"You are going to give me a part in the play?"

"Yes. You are to go about your affairs as always, just as if nothing had happened. Only when you wish to come here will you play any game like that of to-day. Then it will be advisable. Switch your route each time. Your real part is to be that of lure. Through you we shall gradually learn who Karlov's associates are. If you don't care to play the role all you have to do is to move."

"The idea! I'm grateful for anything. You men will never understand. You go forth into the world each day—politics, diplomacy, commerce, war—while we women stay at home and knit or darn socks or take care of the baby or make over our clothes and hats or do household work or play the piano or read. Never any adventure. Never any games. Never any clubs. The leaving your house to go to the office is an adventure. A train from here to Philadelphia is an adventure. We women are always craving it. And about all we can squeeze out of life is shopping and hiding the bills after marriage, and going to the movies before marriage with young men our fathers don't like. We can't even stroll the street and admire the handsome gowns of our more fortunate sisters the way you men do. When you see a pretty woman on the street do you ever stop to think that there are ten at home eating their hearts out? Of course you don't. So I'm going through with this, to satisfy suppressed instincts; and I shan't promise to trot along as usual."

"They may attempt to kidnap you, Kitty."

"That doesn't frighten me."

"So I observe. But if they ever should have the luck to kidnap you, tell all you know at once. There's only one way up here—the elevator. I can get out to the fire escape, but none can get in from that direction, as the door is of steel."

"And, of course, you'll take me into your confidence completely?"

"When the time comes. Half the fun in an adventure is the element of the unexpected," said Cutty.

"Where did you first meet Stefani Gregor?"

Captain Harrison laughed. He liked this girl. She was keen and could be depended upon, as witness last night's work. Her real danger lay in being conspicuously pretty, in looking upon this affair as merely a kind of exciting game, when it was tragedy.

"What makes you think I know Stefani Gregor?" asked Cutty, genuinely curious.

"When I pronounced that name you whirled upon me as if I had struck you."

"Very well. When we learn who Two-Hawks is I'll tell you what I know about Gregor. And in the meantime you will be ceaselessly under guard. You are an asset, Kitty, to whichever side holds you. Captain Harrison is going to stay for dinner. Won't you join us?"

"I'm going to a studio potluck with some girls. And it's time I was on the way. I'll let your Tony Bernini know. Home probably at ten."

Cutty went with her to the elevator and when he returned to the tea table he sat down without speaking.

"Why not kidnap her yourself," suggested Harrison, "if you don't want her in this?"

"She would never forgive me."

"If she found it out."

"She's the kind who would. What do you think of her, Miss Frances?"

"I think she is wonderful. Frankly, I should tell her everything—if there is anything more to be told."

When dinner was over, the nurse gone back to the patient and Captain Harrison to his club, Cutty lit his odoriferous pipe and patrolled the windows of his study. Ever since Kitty's departure he had been mulling over in his mind a plan regarding her future—to add a codicil to his will, leaving her five thousand a year, so Molly's girl might always have a dainty frame for her unusual beauty. The pity of it was that convention denied him the pleasure of settling the income upon her at once, while she was young. He might outlive her; you never could tell. Anyhow, he would see to the codicil. An accident might step in.

He got out his chrysoprase. In one corner of the room there was a large portfolio such as artists use for their proofs and sketches; and from this he took a dozen twelve-by-fourteen-inch photographs of beautiful women, most of them stage beauties of bygone years. The one on top happened to be Patti. The adorable Patti!... Linda, Violetta, Lucia. Lord, what a nightingale she had been! He laughed laid the photograph on the desk, and dipped his hand into a canvas bag filled with polished green stones which would have great commercial value if people knew more about them; for nothing else in the world is quite so beautifully green.

He built tiaras above the lovely head and laid necklaces across the marvellous throat. Suddenly a phenomenon took place. The roguish eyes of the prima donna receded and vanished and slate-blue ones replaced them. The odd part of it was, he could not dissipate the fancied eyes for the replacement of the actual. Patti, with slate-blue eyes! He discarded the photograph and selected another. He began the game anew and was just beginning the attack on the problem uppermost in his mind when the phenomenon occurred again. Kitty's eyes! What infernal nonsense! Kitty had served merely to enliven his tender recollections of her mother. Twenty-four and fifty-two. And yet, hadn't he just read that Maeterlinck, fifty-six, had married Mademoiselle Dahon, many years younger?

In a kind of resentful fury he pushed back his chair and fell to pacing, eddies and loops and spirals of smoke whirling and sweeping behind him. The only light was centred upon the desk, so he might have been some god pacing cloud-riven Olympus in the twilight. By and by he laughed; and the atmosphere—mental—cleared. Maeterlinck, fifty-six, and Cutty, fifty-two, were two different men. Cutty might mix his metaphors occasionally, but he wasn't going to mix his ghosts.

He returned to his singular game. More tiaras and necklaces; and his brain took firm hold of the theme which had in the beginning lured him to the green stones.

Two-Hawks. That name bothered him. He knew he had heard it before, but never in the Russian tongue. It might be that the chap had been spoofing Kitty. Still, he had also called himself Hawksley.

The smoke thickened; there were frequent flares of matches. One by one Cutty discarded the photographs, dropping them on the floor beside his chair, his mind boring this way and that for a solution. He had now come to the point where he ceased to see the photographs or the green stones. The movements of his hands were almost automatic. And in this abstract manner he came to the last photograph. He built a necklace and even ventured an earring.

