The Drums of Jeopardy Part 32

"Did he show the contents?"

"Only the money and the bonds. He said if he had died the money and bonds would have been mine.

"Providing Gregor was also dead." Cutty looked into the wallet, but disturbed nothing. "I imagine these funds are actually Gregor's."

"He told me to give the wallet to you. And so I waited. I fell asleep.

So please don't scold me."

"I'm a brute! But it's because you've become so much to me that I was angry. You're Tommy and Molly's girl, and I've got to watch out for you until you reach some kind of a port."

"Thank you for the flowers. You'll never know just what they did for me.

There was somebody who gave me a thought."

"Kitty, I honestly don't get you. A beauty like you, lonesome!"

"That's it. I am pretty. Why should I deny it? If I'd been homely I shouldn't have been ashamed to invite my friends to my shabby home. I shouldn't have cold shouldered everybody through false pride. But where have you been, and what have you been doing?"

"Official business. But I just missed being a fine jacka.s.s. I'll look into the wallet after I've cleaned up. I'm a mess of gore and dust. Is it interesting stuff?" dreading her answer.

"The wallet? I did not look into it. I had no right."

"Ah! Well, I'll be back in two jigs."

He hurried off, relieved to learn that the secret was still beyond Kitty's knowledge. Of course Hawksley wouldn't carry anything in the wallet by which his true ident.i.ty might be made known. Still, there would be stuff to excite her interest and suspicion. Hawksley had shown her some of that three hundred thousand probably. What a game!

He would say nothing about his own adventures and discoveries. He worked on the theory that the best time to tell about something was after it had become a fact. But no theory is perfect; and in this instance his reticence was going to cost him intolerable agony in the near future.

Within a quarter of an hour he was back in the living room. Kitty was out of sight; probably had curled up on the divan again. He would not disturb her. Hawksley's wallet! He drew a chair under the reading lamp and explored the wallet. Money and bonds he rather expected, but the customs appraiser's receipt was like a buffet. The emeralds belonged honorably to his guest! All his own plans were knocked galley-west by this discovery.

An odd sense of indignation blazed up in him, as though someone had imposed upon him. The sport was gone, the fun of the thing; it became merely official business. To appropriate a pair of smuggled emeralds was a first-cla.s.s sporting proposition, with a humorous twist. As it stood now, he would be picking Hawksley's pocket; and he wasn't rogue enough for that. Hang the luck!

Emeralds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and diamonds! No doubt many of them with histories--in a bag hung to his neck--and all these thousands of miles! Not since the advent of the Gaekwar of Baroda into San Francisco, in 1910, had so many fine stones pa.s.sed through that port of entry.

But why hadn't Hawksley inquired about them? Stoic indifference? A good loser? How had he got through the customs without a lot of publicity?

The Russian consul of the old regime probably; and an appraiser who was a good sport. To have come safely to his destination, and then to have lost out! The magnificent careless generosity of putting the wallet behind Kitty's flatirons, to be hers if he didn't pull through! Why, this fiddling derelict was a man! Stood up and fought Karlov with his bare fists; wasn't ashamed to weep over his mother's photograph; and fiddled like Heifetz. All right. This Johnny Two-Hawks, as Kitty persisted in calling him, was going to reach his Montana ranch. His friend Cutty would take it upon himself to see to that.

It struck him that after all he would have to play the game as he had planned it. Those gems falling into the hands of the Federal agents would surely bring to light Hawksley's ident.i.ty; and Hawksley should have his chance.

Cutty then came upon the will. Somehow the pathos of it went deep into his heart. The poor devil!--a will that hadn't been witnessed, the handwriting the same as that on the pa.s.sport. If he had fallen into the hands of the police they would have justifiably locked him up as a murder suspect. Two-Hawks! It was a small world. He returned the contents to the wallet, leaving out the will, however. This he thrust into a drawer.

"Coffee?" said Kitty at his elbow.

"Kitty? I'd forgotten you! I thought I smelt coffee. Just what I wanted, too, only I hadn't brains enough left to think of it. Smells better than anything Kuroki makes.... Tastes better, too. You're going to make some lucky duffer a fine wife."

"Is there anything you can tell me, Cutty?"

"A whole lot, Kitty; only I'm twenty years too old."

"I mean the wallet. Who is he?"

Cutty drained the cup slowly. A good coherent lie, to appease Kitty's curiosity; half a truth, something hard to nail. He set down the empty cup, building. By the time he had filled his pipe and lit it he was ready.

