About nine o'clock that same night a certain rich man, having established himself comfortably under the reading lamp, a fine book in his hands and a fine after-dinner cigar between his teeth, was exceedingly resentful when his butler knocked, entered, and presented a card.
“My orders were that I was not at home to any one.”
“Yes, sir. But he said you would see him because he came to see you regarding a Mr. Gregory.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Damn these newspapers!... Wait, wait!” the banker called, for the butler was starting for the door to carry the anathema to the appointed head. “Bring him in. He's a big bug, and I can't afford to affront him.”
“Yes, sir”—with the colourless tone of a perfect servant.
When the visitor entered he stopped just beyond the threshold. He remained there even after the butler closed the door. Blue eye and gray clashed; two masters of fence who had executed the same stroke. The banker laughed and Cutty smiled.
“I suppose,” said the banker, “you and I ought to sign an armistice, too.”
“Agreed.”
“And you've always been rather a puzzle to me. A rich man, a gentleman, and yet sticking to the newspaper game.”
“And you're a puzzle to me, too. A rich man, a gentleman, and yet sticking to the banking game.”
“What the devil was our row about?”
“Can't quite recall.”
“Whatever it was it was the way you went at it.”
“A reform was never yet accomplished by purring and pussyfooting,” said Cutty.
“Come over and sit down. Now, how the devil did you find out about this Gregory affair?” The banker held out his hand, which Cutty grasped with honest pressure. “If you are here in the capacity of a newspaper man, not a word out of me. Have a cigar?”
“I never smoke anything but pipes that ruin curtains. You should have given your name to Miss Conover.”
“I was under promise not to explain my business. But before we proceed, an answer. Newspaper?”
“No. I represent the Department of Justice. And we'll get along easier when I add that I possess rather unlimited powers under that head. How did you happen to stumble into this affair?”
“Through Captain Rathbone, my prospective son-in-law, who is in Coblenz. A cable arrived this morning, instructing me to proceed precisely in the manner I did. Rathbone is an intimate friend of the man I was actually seeking. The apartment of this man Gregory was mentioned to Rathbone in a cable as a possible temporary abiding place. What do you want to know?”
“Whether or not he is undesirable.”
“Decidedly, I should say, desirable.”
“You make that statement as an American citizen?”
“I do. I make it unreservedly because my future son-in-law is rather a difficult man to make friends with. I am acting merely as Rathbone's agent. On the other hand, I should be a cheerful liar if I told you I wasn't interested. What do you know?”
“Everything,” answered Cutty, quietly.
“You know where this young man is?”
“At this moment he is in my apartment, rather seriously battered and absolutely penniless.”
“Well, I'll be tinker-dammed! You know who he is, of course?”
“Yes. And I want all your information so that I may guide my future actions accordingly. If he is really undesirable he shall be deported the moment he can stand on his two feet.”
The banker pyramided his fingers, rather pleased to learn that he could astonish this interesting beggar. “He has on account at my bank half a million dollars. Originally he had eight hundred thousand. The three hundred thousand, under cable orders from Yokohama, was transferred to our branch in San Francisco. This was withdrawn about two weeks ago. How does that strike you?”
“All in a heap,” confessed Cutty. “When was this fund established with you?”
“Shortly before Kerensky's government blew up. The funds were in our London bank. There was, of course, a lot of red tape, excessive charges in exchange, and all that. Anyhow, about eight hundred thousand arrived.”
“What brought him to America? Why didn't he go to England? That would have been the safest haven.”
“I can explain that. He intends to become an American citizen. Some time ago he became the owner of a fine cattle ranch in Montana.”
“Well, I'll be tinker-dammed, too!” exploded Cutty.
“A young man with these ideas in his head ought eventually to become a first-rate citizen. What do you say?”
“I am considerably relieved. His forbears, the blood—”
“His mother was a healthy Italian peasant—a famous singer in her time. His fortune, I take it, was his inheritance from her. She made a fortune singing in the capitals of Europe and speculating from time to time. She sent the boy, at the age of ten, to England. Afraid of the home influence. He remained there, under the name of Hawksley, for something like fourteen years, under the guardianship of this fellow Gregory. Of Gregory I know positively nothing. The young fellow is, to all purposes, methods of living, points of view, an Englishman. Rathbone, who was educated at Oxford, met him there and they shared quarters. But it was only in recent years that he learned the identity of his friend. In 1914 the young fellow returned to Russia. Military obligations. That's all I know. Mighty interesting, though.”