It was a glorious face—black eyes that followed you; full lipped; every indication of fire and genius. It must be understood that he rarely saw the photographs when he played this game. It wasn't an amusing pastime, a mental relaxation. It was a unique game of solitaire, the photographs and chrysoprase being substituted for cards; and in some inexplicable manner it permitted him to concentrate upon whatever problem filled his thoughts. It was purely accidental that he saw Patti to-night or recalled her art. Coming upon the last photograph without having found a solution of the riddle of Two-Hawks he relaxed the mental pressure; and his sight reestablished its ability to focus.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated.

He seized the photograph excitedly, scattering the green stones. She! The Calabrian, the enchanting colouratura who had vanished from the world at the height of her fame, thirty-odd years gone! Two-Hawks!

Cutty saw himself at twenty, in the pit at La Scala, with music-mad Milan all about him. Two-Hawks! He remembered now. The nickname the young bloods had given her because she had been eternally guarded by her mother and aunt, fierce-beaked Calabrians, who had determined that Rosa should never throw herself away on some beggarly Adonis.

And this chap was her son! Yesterday, rich and powerful, with a name that was open sesame wherever he went; to-day, hunted, penniless, and forlorn. Cutty sank back in his chair, stunned by the revelation. In that room yonder!



CHAPTER XIV

For a long time Cutty sat perfectly motionless, his pipe at an upward angle—a fine commentary on the strength of his jaws—and his gaze boring into the shadows beyond his desk. What was uppermost in his thoughts now was the fateful twist of events that had brought the young man to the assured haven of this towering loft.

All based, singularly enough, upon his wanting to see Molly's girl for a few moments; and thus he had established himself in Kitty's thoughts. Instead of turning to the police she had turned to him. Old Cutty, reaching round vaguely for something to stay the current—age; hoping by seeing this living link 'twixt the present and the past to stay the afterglow of youth. As if that could be done! He, who had never paid any attention to gray hairs and wrinkles and time, all at once found himself in a position similar to that of the man who supposes he has an inexhaustible sum at the bank and has just been notified that he has overdrawn.

Cutty knew that life wasn't really coordination and premeditation so much as it was coincident. Trivials. Nothing was absolute and dependable but death; between birth and death a series of accidents and incidents and coincidents which men called life.

He tapped his pipe on the ash tray and stood up. He gathered the chrysoprase and restored the stones to the canvas bag. Then he carefully stacked the photographs and carried them to the portfolio. The green stones he deposited in a safe, from which he took a considerable bundle of small notebooks, returning to the desk with these. Denatured dynamite, these notebooks, full of political secrets, solutions of mysteries that baffle historians. A truly great journalist never writes history as a historian; he is afraid to. Sometimes conjecture is safer than fact. And these little notebooks were the repository of suppressed facts ranging over twenty-odd years. Gerald Stanley Lee would have recognized them instantly as coming under the head of what he calls Sh!

An hour later Cutty returned the notebooks to their abiding place, his memory refreshed. The poor devil! A dissolute father and uncle, dissolute forbears, corrupt blood weakened by intermarriage, what hope was there? Only one—the rich, fiery blood of the Calabrian mother.

But why had the chap come to America? Why not England or the Riviera, where rank, even if shorn of its prerogatives, is still treated respectfully? But America!

Cutty's head went up. Perhaps that was it—to barter his phantom greatness for money, to dazzle some rich fool of an American girl. In that case Karlov would be welcome. But wait a moment. The chap had come in from the west. In that event there should be an Odyssey of some kind tucked away in the affair.

Cutty resumed his pacing. The moment his imagination caught the essentials he visualized the Odyssey. Across mountains and deserts, rivers and seas, he followed Two-Hawks in fancy, pursued by an implacable hatred, more or less historical, of which the lad was less a cause than an abstract object. And Karlov—Cutty understood Karlov now—always span near, his hate reenergizing his faltering feet.

There was evidently some iron in this Two-Hawks' blood. Fear never would have carried him thus far. Fear would have whispered, "Futility! Futility!" And he would have bent his head to the stroke. So then there was resource and there was courage. And he lay in yonder room, beaten and penniless. The top piece in the grim irony—to have come all these thousands of miles unscathed, to be dropped at the goal. But America? Well, that would be solved later.

"By the Lord Harry!" Cutty stopped and struck his hands together. "The drums!"

From the hour Kitty had pronounced the name Stefani Gregor an idea had taken lodgment, an irrepressible idea, that somewhere in this drama would be the drums of jeopardy. The mark of the thong! Never any doubt of it now. Those magnificent emeralds were here in New York, The mob—the Red Guard—hammering on the doors, what would have been Two-Hawks' most natural first thought? To gather what treasures the hand could be laid to and flee. Here in New York, and in Karlov's hands, ultimately to be cut up for Bolshevik propaganda! The infernal pity of it!

The passion of the gem hunter blazed forth, dimming all other phases of the drama. Here was a real game, a man's game; sport! Cutty rubbed his hands together pleasurably. To recover those green flames before they could be broken up; under the ancient ruling that "Findings is keepings." The stones, of course, meant nothing to Karlov beyond the monetary value; and upon this fact Cutty began developing a plan. He stood ready to buy those stones if he could draw them into the open. Lord, how he wanted them! Murder and loot, always murder and loot!

The thought of those two incomparable emeralds being broken up distressed him profoundly. He must act at once, before the desecration could be consummated. Two-Hawks—Hawksley hereafter, for the sake of convenience—had an equity in the gems; but what of that? In smuggling them in—and how the deuce had he done it?—he had thrown away his legal right to them. Cutty kneaded his conscience into a satisfactory condition of quiescence and went on with his planning. If he succeeded in recovering the stones and his conscience bit a little too deeply for comfort—why, he could pay over to Hawksley twenty per cent. of the price Karlov demanded. He could take it or leave it. In a case like this—to a bachelor without dependents—money was no object. All his life he had wanted a fine emerald to play with, and here was an opportunity to acquire two!

