Kitty Conover had inherited brains and beauty, and nothing else but the
furniture. Her father had been a famous reporter, the admiration of
cubs from New York to San Francisco; handsome, happy-go-lucky, generous,
rather improvident, and wholly lovable. Her mother had been a comedy
actress noted for her beauty and wit and extravagance. Thus it will be
seen that Kitty was in luck to inherit any furniture at all.
Kitty was twenty-four. A body is as old as it is, but a brain is as old
as the facts it absorbs; and Kitty had absorbed enough facts to carry
her brain well into the thirties.
Conover had been dead twenty years; and Kitty had scarcely any
recollections of him. Improvident as the run of newspaper writers are,
Conover had fulfilled one obligation to his family--he had kept up his
endowment policies; and for eighteen years the insurance had taken care
of Kitty and her mother, who because of a weak ankle had not been able
to return to the scenes of her former triumphs. In 1915 this darling
mother, whom Kitty loved to idolatry, had passed on.
There was enough for the funeral and the cleaning up of the bills; but
that was all. The income ceased with Mrs. Conover's demise. Kitty saw
that she must give up writing short stories which nobody wanted, and
go to work. So she proceeded at once to the newspaper office where
her father's name was still a tradition, and applied for a job. It was
frankly a charity job, but Kitty was never to know that because she fell
into the newspaper game naturally; and when they discovered her wide
acquaintance among theatrical celebrities they switched her into the
dramatic department, where she had astonishing success as a raconteur.
She was now assistant dramatic editor of the Sunday issue, and her pay
envelope had four crisp ten-dollar notes in it each Monday.
She still remained in the old apartment; sentiment as much as anything.
She had been born in it and her happiest days had been spent there. She
lived alone, without help, being one of that singular type of womanhood
that is impervious to the rust of loneliness. Her daily activities
sufficed the gregarious instincts, and it was often a relief to move
about in silence.
Among other things Kitty had foresight. She had learned that a little
money in the background was the most satisfying thing in existence. So
many times she and her mother had just reached the insurance check, with
grumbling bill collectors in the hall, that she was determined never to
be poor. She had to fight constantly her love of finery inherited from
her mother, and her love of good times inherited from her father. So she
established a bank account, and to date had not drawn a check against
it; which speaks well for her will power, an attribute cultivated, not
inherited.
Kitty was as pleasing to the eye as a basket of fruit. Her beauty was
animated. There was an expression in her eyes and on her lips that spoke
of laughter always on tiptoe. An enviable inheritance, this, the desire
to laugh, to be searching always for a vent to laughter; it is something
money cannot buy, something not to be cultivated; a true gift of
the gods. This desire to laugh is found invariably in the tender and
valorous; and Kitty was both. Brown hair with running threads of
gold that was always catching light; slate-blue eyes with heavy black
fringe-Irish; colour that waxed and waned; and a healthy, shapely body.
Topped by a sparkling intellect these gifts made Kitty desirable of men.
Kitty had no beau. After the adolescent days beaux ceased to interest
her. This would indicate that she was inclined toward suffrage. Nothing
of the kind. Intensely romantic, she determined to await the grand
passion or go it alone. No experimental adventures for her. Be assured
that she weighed every new man she met, and finding some flaw discarded
him as a matrimonial possibility. Besides, her unusual facilities to
view and judge men had shown her masculine phases the average woman
would have discovered only after the fatal knot was tied. She did not
suspect that she was romantical. She attributed her wariness to common
sense.
If there is one place where a pretty young woman may labour without
having to build a wall of liquid air about her to fend off amatory
advances that place is the editorial room of a great metropolitan daily.
One must have leisure to fall in love; and only the office boys could
assemble enough idle time to call it leisure.
Her desk faced Burlingame's; and Burlingame was the dramatic editor, a
scholar and a gentleman. He liked to hear Kitty talk, and often he lured
her into the open; and he gathered information about theatrical folks
that was outside even his wide range of knowledge.
A drizzly fog had hung over New York since morning. Kitty was finishing
up some Sunday special. Burlingame was reading proofs. All day
theatrical folks had been in and out of this little ten-by-twelve
cubby-hole; and now there would be quiet.
But no. The door opened and an iron-gray head intruded.
“Will I be in the way?”
“Lord, no!” cried Burlingame, throwing down his proofs. “Come along in,
Cutty.”
The great war correspondent came in and sat down, sighing gratefully.
