The Drums of Jeopardy Part 29

"I want you to give this to your guardian when he comes in. I want him to understand. I say, you know, I'm going to love that old thoroughbred!

He's fine. Fancy his carrying me on his shoulders and eventually bringing me up here among the clouds! Americans.... Are you all like that? And you!"

Kitty's brain began to make preparations to alight, as it were. Cutty.

That gave her a touch of earth. She heard herself say faintly: "And what about me?"

"You were brave and kind. To help an unknown, friendless beggar like that, when you should have turned him over to the police! Makes me feel a bit stuffy. They left me for dead. I wonder--"

"What?"

"If--it wouldn't have been just as well!"

"You mustn't talk like that! You just mustn't! You're with friends, real friends, who want to help you all they can." And then with a little flash of forced humour, because of the recurrent tightening in her throat--"Who could be friendless, with all that money?" Instantly she felt like biting her tongue. He would know nothing of the sad American habit of trying to be funny to keep a wobbly situation on its legs.

He would interpret it as heartlessness. "I didn't mean that!" With the Irish impulsiveness which generally weighs acts in retrospection, she reached over and gripped his hand.

"I say, you two!" Hawksley closed his eyes for a second. "Wanting to buck up a chap because you re that sort! All right. I'll stick it out!

You two! And I might be the worst scoundrel unhung!"

He drew her hand toward his lips, and Kitty had not the power to resist him. She felt strangely theatrical, a character in a play; for American men, except in playful burlesque, never kissed their women's hands. The moment he released the hand the old wave of hysteria rolled over her.

She must fly. The desire to weep, little fool that she was! was breaking through her defences. Loneliness. The two of them all alone but for Cutty. She rose, crus.h.i.+ng the wallet in her hand.

Ah, never had she needed that darling mother of hers so much as now. Tears did not seem to afford relief when one shed them into handkerchiefs and pillows. But on that gentle bosom, to let loose this br.i.m.m.i.n.g flood, to hear the tender voice consoling!

"Oh, I say, now! Please!" she heard Johnny Two-Hawks cry out.

But she rushed on blindly, knocking against the door jamb and almost upsetting the nurse, who was returning. Somehow she managed to reach the living room, glad it was dark. Alter sundry reaching about she found the divan and flung herself upon it. What would he think? What would the nurse think? That Kitty Conover had suddenly gone stark, raving crazy!

And now that she was in the dark, alone, the desire to weep pa.s.sed over and she lay quietly with her face buried in the pillow. But not for long.

She sat up. Music--violin music! A gay waltz that made her think of flas.h.i.+ng water, the laughter of children. Tschaikowsky. Thrilled, she waited for the finale. Silence. Scharwenka's "Polish Dance," with a swing and a fire beyond anything she had ever heard before. Another stretch of silence--a silence full of interrogation points. Then a tender little sketch, quite unfamiliar. But all at once she understood.

He was imploring her to return. She smiled in the dark; but she knew she was going to remain right where she was.

"Miss Conover?" It was the voice of the nurse.

"Yes. I'm over here on the divan."

"Anything wrong?"

"Good gracious, no! I'm overtired. A little hysterical, maybe. The parade to-day, with all those wounded boys in automobiles, the music and colour and excitement--have rather done me up. And the way I rushed up here. And not finding Cutty--"

"Anything I can get for you?"

"No, thanks. I'll try to s.n.a.t.c.h a little sleep before Cutty returns."

"But he may be gone all night!"

"Will it be so very scandalous if I stay here?"

"You poor child! Go ahead and sleep. Don't hesitate to call me if you want anything. I have a mild sedative if you would like it."

"No, thanks. I did not know that Mr. Hawksley played."

"Wonderfully! But does it bother you?"

"It kind of makes me choky."

"I'll tell him."

Kitty, now strangely at peace, snuggled down among the pillows.

Some great Polish violinist, who had roused the bitter enmity of the anarchist? But no; he was Russian. Cutty had admitted that. It struck her that Cutty knew a great deal more than Kitty Conover; and so far as she could see there was no apparent reason for this secrecy. She rather believed she had Cutty. Either he should tell her everything or she would run loose, Bolshevik or no Bolshevik.

Sheep. She boosted one over the bars, another and another. Round somewhere in the thirties the bars dissolved. The next thing she knew she was blinking in the light, Cutty, his arms folded, staring down at her sombrely. There was blood on his face and blood on his hands.

CHAPTER XX

Karlov moodily touched the shoulder of the man on the cot. Stefani Gregor puzzled him. He came to this room more often than was wise, driven by a curiosity born of a cynical philosophy to discover what it was that reenforced this fragile body against threats and thirst and hunger. He knew what he wanted of Gregor--the fiddler on his knees begging for mercy. And always Gregor faced him with that silent calm which reminded him of the sea, aloof, impervious, exasperating. Only once since the day he had been locked in this room had Gregor offered speech. He, Karlov, had roared at him, threatened, baited, but his reward generally had been a twisted wintry smile.

He could not offer physical torture beyond the frequent omissions of food and water; the body would have crumbled. To have planned this for months, and then to be balked by something as visible yet as elusive as quicksilver! Born in the same mudhole, and still Boris Karlov the avenger could not understand Stefani Gregor the fiddler. Perhaps what baffled him was that so valiant a spirit should be housed in so weak a body. It was natural that he, Boris, with the body of a Carpathian bear, should have a soul to match. But that Stefani, with his paper body, should mock him! The d.a.m.ned bourgeoisie!

The quality of this unending calm was understandable: Gregor was always ready to die. What to do with a man to whom death was release? To hold the knout and to see it turn to water in the hand! In lying he had overreached. Gregor, having accepted as fact the reported death of Ivan, had nothing to live for. Having brought Gregor here to torture he had, blind fool, taken away the fiddler's ability to feel. The fog cleared.

He himself had given his enemy this mysterious calm. He had taken out Gregor's soul and dissipated it.

No. Not quite dissipated. What held the body together was the iron residue of the soul. Venom and blood clogged Karlov's throat. He could kill only the body, as he had killed the fiddle; he could not reach the mystery within. Ah, but he had wrung Stefani's heart there. There were pieces of the fiddle on the table where Gregor had placed them, doubtless to weep over when he was alone. Why hadn't he thought to break the fiddle a little each day?

"Stefani Gregor, sit up. I have come to talk." This was formula. Karlov did not expect speech from Gregor.

Slowly the thin arms bore up the torso; slowly the legs swung to the floor. But the little gray man's eyes were bright and quick to-night.

"Boris, what is it you want?"

"To talk"--surprised at this unexpected outburst.

"No, no. I mean, what is it all about--these killings, these burnings?"

Karlov was ready at all times to expound the theories that appealed to his dark yet simple mind--humanity overturned as one overturned the sod in the springtime to give it new life.

"To give the proletariat what is his."

"Ha!" said the little man on the cot. "What is his?"

"That which capitalism has taken away from him."

"The proletariat. The lowest in the human scale--and therefore the most helpless. They shall rule, say you. My poor Russia! Beaten and robbed for centuries, and now betrayed by a handful of madmen--with brains atrophied on one side! You are a fool, Boris. Your feet are in strange quicksands and your head among chimeras. You write some words on a piece of paper, and lo! you say they are facts. Without first proving your theories correct you would ram them down the throat of the world. The world rejects you."

"Wait and see, d.a.m.ned bourgeoisie!" thundered Karlov, not alive to the fact that he was being baited.

"Bourgeoisie? Yes, I am of the middle cla.s.s; the rogue on top and the fool below. I see. The rogue and the fool cannot combine unless the bourgeoisie is obliterated. Go on. I am interested."