If this plan failed to draw Karlov into the open, then every jeweller and pawnbroker in town would be notified and warned. What with the secret-service operatives and the agents of the Department of Justice on the watch for Karlov—who would recognize his limitations of mobility—it was reasonable to assume that the Bolshevik would be only too glad to dicker secretly for the disposal of the stones. Now to work. Cutty looked at his watch.

Nearly midnight. Rather late, but he knew all the tricks of this particular kind of game. If the advertisement appeared isolated, all the better. The real job would be to hide his identity. He saw a way round this difficulty. He wrote out six advertisements, all worded the same. He figured out the cost and was delighted to find that he carried the necessary currency. Then he got into his engineer's—dungarees, touched up his face and hands to the required griminess, and sallied forth.

Luck attended him until he reached the last morning newspaper on the list. Here he was obliged to proceed to the city room—risky business. A queer advertisement coming into the city room late at night was always pried into, as he knew from experience. Still, he felt that he ought not to miss any chance to reach Karlov.

He explained his business to the sleepy gate boy, who carried the advertisement and the cash to the night city editor's desk. Ordinarily the night city editor would have returned the advertisement with the crisp information that he had no authority to accept advertisements. But the "drums of jeopardy" caught his attention; and he sent a keen glance across the busy room to the rail where Cutty stood, perhaps conspicuously.

"Humph!" He called to one of the reporters. "This looks like a story. I'll run it. Follow that guy in the overalls and see what's in it."

Cutty appreciated the interlude for what it was worth. Someone was going to follow him. When the gate boy returned to notify him that the advertisement had been accepted, Cutty went down to the street.

"Hey, there; just a moment!" hailed the reporter. "I want a word with you about that advertisement."

Cutty came to a standstill. "I paid for it, didn't I?"

"Sure. But what's this about the drums of jeopardy?"

"Two great emeralds I'm hunting for," explained Cutty, recalling the man who stood on London Bridge and peddled sovereigns at two bits each, and no buyer.

"Can it! Can it!" jeered the reporter. "Be a good sport and give us the tip. Strike call among the city engineers?"

"I'm telling you."

"Like Mike you are!"

"All right. It's the word to tie up the surface lines, like Newark, if you want to know. Now, get t' hell out o' here before I hand you one on the jaw!"

The reporter backed away. "Is that on the level?"

"Call up the barns and find out. They'll tell you what's on. And listen, if you follow me, I'll break your head. On your way!"

The reporter dashed for the elevator—and back to the doorway in time to see Cutty legging it for the Subway. As he was a reporter of the first class he managed to catch the same express uptown.

On the way uptown Cutty considered that he had accomplished a shrewd bit of work. Karlov or one of his agents would certainly see that advertisement; and even if Karlov suspected a Federal trap he would find some means of communicating with the issuer of the advertisement.

The thought of Kitty returned. What the dickens would she say—how would she act—when she learned who this Hawksley was? He fervently hoped that she had never read "Thaddeus of Warsaw." There would be all the difference in the world between an elegant refugee Pole and a derelict of the Russian autocracy. Perhaps the best course to pursue would be to say nothing at all to her about the amazing discovery.

Upon leaving Elevator Four Cutty said: "Bob, I've been followed by a sharp reporter. Sheer him off with any tale you please, and go home. Goodnight."

"I'll fix him, sir."

Cutty took a bath, put on his lounging robe, and tiptoed to the threshold of the patient's room. The shaded light revealed the nurse asleep with a book on her knees. The patient's eyes were closed and his breathing was regular. He was coming along. Cutty decided to go to bed.

Meantime, when the elevator touched the ground floor, the operator observed a prospective passenger.

"Last trip, sir. You'll have to take the stairs."

"Where'll I find the engineer who went up with you just now?"

"The man I took up? Gone to bed, I guess."

"What floor?"

"Nothing doing, bo. I'm wise. You're the fourth guy with a subpoena that's been after him. Nix."

"I'm not a lawyer's clerk. I'm a reporter, and I want to ask him a few questions."

"Gee! Has that Jane of his been hauling in the newspapers? Good-night! Toddle along, bo; there's nothing coming from me. Nix."

"Would ten dollars make you talk?" asked the reporter, desperately.

"Ye-ah—about the Kaiser and his wood-sawing. By-by!"

The operator, secretly enjoying the reporter's discomfiture, shut off the lights, slammed the elevator door to the latch, and walked to the revolving doors, to the tune of Garry Owen.

The reporter did not follow him but sat down on the first step of the marble stairs to think, for there was a lot to think about. He sensed clearly enough that all this talk about street-railway strikes and subpoenas was rot. The elevator man and the engineer were in cahoots. There was a story here, but how to get to it was a puzzler. He had one chance in a hundred of landing it—tip the mail clerk in the business office to keep an eye open for the man who called for "Double C" mail.

Eventually, the man who did call for that mail presented a card to the mail clerk. At the bottom of this card was the name of the chief of the United States Secret Service.

"And say to the reporter who has probably asked to watch—hands off! Understand? Absolutely—off!"

When the reporter was informed he blew a kiss into air and sought his city editor for his regular assignment. He understood, with the wisdom of his calling, that one didn't go whale fishing with trout rods.



CHAPTER XV

Early the next morning in a bedroom in a rooming house for aliens in Fifteenth Street, a man sat in a chair scanning the want columns of a newspaper. Occasionally he jotted down something on a slip of paper. This man's job was rather an unusual one. He hunted jobs for other men—jobs in steel mills, great factories, in the textile districts, the street-car lines, the shipping yards and docks, any place where there might be a grain or two of the powder of unrest and discontent. His business was to supply the human matches.

