Kitty hung up her hat and coat. She did not pat her hair or tuck in the loose ends before the mirror—a custom as invariable as sunrise. The coat tree stood at the right of the single window, and out of this window Kitty stared solemnly, at everything and at nothing.
Burlingame eyed her seriously. Cutty had given him a glimmer of the tale—enough to make known to him that this pretty, sensible girl, though no fault of her own, was in the shadow of some actual if unknown danger. And Cutty wanted her out of town for a few days. Burlingame had intended sending Kitty out of town on an assignment during Easter week. An exchange of telegrams that morning had closed the gap in time.
“Well, you might say 'Good morning.'”
“I beg your pardon, Burly!” In newspaper offices you belong at once or you never belong; and to belong is to have your name sheared to as few syllables as possible. You are formal only to the city editor, the managing editor, and the auditor.
“What's the matter?”
“I've been set in the middle of a fairy story,” said Kitty, “and I'm wondering if it's worth the trouble to try to find a way out. A Knight of the Round Table, a prince of chivalry. What would you say if you saw one in spats and a black derby?”
“Why,” answered Burlingame, “I suppose I'd consider July first as the best thing that could happen to me.”
Kitty laughed; and that was what he wanted.
What had that old rogue been doing now—offering Kitty his eighteen-story office building?
“It's odd, isn't it, that I shouldn't possess a little histrionic ability. You'd think it would be in my blood to act.”
“It is, Kitty; only not to mimic. You're an actress, but the Big Dramatist writes your business for you. Now, I've got some fairly good news for you. An assignment.”
“Work! What is it?”
“I am going to send you on a visit to the most charming movie queen in the business. She is going to return to Broadway this autumn, and she has a trunkful of plays to read. I have found your judgment ace-high. Mornings you will read with her; afternoons you will visit. She remembers your mother, who was the best comedienne of her day. So she will be quite as interested in you as you are in her. I want you to note her ways, how she amuses herself, eats, exercises. I want you to note the contents of her beautiful home; if she likes dogs or cats or horses. You will take a camera and get half a dozen good pictures, and a page yarn for Easter Sunday. Stay as long as she wants you to.”
“But who?”
Burlingame jerked his thumb toward a photograph on the wall.
“Oh! This will be the most scrumptious event in my life. I'm wild about her! But I haven't any clothes!”
Burlingame waved his hands. “I knew I'd hear that yodel. Eve didn't have anything to speak of, but she travelled a lot. Truth is, Kitty, you'd better dress in monotones. She might wake up to the fact that you're a mighty pretty young woman and suddenly become temperamental. She has a husband round the lot somewhere. Make him think his wife is a lucky woman. Here's all the dope—introduction, expenses, and tickets. Train leaves at two-fifty. Run along home and pack. Remember, I want a page yarn. No flapdoodle or mush; straight stuff. She doesn't need any advertising. If you go at it right you two will react upon each other as a tonic.”
Kitty realized that this little junket was the very thing she needed—open spaces, long walks in which to think out her problem. She hurried home and spent the morning packing. When this heartrending business was over she summoned Tony Bernini.
“I am going out of town, Mr. Bernini. I may be gone a week.”
“All right, Miss Conover.” Bernini hid a smile. He knew all about this trip, having been advised by Cutty over the wire.
“Am I being followed any more?”
“Not that we know of. Still, you never can tell. What's your destination?” Kitty told him. “Better not go by train. I can get a fast roadster and run you out in a couple of hours. Right after lunch you go to the boss's garage and wait for me. I'll take care of your grips and camera. I'll follow on your heels.”
“Anybody would consider that Karlov was after me instead of Hawksley.”
Bernini smiled. “Miss Conover, the moment Karlov puts his hands on you the whole game goes blooey. That's the plain fact. There is death in this game. These madmen expect to blow up the United States on May first. We are easing them along because we want the top men in our net. But if Karlov takes it into his head to get you, and succeeds, he'll have a stranglehold on the whole local service; because we'd have to make great concessions to free you.”
“Why wasn't I told this at the start?”
“You were told, indirectly. We did not care to frighten you.”
“I'm not frightened,” said Kitty.
“Nope. But we wish to the Lord you were, Miss Conover. When you want to come home, wire me and I'll motor out for you.”
Another fragment. Karlov's agent sought his chief and found him in the cellar of the old house, sinisterly engaged. The wall bench was littered with paraphernalia well known to certain chemists. Had the New York bomb squad known of the existence of this den, the short hair on their necks would have risen.
“Well?” greeted Karlov, moodily.
“I have found the man in the dress suit.”
“He and the Conover girl left that office building together this morning, and I followed them to Park Row. This man uses the loft of the building for his home. No elevator goes up unless you have credentials. Our man is hiding there, Boris.”
Karlov dry-washed his hands. “We'll send him one of the samples if we fail in regard to the girl. You say she arrives daily at the newspaper office about nine and leaves between five and six?”
“Every day but Sunday.”
“Good news. Two bolts; one or the other will go home.”
About the same time in Cutty's apartment rather an amusing comedy took place. Professor Ryan, late physical instructor at one of the aviation camps, stood Hawksley in front of him and ran his hard hands over the young man's body. Miss Frances stood at one side, her arms folded, her expression skeptical.
