The reportorial instinct in Kitty Conover, combined with her natural
feminine curiosity, impelled her to seek to the bottom of affair. Her
newspaper was as far from her as the poles; simply a paramount desire to
translate the incomprehensible into sequence and consequence. Harmless
old Gregor's disappearance and the advent of John Two-Hawks--the
absurdity of that name!--with his impeccable English accent, his Latin
gestures, and his black eye, convinced her that it was political; an
electrical cross current out of that broken world over there. Moribund
perspectives. What did that signify save that Johnny Two-Hawks had
fought somewhere that day for his life? Had Gregor been spirited away so
as to leave Two-Hawks without support, to confuse and discourage him
and break down his powers of resistance? Or had there been something of
great value in the Gregor apartment, and Johnny Two-Hawks had come too
late to save his friend?
A word slipped into her mind like a whiff of miasma off an evil swamp.
As she recognized the word she felt the same horror and repugnance one
senses upon being unexpectedly confronted by a cobra. Internationalism.
The scum of the world boiling to the top. A half-blind viper striking
venomously at everything--even itself! A destroyer who tore down but
who knew not how or what to build. Kitty knew that lower New York was
seething with this species of terrorism--thousands of noisome European
rats trying to burrow into the granary of democracy. But she had no
particular fear of the result. The reacting chemicals of American humour
and common sense would neutralize that virus. Supposing a ripple from
this indecent eddy had touched her feet? The torch of liberty in the
hands of Anarch!
Johnny Two-Hawks. Somehow--even if she never saw him again--she knew she
would always remember him by that name. Phases of the encounter began
to return. Fine hands; perhaps he painted or played. The oblong head of
well-balanced mentality. A pleasant voice. Breeding. To be sure, he had
laughed at that fan popping out. Anybody would have laughed. Never had
she felt so idiotic. He had gravely expressed the hope that they
might never meet again because his life was in danger. What danger?
Conceivably the enmity of a society--internationalism. The word having
found lodgment in her thoughts took root. Internationalism--Utopia while
you wait! Anarchism and Bolshevism offering nostrums for humanity's
ills! And there were sane men who defended the cult on the basis that
the intention was honest. Who can say that the rattlesnake does not
consider his intentions honourable?
The attribute lacking in the ape to make him human is continuity of
thought and action in all things save one. He often starts out well but
he never arrives. His interest is never sustained. He drops one thing
and turns to another. The exception is his enmity, savage and cunning,
relentless and enduring.
Kitty was awake to one fact. She could not venture to dig into this
affair alone. On the other hand, she did not want one of the men from
the city room--a reporter who would see nothing but news. If Gregor was
only a prisoner publicity might be the cause of his death; and publicity
would certainly react hardily against Johnny Two-Hawks. To whom might
she turn?
Cutty!--with his great physical strength, his shrewd and alert
mentality, and his wide knowledge of peoples and tongues. There was the
man for her--Kitty Conover's godfather. She dumped the contents of her
handbag upon the stand in the hallway in her impatience to find Cutty's
card with his telephone number. It was not in the directory. She might
catch him before he went out for the evening.
A Japanese voice answered her call.
“'Souse, but he iss out.”
“Where?”
“No tell me.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“'Scuse!”
Kitty heard the click of the receiver as it went down upon the hook.
But she wasn't the daughter of Conover for nothing. She called up the
University Club. No. The Harvard Club. No. The Players, the Lambs; and
in the latter club she found him.
“Who is it?” Cutty spoke impatiently.
“Kitty Conover.”
“Oh! What's the matter? Can't you have lunch with me?”
“Something very strange is happening in this old apartment house, Cutty.
I'm afraid it is a matter of life and death. Otherwise I shouldn't have
bothered you. Can you come up right away?”
“As soon as a taxi can take me!”
“Thanks.”
Kitty then went through the apartment and turned out all the lights.
Next she drew up a chair to the kitchen window and sat down to watch.