Cutty was a nickname; he carried and smoked--everywhere they
would permit him--the worst-looking and the worst-smelling pipe in
Christendom. You may not realize it, but a nickname is a round-about
Anglo-Saxon way of telling a fellow you love him. He was Cutty, but
only among his dear intimates, mind you; to the world at large, to
presidents, kings, ambassadors, generals, and capitalists he is known by
another name. You will find it on the roster of the Royal Geographical;
on the title page of several unique books on travel, jewels, and drums;
in magazines and newspapers; on the membership roll of the Savage in
London and the Lambs in New York. But you will not find it in this
story; because it would not be fair to set his name against the unusual
adventures that crossed his line of life with that of the young man who
wore the tobacco pouch suspended from his neck.
Tall, bony, graceful enough except in a chair, where his angles became
conspicuous; the ruddy, weather-bitten complexion of a deep-sea sailor,
and a sailor man's blue eye; the brow of a thinker and the mouth of a
humourist. Men often call another man handsome when a woman knows they
mean manly. Among men Cutty was handsome.
Kitty considerately rose and gathered up her manuscript.
“No, no, Kitty! I'd rather talk to you than Burly, here. You're always
reminding me of that father of yours. Best comrade I ever had. You laugh
just like him. Did your mother ever tell you that old Cutty is your
godfather?”
“Good gracious!”
“Fact. I told your dad I'd watch over you.”
“And a fat lot of watching you've done to date,” jeered Burlingame.
“Couldn't help that. But I can be on the job until I return to the
Balkans.”
Kitty laughed joyously and sat down, perhaps a little thrilled. She had
always admired Cutty from afar, shyly. Once in a blue moon he had in
the old days appeared for tea; and he and Mrs. Conover would spend
the balance of the afternoon discussing the lovable qualities of Tommy
Conover. Kitty had seen him but twice during the war.
“Every so often,” began Cutty, “I have to find listeners. Fact. I
used to hate crowds, listeners; but those ten days in an open boat, a
thousand miles from anywhere, made me gregarious. I'm always wanting
company and hating to go to bed, which is bad business for a man of
fifty-two.” Cutty's ship had been torpedoed.
To Kitty, with his tired eyes and weather-bitten face, his bony,
gangling body, he had the appearance of a lazy man. Actually she knew
him to be a man of tremendous vitality and endurance. Eagles when they
roost are heavy-lidded and clumsy. She wondered if there was a corner on
the globe he had not peered into.
For thirty years he had been following two gods--Rumour and War. For
thirty years he had been the slave of cables and telegrams. Even now he
was preparing to return to the Balkans, where the great fire had started
and where there were still some threatening embers to watch.
Cutty was not well known in America; his reputation was European. He
played the game because he loved it, being comfortably fortified with
worldly goods. He was a linguist of rare attainments, specializing in
the polyglot of southeastern Europe. He came and went like cloud shadow.
His foresight was so keen he was seldom ordered to go here or there; he
was generally on the spot when the orders arrived.
He was interested in socialism and its bewildering ramifications,
but only as an analytical student. He could fit himself into any
environment, interview a prime minister in the afternoon and take
potluck that night with the anarchist who was planning to blow up the
prime minister.
Burlingame, an intimate, often exposed for Kitty's delectation the
amazing and colourful facets of Cutty's diamond-brilliant mind. Cutty
wrote authoritatively on famous gems and collected drums. He had one
of the finest collections of chrysoprase in the world. He loved
these semi-precious stones because of their unmatchable, translucent
green--like the pulp of a grape. From Burlingame Kitty had learned
that Cutty, rather indifferent to women, carried about with him the
photographs--large size--of famous professional beauties and a case
filled with polished chrysoprase. He would lay a photograph on a table
and adorn the lovely throat with astonishing necklaces and the head with
wonderful tiaras, all the while his brain at work with some intricate
political puzzle.
And he collected drums. The walls of his apartment--part of the loft of
a midtown office building--were covered with a most startling assortment
of drums: drums of war, of the dance, of the temples of the feast,
ancient and modern, some of them dreadful looking objects, as Kitty had
cause to remember.
Though Cutty had known her father and mother intimately, Kitty was a
comparative stranger. He recollected seeing her perhaps a dozen times.
She had been a shy child, not given to climbing over visitors' knees;
not the precocious offspring of the average theatrical mother. So in
the past he had somewhat overlooked her. Then one day recently he had
dropped in to see Burlingame and had seen Kitty instead; which accounts
for his presence here this day. Neither Kitty nor Burlingame suspected
the true attraction. The dramatic editor accepted the advent as a
peculiar compliment to himself. And it is to be doubted if Cutty himself
realized that there was a true magnetic pole in this cubbyhole of a
room.
