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