All was dark across the way. But there was nothing singular in this
fact. Johnny Two-Hawks would have sense enough to realize that it would
be safer to move about in the dark. It was even probable that he was
lying down.
Tumpitum-tump! Tumpitum-tump! went the racing Elevated; and Kitty's
heart raced along with it. Queer how the echo of Cutty's description
of the drums calling a jehad--a holy war--should adapt itself to that
Elevated. Drums! Perhaps the echo clung because she had been interested
beyond measure in his tale of those two emeralds, the drums of jeopardy.
Mobs sacking palaces and museums and banks and homes; all the scum of
the world boiling to the top; the Red Night that wasn't over.
She uttered a shaky little laugh. She would tell Cutty. The real drums
of jeopardy weren't emeralds but the roll of warning that prescience
taps upon the spine, the occult sense of impending danger. That was why
the Elevated went tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! She would tell Cutty.
The drums of fear.
He over there and she here, in darkness; both of them waiting for
something to happen; and the invisible drumsticks beating the tattoo of
fear. If he were in her thoughts might not she be a little in his?
She stood up. She would do it. Convention in a moment like this was
nonsense. Hadn't he kept his side of the line scrupulously?
Nonchalance. It occurred to her for the first time that there must be
good material in a man who could come through in a contest with death,
nonchalant. She would fetch him and have him here to meet Cutty, this
rather forlorn Johnny Two-Hawks, with his unshaven face, his black eye,
and his nonchalance. She would fetch him at once. It would save a good
deal of time.
There were but ten apartments in the building, two on a floor. The
living room formed an L. Kitty's buttressed Gregor's. The elevator shaft
was inside, facing the court; and the stair head was on the Gregor side
of the elevator. The two entrances faced each other across the landing.
As Kitty opened her door to step outside she was nonplussed to see two
men issue cautiously from the Gregor door. The moment they espied her,
however, there was a mad rush for the stair head. She could hear the
thud of their feet all the way down to the ground floor; and every
footfall seemed to touch her heart. One of them carried a bundle.
She breathed quickly, and she knew that she was afraid. Neither man was
Johnny Two-Hawks. Something dreadful had happened; she was sure of it.
Reenforcing her sinking courage with nerve energy she ran across to the
Gregor door and knocked. No answer. She knocked again; then she tried
the door. Locked. The flutter in her breast died away; she became quite
calm. She was going to enter this apartment by the way of the fire
escape. The window he had come out of was still up. She had made note of
this from the kitchen. In returning he had stepped on to the springe of
a snare.
She hurried back to her kitchen for the automatic. She hadn't the least
idea how to manipulate it; but she was no longer afraid of it. Bravely
she stepped out on to the fire escape. To reach her objective she had
to walk under the ladder. Danger often puts odd irrelevancies into the
human brain. As she moved forward she wondered if there was anything in
the superstition regarding ladders.
When she reached the window she leaned against the brick wall and
listened. Silence; an ominous silence. The window was open, the curtain
up. Within, what? For as long as five minutes she waited, then she
climbed in.
Now as this bedroom was a counterpart of her own she knew where the
light button would be. She might stumble over a chair or two, but in the
end she would find the light. The fingers of one hand spread out before
her and the other clutching the impossible automatic, she succeeded in
navigating the uncharted reefs of an unfamiliar room. She blinked for a
moment after throwing on the light, and stood with her back to the wall,
the automatic wabbling at nothing in particular. The room was empty so
far as she could see. There was evidence of a physical encounter, but
she could not tell whether it was due to the former or to the latter
invasion.
Where was he? From where she stood she could not see the floor on the
far side of the bed. Timidly she walked past the foot of the bed--and
the transient paralysis of horror laid hold of her. She became bereft of
the power to grasp and hold, and the automatic slipped from her fingers
and thudded on the carpet.
On the floor lay poor Johnny Two-Hawks, crumpled grotesquely, a streak
of blood zigzagging across his forehead; to all appearances, dead!