The Drums of Jeopardy - Harold MacGrath (open ebook TXT) 📗

a strange weapon in my hands, you tell me it is deadly, but you don't tell me which end is deadly. Do you know who this Russian is?"

"Honestly, I don't."

"Does Cutty?"

"I don't know that, either."

"Did you ever hear of a pair of emeralds called the drums of jeopardy?"

"Nope. But I do know if you continue these stunts you'll head the whole game into the ditch."

"You may set your mind at ease. I'm going to marry Cutty. I shall not go to the apartment again until Hawksley, as he is called, is gone."

"Well, well; that's good news! But let me put you wise to one fact, Miss Conover: you have picked some man! I'm not much of a scholar, but knowing him as I do I'm always wondering why they made Faith, Hope, and Charity in female form. But this night's work was bad business. They know where the Russian is now; and if the game lasts long enough they'll reach the chief, find out who he is; and that'll put the kibosh on his usefulness here and abroad. Well, here's home, and no more lecture from me."

"Sorry I've been so much trouble."

"Perhaps we ought to have shown you which end shoots."

"Good-night."

If Kitty had any doubt as to the wisdom of her decision, the cold, gloomy rooms of her apartment dissipated them. She wandered through the rooms, musing, calling back animated scenes. What would the spirit of her mother say? Had she doddered between Conover and Cutty? Perhaps. But she had been one of the happy few who had guessed right. Singular thought: her mother would have been happy with Cutty, too.

Oh, the relief of knowing what the future was going to be! She took off her hat and tossed it upon the table. The good things of life, and a good comrade.

Food. The larder would be empty and there was her breakfast to consider. She passed out into the kitchen, wrote out a list of necessities, and put it on the dumb waiter. Now for the dishes she had so hurriedly left. She rolled up her sleeves, put on the apron, and fell to the task. After such a night - dish-washing! She laughed. It was a funny old world.

Pauses. Perhaps she should have gone to a hotel, away from all familiar objects. Those flatirons intermittently pulled her eyes round. Her fancy played tricks with her whenever her glance touched the window. Faces peering in. In a burst of impatience she dropped the dish towel, hurried to the window, and threw it up. Black emptiness! ... Cutty, crossing the platform with Hawksley on his shoulders. She saw that, and it comforted her.

She finished her work and started for bed. But first she entered the guest room and turned on the lights. Olga. She had intended to ask him who Olga was.

A great pity. They might have been friends. The back of her hand went to her lips but did not touch them. She could not rub away those burning kisses - that is, not with the back of her hand. Vividly she saw him fiddling bareheaded in front of the Metropolitan Opera House. It seemed, though, that it had happened years ago. A great pity. The charm of that frolic would abide with her as long as she lived. A brave man, too. Hadn't he left her with a gay wave of the hand, not knowing, for want of strength, if he could make the detour of the block? That took courage. His journey halfway across the world had taken courage. Yet he could so basely disillusion her. It was not the kiss; it was the smile. She had seen that smile before, born of evil. If only he had spoken!

The heavenly magic of that fiddle! It made her sad. Genius, the ability to play with souls, soothe, tantalize, lift up; and then to smile at her like that!

She shut down the curtain upon these cogitations and summoned Cutty, visualized his handsome head, shot with gray, the humour of his smile. She did care for him; no doubt of that. She couldn't have sent that telegram else. Cutty - name of a pipe, as the Frenchmen said! All at once she rocked with laughter. She was going to marry a man whose given name she could not recall! Henry, George, John, William? For the life of her she could not remember.

And with this laughter still bubbling in a softer note she got into bed, twisted about from side to side, from this pillow to that, the tired body seeking perfect relaxation.

A broken melody entered her head. Sleepily she sought one channel of thought after another to escape; still the melody persisted. As her consciousness dodged hither and thither the bars and measures joined.... She sat up, chilled, bewildered. That Tschaikowsky waltz! She could hear it as clearly as if Johnny Two-Hawks and the Amati were in the very room. She grew afraid. Of what? She did not know.

And while she sat there in bed threshing out this fear to find the grain, Cutty was tramping the streets of Washington, her telegram crumpled in his hand. From time to time he would open it and reread it under a street lamp.

