory and comparison and allusion in the ebb and flow of life. The philosophical is often misapplied to the stoical. Karlov was a stoic, not a philosopher, or he would not have been the victim of his present obsession. The idea of live and let live has never been the propaganda of the anarch. To the anarch the death of some body or the destruction of some thing is the cornerstone to his madhouse.
Nothing would ever cure this man of his obsession—the death of Hawksley and the possession of the emeralds. Moreover, there was the fanatical belief in his poor disordered brain that the accomplishment of these two projects would eventually assist in the liberation of mankind. Abnormally cunning in his methods of approach, he lacked those imaginative scales by which we weigh our projects and which we call logic. A child alone in a house with a box of matches; a dog on one side of Fifth Avenue that sees a dog on the other side, but not the automobiles—inexorable logic—irresistible force—whizzing up and down the middle of that thoroughfare. It is not difficult to prophesy what is going to happen to that child, that dog.
Karlov was at this moment reaching out toward a satisfactory solution relative to the disappearance of the gems. They had not been found on his enemy; they had not been found in the Gregor apartment; the two men assigned to the task of securing them would not have risked certain death by trying to do a little bargaining on their own initiative. In the first instance they had come forth empty-handed. In the second instance—that of intimidating the girl to disclose his whereabouts—neither Vladimir nor Stemmler had returned. Sinister. The man in the dress suit again?
Conceivably, then, the drums were in the possession of this girl; and she was holding them against the day when the fugitive would reclaim them. The advertisement was a snare. Very good. Two could play that game as well as one.
The girl. Was it not always so? That breed! God's curse on them all! A crooked finger, and the women followed, hypnotized. The girl was away from the apartment the major part of the day; so it was in order to search her rooms. A pretty little fool.
But where were they hiding him? Gall and wormwood! That he should slip through Boris Karlov's fingers, after all these tortuous windings across the world! Patience. Sooner or later the girl would lead the way. Still, patience was a galling hobble when he had so little time, when even now they might be hunting him. Boris Karlov had left New York rather well known.
He expanded under this thought. For the spiritual breath of life to the anarch is flattery, attention. Had the newspapers ignored Trotzky's advent into Russia, had they omitted the daily chronicle of his activities, the Russian problem would not be so large as it is this day. Trotzky would have died of chagrin.
He would answer this advertisement. Trap? He would set one himself. The man who eventually came to negotiate would be made a prisoner and forced to disclose the identity of the man who had interfered with the great projects of Boris Karlov, plenipotentiary extraordinary for the red government of Russia.
Midtown, Cutty tapped his breakfast egg dubiously. Not that he speculated upon the freshness of the egg. What troubled him was that advertisement. Last night, keyed high by his remarkable discovery of the identity of his guest and his cupidity relative to the emeralds, he had laid himself open. If he knew anything at all about the craft, that reporter would be digging in. Fortunately he had resources unsuspected by the reporter. Legitimately he could send a secret-service operative to collect the mail—if Karlov decided to negotiate. Still within his rights, he could use another operative to conduct the negotiations. If in the end Karlov strayed into the net the use of the service for private ends would be justified.
Lord, those green stones! Well, why not? Something in the world worth a hazard. What had he in life but this second grand passion? There shot into his mind obliquely an irrelevant question. Supposing, in the old days, he had proceeded to reach for Molly as he was now reaching for the emeralds—a bit lawlessly? After all these years, to have such a thought strike him! Hadn't he stepped aside meekly for Conover? Hadn't he observed and envied Conover's dazzling assault? Supposing Molly had been wavering, and this method of attack had decided her? Never to have thought of that before! What did a woman want? A love storm, and then an endless after-calm. And it had taken him twenty-odd years to make this discovery.
Fact. He had never been shy of women. He had somehow preferred to play comrade instead of gallant; and all the women had taken advantage of that, used him callously to pair with old maids, faded wives, and homely debutantes.
What impellent was driving him toward these introspections? Kitty, Molly's girl. Each time he saw her or thought of her—the uninvited ghost of her mother. Any other man upon seeing Kitty or thinking about her would have jumped into the future from the spring of a dream. The disparity in years would not have mattered. It was all nonsense, of course. But for his dropping into the office and casually picking up the thread of his acquaintance with Kitty, Molly—the memory of her—would have gone on dimming. Actions, tremendous and world-wide, had set his vision toward the future; he had been too busy to waste time in retrospection and introspection. Thus, instead of a gently rising and falling tide, healthily recurrent, a flood of mixed longings that was swirling him into uncertain depths. Those emeralds had bobbed up just in time. The chase would serve to pull him out of this bog.
He heard a footstep and looked up. The nurse was beckoning to him.
“What is it?”
“He's awake, and there is sanity in his eyes.”
“Great! Has he talked?”
“No. The awakening happened just this moment, and I came to you. You never can tell about blows on the skull or brain fever—never any two eases alike.”
