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

the matter was! Such things happened. He had loved Molly on sight. He had loved Kitty on sight. In neither case had he known it until too late to turn about. Mother and daughter; a kind of sacrilege, as if he had betrayed Molly! But what a clear vision acknowledged love lent to the mind! He understood Kitty, who did not understand herself. Well, this night's adventure would decide things.

He smiled. Neither Kitty nor the drums of jeopardy; nothing. The gates of paradise again - for somebody else! Whoever heard of a prompter receiving press notices?

"Let's look alive! We haven't any time to waste. We'll have to change to dungarees - engineer togs. There'll be some tools to carry. We go straight down to the boiler room. We come up the ash exit on the street side. Remember, no suspicious haste. Two engineers off for their evening swig of beer at the corner groggery. Through the side door there, and into my taxi. Obey every order I give. Now run along to Kuroki and say night work for both of us. He'll understand what's wanted. I'll set the machinery in motion for a raid. How do you feel? I want the truth. I don't want to turn to you for help and not get it."

Hawksley laughed. "Don't worry about me. I'll carry on. Don't you understand? To have an end of it, one way or the other! To come free or to die there!"

"And if Kitty is not where I believe her to be?"

"Then I'll return to the taxi outside."

To be young like that! thought Cutty, feeling strangely sad and old. "To come free or to die there!" That was good Anglo-Saxon. He would make a good American citizen - if he were in luck.

At half after nine the two of them knelt on the roof before the cemented trap. Nothing but raging heat disintegrates cement. So the liberation of this trap, considering the time, was a Herculean task, because it had to be accomplished with little or no noise. Cold chisels, fulcrums, prying, heaving, boring. To free the under edge; the top did not matter. Not knowing if Kitty were below - that was the worst part of the job.

The sweat of agony ran down Hawksley's face; but he never faltered. He was going to die to-night, somehow, somewhere, but with free hands, the way Stefani would have him die, the way the girl would have him die. All these thousands of miles - to die in a house he had never seen before, just when life was really worth something!

An hour went by. Then they heard Kitty's signal. Instinctively the two of them knew that the taps came from her. They were absolutely certain when her signal was repeated. She was below, alone.

"Faster!" whispered Cutty.

Hawksley smiled. To say that to a chap when he was digging into his tomb!

When the sides of the trap were free Cutty tapped to Kitty again. There was a long, agonizing wait. Then three taps came from below. Cutty flashed a signal to the warehouse windows. In five minutes the raid would be in full swing - from the roof, from the street, from the cellar.

With their short crowbars braced by stout fulcrums the two men heaved. Noise did not matter now. Presently the trap went over.

"Look out for your hands; there's lots of loose glass. And together when we drop."

"Right-o!" whispered Hawksley, assured that when he dropped through the trap the result would be oblivion. Done in.


CHAPTER XXXI


Karlov, upon forcing his way past Kitty's barricade, stared at her doubtfully. This was a clever girl; she had proved her cleverness frequently. She might have some reason other than fear in keeping him out. So he put a fresh candle in the sconce and began to prowl. He pierced the attic windows with a ranging glance; no one was in the yard or on the Street. The dust on the windows had not been disturbed.

To Kitty the suspense was intolerable. At any moment Cutty might tap a query to her. How to warn him that all was not well? A scream would do it; but in that event when Cutty arrived there would be no Kitty Conover. Something that would sound unusual to Cutty and accidental to Karlov. She hit upon it. She seized a plank from her barricade, raised it to a perpendicular position, then flung it down violently. Would Cutty hear and comprehend that she was warning him? As a matter of fact, Cutty never heard the crash, for at that particular minute he was standing up to get the kinks out of his knees.

Karlov whirled on his heels, ran to Kitty, and snatched her wrist. "Why did you do that?"

Kitty remained mute. "Answer !" - with a cruel twist.

"You hurt!" she gasped. Anything to gain time. She tried to break away.

"Why did you do that?"

"I was going to thrust it through a window to attract attention. It was too heavy."

This explanation was within bounds of reason. It is possible that Karlov - who had merely come up with a fresh candle - would have departed but for a peculiarly grim burst of humour on the part of Fate.