“Nothin' the matter with you, Bo, but the crack on the conk.”
“Right-o!” agreed Hawksley.
“Lemme see your hands. Humph. Soft. Now stand on that threshold. That's it. Walk t' the' end o' the hall an' back. Step lively.”
“But,” began Miss Frances in protest. This was cruelty.
“I'm the doctor, miss,” interrupted Ryan, crisply. “If he falls down he goes t' bed, an' you stay. If he makes it, he follows my instructions.”
When Hawksley returned to the starting line the walls rocked, there were two or three blinding stabs of pain; but he faced this unusual Irishman with never a hint of the torture. A wild longing to be gone from this kindly prison—to get away from the thought of the girl.
“All right,” said Ryan. “Now toddle back t' bed.”
“Bed?”
“Yep. Goin' t' give you a rub that'll start all your machinery workin'.”
Docilely Hawksley obeyed. He wasn't going to let them know, but that bed was going to be tolerably welcome.
“Well!” said Miss Frances. “I don't see how he did it.”
“I do,” said the ex-pugilist. “I told him to. Either he was a false alarm, or he'd attempt the job even if he fell down. The hull thing is this: Make a guy wanta get well an' he'll get well. If he's got any pride, dig it up. Go after 'em. He hasn't lost any blood. No serious body wound. A crack on the conk. It mighta killed him. It didn't. He didn't wabble an' fall down. So my dope is right. Drop in in a few days an' I'll show yuh.”
Miss Frances held out her hand. “You've handled men,” she said, with reluctant admiration.
“Oh, boy!—millions of 'em, an' each guy different. Believe me! Make 'em wanta.”
Cutty attended his conferences. He learned immediately that he was booked to sail the first week in May. His itinerary began at Piraeus, in Greece, and might end in Vladivostok. But they detained him in Washington overtime because he was a fount of information the departments found it necessary to draw upon constantly. The political and commercial aspects of the polyglot peoples, what they wanted, what they expected, what they needed; racial enmities. The bugaboo of the undesirable alien was no longer bothering official heads in Washington. Stringent immigration laws were in the making. What they wanted to know was an American's point of view, based upon long and intimate associations.
Washington reminded him of nothing so much as a big sheep dog. The hazardous day was over; the wolves had been driven off and the sheep into the fold; and now the valiant guardian was turning round and round and round preparatory to lying down to sleep. For Washington would go to sleep again, naturally.
Often it occurred to him what a remarkable piece of machinery the human brain was. He could dig up all this dry information with the precise accuracy of an economist, all the while his actual thoughts upon Kitty. His nights were nightmares. And all this unhappiness because he had been touched with the lust for loot. Fundamentally, this catastrophe could be laid to the drums of jeopardy.
The alluring possibility of finding those damnable green stones—the unsuspected kink in his moral rectitude—had tumbled him into this pit. Had not Kitty pronounced the name Stefani Gregor—in his mind always linked with the emeralds—he would have summoned an ambulance and had Hawksley carried off, despite Kitty's protests; and perhaps he would have seen her but two or three times before sailing, seen her in conventional and unemotional parts. At any rate, there would have been none of this peculiar intimacy—Kitty coming to him in tears, opening her young heart to him and discovering all its loneliness. If she loved some chap it would not be so hard, the temptation would not be so keen—to cheat her. Marry her, and then tell her. This dogged his thoughts like a murderer's deed, terrible in the watches of the night. Marry her, and then tell her. Cheat her. Break her heart and break his own.
Fifty-two. Never before had he thought old. His splendid health and vigorous mentality were the results of thinking young. But now he heard the avalanche stirring, the whispering slither of the first pebbles. He would grow old swiftly, thunderously. Kitty's youth would shore up the debacle, suspend it indefinitely. Marry her, cheat her, and stay young. Green stones, accursed.
Kitty's days were pleasant enough, but her nights were sieges. One evening someone put Elman's rendition of Schubert's “Ave Maria” on the phonograph. Long after it was over she sat motionless in her chair. Echoes. The Tschaikowsky waltz. She got up suddenly, excused herself, and went to her room.
Six days, and her problem was still unsolved. Something in her—she could not define it, she could not reach it, it defied analysis—something, then, revolted at the idea of marrying Cutty, divorcing him, and living on his money. There was a touch of horror in the suggestion. It was tearing her to pieces, this hidden repellence. And yet this occult objection was so utterly absurd. If he died and left her a legacy she would accept it gratefully enough. Cutty's plan was only a method of circumventing this indefinite wait.
Comforts, the good things of life, amusements—simply by nodding her head. Why not? It wasn't as if Cutty was asking her to be his wife; he wasn't. Just wanted to dodge convention, and give her freedom and happiness. He was only giving her a mite out of his income. Because he had loved her mother; because, but for an accident of chance, she, Kitty, might have been his daughter. Why, then, this persistent and unaccountable revulsion? Why should she hesitate? The ancient female fear of the trap? That could not be it. For a more honourable, a more lovable man did not walk the earth. Brave, strong, handsome, whimsical—why, Cutty was a catch!
Comfy. Never any of that inherent doubt of man when she was with him. Absolute trust. An evil thought had entered her head; fate had made it honourably possible. And still this mysterious repellence.
