Meanwhile, Captain Harrison of the Medical Corps entered the Conover
apartment briskly.
“You old vagabond, what have you been up to? I beg pardon!”--as he saw
Kitty emerge from behind Cutty's bulk.
“This is Miss Conover, Harrison.”
“Very pleased, I'm sure. Luckily my case was in the coat room at the
club. I took the liberty of telephoning for Miss Frances, who returned
on the same ship with me. I concluded that your friend would need a
nurse. Let me have a look at him.”
Callously but lightly and skillfully the surgeon examined the battered
head. “Escaped concussion by a hair, you might say. Probably had his cap
on. That black eye, though, is an older affair. Who is he?”
“I suspect he's some political refugee. We don't know a thing about him
otherwise. How soon can he be moved?”
“He ought to be moved at once and given the best of care.”
“I can give him that in my eagle's nest. Harrison, this chap's life is
in danger; and if we get him into my lofty diggings they won't be able
to trace him. Not far from here there's a private hospital I know. It
goes through from one street to the next. I know the doctor. We'll have
the ambulance carry the patient there, but at the rear I'll have one
of the office newspaper trucks. And after a little wait we'll shoot the
stretcher into the truck. The police will not bother us. I've seen to
that. I rather believe it falls in with some of my work. The main idea,
of course, is to rid Miss Conover of any trouble.”
“Just as you say,” agreed the surgeon. “That's all I can do for the
present. I'll run down to the entrance and wait for The nurse.”
“Will he live?” asked Kitty.
“Of course he will. He is in good physical condition. Imagine he has
simply been knocked out. Serious only if unattended. Your finding him
probably saved him. Twelve hours will tell the story. May be on his feet
inside a week. Still, it would be advisable to keep him in bed as long
as possible. Fagged out, I should say, from that beard. I'll go down and
wait for Miss Frances.”
“And ring three times when you return,” advised Cutty.
“All right. Did they try to strangle him or did he have something round
his neck?”
“Hanged if I know.”
“All out of the room now. I want it dark. Just as soon as the nurse
arrives I'll return. Three rings.” Harrison left the apartment.
Cutty spent a few minutes at the telephone, then he joined Kitty in the
living room.
“Kitty, what was the stranger like?”
“Like a gorilla. He spoke English as if he had a cold.”
Cutty scowled into space. “Have a scar over an eyebrow?”
“Good gracious, I couldn't tell! Both his eyes were black and his nose
banged dreadfully. Johnny Two-Hawks probably did it.”
“Bully for Two-Hawks! Kitty, you're a marvel. Not a flivver from the
start. And those slate-blue eyes of yours don't miss many things.”
“Listen!” she interrupted, taking hold of his sleeve. “Hear it?”
“Only the Elevated.”
“Tumpitum-tump! Tumpitum-tump! Cutty, you hypnotized me this afternoon
with your horrid drums.”
“The emeralds?” He managed to repress the start.
“I don't know what it is; drums, anyhow. Maybe it is the emeralds.
Something has been happening ever since you told me about them--the
misery and evil that follow their wake.”
“But the story goes that women are immune, Kitty.”
“Nonsense! No woman is immune where a wonderful gem is concerned. And
yet I've common sense and humour.”
“And a lot more besides, Kitty. You're a raving, howling little beauty;
and how you've remained out of captivity this long is a puzzler to me.
Haven't you got a beau somewhere?”
“No, Cutty. Perhaps I'm one of those who are quite willing to wait
patiently. If the one I want doesn't come--why, I'll be a jolly,
philosophical old maid. No seconds or culls for me, as the magazine
editor says.”
“Exactly what do you want?” Cutty was keenly curious, for some reason he
could not define. He did not care for diamonds as stones; but he admired
any personality that flashed differently from each new angle exposed.
“Oh, a man, among other things. I don't mean one of those godlike
chromos in the frontispiece of popular novels. He hasn't got to be
handsome. But he must be able to laugh when he's happy, when he's hurt.
I must be his business in life. He must know a lot about things I know.
I want a comrade who will come to me when he has a joke or an ache. A
gay man and whimsical. The law can make any man a husband, but only God
can make a good comrade.”
“Kitty,” said Cutty, his fine eyes sparkling, “I shan't have to watch
over you so much as I thought. On the other hand, you have described me
to a dot.”