“I am much obliged to you. The white elephant becomes a normal drab pachyderm,” said Cutty.
“Still something of an elephant on your hands. I see. Bring him here if you wish.”
“And sic the Bolshevik at your door.”
“That's so. You spoke of his having been beaten and robbed. Bolshevik?”
“Yes. An old line of reasoning first put into effect by Oliver Cromwell. The axe.”
“The poor devil!”
“Fact. I'm sorry for him, but I wish he would blow away conveniently.”
“Rathbone says he's handsome, gay, but decent, considering. Humanity is being knocked about some. The hour has come for our lawyers to go back to their offices. Politics must step aside for business. We ought to hang up signs in every state capitol in the country: 'Men Wanted—Specialists.' A steel man from Pittsburgh, a mining man from Idaho, a shipowner from Boston, a meat packer from Omaha, a grain man from Chicago. What the devil do lawyers know about these things—the energies that make the wheels of this country go round? By the way, that Miss Conover was a remarkably pretty girl. She seemed to be a bit suspicious of me.”
“Good reasons. That chap went to Gregor's—Gregor is his name—and was beaten, robbed, and left for dead. She saved his life.”
“Good Lord! Does she know?”
“No. And what's more, I don't want her to. I am practically her guardian.”
“Then you ought to get her out of that roost.”
“Hang it, I can't get her to leave. I'm not legally her guardian; self-appointed. But she has agreed to leave in May.”
“I'm glad you dropped in. Command me in any way you please.”
“That's very good of you, considering.”
“The war is over. We'd be a fine pair of fools to let an ancient grudge go on. They tell me you've a wonderful apartment on top of that skyscraper of yours.”
“Will you come to dinner some night?”
“Any time you say. I should like to bring my daughter.”
“She doesn't know?”
“No. Heard of Hawksley; thinks he's English.”
“I am certainly agreeable.” This would be a distinct advantage to Kitty. “I see you have a good book there. I'll take myself off.”
In the Avenue Cutty loaded his pipe. He struck a match on the flagstone and cupped it over the bowl of his pipe, thereby throwing his picturesque countenance into ruddy relief. Opposite emotions filled the hearts of the two men watching him—in one, chagrin; in the other, exultation.
Cutty decided to walk downtown, the night being fine. He set his foot to a long, swinging stride. An elephant on his hands, truly. Poor devil, for a fad! Nobody wanted him, not even those who wished him well. Wanted to become an American citizen. He would have been tolerably safe in England. Here he would never be free of danger. A ranch. The beggar would have a chance out there in the West. The anarchist and the Bolshevik were town cooties. His one chance, actually. The poor devil! Kitty had the right idea. It was a mighty fine thing, these times, to be a citizen under the protection of the American doctrine.
Three hundred thousand! And Karlov had got that along with the drums. The devil's own for luck! The fool would be able to start some fine ructions with all that capital behind him. Episodes in the night.
Kitty dreamed of wonderful rose gardens, endless and changing; but strive as she would she could not find Cutty anywhere, which worried her, even in her dream.
The nurse heard the patient utter a single word several times before he fell asleep.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Fan!” And he smiled.
She hunted for the palm leaf, but with a slight gesture he signified that that was not what he wanted.
Cutty played solitaire with his chrysoprase until the telephone broke in upon his reveries. What he heard over the wire disturbed him greatly.
“You were followed from the Avenue to the apartment.”
“How do you know?”
“I am Henderson. You assigned me to watch the apartment in Eightieth through the night. I followed the man who followed you. He saw your face when you lit the pipe. When the banker left Miss Conover he was followed home. That established him in the affair. The follower hung round, and so did I. You appeared. He took a chance shot in the dark. Not sure, but doing a bit of clever guessing.”
“You still followed him?”
“Yes.”
“Where did he wind up?”
“A house in the warehouse district. Vacant warehouses on each side. Some new nest. I can lead you to it, sir, any time you wish.”
“Thanks.”
Cutty pushed aside the telephone and returned to his green stones. After all, why worry? It was unfortunate, of course, but the apartment was more inaccessible than the top of the Matterhorn. Still, they might discover what his real business was and interfere seriously with his future work on the other side. A ruin in the warehouse district? A good place to look for Stefani Gregor—if he were still alive.
He was. And in his dark room he cried piteously for water—water—water!
A March day, sunny and cloudless, with fresh, bracing winds. Green things pushed up from the soil; an eternal something was happening to the tips of the tree branches; an eternal something was happening in young hearts. A robin shook the dust of travel from his wings and bathed publicly in a park basin.