Cutty threw down his napkin and accompanied the nurse to the bedside. The glance of the patient trailed from Cutty to the nurse and back.
“Don't talk,” said Cutty. “Don't ask any questions. Take it easy until later in the day. You are in the hands of persons who wish you well. Eat what the nurse gives you. When the right time comes we'll tell you all about ourselves, You've been robbed and beaten. But the men who did it are under arrest.”
“One question,” said the patient, weakly.
“Well, just one.”
“A girl—who gave me something to eat?”
“Yes. She fed you, and later probably your life.”
“Thanks.” Hawksley closed his eyes.
Cutty and the nurse watched him interestedly for a few minutes; but as he did not stir again the nurse took up her temperature sheet and Cutty returned to his eggs. Was there a girl? No question about the emeralds, no interest in the day and the hour. Was there a girl? The last person he had seen, Kitty; the first question, after coming into the light: Had he seen her? Then and there Cutty knew that when he died he would carry into the Beyond, of all his earthly possessions—a chuckle. Human beings!
The yarn that reporter had missed by a hair—front page, eight-column head! But he had missed it, and that was the main thing. The poor devil! Beaten and without a sou marque in his pockets, his trail was likely to be crowded without the assistance of any newspaper publicity. But what a yarn! What a whale of a yarn!
In his fevered flights Hawksley had spoken of having paid Kitty for that meal.
Kitty had said nothing about it. Supposing—
“Telephone, sair,” announced the Jap. “Lady.”
Molly's girl! Cutty sprinted to the telephone.
“Hello! That you, Kitty?”
“Yes. How is Johnny Two-Hawks?”
“Back to earth.”
“When can I see him? I'm just crazy to know what the story is!”
“Say the third or fourth day from this. We'll have him shaved and sitting up then.”
“Has he talked?”
“Not permitted. Still determined to stay the run of your lease?” Cutty heard a laugh. “All right. Only I hope you will never have cause to regret this decision.”
“Fiddlesticks! All I've got to do in danger is to press a button, and presto! here's Bernini.”
“Kitty, did Hawksley pay you for that meal?”
“Good heavens, no! What makes you ask that?”
“In his delirium he spoke of having paid you. I didn't know.” Cutty's heart began to rap against his ribs. Supposing, after all, Karlov hadn't the stones? Supposing Hawksley had hidden them somewhere in Kitty's kitchen?
“Anything about Gregor?”
“No. Remember, you're to call me up twice a day and report the news. Don't go out nights if you can avoid it.”
“I'll be good,” Kitty agreed. “And now I must hie me to the job. Imagine, Cutty!—writing personalities about stage folks and gabfesting with Burlingame and all the while my brain boiling with this affair! The city room will kill me, Cutty, if it ever finds out that I held back such a yarn. But it wouldn't be fair to Johnny Two-Hawks. Cutty, did you know that your wonderful drums of jeopardy are here in New York?”
“What?” barked Cutty.
“Somebody is offering to buy them. There was an advertisement in the paper this morning. Cutty?”
“Yes.”
“The first problem in arithmetic is two and two make four. By-by!”
Dizzily Cutty hung up the receiver. He had not reckoned on the possibility of Kitty seeing that damfool advertisement. Two and two made four; and four and four made eight; so on indefinitely. That is to say, Kitty already had a glimmer of the startling truth. The initial misstep on his part had been made upon her pronouncement of the name Stefani Gregor. He hadn't been able to control his surprise. And yesterday, having frankly admitted that he knew Gregor, all that was needed to complete the circle was that advertisement. Cutty tore his hair, literally. The very door he hoped she might overlook he had thrown open to her.
Thaddeus of Warsaw. But it should not be. He would continue to offer a haven to that chap; but no nonsense. None of that sinister and unfortunate blood should meddle with Kitty Conover's happiness. Her self-appointed guardian would attend to that.
He realized that his attitude was rather inexplicable; but there were some adventures which hypnotized women; and one of this sort was now unfolding for Kitty. That she had her share of common sense was negligible in face of the facts that she was imaginative and romantical and adventuresome, and that for the first time she was riding one of the great middle currents in human events. She was Molly's girl; Cutty was going to look out for her.
Mighty odd that this fear for her should have sprung into being that night, quite illogically. Prescience? He could not say. Perhaps it was a borrowed instinct—fatherly; the same instinct that would have stirred her father into action—the protection of that dearest to him.
If he told her who Hawksley really was, that would intrigue her. If he made a mystery of the affair, that, too, would intrigue her. And there you were, 'twixt the devil and the deep blue sea. Hang it, what evil luck had stirred him to tell her about those emeralds? Already she was building a story to satisfy her dramatic fancy. Two and two made four—which signified that she was her father's daughter, that she would not rest until she had explored every corner of this dark room. Wanting to keep her out of it, and then dragging her into it through his cupidity. Devil take those emeralds! Always the same; trouble wherever they were.