Kitty, however, had vivid recollections. Actually the first strange man
she had ever met. But not having been visible on her horizon, except in
flashes, she knew of the man only what she had read and what Burlingame
had casually offered during discussions.
“Well, anyhow,” said Burlingame, complacently, “the war is over.”
Cutty smiled indulgently. “That's the trouble with us chaps who tramp
round the world for news. We can't bamboozle ourselves like you folks
who stay at home. The war was only the first phase. There's a mess over
there; wanting something and not knowing exactly what, those millions;
milling cattle, with neither shed nor pasture. The Lord only knows how
long it will take to clarify. Would you mind if I smoked?”
“Wow!” cried Burlingame.
“Not at all,” answered Kitty. “I don't see how any pipe could be worse
than Mr. Burlingame's.”
“I apologize,” said the dramatic editor, humbly.
“You needn't,” replied the girl. She turned to the war correspondent.
“Any new drums?”
“I remember that day. You were scared half to death at my walls.”
“Small wonder! I was only twelve; and I dreamed of cannibals for weeks.”
“Drums! I wonder if any living man has heard a greater variety than
I? What a lot of them! I have heard them calling a jehad in the Sudan.
Tumpi-tum-tump! tumpitum-tump! Makes a white man's hair stand up when he
hears it in the night. I don't know what it is, but the sound drives the
Oriental mad. And that reminds me--I've had them in mind all day--the
drums of jeopardy!”
“What an odd phrase! And what are the drums of jeopardy?” asked
Kitty, leaning on her arms. Odd, but suddenly she felt a longing to go
somewhere, thousands and thousands of miles away. She had never been
west of Chicago or east of Boston. Until this moment she had never
felt the call of the blood--her father's. Cocoanut palms and birds of
paradise! And drums in the night going tumpi-tum-tump! tumpi-tum-tump!
“I've always been mad over green things,” began Cutty. “A wheat field in
the spring, leafing maples. It's Nature's choice and mine. My passion is
emeralds; and I haven't any because those I want are beyond reach.
They are owned by the great houses of Europe and Asia, and lie in royal
caskets; or did. If I could go into a mine and find an emerald as big
as my fist I should be only partly happy if it chanced to be of fine
colour. In a little while I should lose interest in it. It wouldn't be
alive, if you can get what I mean. Just as a man would rather have a
homely woman to talk to than a beautiful window dummy to admire. A
stone to interest me must have a story--a story of murder and loot, of
beautiful women, palaces.
“Br-r-r!” cried Burlingame.
“Why, I've seen emeralds I would steal with half a chance. I couldn't
help it. Fact,” declared Cutty, earnestly. “Think of the loot in the
Romanoff palaces! What's become of all those magnificent stones? In a
little while they'll be turning up in Amsterdam to be cut--some of them.
Or maybe Mister Bolsheviki's inamorata will be stringing them round her
neck. Loot.”
“But the drums of jeopardy!” said Kitty.
“Emeralds, green as an English lawn in May after a shower, Kitty. By the
way, do you mind if I call you Kitty? I used to.”
“And I've always thought of you as Cutty. Fifty-fifty.”
“It's a bargain. Well, the drums to my thinking are the finest two
examples of the green beryl in the world. Polished, of course, as
emeralds always should be. I should say that they were about the size of
those peppermint chocolate drops there.”
“Have one?” said Kitty.
“No. Spoil the taste of the pipe.”
“You ought to spoil that taste once in a while,” was Burlingame's
observation. “But go on.”
“I suppose originally there was a single stone, later cut into halves,
because they are perfect matches. The drums proper are exquisitely
carved ivory statuettes, of Hindu or Mohammedan drummers, squatting,
the golden base of the drums between the knees, and the drumheads the
emeralds. Lord, how they got to me! I wanted to run off with them. The
history of murder and loot they could tell! Some Delhi mogul owned them
first. Then Nadir Shah carried them off to Persia, along with the famous
peacock throne. I saw them in a palace on the Caspian in 1912. Russia
was very strong in Persia at one time. Perhaps they were gifts; perhaps
they were stolen--these emeralds. Anyhow, I'd never heard of them until
that year. And I travelled all the way up from Constantinople to get
a glimpse of them if it were possible. I had to do some mighty fine
wire-pulling. For one of those stones I would give half of all I own. To
see them in the possession of another man would be a supreme test to my
honesty.”
“You old pirate!” said Burlingame.
“But why the word jeopardy?” persisted Kitty, who was intrigued by the
phrase.