Romance? She was not surrendering her right to that. What was a year out of her life if afterward she would be in comfortable circumstances, free to love where she willed? She wasn't cheating herself or Cutty: she was cheating convention, a flimsy thing at best.
Windows. We carry our troubles to our windows; through windows we see the stars. We cannot visualize God, but we can see His stars pinned to the immeasurable spaces. So Kitty sought her window and added her question to the countless millions forlornly wandering about up there, and finding no answer.
But she would return to New York on the morrow. She would not summon Bernini as she had promised. She would go back by train, alone, unhampered.
And in his cellar Boris Karlov spun his web for her.
Hawksley heard the lift door close, and he knew that at last he was alone. He flung out his arms, ecstatically. Free! He would see no more of that nagging beggar Ryan until tomorrow. Free to put into execution the idea that had been bubbling all day long in his head, like a fine champagne, firing his blood with reckless whimsicality.
Quietly he stole down the corridor. Through a crack in the kitchen door he saw Kuroki's back, the attitude of which was satisfying. It signified that the Jap was pegging away at his endless studies and that only the banging of the gong would rouse him. The way was as broad and clear as a street at dawn. Not that Kuroki mattered; only so long as he did not know, so much the better.
With careful step Hawksley manoeuvred his retreat so that it brought him to Cutty's bedroom door. The door was unlocked. He entered the room. What a lark! They would hide his own clothes; so much the worse for the old beggar's wardrobe. Street clothes. Presently he found a dark suit, commendable not so much for its style as for the fact that it was the nearest fit he could find. He had to roll up the trouser hems.
Hats. Chuckling like a boy rummaging a jam closet, he rifled the shelves and pulled down a black derby of an unknown vintage. Large; but a runner of folded paper reduced the size. As he pressed the relic firmly down on his head he winced. A stab over his eyes. He waited doubtfully; but there was no recurrence. Fit as a fiddle. Of course he could not stoop without a flash of vertigo; but on his feet he was top-hole. He was gaining every day.
Luck. He might have come out of it with the blank mind of a newborn babe; and here he was, keen to resume his adventures. Luck. They had not stopped to see if he was actually dead. Some passer-by in the hall had probably alarmed them. That handkerchief had carried him round the brink. Perhaps Fate intended letting him get through—written on his pass an extension of his leave of absence. Or she had some new torture in reserve.
Now for a stout walking stick. He selected a blackthorn, twirled it, saluted, and posed before the mirror. Not so bally rotten. He would pass. Next, he remembered that there were some flowers in the dining room—window boxes with scarlet geraniums. He broke off a sprig and drew it through his buttonhole.
Outside there was a cold, pale April sky, presaging wind and rain. Unimportant. He was going down into the streets for an hour or so. The colour and action of a crowded street; the lure was irresistible. Who would dare touch him in the crowd? These rooms had suddenly become intolerable.
He leaned against the side of the window. Roofs, thousands of them, flat, domed, pinnacled; and somewhere under one of these roofs Stefani Gregor was eating his heart out. It did not matter that this queer old eagle whom everybody called Cutty had promised to bring Stefani home. It might be too late. Stefani was old, highly strung. Who knew what infernal lies Karlov had told him? Stefani could stand up under physical torture; but to tear at his soul, to twist and rend his spirit!
The bubble in the champagne died down—as it always will if one permits it to stand. He felt the old mood seep through the dikes of his gayety. Alone. A familiar face—he would have dropped on his knees and thanked God for the sight of a familiar face. These people, kindly as they were—what were they but strangers? Yesterday he had not known them; to-morrow he would leave them behind forever. All at once the mystery of this bubbling idea was bared: he was going to risk his life in the streets in the vague hope of seeing some face he had known in the days before the world had gone drunk on blood. One familiar face.
Of course he would never forget—at any rate, not the girl whose courage had made possible this hour. Those chaps, scared off temporarily, might have returned. What had become of her? He was always seeing her lovely face in the shadows, now tender, now resolute, now mocking. Doubtless he thought of her constantly because his freedom of action was limited. He hadn't diversion enough. Books and fiddling, these carried him but halfway through the boredom. Where was she? Daily he had called her by telephone; no answer. The Jap shook his head; the slangy boy in the lift shook his.
She was a thoroughbred, even if she had been born of middle-class parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a troglodyte, set down in a new wilderness.
He heard the curtain rings slither on the pole. Believing the intruder to be Kuroki he turned belligerently. And there she stood—the girl herself! The poise of her reminded him of the Winged Victory in the Louvre. Where there had been a cup of champagne in his veins circumstance now poured a magnum.
“You!” he cried.
“What has happened? Where are you going in those clothes?” demanded Kitty.
“I am running away—for an hour or so.”
“But you must not! The risks—after all the trouble we've had to help you!”
“I shall be perfectly safe, for you are going with me. Aren't you my guardian angel? Well, rather! The two of us—people, lights, shop windows! Perfectly splendiferous! Honestly, now, where's the harm?” He approached her rapidly as he spoke, and before the spell of him could be shaken off Kitty found her hands imprisoned in his. “Please! I've been so damnably bored. The two of us in the streets, among the crowds! No one will dare touch us. Can't you see? And then—I say, this is ripping!—we'll have dinner together here. I will play for you on the old Amati. Please!”