The real danger would rise during the convalescence. Kitty would be contriving to drop in frequently; not to see Hawksley especially, but her initial success in playing hide and seek with secret agents, friendly and otherwise, had tickled her fancy. For a while it would be an exciting game; then it might become only a means to an end. Well, it should not be.
Was there a girl! Already Hawksley had recorded her beauty. Very well; the first sign of sentimental nonsense, and out he should go, Karlov or no Karlov. Kitty wasn't going to know any hurt in this affair. That much was decided.
Cutty stormed into his study, growling audibly. He filled a pipe and smoked savagely. Another side, Kitty's entrance into the drama promised to spoil his own fun; he would have to play two games instead of one. A fine muddle!
He came to a stand before one of the windows and saw the glory of the morning flashing from the myriad spires and towers and roofs, and wondered why artists bothered about cows in pastures.
Touching his knees was an antique Florentine bridal chest, with exquisite carving and massive lock. He threw back the lid and disclosed a miscellany never seen by any eye save his own. It was all the garret he had. He dug into it and at length resurrected the photograph of a woman whose face was both roguish and beautiful. He sat on the floor a la Turk and studied the face, his own tender and wistful. No resemblance to Kitty except in the eyes. How often he had gone to her with the question burning his lips, only to carry it away unspoken! He turned over the photograph and read: “To the nicest man I know. With love from Molly.” With love. And he had stepped aside for Tommy Conover!
By George! He dropped the photograph into the chest, let down the lid, and rose to his feet. Not a bad idea, that. To intrigue Kitty himself, to smother her with attentions and gallantries, to give her out of his wide experience, and to play the game until this intruder was on his way elsewhere.
He could do it; and he based his assurance upon his experiences and observations. Never a squire of dames, he knew the part. He had played the game occasionally in the capitals of Europe when there had been some information he had particularly desired. Clever, scheming women, too. A clever, passably good-looking elderly man could make himself peculiarly attractive to young women and women in the thirties. Dazzlement for the young; the man who knew all about life, the trivial little courtesies a younger man generally forgot; the moving of chairs, the holding of wraps; the gray hairs which served to invite trust and confidence, which lulled the eternal feminine fear of the male. To the older women, no callow youth but a man of discernment, discretion, wit and fancy and daring, who remembered birthdays husbands forgot, who was always round when wanted.
There was no vanity back of these premises. Cutty was merely reaching about for an expedient to thwart what to his anticipatory mind promised to be an inevitability. Of course the glamour would not last; it never did, but he felt he could sustain it until yonder chap was off and away.
That evening at five-thirty Kitty received a box of beautiful roses, with Cutty's card.
“Oh, the lovely things!” she cried.
She kissed them and set them in a big copper jug, arranged and rearranged them for the simple pleasure it afforded her. What a dear man this Cutty was, to have thought of her in this fashion! Her father's friend, her mother's, and now hers; she had inherited him. This thought caused her to smile, but there were tears in her eyes. A garden some day to play in, this mad city far away, a home of her own; would it ever happen?
The bell rang. She wasn't going to like this caller for taking her away from these roses, the first she had received in a long time—roses she could keep and not toss out the window. For it must not be understood that Kitty was never besieged.
Outside stood a well-dressed gentleman, older than Cutty, with shrewd, inquiring gray eyes and a face with strong salients.
“Pardon me, but I am looking for a man by the name of Stephen Gregory. I was referred by the janitor to you. You are Miss Conover?”
“Yes,” answered Kitty. “Will you come in?” She ushered the stranger into the living room and indicated a chair. “Please excuse me for a moment.” Kitty went into her bedroom and touched the danger button, which would summon Bernini. She wanted her watchdog to see the visitor. She returned to the living room. “What is it you wish to know?”
“Where I may find this Gregory.”
“That nobody seems able to answer. He was carried away from here in an ambulance; but we have been unable to locate the hospital. If you will leave your name—”
“That is not necessary. I am out of bounds, you might say, and I'd rather my name should be left out of the affair, which is rather peculiar.”
“In what way?”
“I am only an agent, and am not at liberty to speak. Could you describe Gregory?”
“Then he is a stranger to you?”
“Absolutely.”
Kitty described Gregor deliberately and at length. It struck her that the visitor was becoming bored, though he nodded at times. She was glad to hear Bernini's ring. She excused herself to admit the Italian.
“A false alarm,” she whispered. “Someone inquiring for Gregor. I thought it might be well for you to see him.”
“I'll work the radiator stuff.”
“Very well.”
Bernini went into the living room and fussed over the steam cock of the radiator.
“Nothing the matter with it, miss. Just stuck.”
“Sorry to have troubled you,” said the stranger, rising and picking up his hat.
Bernini went down to the basement, obfuscated; for he knew the visitor. He was one of the greatest bankers in New York—that is to say, in America! Asking questions about Stefani Gregor!