“Probably some Hindu trick. It is a language of flowery metaphors. It
means, I suppose, that when you touch the drums they bite. In journeying
from one spot to another they always leave misfortune behind, as I
understand it. Just coincidence; but you couldn't drive that into an
Oriental skull. This is what makes the study of precious stones so
interesting. There is always some enchantment, some evil spell. To
handle the drums is to invite a minor accident. Call it twaddle;
probably is; and yet I have reason to believe that there's something to
the superstition.”
Burlingame sniffed.
“I can prove it,” Cutty declared. “I held those drums in my hands one
day. I carried them to a window the better to observe them. On my return
to the hotel I was knocked down by a horse and laid up in bed for a
week. That same night someone tried to kill the man who showed me the
emeralds. Coincidence? Perhaps. But these days I'm shying at thirteen,
the wrong side of the street, ladders, and religious curses.”
“An old hard-boiled egg like you?” Burlingame threw up his hands in mock
despair.
“I laugh, too; but I duck, nevertheless. The chap who showed me
the stones was what you'd call the honorary custodian; a privileged
character because of his genius. Before approaching him I sent him a
copy of my monograph on green stones. I found that he was quite as crazy
over green as I. That brought us together; and while I drew him out I
kept wondering where I had seen him before. Both his name and his face
were vaguely familiar. It seems a superstition had come along with the
stones, from India to Persia, from there to Russia. A maid fortunate
enough to see the drums would marry and be happy. The old fellow
confessed that occasionally he secretly admitted a peasant maid to gaze
upon the stones. But he never let the male inmates of the palace find
this out. He knew them a little too intimately. A bad lot.”
“And this palace?” asked Kitty.
“Not one stone on another. The proletariat rose up and destroyed it. To
mobs anything beautiful is offensive. Palaces looted, banks, museums,
houses. The ignorant toying with hand grenades, thinking them sceptres.
All the scum in the world boiling to the top. After the Red Day comes
the Red Night.”
“Whatever will become of them--the little kings and princes and dukes?”
After all, thought Kitty, they were human beings; they would not suffer
any the less because they had been born to the purple.
“Maybe they'll go to work,” said Cutty, dryly. “Sooner or later, all
parasites will have to work if they want bread. And yet I've met some
men among them, big in the heart and the mind, who would have made
bully farmers and professors. The beautiful thing about the Anglo-Saxon
education is that the whole structure is based upon fair play. In
eastern and southeastern Europe few of them can play solitaire without
cheating. But I would give a good deal to know what has happened to
those emeralds--the drums of jeopardy. They'll probably be broken up and
sold in carat weights. The whole family was wiped out in a night.... I
say, will you take lunch with me to-morrow?”
“Gladly.”
“All right. I'll drop in here at half after twelve. Here's my telephone
number, should anything alter your plans. If I'm going to be godfather I
might as well start right in.”
“The drums of jeopardy; what a haunting phrase!”
“Haunting stones, too, Kitty. For picking them up in my hands I went to
bed with a banged-up leg. I can't forget that. We Occidentals laugh at
Orientals and their superstitions. We don't believe in the curse. And
yet, by George, those emeralds were accursed!”
“Piffle!” snorted Burlingame. “Mush! It's greed, pure and simple, that
gives precious stones their sinister histories. You'd have been hit by
that horse if you had picked up nothing more valuable than a rhinestone
buckle. Take away the gold lure, and precious stones wouldn't sell at
the price of window glass.”
“Is that so? How about me? It isn't because a stone is worth so much
that makes me want it. I want it for the sheer beauty; I want it for the
tremendous panorama the sight of it unfolds in my mind. I imagine what
happened from the hour the stone was mined to the hour it came into my
possession. To me--to all genuine collectors--the intrinsic value is
nil. Can't you see? It is for me what Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin would
be to you if you had fallen on it for the first time--money, love,
tragedy, death.”
An interruption came in the form of one of the office boys. The chief
was on the wire and wanted Cutty at once.
“At half after twelve, Kitty. And by the way,” added Cutty as he rose,
“they say about the drums that a beautiful woman is immune to their
danger.”
“There's your chance, Kitty,” said Burlingame.
“Am I beautiful?” asked Kitty, demurely.
“Lord love the minx!” shouted Cutty. “A corner in Mouquin's.”
“Rain or shine.” After Cutty had departed Kitty said: “He's the most
fascinating man I know. What fun it would be to jog round the world with
a man like that, who knew everybody and everything. As a little girl I
was violently in love with him; but don't you ever dare give me away.”
