A March day, sunny and cloudless, with fresh, bracing winds. Green
things pushed up from the soil; an eternal something was happening to
the tips of the tree branches; an eternal something was happening in
young hearts. A robin shook the dust of travel from his wings and bathed
publicly in a park basin.
Here and there under the ten thousand roofs of the great city poets were
busy with inkpots, trying to say an old thing in a new way. Woe to the
pinched soul that did not expand this day, for it was spring. Expansion!
Nature--perhaps she was relenting a little, perhaps she saw that
humanity was sliding down the scale, withering, and a bit of extra
sunshine would serve to check the descension and breed a little
optimism.
Cutty's study. The sunlight, thrown westward, turned windows and roofs
and towers into incomparable bijoux. The double reflection cast a white
light into the room, lifting out the blue and old-rose tints of the
Ispahan rug.
Cutty shifted the chrysoprase, irresolutely for him. A dozen problems,
and it was mighty hard to decide which to tackle first. Principally
there was Kitty. He had not seen her in four days, deeming it advisable
for her not to call for the present. The Bolshevik agent who had
followed him from the banker's might decide, without the aid of some
connecting episode, that he had wasted his time.
It did not matter that Kitty herself was no longer watched and followed
from her home to the office, from the office home. Was Karlov afraid
or had he some new trick up his sleeve? It was not possible that he
had given up Hawksley. He was probably planning an attack from some
unexpected angle. To be sure that Karlov would not find reason to
associate him with Kitty, Cutty had remained indoors during the daytime
and gone forth at night in his dungarees.
Problem Two was quite as formidable. The secret agent who had passed
as a negotiator for the drums of jeopardy had disappeared. That had
sinister significance. Karlov did not intend to sell the drums; merely
wanted precise information regarding the man who had advertised for
them. If the secret-service man weakened under torture, Cutty recognized
that his own usefulness would be at an end. He would have to step aside
and let the great currents sweep on without him. In that event these
fifty-two years would pile upon his head, full measure; for the only
thing that kept him vigorous was action, interest. Without some great
incentive he would shrivel up and blow away--like some exhumed mummy.
Problem Three. How the deuce was he going to fascinate Kitty if he
couldn't see her? But there was a bit of silver lining here. If
he couldn't see her, what chance had Hawksley? The whole sense and
prompting of this problem was to keep Kitty and Hawksley apart. How this
was accomplished was of no vital importance. Problem Three, then, hung
fire for the present. Funny, how this idea stuck in his head, that
Hawksley was a menace to Kitty. One of those fool ideas, probably, but
worth trying out.
Problem Four. That night, all on his own, he would make an attempt
to enter that old house sandwiched between the two vacant warehouses.
Through pressure of authority he had obtained keys to both warehouses.
There would be a trap on the roof of that house. Doubtless it would be
covered with tin; fairly impregnable if latched below. But he could find
out. From the third-floor windows of either warehouse the drop was not
more than six feet. If anywhere in town poor old Stefani Gregor would be
in one of those rooms. But to storm the house frontally, without being
absolutely sure, would be folly. Gregor would be killed. The house was
in fact an insane asylum, occupied by super-insane men. Warned, they
were capable of blowing the house to kingdom come, themselves with it.
Problem Five was a mere vanishing point. He doubted if he would ever see
those emeralds. What an infernal pity!
He built a coronet and leaned back, a wisp of smoke darting up from the
bowl of his pipe.
“I say, you know, but that's a ripping game to play!” drawled a tired
voice over his shoulder.
Cutty turned his head, to behold Hawksley, shaven, pale, and handsome,
wrapped in a bed quilt and swaying slightly.
“What the deuce are you doing out of your room?” growled Cutty, but with
the growl of a friendly dog.
Hawksley dropped into a chair weakly. “End of my rope. Got to talk to
someone. Go dotty, else. Questions. Skull aches with 'em. Want to know
whether this is a foretaste of the life I have a right to live--or the
beginning of death. Be a good sport, and let's have it out.”
“What is it you wish to know?” asked Cutty, gently. The poor beggar!
