The Drums of Jeopardy Part 28

By the time she reached the street exhilaration suffused her. The melancholia was gone. The sinister and cynical idea had vanished apparently. Apparently. Merely it had found a hiding place and was content to abide there for the present. Such ideas are not without avenues of retreat; they know the hours of attack. Kitty was alive to but one fact: The game of hide and seek was on again. She was going to have some excitement. She was going into the night on an adventure, as children play at bears in the dark. The youth in her still rejected the fact that the woof and warp of this adventure were murder and loot and pain.

En route to the Subway she never looked back. At Forty-second Street she detrained, walked into the Knickerbocker, entered the ladies dressing room, turned her coat, redraped her hat, checked her gaiters, and sought a taxi. Within two blocks of Cutty's she dismissed the cab and finished the journey on foot.

At the left of the lobby was an all-night apothecary's, with a door going into the lobby. Kitty proceeded to the elevator through this avenue. Number Four was down, and she stepped inside, raising her veil.

"You, miss?"

"Very important. Take me up."

"The boss is out."

"No matter. Take me up.

"You're the doctor!" What a pretty girl she was. No come-on in her eyes, though. "The boss may not get back until morning. He just went out in his engineer's togs. He sure wasn't expecting you.

"Do you know where he went?"

"Never know. But I'll be in this bird cage until he comes back."

"I shall have to wait for him."

"Up she goes!"

As Kitty stepped out into the corridor a wave of confusion a.s.sailed her.

She hadn't planned against Cutty's absence. There was nothing she could say to the nurse; and if Johnny Two-Hawks was asleep--why, all she could do would be to curl up on a divan and await Cutty's return.

The nurse appeared. "You, Miss Conover?"

"Yes." Kitty realized at once that she must take the nurse into her confidence. "I have made a really important discovery. Did Cutty say when he would return?"

"No. I am not in his confidence to that extent. But I do know that you a.s.sumed unnecessary risks in coming here."

Kitty shrugged and produced the wallet. "Is Mr. Hawksley awake?"

"He is."

"It appears that he left this wallet in my kitchen that night. It might buck him up if I gave it to him."

The nurse, eyeing the lovely animated face, conceded that it might.

"Come, I've been trying futilely to read him asleep, but he is restless.

No excitement, please."

"I'll try not to. Perhaps, after all, you had better give him the wallet."

"On the contrary, that would start a series of questions I could not answer. Come along."

When Kitty saw Hawksley she gave a little gasp of astonishment. Why, he was positively handsome! His dark head, standing out boldly against the bolstering pillows, the fine lines of his face definite, the pallor--he was like a Roman cameo. Who and what could he be, this picturesque foundling?

His glance flashed into hers delightedly. For hours and hours the constant wonder where she was, why no one mentioned her, why they evaded his apparently casual questions. To burst upon his vision in the nadir of his boredom and loneliness like this! She was glorious, this American girl. She made him think of a golden scabbard housing a fine Toledo blade. Hadn't she saved his life? More, hadn't she a.s.sumed a responsibility in so doing? Instantly he purposed that she should not be permitted to resign the office of good Samaritan. He motioned toward the nurse's chair; and Kitty sat down, her errand in total eclipse.

"Just when I never felt so lonely! Ripping!"

His quick smile was so engaging that Kitty answered it--kindred spirits, subconsciously recognizing each other. Fire; but neither of them knew that; or that two lonely human beings of opposite s.e.x, in touch, const.i.tute a first-rate combustible.

Quietly the nurse withdrew. There would be a tonic in this meeting for the patient. Her own presence might neutralize the effect. She had not spent all those dreadful months in base hospitals without acquiring a keen insight into the needs of sick men. No harm in letting him have this pretty, self-reliant girl alone to himself for a quarter of an hour. She would then return with some broth.

"How--how are you?" asked Kitty, inanely.

"Top-hole, considering. Quite ready to be killed all over again."

"You mustn't talk like that!" she protested.

"Only to show you I was bucking up. Thank you for doing what you did."

"I had to do it."

"Most women would have run away and left me to my fate."

"Not my kind."

"Rather not! Your kind would risk its neck to help a stray cat. I say, what's that you have in your hand?"

"Good gracious!" Kitty extended the wallet. "It is yours, isn't it?"

"Yes. I wanted you to bring it to me the way you have. If I hadn't come back--out of that--it was to be yours."

"Mine?"--dumfounded. "But----"

"Why not? Gregor gone, there wasn't a soul in the world. I was hungry, and you gave me food. I wanted that to pay you. I'll wager you've never looked into it."

"I had no right to."

"See!" He opened the wallet and spread the contents on the counterpane.

"I wasn't so stony as you thought. What? Cash and unregistered bonds.

They would have been yours absolutely."

"But I don't--I can't quite," Kitty stammered--"but I couldn't have kept them!"

"Positively yes. You would have shown them to that ripping guardian of yours, and he would have made you see."

"Indeed, yes! He would have been scared to death. You poor man, can't you see? Circ.u.mstantial evidence that I had killed you!"

"Good Lord! And you're right, too! So it goes. You can't do anything you want to do. The good Samaritan is never requited; and I wanted to break the rule. Lord, what a bally mix-up I'd have tumbled you in! I forgot that you were you, that you would have gone straight to the authorities.

Of course I knew if I pulled through and you found the wallet you would bring it to me."

Kitty no longer had a foot on earth. She floated. Her brain floated, too, because she could not make it think coherently for her. A fortune--for a dish of bacon and eggs! The magnificence, the utter prodigality of such generosity! For a dish of bacon and eggs and a bottle of milk! Had she left home? Hadn't she fallen asleep, the victim of another nightmare? A corner of the atmosphere cleared a little.

A desire took form; she wanted the nurse to come back and stabilize things. In a wavering blur she saw the odd young man restore the money and bonds and other doc.u.ments to the wallet.