“You'll probably have nightmare to-night. And honestly you ought not to
live in that den alone. But Cutty has seen things,” Burlingame admitted;
“things no white man ought to see. He's been shot up, mauled by animals,
marooned, torpedoed at sea, made prisoner by old Fuzzy-Wuzzy. An
ordinary man would have died of fatigue. Cutty is as tough and strong
as a gorilla and as active as a cat. But this jewel superstition is all
rot. Odd, though; he'll travel halfway round the world to see a ruby or
an emerald. He says no true collector cares a cent for a diamond. Says
they are vulgar.”
“Except on the third finger of a lady's left hand; and then they are
just perfectly splendid!”
“Oho! Well, when you get yours I hope it's as big as the Koh-i-noor.”
“Thank you! You might just as well wish a brick on me!”
Kitty left the office at a quarter of six. The phrase kept running
through her head--the drums of jeopardy. A little shiver ran up her
spine. Money, love, tragedy, death! This terrible and wonderful old
world, of which she had seen little else than city streets, suddenly
exhibited wide vistas. She knew now why she had begun to save--travel.
Just as soon as she had a thousand she would go somewhere. A great
longing to hear native drums in the night.
Even as the wish entered her mind a new sound entered her ears. The
Subway car wheels began to beat--tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! Fudge!
She opened her evening paper and scanned the fashions, the dramatic
news, and the comics. Being a woman she read the world news last. On the
front page she saw a queer story, dated at Albany: Mysterious guests at
a hotel; how they had fought and fled in the early morning. There had
been left behind a case with foreign orders incrusted with several
thousand dollars' worth of gems. Bolsheviki, said the police; just as
they said auto bandits a few years ago when confronted with something
they could not understand. The orders had been turned over to the
Federal authorities from whom it was learned that they were all royal
and demi-royal. Neither of the two guests had returned up to noon, and
one had fled, leaving even his hat and coat. But there was nothing to
indicate his identity.
“Loot!” murmured Kitty. “All the scum in the world rising to the
top”--quoting Cutty. “Poor things!” as she thought of the gentle ladies
who had died horribly in bedrooms and cellars.
Kitty was beginning to cast about for more congenial quarters. There
were too many foreigners in the apartments, and none of them especially
good housekeepers. Always, nowadays, somebody had a washing out on the
line, the odour of garlic was continuously in the air, and there were
noisy children under foot in the halls. The families she and her mother
had known were all gone; and Kitty was perhaps the oldest inhabitant in
the block.
The living-room windows faced Eightieth Street; bedrooms, dining room,
and kitchen looked out upon the court. From the latter windows one could
step out upon the fire-escape platform, which ran round the three sides
of the court.
Among the present tenants she knew but one, an old man by the name of
Gregory, who lived opposite. The acquaintance had never ripened into
friendship; but sometimes Kitty would borrow an egg and he would borrow
some sugar. In the summertime, when the windows were open at night, she
had frequently heard the music of a violin swimming across the court.
Polish, Russian, and Hungarian music, always speaking with a tragic
note; nothing she had ever heard in concerts. Once, however, she had
heard him begin something from Thais, and stop in the middle of it; and
that convinced her that he was a master. She was fond of good music. One
day she asked Gregory why he did not teach music instead of valeting
at a hotel. His answer had been illuminative. It was only his body that
pressed clothes; but it would have torn his soul to listen daily to the
agonized bow of the novice. Kitty was lonely through pride as much as
anything. As for friends, she had a regiment of them. But she rarely
accepted their hospitality, realizing that she could not return it. No
young men called because she never invited them. All this, however, was
going to change when she moved.
As she turned on the hail light she saw an envelope on the floor.
Evidently it had been shoved under the door. It was unstamped. She
opened it, and stepped out of the humdrum into the whirligig.
DEAR MISS CONOVER:
If anything should happen to me all the things in my apartment
I give to you without reservation.
STEPHEN GREGORY.
She read the letter a dozen times to make sure that it meant exactly
what it said. He might be ill. After she had cooked her supper she would
run round and inquire. The poor lonely old man!
She went into the kitchen and took inventory. There was nothing but
bacon and eggs and coffee. She had forgotten to order that morning. She
lit the gas range and began to prepare the meal. As she broke an egg
against the rim of the pan the nearby Elevated train rushed by,
drumming tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! She laughed, but it wasn't honest
laughter. She laughed because she was conscious that she was afraid
of something. Impulse drove her to the window. Contact with men--her
unusual experiences as a reporter--had developed her natural
fearlessness to a point where it was aggressive. As she pressed the tip
of her nose against the pane, however, she found herself gazing squarely
into a pair of exceedingly brilliant dark eyes; and all the blood in her
body seemed to rush violently into her throat.
Tableau!