Tap - tap - tap? inquired the unsuspecting man on the roof - exactly to Kitty like some innocent, inquisitive child embarrassing the family before company.

Karlov flung her aside roughly, stepped under the trap, and cupped an ear. He required no explanations from Kitty, who shrank to the wall and remained pinned there by terror. Karlov's intuition was keen. Men on the roof held but one significance. The house was surrounded by Federal agents. For a space he wavered between two desires, the political and the private vengeance.

A call down the stairs, and five minutes afterward there would be nothing on the spot but a jumble of smoking wood and brick. But not to see them die!

His subsequent acts, cold and methodical, fascinated Kitty. He took a step toward her. The scream died in her throat. But he did not go beyond that step. The picture of her terror decided his future actions. He would see them die, here, with the girl looking on. A full measure. Well enough he knew who were digging away the cement of the trap. What gave lodgment to this conviction he did not bother to analyze. The man he had not yet seen, who had balked him, now here, now there, from that first night; and who but the last of that branch of the hated house should be with him? To rend, batter, crush, kill! If he were bound for hell, to go there with the satisfaction of knowing that his private vengeance had been cancelled. The full reckoning for Anna's degradation: Stefani Gregor, broken and dying, and all the others dead!

He would shoot them as they dropped through the trap. Not to kill, but to maim, render helpless; then he would taunt them and grind his heels in their faces. Up there, the two he most hated of all living men!

First he restored Kitty's barricade - to keep assistance from entering before his work was completed. The butt of the first plank he pushed under the door knob. The other planks he laid flat, end to end, with the butt of the last snug against the brick chimney. The door would never give as a whole; it would have to be smashed in by axes. He then set the candle on the floor, backed by an up-ended soapbox. His enemies would drop into a pool of light, while they would not be able to see him at once. The girl would not matter. Her terror would hold her for some time. These manoeuvres completed, he answered the signal, sat down on another box and waited, reminding Kitty of some grotesque Mongolian idol.

Kitty saw the inevitable. Thereupon her terror ceased to bind her. As Cutty flung back the trap she would cry out a warning. Karlov might - and probably would - kill her. Her share in this night's work - her incredible folly - required full payment. Having decided to die with Cutty, all her courage returned. This is the normal result of any sublime resolve. But with the return of her courage she evolved another plan. She measured the distance between herself and Karlov, calculating there would be three strides. As Cutty dropped she would fling herself upon the madman. The act would at least give Cutty something like equal terms. What became of Kitty Conover thereafter was of no importance to the world.

Sounds. She became conscious of noises elsewhere in the house. The floor trembled. There came a creaking and snapping of wood, and she heard the trap fall. Karlov stood up, menacing, terrible. She saw where Cutty would drop, and now understood the cunning of the manoeuvre of placing the candle in front of the soapbox. Cutty would be an absolute mark for Karlov, protected by the shadow. She set herself, as a runner at the tape.

Karlov was not the type criminal, which when cornered, thinks only of personal safety. He was a political fanatic. All who opposed his beliefs must not be permitted to survive. There was a touch of Torquemada of the Inquisition in his cosmos. He could not kill directly; he had to torture first.

He knew by the ascending sounds that there would be no way out of this for him. To the American, Russia was an outlaw. He would be treated as a dangerous alien enemy and locked up. Boris Karlov should never live to eat his heart out behind bars.

Unique angle of thought, he mused. He wanted mud to trample them in, Russian mud. The same mud that had filled the mouth of Anna's destroyer.

He was, then, a formidable antagonist for any two strong men; let alone two one of whom was rather spent, the other dizzy with pain, holding himself together by the last shreds of his will. They dropped through the trap, Cutty in front of the candle, Hawksley a little to one side. The elder man landed squarely, but Hawksley fell backward. He crawled to his feet, swaying drunkenly. For a space he was not sure of the reality of the scene.... Torches and hobnailed boots!

"So!" said Karlov.

The torturer must talk; he must explain the immediate future to double the agony. He could have maimed them both, then trampled them to death, but he had to inform them of the fact. He pointed the automatic at Cutty because he considered this man the more dangerous of the two. He at once saw that the other was a negligible factor. He spoke slowly.

"And the girl shall witness your agonies," he concluded.

Cutty, bereft of invention, could only stare.