“Where I am. Who you are. What happened to me. What is going to happen
to me,” rather breathlessly. “Don't want any more suspense. Don't want
to look over my shoulder any more. Straight ahead. All the cards on the
table, please.”
Cutty rose and pushed the invalid's chair to a window and drew another
up beside it.
“My word, the top of the world! Bally odd roost.”
“You will find it safer here than you would on the shores of Kaspuskoi
More,” replied Cutty, gravely. “The Caspian wouldn't be a healthy place
for you now.”
With wide eyes Hawksley stared across the shining, wavering roofs. A
pause. “What do you know?” he asked, faintly.
“Everything. But wait!” Cutty fetched one of the photographs and laid it
upon the young man's knees. “Know who this is--Two-Hawks?”
A strained, tense gesture as Hawksley seized the photograph; then his
chin sank slowly to his chest. A moment later Cutty was profoundly
astonished to see something sparkle on its way down the bed quilt.
Tears!
“I'm sorry!” cried Cutty, troubled and embarrassed. “I'm terribly sorry!
I should have had the decency to wait a day or two.”
“On the contrary, thank you!” Hawksley flung up his head. “Nothing in
all God's muddied world could be more timely--the face of my mother!
I am not ashamed of these tears. I am not afraid to die. I am not even
afraid to live. But all the things I loved--the familiar earth, the
human beings, my dog--gone. I am alone.”
“I'm sorry,” repeated Cutty, a bit choked up. This was honest misery and
it affected him deeply. He felt himself singularly drawn.
“I want to live. Because I am young? No. I want to prove to the shades
of those who loved me that I am fit to go on. So my identity is known to
you?”--dejectedly.
“Yes. You wish me to forget what I know?”
“Will you?”--eagerly. “Will you forget that I am anything but a naked,
friendless human being?”
“Yes. But your enemies know.”
“I rather fancy they will keep the truth to themselves. Let them publish
my identity, and a hundred havens would be offered. Your Government
would protect me.”
“It is doing so now, indirectly. But why do you not want it known?”
“Freedom! Would I have it if known? Could I trust anybody? Would it not
be essentially the old life in a new land? I want a new life in a new
land. I want to be born again. I want to be what you patently are, an
American. That is why I risked life a hundred times in coming all these
miles, why I sit in this chair before you, with the room rocking because
they battered in my head. I do not offer a human wreck, an illiterate
mind, in exchange for citizenship. I bring a tolerably decent manhood.
Try me! Always I have admired you people. Always we Russians have.
But there is no Russia now that I can ever return to!” Hawksley's head
drooped again and his bloodshot eyes closed.
Cutty sensed confusion, indecision; all his deductions were upset in
the face of this strange appeal. Russian, born of an Italian mother
and speaking Oxford English as if it were his birthright; and wanting
citizenship! Wasn't ashamed of his tears; wasn't afraid to die or to
live! Cutty searched quickly for a new handhold to his antagonism, but
he found only straws. He was honest enough to realize that he had built
this antagonism upon a want, a desire; there was no foundation for it.
Downright likeable. A chap who had gone through so much, who was in such
a pitiable condition, would not have the wit to manufacture character,
camouflage his soul.
“Hang it!” he said, briskly. “You shall have your chance. Talk like that
will carry a man anywhere in this country. You shall stay here until
you are strong again. Then some night I'll put you on your train for
Montana. You want to ask questions. I'll save you the trouble by telling
you what I know.”
But his narrative contained no mention of the emeralds. Why? A bit
conscience-stricken because, if he could, he was going to rob his guest
on the basis that findings is keepings? Cutty wasn't ready to analyze
the omission. Perhaps he wanted Hawksley himself to inquire about the
stones; test him out. If he asked frankly that would signify that he
had brought the stones in honestly, paid his obligations to the Customs.
Otherwise, smuggling; and in that event conscience wouldn't matter;
the emeralds became a game anybody could take a hand in--anybody who
considered the United States Customs an infringement upon human rights.
What a devil of a call those stones had for him! Did they mean anything
to Hawksley aside from their intrinsic value? But for the nebulous idea,
originally, that the emeralds were mixed up somewhere in this adventure,
Cutty knew that he would have sent Hawksley to a hospital, left him to
his fate, and never known who he was.