No more parading the streets, no more haranguing from soap boxes. The proper place nowadays was in the yard or shop corners at noontime. A word or two dropped at the right moment; perhaps a printed pamphlet; little wedges wherever there were men who wanted something they neither earned nor deserved. Here and there across the land little flares, one running into the other, like wildfire on the plains, and then—the upheaval. As in Russia, so now in Germany; later, England and France and here. The proletariat was gaining power.

He was no fool, this individual. He knew his clay, the day labourer, with his parrotlike mentality. Though the victim of this peculiar potter absorbs sounds he doesn't often absorb meanings. But he takes these sounds and respouts them and convinces himself that he is some kind of Moses, headed for the promised land. Inflammable stuff. Hence, the strikes which puzzle the average intelligent American citizen. What is it all about? Nobody seems to know.

Once upon a time men went on a strike because they were being cheated and abused. Now they strike on the principle that it is excellent policy always to be demanding something; it keeps capitalism where it belongs—on the ragged edge of things. No matter what they demand they never expect to give an equivalent; and a just cause isn't necessary. Thus the present-day agitator has only one perplexity—that of eluding the iron hand of the Department of Justice.

Suddenly the man in the chair brought the newspaper close up and stared. He jumped to his feet, ran out and up the next flight of stairs. He stopped before a door and turned the knob a certain number of times. Presently the door opened the barest crack; then it was swung wide enough to admit the visitor.

"Look!" he whispered, indicating Cutty's advertisement.

The occupant of the room snatched the newspaper and carried it to a window.

Will purchase the drums of jeopardy at top price. No questions asked. Address this office. Double C.

"Very good. I might have missed it. We shall sell the accursed drums to this gentleman."

"Sell them? But—"

"Imbecile! What we must do is to find out who this man is. In the end he may lead us to him."

"But it may be a trap!"

"Leave that to me. You have work of your own to do, and you had best be about it. Do you not see beneath? Who but the man who harbours him would know about the drums? The man in the evening clothes. I was too far away to see his face. Get me all the morning newspapers. If the advertisement is in all of them I will send a letter to each. We lost the young woman yesterday. And nothing has been heard of Vladimir and Stemmler. Bad. I do not like this place. I move to the house to-night. My old friend Stefani may be lonesome. I dare not risk daylight. Some fool may have talked. To work! All of us have much to do to wake up the proletariat in this country of the blind. But the hour will come. Get me the newspapers."

Karlov pushed his visitor from the room and locked and bolted the door. He stepped over to the window again and stared down at the clutter of pushcarts, drays, trucks, and human beings that tried to go forward and got forward only by moving sideways or worming through temporary breaches, seldom directly—the way of humanity. But there was no object lesson in this for Karlov, who was not philosophical in the peculiar sense of one who was demanding a reason for everything and finding allegory and comparison and allusion in the ebb and flow of life. The philosophical is often misapplied to the stoical. Karlov was a stoic, not a philosopher, or he would not have been the victim of his present obsession. The idea of live and let live has never been the propaganda of the anarch. To the anarch the death of some body or the destruction of some thing is the cornerstone to his madhouse.

Nothing would ever cure this man of his obsession—the death of Hawksley and the possession of the emeralds. Moreover, there was the fanatical belief in his poor disordered brain that the accomplishment of these two projects would eventually assist in the liberation of mankind. Abnormally cunning in his methods of approach, he lacked those imaginative scales by which we weigh our projects and which we call logic. A child alone in a house with a box of matches; a dog on one side of Fifth Avenue that sees a dog on the other side, but not the automobiles—inexorable logic—irresistible force—whizzing up and down the middle of that thoroughfare. It is not difficult to prophesy what is going to happen to that child, that dog.

Karlov was at this moment reaching out toward a satisfactory solution relative to the disappearance of the gems. They had not been found on his enemy; they had not been found in the Gregor apartment; the two men assigned to the task of securing them would not have risked certain death by trying to do a little bargaining on their own initiative. In the first instance they had come forth empty-handed. In the second instance—that of intimidating the girl to disclose his whereabouts—neither Vladimir nor Stemmler had returned. Sinister. The man in the dress suit again?

Conceivably, then, the drums were in the possession of this girl; and she was holding them against the day when the fugitive would reclaim them. The advertisement was a snare. Very good. Two could play that game as well as one.

The girl. Was it not always so? That breed! God's curse on them all! A crooked finger, and the women followed, hypnotized. The girl was away from the apartment the major part of the day; so it was in order to search her rooms. A pretty little fool.

But where were they hiding him? Gall and wormwood! That he should slip through Boris Karlov's fingers, after all these tortuous windings across the world! Patience. Sooner or later the girl would lead the way. Still, patience was a galling hobble when he had so little time, when even now they might be hunting him. Boris Karlov had left New York rather well known.

He expanded under this thought. For the spiritual breath of life to the anarch is flattery, attention. Had the newspapers ignored Trotzky's advent into Russia, had they omitted the daily chronicle of his activities, the Russian problem would not be so large as it is this day. Trotzky would have died of chagrin.

He would answer this advertisement. Trap? He would set one himself. The man who eventually came to negotiate would be made a prisoner and forced to disclose the identity of the man who had interfered with the great projects of Boris Karlov, plenipotentiary extraordinary for the red government of Russia.