The fire of him communicated to the combustibles in Kitty's soul. A wild, reckless irony besieged her. This adventure would be exactly what she needed; it would sweep clear the fog separating one side of her brain from the other. For it was plain enough that part of her brain refused to cooperate with the other. A break in the trend of thought: she might succeed in getting hold of the puzzle if she could drop it absolutely for a little while and then pick it up again.
She had not gone home. She had not notified Bernini. She had checked her luggage in the station parcel room and come directly here. For what? To let the sense of luxury overcome the hidden repugnance of the idea of marrying Cutty, divorcing him, and living on his money. To put herself in the way of visible temptation. What fretted her so, what was wearing her down to the point of fatigue, was the patent imbecility of her reluctance. There would have been some sense of it if Cutty had proposed a real marriage. All she had to do was mumble a few words, sign her name to a document, live out West for a few months, and be in comfortable circumstances all the rest of her life. And she doddered!
She would run the streets with Johnny Two-Hawks, return, and dine with him. Who cared? Proper or improper, whose business was it but Kitty Conover's? Danger? That was the peculiar attraction. She wanted to rush into danger, some tense excitement the strain of which would lift her out of her mood. A recurrent touch of the wild impulsiveness of her childhood. Hadn't she sometimes flown out into thunderstorms, after merited punishment, to punish the mother whom thunder terrorized? And now she was going to rush into unknown danger to punish Fate—like a silly child! Nevertheless, she would go into the streets with Johnny Two-Hawks.
“But are you strong enough to venture on the streets?”
“Rot! Dash it all, I'm no mollycoddle! All nonsense to keep me pinned in like this. Will you go with me—be my guide?”
“Yes!” She shot out the word and crossed the Rubicon before reason could begin to lecture. Besides, wasn't reason treating her shabbily in withholding the key to the riddle? “Johnny Two-Hawks, I will go as far as Harlem if you want me to.”
“Johnny Two-Hawks!” He laughed joyously, then kissed her hands. But he had to pay for this bending—a stab that filled his eyes with flying sparks. He must remember, once out of doors, not to stoop quickly. “I say, you're the jolliest girl I ever met! Just the two of us, what?”
“The way you speak English is wonderful!”
“Simple enough to explain. Had an English nurse from the beginning. Spoke English and Italian before I spoke Russian.”
He seized the wooden mallet and beat the Burmese gong—a flat piece of brass cut in the shape of a bell. The clear, whirring vibrations filled the room. Long before these spent themselves Kuroki appeared on the threshold. He bobbed.
“Kuroki, Miss Conover is dining here with me to-night. Seven o'clock sharp. The best you have in the larder.”
“Yes, sair. You are going out, sair?”
“For a bit of fresh air.”
“And I am going with him, Kuroki,” said Kitty. Kuroki bobbed again. “Dinner at seven, sair.” Another bob, and he returned to the kitchen, smiling. The girl was free to come and go, of course, but the ancient enemy of Nippon would not pass the elevator door. Let him find that out for himself.
When the elevator arrived the boy did not open the door. He noted the derby on Hawksley's head.
“I can take you down, Miss Conover, but I cannot take Mr. Hawksley. When the boss gives me an order I obey it—if I possibly can. On the day the boss tells me you can go strolling, I'll give you the key to the city. Until then, nix! No use arguing, Mr. Hawksley.”
“I shan't argue,” replied Hawksley, meekly. “I am really a prisoner, then?”
“For your own good, sir. Do you wish to go down, Miss Conover?”
“No.”
The boy swung the lever, and the car dropped from sight.
“I'm sorry,” said Kitty.
Hawksley smiled and laid a finger on his lips. “I wanted to know,” he whispered. “There's another way down from this Matterhorn. Come with me. Off the living room is a storeroom. I found the key in the lock the other day and investigated. I still have the key. Now, then, there's a door that gives to the main loft. At the other end is the stairhead. There is a door at the foot of the first flight down. We can jolly well leave this way, but we shall have to return by the lift. That bally young ruffian can't refuse to carry us up, y' know!”
Kitty laughed. “This is going to be fun!”
“Rather!”
They groped their way through the dim loft—for it was growing dark outside—and made the stairhead. The door to the seventeenth floor opened, and they stepped forth into the lighted hallway.
“Now what?” asked Kitty, bubbling.
“The floor below, and one of the other lifts, what?” Twenty minutes later the two of them, arm in arm, turned into Broadway.
“This, sir,” began Kitty with a gesture, “is Broadway—America's backyard in the daytime and Ali Baba's cave at night. The way of the gilded youth; the funnel for papa's money; the chorus lady; the starting point of the high cost of living. We New Yorkers despise it because we can't afford it.”
“The lights!” gasped Hawksley.
“Wreckers' lights. Behold! Yonder is a highly nutritious whisky blinking its bloomin' farewell. Do you chew gum? Even if you don't, in a few minutes I'll give you a cud for thought. Chewing gum was invented by a man with a talkative wife. He missed the physiological point, however, that a body can chew and talk at the same time. Come on!”
They went on uptown, Hawksley highly amused, exhilarated, but frequently puzzled. The pungent irony of her observations conveyed to him that under this gayety was a current of extreme bitterness. “I say, are all American girls like you?”
“Heavens, no! Why?”
“Because I never met one like you before. Rather stilted—on their good behaviour, I fancy.”
