CHAPTER X
WhenAmes returned to the studio twenty minutes later, it was still empty. In his own room over on East Twenty-Eighth Street, Dmitri sat on a couch, smoking and listening to the boy Steccho talk of Sofia, of his mountain home, of Maryna his sister, and the little smiling mother who cooked so excellently.
“The last time we met, we dipped in the same drinking-bowl, remember?” Dmitri smiled across at him. “You are too young to come here in these times. Who has sent you? Do not tell me if you dare not. I am not afraid. I will still open wide the door every time you care to visit me, my friend. Are the little mother and sister quite safe, you are sure?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Steccho’s dark face glowed with enthusiasm. “Before I come here I see to that, and they will have more still, much more.”
“So? Then you are doing well. That is good. The times are changing about, eh? Are there any of the others here? I have met no one since I came. I was wounded and in the hospital for months, so I have lost track of the old friends.”
“You did not return, then, afterwards?” Steccho’s glance was uneasy.
“No,” replied Dmitri, lying on his back, and blowing long, uneven ovals into the air. “I do not like it all, frankly, my boy. They compromise and barter first with this faction, then with the other. Each is afraid to trust the other. It has become a great struggle for self-preservation now that the masters twist the torture screws of starvation. Life, after all, once you desert nature, becomes merely a struggle for the dear old bread and butter in one form or another. Commerce is built upon the necessities of human existence under modern conditions. Personally, I am very radical on one point. I would kill without mercy the man who gambles for his own profit on the necessities of his brother man, his food, his fuel, his clothing. And I do not believe in killing, as you know. I regard war as a subterfuge, an exploitation of power. I object to persons infusing into my mind hatred of my brother man merely because he happens to live on a different spot of earth than I do, and belongs to a different branch of the same human race.”
“There are robbers and murderers in the brotherhood as well as in the privileged classes.”
“So, my Steccho has learned to perchsafely and sensibly upon the fence between the warring factions, yes? The rain falls on the just and the unjust, therefore we must be merciful likewise.” He sat up and reached for his violin, playing stray chords, bits of folk-songs and haunting Czech melodies in minors.
Steccho listened moodily, his eyes almost closed as he clasped arms about his knees, and bent his head on them. Dmitri played in silence for nearly half an hour. When he stopped, the boy looked up at him wistfully.
“When the cause is right, the way must be right too.”
“What do you mean by the cause?” Dmitri asked genially. “We live in a day when causes are hung for sale in any market-place. You may buy them like indulgences from pilgrim friars. I would pick my cause with caution.”
“I mean this. No matter what we do, if it is for some great, beautiful purpose, then it does not matter, eh?”
“You will stub your toe on that rock, the end that justifies the means; that is all it comes to when you are through with reasoning and sophistry. And I do not like any reasoning which may be diverted by the idiot Chance, to his own blind folly. Can you tell me frankly why you are here? I will keep silent and help you if I may.”
Steccho threw away his last cigarette and rose, stretching himself like an animal impatient for a run.
“I am here so that my mother and Maryna may dwell in the yellow castle forever,” he answered with a slow smile. “You cannot help, but I should like to come here and rest now and then.”
“You will come again soon, my friend,” Dmitri laid both hands on his shoulders warmly. “Come often, when you like. If I am out, look for me over in the squares, or open the door and be happy as you can until I return. Light the fire yourself. It awaits you. If you will come back to-night, I can promise you such a meal of broiled lamb and rice as you have not tasted since the home days.”
“Not to-night.” Steccho shook his head. “I might take you from your friends. I could hear you singing while I stood in the park there to-day. The girl had a fine voice.”
“She has genius and is poor. My friend is giving her lessons so she may sing in his opera some day. He is very much interested in her. It is a romance.” Dmitri smiled whimsically. “He does not even know her name, but she is very beautiful. Ah, my Steccho, if you and I, who are older than the ages in our outlook on life, could only receive this baptism of joy,this love. You would forget your torches and rivers of blood if the one woman would give you her lips, yes?”
The boy turned his back on him at the door, the face of Carlota before his eyes as it had disturbed and bewildered his purpose ever since he had first looked upon its beauty and innocence. His fingers shook as he fumbled blindly for the doorknob.
“I will come again, Dmitri. Good-night.”
He went directly uptown in the subway. There is a small carriage entrance to the Hotel Dupont. By it, you may enter most privately and unostentatiously a low-ceiled, satin-walled corridor which leads past a flower-stand and telephone booth to a single elevator, half concealed in a recess.
Here the boy waited while his name was sent up to Count Lazio Jurka. There was a delay, and presently down in the private elevator came the valet and personal courier of the Count, a soldierly individual, gray-haired and austere.