Here and there under the ten thousand roofs of the great city poets were busy with inkpots, trying to say an old thing in a new way. Woe to the pinched soul that did not expand this day, for it was spring. Expansion! Nature—perhaps she was relenting a little, perhaps she saw that humanity was sliding down the scale, withering, and a bit of extra sunshine would serve to check the descension and breed a little optimism.
Cutty's study. The sunlight, thrown westward, turned windows and roofs and towers into incomparable bijoux. The double reflection cast a white light into the room, lifting out the blue and old-rose tints of the Ispahan rug.
Cutty shifted the chrysoprase, irresolutely for him. A dozen problems, and it was mighty hard to decide which to tackle first. Principally there was Kitty. He had not seen her in four days, deeming it advisable for her not to call for the present. The Bolshevik agent who had followed him from the banker's might decide, without the aid of some connecting episode, that he had wasted his time.
It did not matter that Kitty herself was no longer watched and followed from her home to the office, from the office home. Was Karlov afraid or had he some new trick up his sleeve? It was not possible that he had given up Hawksley. He was probably planning an attack from some unexpected angle. To be sure that Karlov would not find reason to associate him with Kitty, Cutty had remained indoors during the daytime and gone forth at night in his dungarees.
Problem Two was quite as formidable. The secret agent who had passed as a negotiator for the drums of jeopardy had disappeared. That had sinister significance. Karlov did not intend to sell the drums; merely wanted precise information regarding the man who had advertised for them. If the secret-service man weakened under torture, Cutty recognized that his own usefulness would be at an end. He would have to step aside and let the great currents sweep on without him. In that event these fifty-two years would pile upon his head, full measure; for the only thing that kept him vigorous was action, interest. Without some great incentive he would shrivel up and blow away—like some exhumed mummy.
Problem Three. How the deuce was he going to fascinate Kitty if he couldn't see her? But there was a bit of silver lining here. If he couldn't see her, what chance had Hawksley? The whole sense and prompting of this problem was to keep Kitty and Hawksley apart. How this was accomplished was of no vital importance. Problem Three, then, hung fire for the present. Funny, how this idea stuck in his head, that Hawksley was a menace to Kitty. One of those fool ideas, probably, but worth trying out.
Problem Four. That night, all on his own, he would make an attempt to enter that old house sandwiched between the two vacant warehouses. Through pressure of authority he had obtained keys to both warehouses. There would be a trap on the roof of that house. Doubtless it would be covered with tin; fairly impregnable if latched below. But he could find out. From the third-floor windows of either warehouse the drop was not more than six feet. If anywhere in town poor old Stefani Gregor would be in one of those rooms. But to storm the house frontally, without being absolutely sure, would be folly. Gregor would be killed. The house was in fact an insane asylum, occupied by super-insane men. Warned, they were capable of blowing the house to kingdom come, themselves with it.
Problem Five was a mere vanishing point. He doubted if he would ever see those emeralds. What an infernal pity!
He built a coronet and leaned back, a wisp of smoke darting up from the bowl of his pipe.
“I say, you know, but that's a ripping game to play!” drawled a tired voice over his shoulder.
Cutty turned his head, to behold Hawksley, shaven, pale, and handsome, wrapped in a bed quilt and swaying slightly.
“What the deuce are you doing out of your room?” growled Cutty, but with the growl of a friendly dog.
Hawksley dropped into a chair weakly. “End of my rope. Got to talk to someone. Go dotty, else. Questions. Skull aches with 'em. Want to know whether this is a foretaste of the life I have a right to live—or the beginning of death. Be a good sport, and let's have it out.”
“What is it you wish to know?” asked Cutty, gently. The poor beggar!
“Where I am. Who you are. What happened to me. What is going to happen to me,” rather breathlessly. “Don't want any more suspense. Don't want to look over my shoulder any more. Straight ahead. All the cards on the table, please.”
Cutty rose and pushed the invalid's chair to a window and drew another up beside it.
“My word, the top of the world! Bally odd roost.”
“You will find it safer here than you would on the shores of Kaspuskoi More,” replied Cutty, gravely. “The Caspian wouldn't be a healthy place for you now.”
With wide eyes Hawksley stared across the shining, wavering roofs. A pause. “What do you know?” he asked, faintly.
“Everything. But wait!” Cutty fetched one of the photographs and laid it upon the young man's knees. “Know who this is—Two-Hawks?”
A strained, tense gesture as Hawksley seized the photograph; then his chin sank slowly to his chest. A moment later Cutty was profoundly astonished to see something sparkle on its way down the bed quilt. Tears!