Something bored up through the subconscious, however--a query. Why hadn't he told her the plain truth at the start? Wasn't on account of the drums. He hadn't kept her in the dark because of the drums. He could have trusted her with that part of it--his tentative piracy. That to divulge Hawksley's ident.i.ty would be a menace to her peace of mind now appeared ridiculous; and yet he had worked forward from this a.s.sumption.

No answer to the query. Generally he thought clearly enough; but somewhere along this route he had made a muddle of things and couldn't find the spot. The only point clearly defined was that he should wish to keep her out of the affair because there were elements of positive danger. But somewhere inside of him was a question asking for recognition, and it eluded him. Nothing could be solved until this question got out of the fog. Even now he might risk the whole truth; but the lie he had woven appeared too good to waste.

Human frailty. The most accomplished human being is the finished liar.

Never to forget a detail, to remember step by step the windings, over a ticklish road. And Cutty, for all his wide newspaper experience, was a poor liar because he had been brought up on facts. Perhaps his lie might have pa.s.sed had he not been so f.a.gged. The physical labours of the night had dulled his perceptions.

"Ab, but that tastes good!"--as he blew forth a wavering ring of smoke.

"It ought to have at least one merit," replied Kitty, wrinkling her nose. What a fine profile Cutty had! "Now, who and what is he? I'm dying to know."

"An odd story; probably hundreds like it. You see, the Bolsheviki have driven out of the country or killed all the n.o.bles and bourgeoisie. Some of them have escaped--into China, Sweden, India, wherever they could find an open route. To his story there are many loose ends, and Hawksley is not the talking kind. You mustn't repeat what I tell you. Hawksley, with all that money and a forged English pa.s.sport, would have a good deal of trouble explaining if he ran afoul the police. There is no real proof that the money is his or Gregor's. As a matter of fact, it is Gregor's, and Hawksley was bringing it to him. Hawksley is Gregor's protege."

Kitty nodded. This dovetailed with what Johnny Two-Hawks had told her that night.

"How the two came together originally I don't know. Gregor was in his younger days a great violinist, but unknown to the American public.

Early in his career he speculated with his concert earnings and turned a pot of money. He dropped the professional career for that of a country gentleman. He had a handsome estate, and lived sensibly. He sent Hawksley to England to school and spent a good deal of time there with him, teaching him how to play the fiddle, for which it seems Hawksley had a natural bent. He had to Anglicize his name; for Two-Hawks would have made people laugh. To be a gentleman, Kitty, one does not have to be a prince or a grand duke. Gregor was a polished gentleman, and he turned Hawksley into one."

Again Kitty nodded, her eyes sparkling.

"The Russ--the educated Russ--is a queer biscuit. Got to have a finger in some political pie, and political pies in Russia before the war were lese-majesty. The result--Gregor got in wrong with his secret society and the political police and was forced to fly to save his life. But before he fled he had all his convertible funds transferred. Only his estate was confiscated. Hawksley was in London when the war broke out.

There was a lot of red tape, naturally, regarding the funds. I shan't bother you with that, Hawksley, hoping to better his protector's future, returned to Russia and joined his regiment and fought until the Czar abdicated. Foretasting the trend of events, he tried to get back to England, but that was impossible. He was permitted to retire to the Gregor estate, where he remained until the uprising of the Bolsheviki.

Then he started across the world to join Gregor."

"That was brave."

"It certainly was. I imagine that Hawksley's journey has that of Ulysses laid away on the shelf. Karlov was the head of the society which had voted Gregor's death. So he had agents watching Hawksley. And Karlov himself undertook the chase across Russia, China, and the Pacific."

"I'm glad I gave him something to eat. But Gregor, a valet in a hotel, with all that money!"

"The red tape."

"What a dizzy world we live in, Cutty!"

"Dizzy is the word." Cutty sighed. His yarn had pa.s.sed a very shrewd censor. "Karlov feels it his duty to kill off all his countryman who do not agree with his theories. He wanted these funds here, but Hawksley was too clever for him. Remember, now, not a word of this to Hawksley. I tell you this in confidence."

"I promise."

"You'll have to spend the night here. It's round four, and the power has been shut off. There's the stairs, but it would be dawn before you reach the street."

"Who cares?"

"I do. I don't believe you're in a good mood to send back to that garlicky warren. I wish to the Lord you'd leave it!"

"It's difficult to find anything desirable within my means. Rents are terrifying. I'll sleep on the divan. A rug or a blanket. I'm a silly fool, I suppose."

"You can have a guest room."