“You always blunder,” he said as he led the way to the servants’ elevator. “You come here as a tailor, not a guest. He does not expect you to-night. Have you news?”
Steccho shrugged his shoulders sullenly. After the meeting with Dmitri his mind wasunsettled. As they passed by the palm-guarded tea-room, the great paneled dining-room on the corner, the rotunda with its rose-hued walls and marble columns, the leisurely parade of the late afternoon frequenters, his memory traveled rapidly back to his old life that Dmitri had been a part of.
It was a far cry to Rigl, his home village, eighteen miles out of Sofia if you take the narrow mountain trail on horseback. There had been the childhood there, and later, when he had worked in Sofia at the little hand-press bindery, to enable himself to study evenings. He passed one hand over his eyes restlessly as the valet opened the door of a corner suite on the eighth floor and snapped the catch after them. The small inner salon was empty. Excepting for scattered daily papers it bore no trace of use. The door of the dressing-room was ajar, and Steccho bowed low on its threshold, waiting the word to enter.
Before a large oval mirror Count Jurka tied his cravat with a deliberate and distinct enjoyment of the artistry required by the operation. Clad in underclothes and shirt, he resembled some French courtier, one who might have just flung off his cloak and hat in a gray dawn rendezvous, and, balancing his rapier, awaited his opponent.
He was youthful, blond, serene-eyed, the Count Jurka. Throughout the war of nations those same blue eyes had witnessed unspeakable atrocities with the utmost impersonal calm. The white, pink-nailed hands that dallied over cravats had dipped in the blood of innocents quite as artistically and deliberately as they handled the silk ends now. He was an individual the guillotine would have licked its long steel tongue over after devouring, but there were no guillotines in Sofia, and firing-squads were out of date likewise. The hand of fate deputed its blows to those who worked secretly and left no trace behind save the victim.
“Come in, Steccho,” he called pleasantly. “How goes this merry world with you? The cigarettes, Georges.”
Steccho accepted two from the long, narrow brown leather box the valet extended to him, and held them unlighted in his fingers. There had been a man in Sofia who had been extremely ill, even to the verge of death, after smoking cigarettes from that brown leather box.
The cravat tied, Jurka seated himself in an amber satin armchair, a black-velvet dressing-robe about his shoulders. He smiled musingly across at the boy, noting his drawn, harassedface. The hand that held the cigarettes shook slightly. The muscles around his lips twitched under that amused scrutiny.
“Have you found them?”
The question came hard and short finally. Steccho shook his head.
“Excellenza,” he said eagerly, “the opportunity has not come. I have followed them both unceasingly, day and night, and have seen nothing.”
“You have followed the girl. Day and night you have followed her, no one else. You have not yet ascertained where the jewels are kept, nor whether she has access to them. Are they in New York or in Italy? Are they in the possession of Maria Roma in their apartment, or in a safety-deposit vault? Why do you shadow the girl Carlota unless you are perhaps in love with her?”
Steccho’s eyes were brilliant with resentment that he dared not express in words.
“One must go slowly here, excellenza,” he said. “It is not Sofia. You yourself would not have the power to shield me or hold the jewels if I were caught. One must look the ground over thoroughly. Possibly, as you say, they are not even here in America, but have been left in Italy.”
Jurka smiled slowly.
“I will satisfy you on that point, and relieve your doubt, my Steccho. They are here. Duty was declared on the full collection, Palmieri tells me. It passed as the private jewels of a non-resident alien. So far, I do not believe Ogden Ward has even seen them, but I know the girl has offered them to him in return for the sums he has advanced for her musical education. She has no conception of their value.”
“You know she has offered them to him, excellenza!” Steccho’s head was thrust forward eagerly, the emphasis in his tone conveying his incredulity.
“Through Ward’s Japanese butler, Ishigaki. He overheard her the night Ward gave the girl a dinner.”
“Excellenza, your eyes are everywhere,” murmured the boy.
“Not my eyes, Steccho,” smiled Jurka. “My gold. Georges here is an able and cautious distributor, eh? Does the girl Carlota never wear her jewels?”
He stretched out his feet carelessly for Georges to fasten his boots. The boy watched him with unblinking eyes, thinking of how once he had seen their high, hard heels grind into the dead face of a man lying in the snow. He was the friend of Dmitri and his group then. The war had seemed far from their little mountainvillage until there came a day when Jurka’s troops came through. They had quartered at the inn and scattered among the different homes. Levano, old Levano, who preached liberty and peace from his blacksmith forge, had staggered out into the road after his two daughters had been violated, and had thrust his red-hot branding-irons into the face of the soldiery. Jurka had ground his heel on his mouth that had stiffened under choked curses.