“I'm sorry!” cried Cutty, troubled and embarrassed. “I'm terribly sorry! I should have had the decency to wait a day or two.”
“On the contrary, thank you!” Hawksley flung up his head. “Nothing in all God's muddied world could be more timely—the face of my mother! I am not ashamed of these tears. I am not afraid to die. I am not even afraid to live. But all the things I loved—the familiar earth, the human beings, my dog—gone. I am alone.”
“I'm sorry,” repeated Cutty, a bit choked up. This was honest misery and it affected him deeply. He felt himself singularly drawn.
“I want to live. Because I am young? No. I want to prove to the shades of those who loved me that I am fit to go on. So my identity is known to you?”—dejectedly.
“Yes. You wish me to forget what I know?”
“Will you?”—eagerly. “Will you forget that I am anything but a naked, friendless human being?”
“Yes. But your enemies know.”
“I rather fancy they will keep the truth to themselves. Let them publish my identity, and a hundred havens would be offered. Your Government would protect me.”
“It is doing so now, indirectly. But why do you not want it known?”
“Freedom! Would I have it if known? Could I trust anybody? Would it not be essentially the old life in a new land? I want a new life in a new land. I want to be born again. I want to be what you patently are, an American. That is why I risked life a hundred times in coming all these miles, why I sit in this chair before you, with the room rocking because they battered in my head. I do not offer a human wreck, an illiterate mind, in exchange for citizenship. I bring a tolerably decent manhood. Try me! Always I have admired you people. Always we Russians have. But there is no Russia now that I can ever return to!” Hawksley's head drooped again and his bloodshot eyes closed.
Cutty sensed confusion, indecision; all his deductions were upset in the face of this strange appeal. Russian, born of an Italian mother and speaking Oxford English as if it were his birthright; and wanting citizenship! Wasn't ashamed of his tears; wasn't afraid to die or to live! Cutty searched quickly for a new handhold to his antagonism, but he found only straws. He was honest enough to realize that he had built this antagonism upon a want, a desire; there was no foundation for it. Downright likeable. A chap who had gone through so much, who was in such a pitiable condition, would not have the wit to manufacture character, camouflage his soul.
“Hang it!” he said, briskly. “You shall have your chance. Talk like that will carry a man anywhere in this country. You shall stay here until you are strong again. Then some night I'll put you on your train for Montana. You want to ask questions. I'll save you the trouble by telling you what I know.”
But his narrative contained no mention of the emeralds. Why? A bit conscience-stricken because, if he could, he was going to rob his guest on the basis that findings is keepings? Cutty wasn't ready to analyze the omission. Perhaps he wanted Hawksley himself to inquire about the stones; test him out. If he asked frankly that would signify that he had brought the stones in honestly, paid his obligations to the Customs. Otherwise, smuggling; and in that event conscience wouldn't matter; the emeralds became a game anybody could take a hand in—anybody who considered the United States Customs an infringement upon human rights.
What a devil of a call those stones had for him! Did they mean anything to Hawksley aside from their intrinsic value? But for the nebulous idea, originally, that the emeralds were mixed up somewhere in this adventure, Cutty knew that he would have sent Hawksley to a hospital, left him to his fate, and never known who he was.
All through the narration Hawksley listened motionless, with his eyes closed, possibly to keep the wavering instability of the walls from interfering with his assimilation of this astonishing series of fact.
“Found you insensible on the floor,” concluded Cutty, “hoisted you to my shoulders, took you to the street—and here you are!”
Hawksley opened his eyes. “I say, you know, what a devil of an old Sherlock you must be! And you carried me on your shoulders across that fire escape? Ripping! When I stepped back into that room I heard a rushing sound. I knew! But I didn't have the least chance.... You and that bully girl!”
Cutty swore under his breath. He had taken particular pains to avoid mentioning Kitty; and here, first off, the fat was in the fire. He remembered now that he had told Hawksley that Kitty had saved his life. Fortunately, the chap wasn't keen enough with that banged-up head of his to apply reason to the omission.
“Saved my life. Suppose she doesn't want me to know.”
Cutty jumped at this. “Doesn't care to be mixed up with the Bolshevik end of it. Besides, she doesn't know who you are.”
“The fewer that know the better. But I'll always remember her kindness and that bally pistol with the fan in it. But you? Why did you bother to bring me up here?”
“Couldn't decently leave you where Karlov could get to you again.”
“Is Stefani Gregor dead?”