“Quite possibly. Vanity has its uses. It keeps us in contact with
bathtubs and nice clothes. I imagine that you would make both husband
and comrade; or you would have, twenty years ago”--without intentional
cruelty. Wasn't Cutty fifty-two?
“Kitty, you've touched a vital point. It took those twenty years to make
me companionable. Experience is something we must buy; it isn't left in
somebody's will. Let us say that I possess all the necessary attributes
save one.”
“And what is that?”
“Youth, Kitty. And take the word of a senile old dotard, your young man,
when you find him, will lack many of the attributes you require. On the
other hand, there is always the possibility that these will develop as
you jog along. The terrible pity of youth is that it has the habit of
conferring these attributes rather than finding them. You put garlands
on the heads of snow images, and the first glare of sunshine--pouf!”
“Cutty, I'm beginning to like you immensely”--smiling. “Perhaps women
ought to have two husbands--one young and handsome and the other old and
wise like yourself.”
Cutty wished he were alone in order to analyze the stab. Old! When
he knew that mentally and physically he could take and break a dozen
Two-Hawks. Old! He had never thought himself that. Fifty-two years;
they had piled up on him without his appreciation of the fullness of the
score. And yet he was more than a match for any ordinary man of thirty
in sinew and brain; and no man met the new morning with more zest than
he himself met it. But to Kitty he was old! Lavender and oak leaves were
being draped on his door knob. He laughed.
“Why do you laugh?”
“Oh, because--Hark!”
The two of them ran to the bedroom door.
“Olga! Olga!” And then a guttural level jumble of sounds.
Kitty's quick brain reached out for a similitude--water rushing over
ragged boulders.
“Olga!” she whispered. “He is a Russian!”
“There are Serbian Olgas and Bulgarian Olgas and Rumanian Olgas.
Probably his sweetheart.”
“The poor thing!”
“Sounds like Russian,” added Cutty, his conscience pricking him. But
he welcomed that “Olga.” It would naturally put a damper on Kitty's
interest. “There's Harrison with the nurse.”
Quarter of an hour later the patient was taken down to the ambulance
and conveyed to the private hospital. Cutty had no way of ascertaining
whether they were followed; but he hoped they would be. The knowledge
that their victim was in a near-by hospital would naturally serve to
relax the enemy vigilance temporarily; and this would permit safely and
secretly the second leg of the journey--that to his own apartment.
He decided to let an hour go past; then Two-Hawks was taken through the
building to the rear and transferred to the truck. Cutty sat with
the driver while Captain Harrison and the nurse rode inside with the
patient.
On the way Cutty was rather disturbed by the deep impression Kitty
Conover had made upon his heart and mind. That afternoon he had looked
upon her with fatherly condescension, as the pretty daughter of the two
he had loved most. From the altitude of his fifty-two he had gazed
down upon her twenty-four, weighing her as like all young women of
twenty-four--pleasure-loving and beau-hunting and fashion-scorched;
and in a flash she had revealed the formed mind of a woman of thirty.
Altitude. He had forgotten that relative to altitudes there are always
two angles of vision--that from the summit and that from the green
valley below. Kitty saw him beyond the tree line, but just this side
of the snows--and matched his condescension with pity! He chuckled.
Doddering old ass, what did it matter how she looked at him?
Beautiful and young and full of common sense, yet dangerously
romantical. To wait for the man she wanted, what did that signify but
romance? And there was her Irish blood to consider. The association
of pretty nurse and interesting patient always afforded excellent
background for sentimental nonsense, the obligations of the one and the
gratitude of the other. Well, he had nipped that in the bud.
And why hadn't he taken this Two-Hawks person--how easy it was to fall
into Kitty's way of naming the chap!--why hadn't he taken him directly
to the Roosevelt? Why all this pother and secrecy over a total stranger?
Stefani Gregor, who lived opposite Kitty and who hadn't prospered
particularly since the day he had exhibited the drums of jeopardy--he
was the reason. These were volcanic days, and a friend of Stefani
Gregor--who played the violin like Paganini--might well be worth the
trouble of a little courtesy. Then, too, there was that mark of the
thong--a charm, a military identification disk or something of value.
Whatever it was, the rogues had got it. Murder and loot. And as soon as
he returned to consciousness the young fellow would be making inquiries.
Perhaps Kitty's point of view regarding a certain duffer aged fifty-two
was nearer the truth than the duffer himself realized. Second childhood!