Midtown, Cutty tapped his breakfast egg dubiously. Not that he speculated upon the freshness of the egg. What troubled him was that advertisement. Last night, keyed high by his remarkable discovery of the identity of his guest and his cupidity relative to the emeralds, he had laid himself open. If he knew anything at all about the craft, that reporter would be digging in. Fortunately he had resources unsuspected by the reporter. Legitimately he could send a secret-service operative to collect the mail—if Karlov decided to negotiate. Still within his rights, he could use another operative to conduct the negotiations. If in the end Karlov strayed into the net the use of the service for private ends would be justified.

Lord, those green stones! Well, why not? Something in the world worth a hazard. What had he in life but this second grand passion? There shot into his mind obliquely an irrelevant question. Supposing, in the old days, he had proceeded to reach for Molly as he was now reaching for the emeralds—a bit lawlessly? After all these years, to have such a thought strike him! Hadn't he stepped aside meekly for Conover? Hadn't he observed and envied Conover's dazzling assault? Supposing Molly had been wavering, and this method of attack had decided her? Never to have thought of that before! What did a woman want? A love storm, and then an endless after-calm. And it had taken him twenty-odd years to make this discovery.

Fact. He had never been shy of women. He had somehow preferred to play comrade instead of gallant; and all the women had taken advantage of that, used him callously to pair with old maids, faded wives, and homely debutantes.

What impellent was driving him toward these introspections? Kitty, Molly's girl. Each time he saw her or thought of her—the uninvited ghost of her mother. Any other man upon seeing Kitty or thinking about her would have jumped into the future from the spring of a dream. The disparity in years would not have mattered. It was all nonsense, of course. But for his dropping into the office and casually picking up the thread of his acquaintance with Kitty, Molly—the memory of her—would have gone on dimming. Actions, tremendous and world-wide, had set his vision toward the future; he had been too busy to waste time in retrospection and introspection. Thus, instead of a gently rising and falling tide, healthily recurrent, a flood of mixed longings that was swirling him into uncertain depths. Those emeralds had bobbed up just in time. The chase would serve to pull him out of this bog.

He heard a footstep and looked up. The nurse was beckoning to him.

"What is it?"

"He's awake, and there is sanity in his eyes."

"Great! Has he talked?"

"No. The awakening happened just this moment, and I came to you. You never can tell about blows on the skull or brain fever—never any two eases alike."

Cutty threw down his napkin and accompanied the nurse to the bedside. The glance of the patient trailed from Cutty to the nurse and back.

"Don't talk," said Cutty. "Don't ask any questions. Take it easy until later in the day. You are in the hands of persons who wish you well. Eat what the nurse gives you. When the right time comes we'll tell you all about ourselves, You've been robbed and beaten. But the men who did it are under arrest."

"One question," said the patient, weakly.

"Well, just one."

"A girl—who gave me something to eat?"

"Yes. She fed you, and later probably your life."

"Thanks." Hawksley closed his eyes.

Cutty and the nurse watched him interestedly for a few minutes; but as he did not stir again the nurse took up her temperature sheet and Cutty returned to his eggs. Was there a girl? No question about the emeralds, no interest in the day and the hour. Was there a girl? The last person he had seen, Kitty; the first question, after coming into the light: Had he seen her? Then and there Cutty knew that when he died he would carry into the Beyond, of all his earthly possessions—a chuckle. Human beings!

The yarn that reporter had missed by a hair—front page, eight-column head! But he had missed it, and that was the main thing. The poor devil! Beaten and without a sou marque in his pockets, his trail was likely to be crowded without the assistance of any newspaper publicity. But what a yarn! What a whale of a yarn!

In his fevered flights Hawksley had spoken of having paid Kitty for that meal.

Kitty had said nothing about it. Supposing—

"Telephone, sair," announced the Jap. "Lady."

Molly's girl! Cutty sprinted to the telephone.

"Hello! That you, Kitty?"

"Yes. How is Johnny Two-Hawks?"

"Back to earth."

"When can I see him? I'm just crazy to know what the story is!"

"Say the third or fourth day from this. We'll have him shaved and sitting up then."

"Has he talked?"

"Not permitted. Still determined to stay the run of your lease?" Cutty heard a laugh. "All right. Only I hope you will never have cause to regret this decision."

"Fiddlesticks! All I've got to do in danger is to press a button, and presto! here's Bernini."

"Kitty, did Hawksley pay you for that meal?"

"Good heavens, no! What makes you ask that?"

"In his delirium he spoke of having paid you. I didn't know." Cutty's heart began to rap against his ribs. Supposing, after all, Karlov hadn't the stones? Supposing Hawksley had hidden them somewhere in Kitty's kitchen?

"Anything about Gregor?"

"No. Remember, you're to call me up twice a day and report the news. Don't go out nights if you can avoid it."

"I'll be good," Kitty agreed. "And now I must hie me to the job. Imagine, Cutty!—writing personalities about stage folks and gabfesting with Burlingame and all the while my brain boiling with this affair! The city room will kill me, Cutty, if it ever finds out that I held back such a yarn. But it wouldn't be fair to Johnny Two-Hawks. Cutty, did you know that your wonderful drums of jeopardy are here in New York?"

"What?" barked Cutty.

"Somebody is offering to buy them. There was an advertisement in the paper this morning. Cutty?"

"Yes."

"The first problem in arithmetic is two and two make four. By-by!"

Dizzily Cutty hung up the receiver. He had not reckoned on the possibility of Kitty seeing that damfool advertisement. Two and two made four; and four and four made eight; so on indefinitely. That is to say, Kitty already had a glimmer of the startling truth. The initial misstep on his part had been made upon her pronouncement of the name Stefani Gregor. He hadn't been able to control his surprise. And yesterday, having frankly admitted that he knew Gregor, all that was needed to complete the circle was that advertisement. Cutty tore his hair, literally. The very door he hoped she might overlook he had thrown open to her.