“Don't know; probably not. But we are hunting for him.” Cutty had not explained his interest in Gregor. Those plaguey stones again. They were demoralizing him. Loot.
“You spoke of Karlov. Who is he?”
“Why, the man who followed you across half the world.”
“There were many. What is he like?”
“A gorilla.”
“Ah!” Hawksley became galvanized and extended his fists. “God let me live long enough to put my hands on him! I had the chance the other day—to blot out his face with my boots! But I couldn't do it! I couldn't do it!” He sagged in the chair. “No, no! Just a bit groggy. All right in a moment.”
“By the Lord Harry, I'll see you through. Now buck up. Hear that?” cried Cutty, throwing up a window.
“Music.”
“Look through that street there. See the glint of bayonets? American soldiers, marching up Fifth Avenue, thousands of them, freemen who broke the vaunted Hindenburg Line. God bless 'em! Americans, every mother's son of 'em; who went away laughing, who returned laughing, who will go back to their jobs laughing. The ability to laugh, that's America. Do you know how to laugh?”
“I used to. I'm jolly weak just now. But I'll grin if you want me to.” And Hawksley grinned.
“That's the way. A grin in this country will take you quite as far. All right. In five years you'll be voting. I'll see to that. Now back to bed with you, and no more leaving it until the nurse says so. What you need is rest.”
Cutty sent a call to the nurse, who was standing undecidedly in the doorway; and together they put the derelict back to bed. Then Cutty fetched the photograph and set it on top of the dresser, where Hawksley could see it.
“Now, no more gallivanting about.”
“I promise, old top. This bed is a little bit of all right. I say!”
“What?”
“How long am I to be here?”
“If you're good, two weeks,” interposed the nurse.
“Two weeks? I say, would you mind doing me a trifling favour? I'd like a violin to amuse myself with.”
“A fiddle? I don't know a thing about 'em except that they sound good.” Cutty pulled at his chin.
“Whatever it costs I'll reimburse you the day I'm up.”
“All right. I'll bring you a bundle of them, and you can do your own selecting.”
Out in the corridor the nurse said: “I couldn't hold him. But he'll be easier now that he's got the questions off his mind. He will have to be humoured a lot. That's one of the characteristics of head wounds.”
“What do you think of him?”
“He seems to be gentle and patient; and I imagine he's hard to resist when he wants anything. Winning, you'd call it. I suppose I mustn't ask who he really is?”
“No. Poor devil. The fewer that know, the better. I'll be home round three.”
Once in the street, Cutty was besieged suddenly with the irresistible desire to mingle with the crowd over in the Avenue, to hear the military bands, the shouts, to witness the gamut of emotions which he knew would attend this epochal day. Of course he would view it all from the aloof vantage of the historian, and store away commentaries against future needs.
And what a crowd it was! He was elbowed and pushed, jostled and trod on, carried into the surges, relegated to the eddies; and always the metallic taptap of steel-shod boots on the asphalt, the bayonets throwing back the radiant sunshine in sharp, clear flashes. The keen, joyous faces of those boys. God, to be young like that! To have come through that hell on earth with the ability still to smile! Cutty felt the tears running down his cheeks. Instinctively he knew that this was to be his last thrill of this order. He was fifty-two.
“Quit your crowding there!” barked a voice under his chin.
“Sorry, but it's those behind me,” said Cutty, looking down into a florid countenance with a raggedy gray moustache and a pair of blue eyes that were blinking.
“I'm so damned short I can't see anything!”
“Neither can I.”
“You could if you wiped your eyes.”
“You're crying yourself,” declared Cutty.
“Blinking jackass! Got anybody out there?”
“All of 'em.”
“I get you, old son of a gun! No flesh and blood, but they're ours all the same. Couple of old fools; huh?”
“Sure pop! What right have two old codgers got here, anyhow? What brought you out?”
“What brought you?”
“Same thing.”
“Damn it! If I could only see something!”
Cutty put his hands upon the shoulders of this chance acquaintance and propelled him toward the curb. There were cries of protest, curses, catcalls, but Cutty bored on ahead until he got his man where he could see the tin hats, the bayonets, and the colours; and thus they stood for a full hour. Each time the flag went by the little man yanked off his derby and turned truculently to see that Cutty did the same.
“Say,” he said as they finally dropped back, “I'd offer to buy a drink, only it sounds flat.”
“And it would taste flat after a mighty wine like this,” replied Cutty. “Maybe you've heard of the nectar of the gods. Well, you've just drunk it, my friend.”