All through the narration Hawksley listened motionless, with his eyes
closed, possibly to keep the wavering instability of the walls from
interfering with his assimilation of this astonishing series of fact.
“Found you insensible on the floor,” concluded Cutty, “hoisted you to my
shoulders, took you to the street--and here you are!”
Hawksley opened his eyes. “I say, you know, what a devil of an old
Sherlock you must be! And you carried me on your shoulders across that
fire escape? Ripping! When I stepped back into that room I heard a
rushing sound. I knew! But I didn't have the least chance.... You and
that bully girl!”
Cutty swore under his breath. He had taken particular pains to avoid
mentioning Kitty; and here, first off, the fat was in the fire. He
remembered now that he had told Hawksley that Kitty had saved his life.
Fortunately, the chap wasn't keen enough with that banged-up head of his
to apply reason to the omission.
“Saved my life. Suppose she doesn't want me to know.”
Cutty jumped at this. “Doesn't care to be mixed up with the Bolshevik
end of it. Besides, she doesn't know who you are.”
“The fewer that know the better. But I'll always remember her kindness
and that bally pistol with the fan in it. But you? Why did you bother to
bring me up here?”
“Couldn't decently leave you where Karlov could get to you again.”
“Is Stefani Gregor dead?”
“Don't know; probably not. But we are hunting for him.” Cutty had not
explained his interest in Gregor. Those plaguey stones again. They were
demoralizing him. Loot.
“You spoke of Karlov. Who is he?”
“Why, the man who followed you across half the world.”
“There were many. What is he like?”
“A gorilla.”
“Ah!” Hawksley became galvanized and extended his fists. “God let me
live long enough to put my hands on him! I had the chance the other
day--to blot out his face with my boots! But I couldn't do it! I
couldn't do it!” He sagged in the chair. “No, no! Just a bit groggy. All
right in a moment.”
“By the Lord Harry, I'll see you through. Now buck up. Hear that?” cried
Cutty, throwing up a window.
“Music.”
“Look through that street there. See the glint of bayonets? American
soldiers, marching up Fifth Avenue, thousands of them, freemen who broke
the vaunted Hindenburg Line. God bless 'em! Americans, every mother's
son of 'em; who went away laughing, who returned laughing, who will go
back to their jobs laughing. The ability to laugh, that's America. Do
you know how to laugh?”
“I used to. I'm jolly weak just now. But I'll grin if you want me to.”
And Hawksley grinned.
“That's the way. A grin in this country will take you quite as far. All
right. In five years you'll be voting. I'll see to that. Now back to bed
with you, and no more leaving it until the nurse says so. What you need
is rest.”
Cutty sent a call to the nurse, who was standing undecidedly in the
doorway; and together they put the derelict back to bed. Then Cutty
fetched the photograph and set it on top of the dresser, where Hawksley
could see it.
“Now, no more gallivanting about.”
“I promise, old top. This bed is a little bit of all right. I say!”
“What?”
“How long am I to be here?”
“If you're good, two weeks,” interposed the nurse.
“Two weeks? I say, would you mind doing me a trifling favour? I'd like a
violin to amuse myself with.”
“A fiddle? I don't know a thing about 'em except that they sound good.”
Cutty pulled at his chin.
“Whatever it costs I'll reimburse you the day I'm up.”
“All right. I'll bring you a bundle of them, and you can do your own
selecting.”
Out in the corridor the nurse said: “I couldn't hold him. But he'll be
easier now that he's got the questions off his mind. He will have to be
humoured a lot. That's one of the characteristics of head wounds.”
“What do you think of him?”
“He seems to be gentle and patient; and I imagine he's hard to resist
when he wants anything. Winning, you'd call it. I suppose I mustn't ask
who he really is?”
“No. Poor devil. The fewer that know, the better. I'll be home round
three.”
Once in the street, Cutty was besieged suddenly with the irresistible
desire to mingle with the crowd over in the Avenue, to hear the military
bands, the shouts, to witness the gamut of emotions which he knew would
attend this epochal day. Of course he would view it all from the aloof
vantage of the historian, and store away commentaries against future
needs.