“And I interest you because I'm not on my good behaviour?” Kitty whipped back.
“Because you are as God made you—without camouflage.”
“The poor innocent young man! I'm nothing but camouflage to-night. Why are you risking your life in the street? Why am I sharing that risk? Because we both feel bound and are blindly trying to break through. What do you know about me? Nothing. What do I know about you? Nothing. But what do we care? Come on, come on!”
Tumpitum—tump! tumpitum—tump! drummed the Elevated. Kitty laughed. The tocsin! Always something happened when she heard it.
“Pearls!” she cried, dragging him toward a jeweller's window.
“No!” he said, holding back. “I hate—jewels! How I hate them!” He broke away from her and hurried on.
She had to run after him. Had she hesitated they might have become separated. Hated jewels? No, no! There should be no questions, verbal or mental, this night. She presently forced him to slow down. “Not so fast! We must never become separated,” she warned. “Our safety—such as it is—lies in being together.”
“I'm an ass. Perhaps my head is ratty without my realizing it. I fancy I'm like a dog that's been kicked; I'm trying to run away from the pain. What's this tomb?”
“The Metropolitan Opera House.”
As they were passing a thin, wailing sound came to the ears of both. Seated with his back to the wall was a blind fiddler with a tin cup strapped to a knee. He was out of bounds; he had no right on Broadway; but he possessed a singular advantage over the law. He could not be forced to move on without his guide—if he were honestly blind. Hundreds of people were passing; but the fiddler's “Last Rose of Summer” wasn't worth a cent. His cup was empty.
“The poor thing!” said Kitty.
“Wait!” Hawksley approached the fiddler, exchanged a few words with him, and the blind man surrendered his fiddle.
“Give me your hat!” cried Kitty, delighted.
Carefully Hawksley pried loose his derby and handed it to Kitty. No stab of pain; something to find that out. He turned the instrument, tucked it under his chin and began “Traumerei.” Kitty, smiling, extended the hat. Just the sort of interlude to make the adventure memorable. She knew this thoroughfare. Shortly there would be a crowd, and the fiddler's cup would overflow—that is, if the police did not interfere too soon.
As for the owner of the wretched fiddle, he raised his head, his mouth opened. Up there, somewhere, a door to heaven had opened.
True to her expectations a crowd slowly gathered. The beauty of the girl and the dark, handsome face of the musician, his picturesque bare head, were sufficient for these cynical passers-by. They understood. Operatic celebrities, having a little fun on their own. So quarters and dimes and nickels began to patter into Cutty's ancient derby hat. Broadway will always contribute generously toward a novelty of this order. Famous names were tossed about in undertones.
Entered then the enemy of the proletariat. Kitty, being a New Yorker born, had had her weather eye roving. The brass-buttoned minion of the law was always around when a bit of innocent fun was going on. As the policeman reached the inner rim of the audience the last notes of Handel's “Largo” were fading on the ear.
“What's this?” demanded the policeman.
“It's all over, sir,” answered Kitty, smiling.
“Can't have this on Broadway, miss. Obstruction.” He could not speak gruffly in the face of such beauty—especially with a Broadway crowd at his back.
“It's all over. Just let me put this money in the blind man's cup.” Kitty poured her coins into the receptacle. At the same time Hawksley laid the fiddle in the blind man's lap. Then he turned to Kitty and boomed a long Russian phrase at her. Her quick wit caught the intent. “You see, he doesn't understand that this cannot be done in New York. I couldn't explain.”
“All right, miss; but don't do it again.” The policeman grinned.
“And please don't be harsh with the blind man. Just tell him he mustn't play on Broadway again. Thank you!”
She linked her arm in Hawksley's, and they went on; and the crowd dissolved; only the policeman and the blind man remained, the one contemplating his duty and the other his vision of heaven.
“What a lark!” exclaimed Hawksley.
“Were you asking me for your hat?”
“I was telling the bobby to go to the devil!”
They laughed like children.
“March hares!” he said.
“No. April fools! Good heavens, the time! Twenty minutes to seven. Our dinner!”
“We'll take a taxi.... Dash it!”
“What's wrong?”
“Not a bally copper in my pockets!”
“And I left my handbag on the sideboard! We'll have to walk. If we hurry we can just about make it.”
Meantime, there lay in wait for them—this pair of April fools—a taxicab. It stood snugly against the curb opposite the entrance to Cutty's apartment. The door was slightly ajar.
The driver watched the south corner; the three men inside never took their gaze off the north corner.
“But, I say, hasn't this been a jolly lark?”
“If we had known we could have borrowed a dollar from the blind man; he'd never have missed it.”
Champagne in the glass is a beautiful thing to see. So is water, the morning after. That is the fault with frolic; there is always an inescapable rebound. The most violent love drops into humdrum tolerance. A pessimist is only a poor devil who has anticipated the inevitable; he has his headache at the start. Mental champagnes have their aftermaths even as the juice of the grape.
Hawksley and Kitty, hurrying back, began to taste lees. They began to see things, too—menace in every loiterer, threat in every alley. They had had a glorious lark; somewhere beyond would be the piper with an appalling bill. They exaggerated the dangers, multiplied them; perhaps wisely. There would be no let-down in their vigilance until they reached haven. But this state of mind they covered with smiling masks, banter, bursts of laughter, and flashes of wit.