“I sure have. Those kids out there, smiling after all that hell; and you and me on the sidewalk, blubbering over 'em! What's the answer? We're Americans!”
“You said it. Good-bye.”
Cutty pressed on to the flow and went along with it, lighter in the heart than he had been in many a day. These two million who lined Fifth Avenue, who cheered, laughed, wept, went silent, cheered again, what did their presence here signify? That America's day had come; that as a people they were homogeneous at last; that that which laws had failed to bring forth had been accomplished by an ideal.
Bolshevism, socialism—call it what you will—would beat itself into fragments against this Rock of Democracy, which went down to the centre of the world and whose pinnacle touched the stars. Reincarnation; the simple ideals of the forefathers restored. And with this knowledge tingling in his thoughts—and perhaps there was a bit of spring in his heart—Cutty continued on, without destination, chin jutting, eyes shining. He was an American!
He might have continued on indefinitely had he not seen obliquely a window filled with musical instruments.
Hawksley's fiddle! He had all but forgotten. All right. If the poor beggar wanted to scrape a fiddle, scrape it he should. The least he, Cutty, could do would be to accede to any and every whim Hawksley expressed. Wasn't he planning to rob the beggar of the drums, happen they ever turned up? But how the deuce to pick out a fiddle which would have a tune in it? Of all the hypercritical duffers the fiddler was the worst. Beside a fiddler of the first rank the rich old maid with the poodle was a hail fellow well met.
Of course Gregor had taught the chap. That meant he would know instantly; just as his host would instantly observe the difference between green glass and green beryl.
Cutty turned into the shop, infinitely amused. Fiddles! What next? Having constituted a guardianship over Kitty, he was now playing impressario to Hawksley. As if he hadn't enough parts to play! Wouldn't he be risking his life to-night trying to find where Stefani Gregor was? Fiddles! Fiddles and emeralds! What a choice old hypocrite he was!
Fate has a way of telling you all about it—afterward; conceivably, that humanity might continue to reproduce its species. Otherwise humanity would proceed to extinguish itself forthwith. Thus, Cutty was totally unaware upon entering the shop that he was about to tear off its hinges the door he was so carefully bolting and latching and padlocking between Kitty Conover and this duffer who wanted to fiddle his way through convalescence.
Where there is fiddling there is generally dancing. If it be not the feet, then it will be the soul.
There are some men who know a little about all things and a great deal about many. Such a man was Cutty. But as he approached the counter behind which stood an expectant clerk he felt for once that he was in a far country. There were fiddles and fiddles, just as there were emeralds and emeralds. Never again would he laugh over the story of the man who thought Botticelli was a manufacturer of spool thread. He attacked the problem, however, like the thoroughbred he was—frankly.
“I want to buy a violin,” he began, knowing that in polite musical circles the word fiddle was taboo. “I know absolutely nothing at all about quality or price. Understand, though, while you might be able to fool me, you wouldn't fool the man I'm buying it for. Now what would you suggest?”
The clerk—a salesman familiar with certain urban types, thinly including the Fifth Avenue, which came in for talking-machine records—recognized in this well-dressed, attractive elderly man that which he designated the swell. Hateful word, yes, but having a perfectly legitimate niche, since in the minds of the hoi polloi it nicely describes the differences between the poor gentleman and the gentleman of leisure. To proceed with the digression, to no one is the word more hateful than to the individual to whom it is applied. Cutty would have blushed at the clerk's thought.
“Perhaps I'd better get the proprietor,” was the clerk's suggestion.
“Good idea,” Cutty agreed. “Take my card along with you.” This was a Fifth Avenue shop, and Cutty knew there would be a Who's Who or a Bradstreet somewhere about.
In the interim he inspected the case-lined walls. Trombones. He chuckled. Lucky that Hawksley's talent didn't extend in this direction. True, he himself collected drums, but he did not play them. Something odd about music; human beings had to have it, the very lowest in the scale. A universal magic. He was himself very fond of good music; but these days he fought shy of it; it had the faculty of sweeping him back into the twenties and reincarnating vanished dreams.
After a certain length of time, from the corner of his eye he saw the clerk returning with the proprietor, the latter wearing an amiable smile, which probably connoted a delving into the aforesaid volumes of attainment and worth. Cutty hoped this was so, as it would obviate the necessity of going into details as to who he was and what he had.
“Your name is familiar to me,” began the proprietor. “You collect antique drums. My clerk tells me that you wish to purchase a good violin.”
“Very good. I have in my apartment rather a distinguished guest who plays the violin for his own amusement. He is ill and cannot select for himself. Now I know a little about music but nothing about violins.”