Thaddeus of Warsaw. But it should not be. He would continue to offer a haven to that chap; but no nonsense. None of that sinister and unfortunate blood should meddle with Kitty Conover's happiness. Her self-appointed guardian would attend to that.

He realized that his attitude was rather inexplicable; but there were some adventures which hypnotized women; and one of this sort was now unfolding for Kitty. That she had her share of common sense was negligible in face of the facts that she was imaginative and romantical and adventuresome, and that for the first time she was riding one of the great middle currents in human events. She was Molly's girl; Cutty was going to look out for her.

Mighty odd that this fear for her should have sprung into being that night, quite illogically. Prescience? He could not say. Perhaps it was a borrowed instinct—fatherly; the same instinct that would have stirred her father into action—the protection of that dearest to him.

If he told her who Hawksley really was, that would intrigue her. If he made a mystery of the affair, that, too, would intrigue her. And there you were, 'twixt the devil and the deep blue sea. Hang it, what evil luck had stirred him to tell her about those emeralds? Already she was building a story to satisfy her dramatic fancy. Two and two made four—which signified that she was her father's daughter, that she would not rest until she had explored every corner of this dark room. Wanting to keep her out of it, and then dragging her into it through his cupidity. Devil take those emeralds! Always the same; trouble wherever they were.

The real danger would rise during the convalescence. Kitty would be contriving to drop in frequently; not to see Hawksley especially, but her initial success in playing hide and seek with secret agents, friendly and otherwise, had tickled her fancy. For a while it would be an exciting game; then it might become only a means to an end. Well, it should not be.

Was there a girl! Already Hawksley had recorded her beauty. Very well; the first sign of sentimental nonsense, and out he should go, Karlov or no Karlov. Kitty wasn't going to know any hurt in this affair. That much was decided.

Cutty stormed into his study, growling audibly. He filled a pipe and smoked savagely. Another side, Kitty's entrance into the drama promised to spoil his own fun; he would have to play two games instead of one. A fine muddle!

He came to a stand before one of the windows and saw the glory of the morning flashing from the myriad spires and towers and roofs, and wondered why artists bothered about cows in pastures.

Touching his knees was an antique Florentine bridal chest, with exquisite carving and massive lock. He threw back the lid and disclosed a miscellany never seen by any eye save his own. It was all the garret he had. He dug into it and at length resurrected the photograph of a woman whose face was both roguish and beautiful. He sat on the floor a la Turk and studied the face, his own tender and wistful. No resemblance to Kitty except in the eyes. How often he had gone to her with the question burning his lips, only to carry it away unspoken! He turned over the photograph and read: "To the nicest man I know. With love from Molly." With love. And he had stepped aside for Tommy Conover!

By George! He dropped the photograph into the chest, let down the lid, and rose to his feet. Not a bad idea, that. To intrigue Kitty himself, to smother her with attentions and gallantries, to give her out of his wide experience, and to play the game until this intruder was on his way elsewhere.

He could do it; and he based his assurance upon his experiences and observations. Never a squire of dames, he knew the part. He had played the game occasionally in the capitals of Europe when there had been some information he had particularly desired. Clever, scheming women, too. A clever, passably good-looking elderly man could make himself peculiarly attractive to young women and women in the thirties. Dazzlement for the young; the man who knew all about life, the trivial little courtesies a younger man generally forgot; the moving of chairs, the holding of wraps; the gray hairs which served to invite trust and confidence, which lulled the eternal feminine fear of the male. To the older women, no callow youth but a man of discernment, discretion, wit and fancy and daring, who remembered birthdays husbands forgot, who was always round when wanted.

There was no vanity back of these premises. Cutty was merely reaching about for an expedient to thwart what to his anticipatory mind promised to be an inevitability. Of course the glamour would not last; it never did, but he felt he could sustain it until yonder chap was off and away.

That evening at five-thirty Kitty received a box of beautiful roses, with Cutty's card.

"Oh, the lovely things!" she cried.

She kissed them and set them in a big copper jug, arranged and rearranged them for the simple pleasure it afforded her. What a dear man this Cutty was, to have thought of her in this fashion! Her father's friend, her mother's, and now hers; she had inherited him. This thought caused her to smile, but there were tears in her eyes. A garden some day to play in, this mad city far away, a home of her own; would it ever happen?

The bell rang. She wasn't going to like this caller for taking her away from these roses, the first she had received in a long time—roses she could keep and not toss out the window. For it must not be understood that Kitty was never besieged.

Outside stood a well-dressed gentleman, older than Cutty, with shrewd, inquiring gray eyes and a face with strong salients.

"Pardon me, but I am looking for a man by the name of Stephen Gregory. I was referred by the janitor to you. You are Miss Conover?"

"Yes," answered Kitty. "Will you come in?" She ushered the stranger into the living room and indicated a chair. "Please excuse me for a moment." Kitty went into her bedroom and touched the danger button, which would summon Bernini. She wanted her watchdog to see the visitor. She returned to the living room. "What is it you wish to know?"

"Where I may find this Gregory."

"That nobody seems able to answer. He was carried away from here in an ambulance; but we have been unable to locate the hospital. If you will leave your name—"

"That is not necessary. I am out of bounds, you might say, and I'd rather my name should be left out of the affair, which is rather peculiar."

"In what way?"

"I am only an agent, and am not at liberty to speak. Could you describe Gregory?"

"Then he is a stranger to you?"

"Absolutely."

Kitty described Gregor deliberately and at length. It struck her that the visitor was becoming bored, though he nodded at times. She was glad to hear Bernini's ring. She excused herself to admit the Italian.