As if the drums of jeopardy would ever again see light, after that
tempest of fire and death--that mud volcano!
One thing was certain--there would be no more cat-napping. The game was
on again. He was assured of that side of it.
Green stones, the sunlight breaking against the flaws in a shower of
golden sparks; green as the pulp of a Champagne grape; the drums of
jeopardy! Murder and loot; he could understand.
Immediately after the patient was put to bed Cutty changed. A
nondescript suit of the day-labourer type and a few deft touches of coal
dust completed his make-up.
“I shan't be back until morning,” he announced. “Work to do. Kuroki will
be at your service through the night, Miss Frances. Strike that Burmese
gong once, at any hour. Come along, Harrison.”
“Want any company?” asked Harrison, with a belligerent twist to his
moustache.
Cutty laughed. “No. You run along to your lambs. I'm running with
the wolves to-night, old scout, and you might get that spick-and-span
uniform considerably mussed up. Besides, it's raining.”
“But what's to become of Miss Conover? She ought not to remain alone in
that apartment.”
“Well, well! I thought of that, too. But she can take care of herself.”
“Those ruffians may call up the hospital and learn that we tricked them.
“And then?”
“Try to force the truth from Miss Conover.”
“That's precisely the wherefore of this coal dust. On your way!”
Eleven o'clock. Kitty was in the kitchen, without light, her chair by
the window, which she had thrown up. She had gone to bed, but sleep was
impossible. So she decided to watch the Gregor windows. Sometimes the
mind is like a movie camera set for a double exposure. The whole scene
is visible, but the camera sees only half of it. Thus, while she saw
the windows across the court there entered the other side of her mind
a picture of the immaculate Cutty crossing the platform with Johnny
Two-Hawks thrown over his shoulder. The mental picture obscured the
actual.
She had called him old. Well, he was old. And no doubt he looked upon
her as a child, wanting her to spend the night at a hotel! The affair
was over. No one would bother Kitty Conover. Why should they? But it
took strength to shoulder a man like that. What fun he and her father
must have had together! And Cutty had loved her mother! That made
Kitty exquisitely tender for a moment. All alone, at the age when new
friendships were impossible. A lovable man like that going down through
life alone!
Census taker of alien undesirables; a queer occupation for a man so
famous as Cutty. Patriotism--to plunge into that seething revolutionary
scum to sort the dangerous madmen from the harmless mad-men. Courage and
strength and mental resource; yes, Cutty possessed these; and he would
be the kind to laugh at a joke or a hurt.
One thing, however, was indelibly printed on her mind. Stefani
Gregor--either Cutty had met and known the man or he had heard of him.
Suddenly she became conscious that she was blinking as one blinks
from mirror-reflected sunlight. She cast about for the source of this
phenomenon. Obliquely from between the interstices of the fire-escape
platform came a point of moving white light. She craned her neck. A
battery lamp! The round spot of light worked along the cement floor,
vanished occasionally, reappeared, and then vanished altogether.
Somebody was down there hunting for something. What?
Kitty remained with her head out of the window for some time, unmindful
of the spatter of rain. But nothing happened. The man was gone. Of
course the incident might not have the slightest bearing upon the
previous adventures of this amazing night; still, it was suggestive. The
young man had worn something round his neck. But if his enemies had
it why should this man comb the court, unless he was a tenant and had
knocked something off a window ledge?
She began to appreciate that she was very tired, and decided to go back
to bed. This time she fell asleep. Her disordered thoughts rearranged
themselves in a dazzling dream. She found herself wandering through a
glorious translucent green cavern--a huge emerald. And in the distance
she heard that unmistakable tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! It drew her
irresistibly. She fought and struggled against the fascinating sound,
but it continued to draw her on. Suddenly from round a corner came the
squat man, his hair a la Fuzzy-Wuzzy. He caught her savagely by the
shoulder and dragged her toward a fire of blazing diamonds. On the other
side of that fire was a blonde young woman with a tiara of rubies on her
head. “Save me! I am Olga, Olga!” Kitty struggled fiercely and awoke.
The light was on. At the side of her bed were two men. One of them was
holding her bare shoulder and digging his fingers into it cruelly. They
looked like coal heavers.
“We do not wish to harm you, and won't if you're sensible. Where did
they take the man you brought?”