They were both genuinely frightened, but with unselfish fear. Kitty's fear was not for herself but for Johnny Two-Hawks. If anything happened the blame would rightly be hers. With that head he wasn't strictly accountable for what he did; she was. A firm negative on her part and he would never have left the apartment. And his fear was wholly for this astonishing girl. He had recklessly thrust her into grave danger. Who knew, better than he, the implacable hate of the men who sought to kill him?
Moreover, his strength was leaving him. There was an alarming weakness in his legs, purely physical. He had overdone, and if need rose he would not be able to protect her. Damnable fool! But she had known. That was the odd phase of it. She hadn't come blindly. What mood had urged her to share the danger along with the lark? Somehow, she was always just beyond his reach, this girl. He would never forget that fan popping out of the pistol, the egg burning in the pan.
The apartment was only three blocks away when Kitty decided to drop her mask. “I'd give a good deal to see a policeman. They are never around when you really want them. Johnny Two-Hawks, I'm a little fool! You wouldn't have left the apartment but for me. Will you forgive me?”
“It is I who should ask forgiveness. I say, how much farther is it?”
“Only about two blocks; but they may be long ones. Let's step into this doorway for a moment. I see a taxicab. It looks to be standing opposite the building. Don't like it. Suppose we watch it for a few minutes?”
Hawksley was grateful for the respite; and together they stared at the unwinking red eye of the tail light. But no man approached the cab or left it.
“I believe I've hit upon a plan,” said Kitty. “Certainly we have not been followed. In that event they would have had a dozen chances. If someone saw us leave together, naturally they will expect us to return together. We'll walk to the corner of our block, then turn east; but I shall remain just out of sight while you will go round the block. Fifteen minutes should carry you to the south corner. I'll be on watch for you. The moment you turn I'll walk toward you. It will give us a bit of a handicap in case that taxi is a menace. If any one appears, run for it. Where's the cane you had?”
“What a jolly ass I am! I remember now. I left the stick against the wall of the opera house. Blockhead! With a stick, now!... I'm hopeless!”
“Never mind. Let's start. That taxi may be perfectly honest. It's our guilty consciences that are peopling the shadows with goblins. What really bothers us is that we have broken our word to the kindliest man in all this world.”
Hawksley wondered if he could walk round the block without falling down. He saw that he was facing a physical collapse, hastened by the knowledge that the safety of the girl depended largely upon himself. What he had accepted at the beginning as strength had been nothing more than exhilaration and nerve energy. There was now nothing but the latter, and only feeble straws at that. Oh, he would manage somehow; he jolly well had to; and there was a bare chance of falling in with a bobby. But run? Honestly, now, how the devil was a chap to run on a pair of spools?
Arriving at the appointed spot they separated. He waved his hand airily and marched off. If he fell it would be out of sight, where the girl could not see him. Clever chap—what? Damned rotter! For himself he did not care. He was weary of this game of hide and seek. But to have lured the girl into it! When he turned the first corner of his journey he paused and leaned against the wall, his eyes shut. When he opened them the sidewalk and the street lamps were normal again.
As soon as he disappeared a new plan came to Kitty. She put it into execution at once, on the basis that yonder taxicab was an enemy machine. She left her retreat and walked boldly down the street, her eyes alert for the least suspicious sign. If she could make the entrance before they suspected the trick, she could obtain help before Johnny Two-Hawks made the south turn. She reached her objective, pushed through the revolving doors, and turned. Dimly she could see the taxi driver; but he appeared to be dozing on the seat.
As a matter of fact, one of the three men in the taxi recognized Kitty, but too late to intercept her. Her manoeuvre had confused him temporarily. And while he and his companions were debating, Kitty had time to summon Cutty's man from Elevator Four.
“Step into the car!” he roughly ordered, after she had given him a gist of her suspicions. He turned off the lights, stepped out, and shut the gates with a furious bang. “And stick to the corner! I'll attend to the other fool.”
He rushed into the street, his automatic ready, eyed the taxicab speculatively, wheeled suddenly, and ran south at a dog-trot. He rounded the south corner, but he did not see Hawksley anywhere. The dog-trot became a dead run. As he wheeled round the corner of the parallel street he almost bumped into Hawksley, who had a policeman in tow.
“Officer,” said the man with the boy's face, “this is Federal business. Aliens. Come along. There may be trouble. If there should be any shooting don't bother with the atmosphere. Pick out a real target.”
“Anarchists?”
“About the size of it.”
“Miss Conover?” asked Hawksley.
“Safe. No thanks to you, though. I'd like to knock your block off, if you want to know!”
“Do it! Damned little use to me,” declared Hawksley, sagging.
“Here, what's the matter with you?” cried the policeman, throwing his arm round Hawksley.
“They nearly killed him a few days gone. A crack on the bean; but he wasn't satisfied. Help him along. I'll be hiking back.”
But the taxicab was gone.
Before Cutty's lieutenant opened the gate to the apartment he spoke to Hawksley. “The boss is doing everything he can to put you through, sir. Miss Conover's wit saved you. For if you hadn't separated they'd have nailed you. I've been running round like a chicken with its head cut off. I forgot that door on the seventeenth floor. I tell you honestly, you've been playing with death. It wasn't fair to Miss Conover.”