"A false alarm," she whispered. "Someone inquiring for Gregor. I thought it might be well for you to see him."

"I'll work the radiator stuff."

"Very well."

Bernini went into the living room and fussed over the steam cock of the radiator.

"Nothing the matter with it, miss. Just stuck."

"Sorry to have troubled you," said the stranger, rising and picking up his hat.

Bernini went down to the basement, obfuscated; for he knew the visitor. He was one of the greatest bankers in New York—that is to say, in America! Asking questions about Stefani Gregor!



CHAPTER XVI

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!



CHAPTER XVII

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.



CHAPTER XVIII

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.



CHAPTER XIX

Kitty came home at nine that night, dreadfully tired. She had that day been rocked by so many emotions. She had viewed the parade from the windows of a theatrical agency, and she had cheered and cried like everybody else. Her eyes still smarted, and her throat betrayed her every time she recalled what she had seen. Those boys!

Loneliness. She had dined downtown, and on the way home the shadow had stalked beside her. Loneliness. Never before had these rooms seemed so empty, empty. If God had only given her a brother and he had marched in that glorious parade, what fun they two would be having at this moment! Empty rooms; not even a pet.

Loneliness. She had been a silly little fool to stand so aloof, just because she was poor and lived in a faded locality. She mocked herself. Poor but proud, like the shopgirl in the movies. Denied herself companionship because she was ashamed of her genteel poverty. And now she was paying for it. Silly little fool! It wasn't as if she did not know how to make and keep friends. She knew she had attractions. Just a senseless false pride. The best friends in the world, after a series of rebuffs, would drop away. Her mother's friends never called any more, because of her aloofness. She had only a few girl friends, and even these no doubt were beginning to think her uppish.

She did not take off her hat and coat. She wandered through the empty rooms, undecided. If she went to a movie the rooms would be just as lonely when she returned. Companionship. The urge of it was so strong that there was a temptation to call up someone, even someone she had rebuffed. She was in the mood to confess everything and to make an honest attempt to start all over again—to accept friendship and let pride go hang. Impulsively she started for the telephone, when the doorbell rang.

Immediately the sense of loneliness fell away. Another chapter in the great game of hide and seek that had kept her from brooding until to-night? The doorbell carried a new message these days. Nine o'clock. Who could be calling at that hour? She had forgotten to advise Cutty of the fact that someone had gone through the apartment. She could not positively assert the fact. Those articles in her bureau she herself might have disturbed. She might have taken a handkerchief in a hurry, hunted for something under the lingerie impatiently. Still she could not rid herself of the feeling that alien hands had been rifling her belongings. Not Bernini, decidedly.

Remembering Cutty's advice about opening the door with her foot against it, she peered out. No emissary of Bolshevisim here. A weary little messenger boy with a long box in his arms called her name.

"Miz Conover?"

"Yes."

The boy thrust the box into her hands and clumped to the stairhead. Kitty slammed the door and ran into the living room, tearing open the box as she ran. Roses from Cutty; she knew it. The old darling! Just when she was on the verge of breaking down and crying! She let the box fall to the floor and cuddled the flowers to her heart, her eyes filling. Cutty.

One of those ideas which sometime or another spring into the minds of all pretty women who are poor sprang into hers—an idea such as an honest woman might muse over, only to reject. Sinister and cynical. Kitty was at this moment in rather a desperate frame of mind. Those two inherent characteristics, which she had fought valiantly—love of good times and of pretty clothes—made ingress easy for this sinister and cynical idea. Having gained a foothold it pressed forward boldly. Cutty, who had everything—strength, comeliness, wisdom, and money. To live among all those beautiful things, never to be lonely again, to be waited on, fussed over, made much of, taken into the high world. Never more to add up accounts, to stretch five-dollar bills across the chasm of seven days. An old man's darling!

"No, no, no!" she burst out, passionately. She drew a hand across her eyes. As if that gesture could rub out an evil thought! It is all very well to say "Avaunt!" But if the idea will not? "I couldn't, I couldn't! I'd be a liar and a cheat. But he is so nice! If he did want me!... No, no! Just for comforts! I couldn't! What a miserable wretch I am!"

She caught up the copper jug and still holding the roses to her heart, the tears streaming down her cheeks, rushed out to the kitchen for water. She dropped the green stems into the jug, buried her face in the buds to cool the hot shame on her cheeks, and remembered—what a ridiculous thing the mind was!—that she had three shirt waists to iron. She set the jug on the kitchen table, where it remained for many hours, and walked over to the range, to the flatiron shelf. As she reached for a flatiron her hand stopped in midair.

A fat black wallet! Instantly she knew who had placed it there. That poor Johnny Two-Hawks!

Kitty lifted out the wallet from behind the flatirons. No doubt of it, Johnny Two-Hawks had placed it there when she had gone to the speaking tube to summon the janitor. Not knowing if he would ever call for it! Preferring that she rather than his enemies should have it. And without a word! What a simple yet amazing hiding place; and but for the need of a flatiron the wallet would have stayed there until she moved. Left it there, with the premonition that he was heading into trouble. But what if they had killed him? How would she have explained the wallet's presence in her apartment? Good gracious, what an escape!

Without direct consciousness she raised the flap. She saw the edges of money and documents; but she did not touch anything. There was no need. She knew it belonged to Johnny Two-Hawks. Of course there was an appalling attraction. The wallet was, figuratively, begging to be investigated. But resolutely she closed the flap. Why? Because it was as though Two-Hawks had placed the wallet in her hands, charging her to guard it against the day he reclaimed it. There was no outward proof that the wallet was his. She just knew, that was all.