“I suggest that I personally carry half a dozen instruments to your apartment and let your guest try them. How much is he willing to pay?”
“Top price, I should say. Shall I make a deposit?”
“If you don't mind. Merely precautionary. Half a dozen violins will represent quite a sum of money; and taxicabs are unreliable animals. A thousand against accidents. What time shall I call?” The proprietor's curiosity was stirred. Musical celebrities, as he had occasion to know, were always popping up in queer places. Some new star probably, whose violin had been broken and who did not care to appear in public before the hour of his debut.
“Three o'clock,” said Cutty.
“Very well, sir. I promise to bring the violins myself.”
Cutty wrote out his check for a thousand and departed, the chuckle still going on inside of him. Versatile old codger, wasn't he?
Promptly at three the dealer arrived, his arms and his hands gripping violin cases. Cutty hurried to his assistance, accepted a part of the load, and beckoned to the man to follow him. The cases were placed on the floor, and the dealer opened them, putting the rosin on a single bow.
Hawksley, a fresh bandage on his head, his shoulders propped by pillows, eyed the initial manoeuvres with frank amusement.
“I say, you know, would you mind tuning them for me? I'm not top hole.”
The dealer's eyebrows went up. An Englishman? Bewildered, he bent to the trifling labour of tuning the violins. Hawksley rejected the first two instruments after thrumming the strings with his thumb. He struck up a melody on the third but did not finish it.
“My word! If you have a violin there why not let me have it at once?”
The dealer flushed. “Try this, sir. But I do not promise you that I shall sell it.”
“Ah!” Hawksley stretched out his hands to receive the instrument.
Of course Cutty had heard of Amati and Stradivari, master and pupil. He knew that all famous violinists possessed instruments of these schools, and that such violins were practically beyond the reach of many. Only through some great artist's death or misfortune did a fine violin return to the marts. But the rejected fiddles had sounded musically enough for him and looked as if they were well up in the society of select fiddles. The fiddle Hawksley now held in his hands was dull, almost black. The maple neck was worn to a shabby gray and the varnish had been sweated off the chin rest.
Hawksley laid his fingers on the strings and drew the bow with a powerful flourishing sweep. The rich, sonorous tones vibrated after the bow had passed. Then followed the tricks by which an artist seeks to discover flaws or wolf notes. A beatific expression settled upon Hawksley face. He nestled the violin comfortably under his chin and began to play softly. Cutty, the nurse, and the dealer became images.
Minors; a bit of a dance; more minors; nothing really begun, nothing really finished—sketches, with a melancholy note running through them all. While that pouring into his ears enchained his body it stirred recollections in Cutty's mind: The fair at Novgorod; the fiddling mountebanks; Russian.
Perhaps the dealer's astonishment was greatest. An Englishman! Who ever heard of an Englishman playing a violin like that?
“I will buy it,” said Hawksley, sinking back.
“Sir,” began the dealer, “I am horribly embarrassed. I cannot sell that violin because it isn't mine. It is an Amati worth ten thousand dollars.”
“I will give you twelve.”
“But, sir—”
“Name a price,” interrupted Hawksley, rather imperiously. “I want it.”
Cutty understood that he was witnessing a flash of the ancient blood. To want anything was to have it.
“I repeat, sir, I cannot sell it. It belongs to a Hungarian who is now in Hungary. I loaned him fifteen hundred and took the Amati as security. Until I learn if he is dead I cannot dispose of the violin. I am sorry. But because you are a real artist, sir, I will loan it to you if you will make a deposit of ten thousand against any possible accident, and that upon demand you will return the instrument to me.”
“That's fair enough,” interposed Cutty.
“I beg pardon,” said Hawksley. “I agree. I want it, but not at the price of any one's dishonesty.”
He turned his head toward Cutty, “You're a thoroughbred, sir. This will do more to bring me round than all the doctors in the world.”
“But what the deuce is the difference?” Cutty demanded with a gesture toward the rejected violins.
The dealer and Hawksley exchanged smiles. Said the latter: “The other violins are pretty wooden boxes with tolerable tunes in their insides. This has a soul.” He put the violin against his cheek again.
Massenet's “Elegie,” Moszkowski's “Serenata,” a transcription, and then the aria from Lucia. Not compositions professional violinists would have selected. Cutty felt his spine grow cold as this aria poured goldenly toward heaven. He understood. Hawksley was telling him that the shade of his glorious mother was in this room. The boy was right. Some fiddles had souls. An odd depression bore down upon him. Perhaps this surprising music, topping his great emotions of the morning, was a straw too much. There were certain exaltations that could not be sustained.