“It was my fault,” volunteered Kitty.
“Mine,” protested Hawksley.
“Well, they know where you roost now, for a fact. You've spilled the beans. I'm sorry I lost my temper. The devil fly away with you both!” The boy laughed. “You're game, anyhow. But darn it all, if anything had happened to you the boss would never have forgiven me. He's the whitest old scout God ever put the breath of life into. He's always doing something for somebody. He'd give you the block if you had the gall to ask for it. Play the game fifty-fifty with him and you'll land on both feet. And you, Miss Conover, must not come here again.”
“I promise.”
“I'll tell you a little secret. It was the boss who sent you out of town. He was afraid you'd do something like this. When you are ready to go home you'll find Tony Bernini downstairs. Sore as a crab, too, I'll bet.”
“I'll be glad to go home with him,” said Kitty, thoroughly chastened in spirit.
“That's all for to-night.”
Kitty and Hawksley stepped out into the corridor, the problem they had sought to shake off reestablished in their thoughts, added too, if anything.
“How do you feel?”
“Top-hole,” lied Hawksley. “My word, though, I wobbled a bit going round that block. I almost kissed the bobby. I say, he thought I'd been tilting a few. But it was a lark!”
“Dinner is served,” announced Kuroki at their elbows. His expression was coldly bland.
“Dinner!” cried Hawksley, brightening. “What does the American soldier say?”
“Eats!” answered Kitty.
All tension vanished in the double laughter that followed. They approached dinner with something of the spirit that had induced Hawksley to fiddle and Kitty to pass the hat in front of the Metropolitan Opera House. Hawksley's recuperative powers promised well for his future. By the time coffee was served his head had cleared and his legs had resumed their normal functions of support.
“I was so infernally bored!”
“And now?” asked Kitty, recklessly.
“Fancy asking me that!”
“Do you realize that all this is dreadfully improper?”
“Oh, I say, now! Where's the harm? If ever there was a young woman capable of taking care of herself—”
“That isn't it. It's just being here alone with you.”
“But you are not alone with me!”
“Kuroki?” Kitty shrugged.
“No. At my side of the table is Stefani Gregor; at yours the man who has befriended me.”
“Thank you for that. I don't know of anything nicer you could say. But the outside world would see neither of our friends. I did not come here to see you.”
“No need of telling me that.”
“I had a problem—a very difficult one—to solve; and I believed that I might solve it if I came to these rooms. I had quite forgotten you.”
Instantly, upon receiving this blunt explanation, he determined that she should never cease to remember him after this night. His vanity was not touched; it was something far more elusive. It was perhaps a recurrence of that inexplicable desire to hurt. Somehow he sensed the flexible steel behind which lay the soul of this baffling girl. He would presently find a chink in the armour with that old Amati.
Blows on the head have few surgical comparisons. That which kills one man only temporarily stuns another. One man loses his identity; another escapes with all his faculties and suffers but trifling inconvenience. In Hawksley's case the blow had probably restricted some current of thought, and that which would have flowed normally now shot out obliquely, perversely. It might be that the natural perverseness of his blood, unchecked by the noble influence of Stefani Gregor and liberated by the blow, governed his thoughts in relation to Kitty. The subjugation of women, the old cynical warfare of sex—the dominant business of his rich and idle forbears, the business that had made Boris Karlov a deadly and implacable enemy—became paramount in his disordered brain.
She had forgotten him! Very well. He would stir the soul of her, play with it, lift it to the stars and dash it down—if she had a soul. Beautiful, natural, alone. He became all Latin under the pressure of this idea.
“I will play for you,” he said, quietly.
“Please! And then I'll go home where I belong. I'll be in the living room.”
When he returned he found her before a window, staring at the myriad lights.
“Sit here,” he said, indicating the divan. “I shall stand and walk about as I play.”
Kitty sat down, touching the pillows, reflectively. She thought of the tears she had wept upon them. That sinister and cynical thought! Suddenly she saw light. Her problem would have been none at all if Cutty had said he loved her. There would have been something sublime in making him happy in his twilight. He had loved and lost her mother. To pay him for that! He was right. Those twenty-odd years—his seniority—had mellowed him, filled him with deep and tender understanding. To be with him was restful; the very thought of him now was resting. No matter how much she might love a younger man he would frequently torture her by unconscious egoism; and by the time he had mellowed, the mulled wine would be cold. If only Cutty had said he loved her!
“What shall I play?”
Kitty raised her eyes in frank astonishment. There was a fiercely proud expression on Hawksley's face. It was not the man, it was the artist who was angry.
“Forgive me! I was dreaming a little,” she apologized with quick understanding. “I am not quite—myself.”
“Neither am I. I will play something to fit your dream. But wait! When I play I am articulate. I can express myself—all emotions. I am what I play—happy, sad, gay, full of the devil. I warn you. I can speak all things. I can laugh at you, weep with you, despise you, love you! All in the touch of these strings. I warn you there is magic in this Amati. Will you risk it?”
Ordinarily—had this florid outburst come from another man—Kitty would have laughed. It had the air of piqued vanity; but she knew that this was not the interpretation. On the streets he had been the most amusing and surprising comrade she had ever known, as merry and whimsical as Cutty—young and handsome—the real man. He had been real that night when he entered through her kitchen window, with the drums of jeopardy about his neck. He had been real that night she had brought him his wallet.