Still, she examined the outside carefully. In one corner had been originally a monogram or a crest; effectually obliterated by the application of fire.

Who he was and what he was, by a simple turn of the wrist. It was Cutty's affair now, not hers. He had a legal right to examine the contents. He was an agent of the Federal Government. The drums of jeopardy and Stefani Gregor and Johnny Two-Hawks, all interwoven. She had waited in vain for Cutty to mention the emeralds. What signified his silence? She had indirectly apprised him of the fact that she knew the author of that advertisement offering to purchase the drums, no questions asked. Who but Cutty in New York would know about them? The mark of the thong. Johnny Two-Hawks had been carrying the drums, and Karlov's men had torn them from their victim's neck during the battle. Was there any reason why Cutty should not have taken her completely into his confidence? Palaces looted. If Stefani Gregor had lived in a palace, why not his protege? Still, it was possible Cutty was holding back until he could tell her everything.

But what to do with it? If she called him up and made known her discovery, Cutty would rush up as fast as a taxicab could bring him. He had peremptorily ordered her not to come to his apartment for the present. But to sit here and wait, to be alone again after he had gone! It was not to be borne. Orders or no orders, she would carry the wallet to him. He could lecture her as much as he pleased. To-night, at least, she would lay aside her part as parlour maid in the drama. It would give her something to do, keep her mind off herself. Nothing but excitement would pull her out of this semi-hysterical doldrum.

She hid the wallet in the pocket of her underskirt. Already her blood was beginning to dance. She ran into her bedroom for two veils, a gray automobile puggree and one of those heavy black affairs with butterflies scattered over it, quite as effectual as a mask. She wound the puggree about her hat. When the right moment came she would discard the puggree and drop the black veil. Her coat was of dark blue, lined with steel-gray taffeta. Turned inside out it would fool any man. She wore spats. These she would leave behind when she made the change.

Someone might follow her as far as the Knickerbocker, but beyond there, never. She was sorry, but she dared not warn Bernini. He might object, notify Cutty, and spoil everything.

By the time she reached the street exhilaration suffused her. The melancholia was gone. The sinister and cynical idea had vanished apparently. Apparently. Merely it had found a hiding place and was content to abide there for the present. Such ideas are not without avenues of retreat; they know the hours of attack. Kitty was alive to but one fact: The game of hide and seek was on again. She was going to have some excitement. She was going into the night on an adventure, as children play at bears in the dark. The youth in her still rejected the fact that the woof and warp of this adventure were murder and loot and pain.

En route to the Subway she never looked back. At Forty-second Street she detrained, walked into the Knickerbocker, entered the ladies dressing room, turned her coat, redraped her hat, checked her gaiters, and sought a taxi. Within two blocks of Cutty's she dismissed the cab and finished the journey on foot.

At the left of the lobby was an all-night apothecary's, with a door going into the lobby. Kitty proceeded to the elevator through this avenue. Number Four was down, and she stepped inside, raising her veil.

"You, miss?"

"Very important. Take me up."

"The boss is out."

"No matter. Take me up.

"You're the doctor!" What a pretty girl she was. No come-on in her eyes, though. "The boss may not get back until morning. He just went out in his engineer's togs. He sure wasn't expecting you.

"Do you know where he went?"

"Never know. But I'll be in this bird cage until he comes back."

"I shall have to wait for him."

"Up she goes!"

As Kitty stepped out into the corridor a wave of confusion assailed her. She hadn't planned against Cutty's absence. There was nothing she could say to the nurse; and if Johnny Two-Hawks was asleep—why, all she could do would be to curl up on a divan and await Cutty's return.

The nurse appeared. "You, Miss Conover?"

"Yes." Kitty realized at once that she must take the nurse into her confidence. "I have made a really important discovery. Did Cutty say when he would return?"

"No. I am not in his confidence to that extent. But I do know that you assumed unnecessary risks in coming here."

Kitty shrugged and produced the wallet. "Is Mr. Hawksley awake?"

"He is."

"It appears that he left this wallet in my kitchen that night. It might buck him up if I gave it to him."

The nurse, eyeing the lovely animated face, conceded that it might. "Come, I've been trying futilely to read him asleep, but he is restless. No excitement, please."

"I'll try not to. Perhaps, after all, you had better give him the wallet."

"On the contrary, that would start a series of questions I could not answer. Come along."

When Kitty saw Hawksley she gave a little gasp of astonishment. Why, he was positively handsome! His dark head, standing out boldly against the bolstering pillows, the fine lines of his face definite, the pallor—he was like a Roman cameo. Who and what could he be, this picturesque foundling?

His glance flashed into hers delightedly. For hours and hours the constant wonder where she was, why no one mentioned her, why they evaded his apparently casual questions. To burst upon his vision in the nadir of his boredom and loneliness like this! She was glorious, this American girl. She made him think of a golden scabbard housing a fine Toledo blade. Hadn't she saved his life? More, hadn't she assumed a responsibility in so doing? Instantly he purposed that she should not be permitted to resign the office of good Samaritan. He motioned toward the nurse's chair; and Kitty sat down, her errand in total eclipse.

"Just when I never felt so lonely! Ripping!"

His quick smile was so engaging that Kitty answered it—kindred spirits, subconsciously recognizing each other. Fire; but neither of them knew that; or that two lonely human beings of opposite sex, in touch, constitute a first-rate combustible.

Quietly the nurse withdrew. There would be a tonic in this meeting for the patient. Her own presence might neutralize the effect. She had not spent all those dreadful months in base hospitals without acquiring a keen insight into the needs of sick men. No harm in letting him have this pretty, self-reliant girl alone to himself for a quarter of an hour. She would then return with some broth.