A whimsical forecast: This chap here, in the dingy parlour of his Montana ranch, playing these indescribable melodies to the stars, his cowmen outside wondering what was the matter with their “inards.” Somehow this picture lightened the depression.
“My fingers are stiff,” said Hawksley. “My hand is tired. I should like to be alone.” He lay back rather inertly.
In the corridor Cutty whispered to the dealer: “What do you think of him?”
“As he says, his touch shows a little stiffness, but the wonderful fire is there. He's an amateur, but a fine one. Practice will bring him to a finish in no time. But I never heard an Englishman play a violin like that before.”
“Nor I,” Cutty agreed. “When the owner sends for that fiddle let me know. Mr. Hawksley might like to dicker for it. If you know where the owner is you might cable that you have an offer of twelve thousand.”
“I'm sorry, but I haven't the least idea where the owner is. However, there is an understanding that if the loan isn't covered in eighteen months the instrument becomes salable for my own protection. There is a year still to run.”
Four o'clock found Cutty pacing his study, the room blue with smoke. Of all the queer chaps he had met in his varied career this Two-Hawks topped the lot. The constant internal turmoil that must be going on, the instincts of the blood—artist and autocrat! And in the end, the owner of a cattle ranch, if he had the luck to get there alive! Dizzy old world.
Something else happened at four o'clock. A policeman strolled into Eightieth Street. He was at peace with the world. Spring was in his whistle, in his stride, in the twirl of his baton. Whenever he passed a shop window he made it serve as a mirror. No waistline yet—a comforting thought.
Children swarmed the street and gathered at corners. The older ones played boldly in midstreet, while the toddlers invented games that kept them to the sidewalk and curb. The policeman came stealthily upon one of these latter groups—Italians. At the sight of his brass buttons they fled precipitately. He laughed. Once in a month of moons he was able to get near enough to touch them. Natural. Hadn't he himself hiked in the old days at the sight of a copper? Sure, he had.
A bit of colour on the sidewalk attracted his eye, and he picked up the object. Something those kids had been playing with. A bit of red glass out of a piece of cheap jewellery. Not half bad for a fake. He would put one over on Maggie when he turned in for supper. Certainly this was the age of imitation. You couldn't buy a brass button with any confidence. He put the trinket in his pocket and continued on, soon to forget it.
At six he was off duty. As he was leaving the precinct the desk sergeant called him back.
“Got change for a dollar, an' I'll settle that pinochle debt,” offered the sergeant.
“I'll take a look.” The policeman emptied his coin pocket.
“What's that yuh got there?”
“Which?”
“The red stone?”
“Oh, that? Picked it up on the sidewalk. Some Italian kids dropped it as they skedaddled.”
“Let's have a look.”
“Sure.” The policeman passed over the stone.
“Gee! That looks like real money. Say, they can do anything with glass these days.”
“They sure can.”
A man in civilian clothes—a detective from headquarters—went up to the desk. “What you guys got there?”
“A ruby this boob picks up off'n the sidewalk,” said the sergeant, winking at the finder, who grinned.
“Let's have a squint at it.”
The stone was handed to him. The detective stared at it carefully, holding it on his palm and rocking it gently under the desk light. Crimson darts of flame answered to this treatment. He pushed back his hat.
“Well, you boobs!” he drawled.
“What's the matter?”
“Matter? Why, this is a ruby! A whale of a ruby, an' pigeon blood at that! I didn't work in the' appraiser's office for nothing. But for a broken point—kids probably tried to crack it—it would stack up somewhere between three and four thousand dollars!”
The sergeant and the policemen barked simultaneously: “What?”
“A pigeon blood. Where was it you found it?”
“Holy Moses! On Eightieth.”
“Any chance of finding that bunch of kids?”
“Not a chance, not a chance! If I got the hull district here there wouldn't be nothin' doin'. The kids'd be too scared t' remember anything. A pigeon-blood ruby, an' I wasn't gonna pick it up at first!”
“Lock it up, sergeant,” ordered the detective. “I'll pass the word to headquarters. Too big for a ring. Probably fallen from a pin. But there'll be a holler in a few hours. Lost or stolen, there'll be some big noise. You two boobs!”
“Well, whadda yuh know about that?” whined the policeman. “An' me thinkin' it was glass!”
But there was no big noise. No one had reported the loss or theft of a pigeon-blood ruby of unusual size and quality.