Later, in an upper room at the inn—He stared fixedly at the highly polished boots of Jurka, and sought to fasten his memory solely on Maryna and the little mother. The Count had said Maryna was a pretty little thing the day he had saved Steccho from the troops. She had run through the crowd in the village and had knelt to wipe her brother’s bruised face. That was the first time he had seen her, and she was barely fifteen. It had been later on, in the upper room at the inn, that Steccho had sworn to enter the service of the Queen providing safety might be assured the two left at Rigl. Whenever, as now, he was tempted to spring at the white, self-assured throat, he forced himself to think of them. He had come to-night primarily to ask if they were still safe, if his excellenza had any news from Rigl, and to shake off the disquieting effect of Dmitri’s philosophy.
“I have never seen her wear jewels, excellenza,” he answered slowly. “She is very young, about sixteen. They would not permit it, probably.”
“She is nineteen and looks older,” returned the Count curtly.
“Pardon—you have then seen her?”
Jurka made no reply, but met the boy’s eager gaze with calculating suspicion.
“You are feeling your way through the dark, Steccho. Beware of pricking swords. You have been allotted a certain task, a very easy task, merely to find out where these jewels are if they are concealed in the apartment of Carlota Trelango, and to get them at all risks. You have two women as opponents, and you crawl and creep and shadow them for weeks. You were told to enter their abode and search it. You were told to find out their associates, their circumstances. What have you accomplished save the incessant following of the girl herself. Are you then infatuated, my Steccho? It is the eternal failing of youth.”
Steccho’s face colored dully. Maryna was fifteen, the girl Carlota only four years older. Most of the young girls of Rigl had been given to the Jurka’s soldiery that week, excepting the three loveliest,—little Roziska, the pale Wanda destined for the convent, and radiantKatinka with eyes like Carlota’s, velvety, luminous. He had always watched her in church when she knelt in the long shaft of purple light above the aureole of Saint Genevieve. If there had been no war, he would have married Katinka some day, but the three had been dragged to the rooms above the inn, reserved for the high honor of his excellenza’s favor. Were the jewels but part of his plan? If he had seen Carlota’s beauty, would she not become like the three girls he had seen thrown out to the soldiers after his excellenza had wearied of them? He lifted keen eyes to the suave, smiling face.
“They go nowhere, save to the places I have already told you.”
Georges grimaced at his servility and protesting palms.
“Recount!” ordered Jurka. “The Marchese, Ward, Jacobelli. Are there more?”
“No more.” The boy’s gaze never wavered. Dmitri had said it was a romance, the affair in the Square, and they were his friends. It gave him a curious, inmost thrill of happiness to feel that he was thwarting the man who had killed the other girl, Katinka.
The bell of the suite rang lightly. Georges sprang to his feet, laying an evening suit over the boy’s arm, and pushing him before himinto the reception-hall. As he opened the door, he gave voluble directions to the tailor’s assistant for the evening garb of the Count. The hotel page presented several letters on a silver tray and passed on down the corridor.
“It is not safe for you to come here.” Jurka opened the letters with a single thrust of a slender blade. His clean-cut dexterity fascinated Steccho. “Where the devil do you live, anyway?”
“Twenty-Eighth Street, East,” he lied simply. “I change often. A friend told me of this place.”
“Make no friends, I have told you.”
“A former friend whom I had known in Sofia. I but met him on the street one day, a very old man, Boris—”
Georges held up his hand with a frown. The Count perused the first letter he opened twice, and smiled. It was from Mrs. Carrington Nevins, urgently requesting his presence and assistance in the success of her entertainment at Belvoir, Long Island.
“The social ruse always wins out, Georges. We are the emissaries of the queen’s mercy; we wish to study the methods for rehabilitating the wounded, for salvaging the war wreckage of humanity. The exiled queen’s heart is torn with remorse for her poor lost ones. Itsounds well and opens many doors, among them, Belvoir.” He laughed and tossed the letter to Georges. “Accept. It is for a week from Saturday.”
Steccho waited his pleasure by the door. Timidly, as Jurka went through his mail, he ventured to attract his attention once more.
“Excellenza, you have heard some news recently, perhaps from Sofia, from Rigl?”
Georges motioned him to leave, but he lingered obstinately.
“You have news of my mother and sister, yes, of Maryna, excellenza? You remember Maryna, the little girl who—”
The Count nodded his blond head towards the door.
“Out!” he said briefly. “Bring me the jewels by Saturday.”