Electric antagonism—the room seemed charged with it. The man had stepped aside for a moment and the great noble had taken his place. It was not because she had been reared in rather a theatrical atmosphere that she transcribed his attitude thus. She knew that he was noble. That she did not know his rank was of no consequence. Cutty's narrative, which she had pretended to believe, had set this man in the middle class. Never in this world. There was only one middle class out of which such a personality might, and often did, emerge—the American middle class. In Europe, never. No peasant blood, no middle-class corpuscle, stirred in this man's veins. The ancient boyar looked down at her.
“Play!” said Kitty. There was a smile on her lips, but there was fiery challenge in her slate-blue eyes. The blood of Irish kings—and what Irishman dares deny it?—surged into her throat.
We wear masks, we inherit generations of masks; and a trivial incident reveals the primordial which lurks in each one of us. Savages—Kitty with her stone hatchet and Hawksley swinging the curved blade of Hunk.
He began one of those tempestuous compositions, brilliant and bewildering, that submerge the most appreciative lay mentality—because he was angry, a double anger that he should be angry over he knew not what—and broke off in the middle of the composition because Kitty sat upright, stonily unimpressed.
Tschaikowsky's “Serenade Melancolique.” Kitty, after a few measures, laid aside her stone hatchet, and her body relaxed. Music! She began to absorb it as parched earth absorbs the tardy rain. Then came the waltz which had haunted her. Her face grew tenderly beautiful; and Hawksley, a true artist, saw that he had discovered the fifth string; and he played upon it with all the artistry which was naturally his and which had been given form by the master who had taught him.
For the physical exertions he relied upon nerve energy again. Nature is generous when we are young. No matter how much we draw against the account she always has a little more for us. He forgot that only an hour gone he had been dizzy with pain, forgot everything but the glory of the sounds he was evoking and their visible reaction upon this girl. The devil was not only in his heart, but in his hand.
Never had Kitty heard such music. To be played to in this manner—directly, with embracing tenderness, with undivided fire—would have melted the soul of Gobseck the money lender; and Kitty was warm-blooded, Irish, emotional. The fiddle called poignantly to the Irish in her. She wanted to go roving with this man; with her hand on his shoulder to walk in the thin air of high places. Through it all, however, she felt vaguely troubled; the instinct of the trap. The sinister and cynical idea which had clandestinely taken up quarters in her mind awoke and assailed her from a new angle, that of youth. Something in her cried out: “Stop! Stop!” But her lips were mute, her body enchained.
Suddenly Hawksley laid aside the fiddle and advanced. He reached down and drew her up. Kitty did not resist him; she was numb with enchantment. He held her close for a second, then kissed her—her hair, eyes, mouth—released her and stepped back, a bantering smile on his lips and cold terror in his heart. The devil who had inspired this phase of the drama now deserted his victim, as he generally does in the face of superior forces.
Kitty stood perfectly still for a full minute, stunned. It was that smile—frozen on his lips—that brought her back to intimacy with cold realities. Had he asked her pardon, had he shown the least repentance, she might have forgiven, forgotten. But knowing mankind as she did she could give but one interpretation to that smile—of which he was no longer conscious.
Without anger, in quiet, level tones she said: “I had foolishly thought that we two might be friends. You have made it impossible. You have also abused the kindly hospitality of the man who has protected you from your enemies. A few days ago he did me the honour to ask me to marry him. I am going to. I wish you no evil.” She turned and walked from the room.
Even then there was time. But he did not move. It was not until he heard the elevator gate crash that he was physically released from the thraldom of the inner revelation. Love—in the blinding flash of a thunderbolt! He had kissed her not because he was the son of his father, but because he loved her! And now he never could tell her. He must let her go, believing that the man she had saved from death had repaid her with insult. On top of all his misfortunes, his tragedies—love! There was a God, yes, but his name was Irony. Love! He stepped toward the divan, stumbled, and fell against it, his arms spread over the pillows; and in this position he remained.
For a while his thoughts were broken, inconclusive; he was like a man in the dark, groping for a door. Principally, his poor head was trying to solve the riddle of his never-ending misfortunes. Why? What had he done that these calamities should be piled upon his head? He had lived decently; his youth had been normal; he had played fair with men and women. Why make him pay for what his forbears had done? He wasn't fair game.
He! A singular revelation cleared one corner. Kitty had spoken of a problem; and he, by those devil-urged kisses, had solved it for her. She had been doddering, and his own act had thrust her into the arms of that old thoroughbred. That cynical suggestion of his the other morning had been acted upon. God had long ago deserted him, and now the devil himself had taken leave. Hawksley buried his face in the pillow once made wet with Kitty's tears.
The great tragedy in life lies in being too late. Hawksley had learned this once before; it was now being driven home again. Cutty was to find it out on the morrow, for he missed his train that night.
The shuttles of the Weaver in this pattern of life were two green stones called the drums of jeopardy, inanimate objects, but perfect tools in the hands of Destiny. But for these stones Hawksley would not have tarried too long on a certain red night; Cutty would not now be stumbling about the labyrinths into which his looting instincts had thrust him; and Kitty Conover would have jogged along in the humdrum rut, if not happy at least philosophically content with her lot.