And what a crowd it was! He was elbowed and pushed, jostled and trod
on, carried into the surges, relegated to the eddies; and always
the metallic taptap of steel-shod boots on the asphalt, the bayonets
throwing back the radiant sunshine in sharp, clear flashes. The keen,
joyous faces of those boys. God, to be young like that! To have come
through that hell on earth with the ability still to smile! Cutty felt
the tears running down his cheeks. Instinctively he knew that this was
to be his last thrill of this order. He was fifty-two.
“Quit your crowding there!” barked a voice under his chin.
“Sorry, but it's those behind me,” said Cutty, looking down into a
florid countenance with a raggedy gray moustache and a pair of blue eyes
that were blinking.
“I'm so damned short I can't see anything!”
“Neither can I.”
“You could if you wiped your eyes.”
“You're crying yourself,” declared Cutty.
“Blinking jackass! Got anybody out there?”
“All of 'em.”
“I get you, old son of a gun! No flesh and blood, but they're ours all
the same. Couple of old fools; huh?”
“Sure pop! What right have two old codgers got here, anyhow? What
brought you out?”
“What brought you?”
“Same thing.”
“Damn it! If I could only see something!”
Cutty put his hands upon the shoulders of this chance acquaintance and
propelled him toward the curb. There were cries of protest, curses,
catcalls, but Cutty bored on ahead until he got his man where he could
see the tin hats, the bayonets, and the colours; and thus they stood for
a full hour. Each time the flag went by the little man yanked off his
derby and turned truculently to see that Cutty did the same.
“Say,” he said as they finally dropped back, “I'd offer to buy a drink,
only it sounds flat.”
“And it would taste flat after a mighty wine like this,” replied Cutty.
“Maybe you've heard of the nectar of the gods. Well, you've just drunk
it, my friend.”
“I sure have. Those kids out there, smiling after all that hell; and you
and me on the sidewalk, blubbering over 'em! What's the answer? We're
Americans!”
“You said it. Good-bye.”
Cutty pressed on to the flow and went along with it, lighter in the
heart than he had been in many a day. These two million who lined Fifth
Avenue, who cheered, laughed, wept, went silent, cheered again, what
did their presence here signify? That America's day had come; that as a
people they were homogeneous at last; that that which laws had failed to
bring forth had been accomplished by an ideal.
Bolshevism, socialism--call it what you will--would beat itself into
fragments against this Rock of Democracy, which went down to the centre
of the world and whose pinnacle touched the stars. Reincarnation; the
simple ideals of the forefathers restored. And with this knowledge
tingling in his thoughts--and perhaps there was a bit of spring in
his heart--Cutty continued on, without destination, chin jutting, eyes
shining. He was an American!
He might have continued on indefinitely had he not seen obliquely a
window filled with musical instruments.
Hawksley's fiddle! He had all but forgotten. All right. If the poor
beggar wanted to scrape a fiddle, scrape it he should. The least he,
Cutty, could do would be to accede to any and every whim Hawksley
expressed. Wasn't he planning to rob the beggar of the drums, happen
they ever turned up? But how the deuce to pick out a fiddle which would
have a tune in it? Of all the hypercritical duffers the fiddler was the
worst. Beside a fiddler of the first rank the rich old maid with the
poodle was a hail fellow well met.
Of course Gregor had taught the chap. That meant he would know
instantly; just as his host would instantly observe the difference
between green glass and green beryl.
Cutty turned into the shop, infinitely amused. Fiddles! What next?
Having constituted a guardianship over Kitty, he was now playing
impressario to Hawksley. As if he hadn't enough parts to play! Wouldn't
he be risking his life to-night trying to find where Stefani Gregor was?
Fiddles! Fiddles and emeralds! What a choice old hypocrite he was!
Fate has a way of telling you all about it--afterward; conceivably, that
humanity might continue to reproduce its species. Otherwise humanity
would proceed to extinguish itself forthwith. Thus, Cutty was totally
unaware upon entering the shop that he was about to tear off its hinges
the door he was so carefully bolting and latching and padlocking between
Kitty Conover and this duffer who wanted to fiddle his way through
convalescence.
Where there is fiddling there is generally dancing. If it be not the
feet, then it will be the soul.