To marry her and then to cheat her. It wasn't humanly possible to marry her and then to let her go. He thought of those warm, soft arms round his neck, the absolute trust of that embrace. Molly's girl. No, he could not do it. He would have to back down, tell her he could not put the bargain through, invent some other scheme.

The idea had been repugnant to her. It had taken her a week to fight it out. It was a little beyond his reach, however, why the idea should have been repugnant to her. It entailed nothing beyond a bit of mummery. The repugnance was not due to religious training. The Conover household, as he recalled it, had been rather lax in that respect. Why, then, should Kitty have hesitated?

He thought of Hawksley, and swore. But for Hawksley's suggestion no muddle like this would have occurred. Devil take him and his infernal green stones!

Cutty suddenly remembered his train. He looked at his watch and saw that his lower berth was well on the way to Baltimore. Always and eternally he was missing something.


CHAPTER XXIX


Not unusually, when we burn our bridges, we have in the back of our minds the dim hope that there may be a shallow ford somewhere. Thus, bridges should not be burned impulsively; there may be no ford.

The idea of retreat pushed forward in Kitty's mind the moment she awoke; but she pressed it back in shame. She had given her word, and she would stand by it.

The night had been a series of wild impulses. She had not sent that telegram to Cutty as the result of her deliberations in the country. Impulse; a flash, and the thing was done, her bridges burned. To crush Johnny Two-Hawks, fill his cup with chagrin, she had told him she was going to marry Cutty. That was the milk in the cocoanut. Morning has a way of showing up night-gold for what it is - tinsel. Kitty saw the stage of last night's drama dismantled. If there was a shallow ford, she would never lower her pride to seek it. She had told Two-Hawks, sent that wire to Cutty, broke the news to Bernini.

But did she really want to go back? Not to know her own mind, to swing back and forth like a pendulum! Was it because she feared that, having married Cutty, she might actually fall in love with some other man later? She could still go through the mummery as Cutty had planned; but what about all the sublime generosity of the preceding night?

A queer feeling pervaded her: She was a marionette, a human manikin, and some invisible hand was pulling the wires that made her do all these absurd things. Her own mind no longer controlled her actions. The persistence of that waltz! It had haunted her, broken into her dreams, awakened her out of them. Why should she be afraid? What was there to be afraid of in a recurring melody? She had heard a dozen famed violinists play it. It had never before affected her beyond a flash of emotionalism. Perhaps it was the romantic misfortune of the man, the mystery surrounding him, the menace which walled him in.

Breakfast. Human manikins had appetites. So she made her breakfast. Before leaving the kitchen she stopped at the window. The sun filled the court with brilliant light. The patches of rust on the fire-escape ladder, which was on the Gregor side of the platform, had the semblance of powdered gold.

Half an hour later she was speeding downtown to the office. All through the day she walked, worked, talked as one in the state of trance. There were periods of stupefaction which at length roused Burlingame's curiosity.

"Kitty, what's the matter with you? You look dazed about something."

"How do you clean a pipe?" she countered, irrelevantly.

"Clean a pipe?" he repeated, nearly overbalancing his chair.

"Yes. You see, I may make up my mind to marry a man who smokes a pipe," said Kitty, desperately, eager to steer Burlingame into another channel; "and certainly I ought to know how to clean one."

"Kitty, I'm an old-timer. You can't sidetrack me like this. Something has happened. You say you had a great time in the country, and you come in as pale as the moon, like someone suffering from shell shock. Ever since Cutty came in here that day you've been acting oddly. You may not know it, but Cutty asked me to send you out of town. You've been in some kind of danger. What's the yarn?"

"So big that no newspaper will ever publish it, Burly. If Cutty wants to tell you some day he can. I haven't the right to."

"Did he drag you into it or did you fall into it?"

"I walked into it, as presently I shall walk out of it - all on my own.

"Better keep your eyes open. Cutty's a stormy petrel; when he flies there's rough weather."

"What do you know about him?"

"Probably what he has already told you - that he is a foreign agent of the Government. What do you know?"

"Everything but one thing, and that's a problem particularly my own."

"Alien stuff, I suppose. Cutty's strong on that. Well, mind your step. The boys are bringing in queer scraps about something big going to happen May Day - no facts, just rumours. Better shoot for home the shortest route each night and stick round there."

There are certain spiritual exhilarants that nullify caution, warning the presence of danger. The boy