Kitty Conover ate in the kitchen. First off, this statement is likely
to create the false impression that there was an ordinary grain here,
a wedge of base hemlock in the citron. Not so. She ate in the kitchen
because she could not yet face that vacant chair in the dining room
without choking and losing her appetite. She could not look at the chair
without visualizing that glorious, whimsical, fascinating mother of
hers, who could turn grumpy janitors into comedians and send importunate
bill collectors away with nothing but spangles in their heads.
So long as she stayed out of the dining room she could accept her
loneliness with sound philosophy. She knew, as all sensible people know,
that there were ghosts, that memory had haunted galleries, and that
empty chairs were evocations.
Her days were so busily active, there were so many first nights and
concerts, that she did not mind such evenings as she had to spend alone
in the apartment. Persons were in and out of the office all through
the day, and many of them entertaining. For only real persons ever
penetrated that well-guarded cubby-hole off the noisy city room. Many
of them were old friends of her mother. Of course they were a little
pompous, but this was less innate than acquired; and she knew that below
they were worth while. She had come to the conclusion that successful
actors and actresses were the only people in America who spoke English
fluently and correctly.
Yes, she ate in the kitchen; but she would have been a fit subject for
the fastidious Fragonard. Kitty was naturally an exquisite. Everything
about her was dainty, her body and her mind. The background of pans and
dishes, gas range and sink did not absorb Kitty; her presence here in
the morning lifted everything out of the rut of commonplace and created
an atmosphere that was ornamental. Pink peignoir and turquoise-blue
boudoir cap, silk petticoat and stockings and adorable little slippers.
No harm to tell the secret! Kitty was educating herself for a husband.
She knew that if she acquired the habit of daintiness at breakfast
before marriage it would become second nature after marriage. Moreover,
she was determined that it should be tremendous news that would cause a
newspaper to intervene. She had all the confidence in the world in her
mirror.
She got her breakfast this morning, singing. She was happy. She had
found a door out of monotony; theatrical drama had given way to the
living. She had opened the book of adventure and she was going straight
through to finis. That there was an undertow of the sinister escaped her
or she ignored it.
In all high-strung Irish souls there is a bit of the old wife, the
foreteller; the gift of prescience; and Kitty possessed this in a mild
degree. Something held her here, when for a dozen reasons she should
have gone elsewhere.
She strained the coffee, humming a tune out of The Mikado, the revival
of which she had seen lately:
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time
To make the punishment fit the crime.
The punishment fit the crime.
And make the prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment.
Of innocent merriment!
And there you were! To make the punishment fit the crime. Wall in the
Bolsheviki, the I.W.W.'s, the Red Socialist, the anarchists--and let
them try it for ten years. Those left would be glad enough to embrace
democracy and sanity. The poor benighted things, to imagine that they
were going forward there in Russia! What kind of mentality was it that
could conceive a blessing to humanity in the abolition of baths and
work? And Cutty felt sorry for them. Well, as for that, so did Kitty
Conover; and she would continue feeling sorry for them so long as they
remained thousands of miles away. But next door!
“Grapefruit, eggs on toast, and coffee; mademoiselle is served!” she
cried, gayly, sitting down and attacking her breakfast with the zest of
healthy youth.
Often the eyes are like the lenses of a camera minus the sensitized
plate; they see objects without printing them. Thus a dozen times
Kitty's glance absently swept the range and the racks on each side of
the stovepipe, one rack burdened with an empty pancake jug and the other
cluttered with old-fashioned flatirons; but she saw nothing.
She was carefully reviewing the events of the night before. She could
not dismiss the impression that Cutty knew Stefani Gregor or had heard
of him; and in either case it signified that Gregor was something more
than a valet. And decidedly Two-Hawks was not of the Russian peasantry.
By the time she was ready to leave for the office the Irish blood in
her was seething and bubbling and dancing. She knew she would do crazy,
impulsive things all day. It was easy to analyze this exuberance. She
had reached out into the dark and touched danger, and found a new thrill
in a humdrum world.
The Great Dramatist had produced a tremendous drama and she had watched
curtain after curtain fall from the wrong side of the lights. Now she
had been given a speaking part; and she would be down stage for a moment
or two--dusting the furniture--while the stars were retouching
their make-up. It was not the thought of Cutty, of Gregor, of Johnny
Two-Hawks, of hidden treasure; simply she had arrived somewhere in the
great drama.
When she reached the office she had a hard time of it to settle down to
the day's work.
“Hustle up that Sunday stuff,” said Burlingame. Kitty laughed. Just as
she had pictured it. She hustled.
“I have it!” she cried, breaking a spell of silence.
“What--St. Vitus?” inquired Burlingame, patiently.
“No; the Morgue!”
“What the dickens--!”
But Kitty was no longer there to answer.
In all newspaper offices there is a department flippantly designated
as the Morgue. Obituaries on ice, as it were. A photograph or an item
concerning a great man, a celebrated, beauty or some notorious rogue;
from the king calibre down to Gyp-the-Blood brand, all indexed and laid
away against the instant need. So, running her finger tip down the K's,
Kitty found Karlov. The half tone which she eventually exhumed from the
tin box was an excellent likeness of the human gorilla who had entered
her rooms with the policeman. She would be able to carry this positive
information to Cutty that afternoon.
When she left the office at four she took the Subway to Forty-second
Street. She engaged a taxi from the Knickerbocker and discharged it at
the north entrance to the Waldorf, which she entered. She walked through
to the south entrance and got into another taxi. She left this at
Wanamaker's, ducking and dodging through the crowded aisles. She
selected this hour because, being a woman, she knew that the press of
shoppers would be the greatest during the day. Karlov's man and
the secret-service operative detailed by Cutty both made the same
mistake--followed Kitty into the dry-goods shop and lost her as
completely as if she had popped up in China. At quarter to five she
stepped into Elevator Number Four of the building which Cutty called his
home, very well pleased with herself.