The Drums of Jeopardy Part 38

Of course he would never forget--at any rate, not the girl whose courage had made possible this hour. Those chaps, scared off temporarily, might have returned. What had become of her? He was always seeing her lovely face in the shadows, now tender, now resolute, now mocking. Doubtless he thought of her constantly because his freedom of action was limited.

He hadn't diversion enough. Books and fiddling, these carried him but halfway through the boredom. Where was she? Daily he had called her by telephone; no answer. The j.a.p shook his head; the slangy boy in the lift shook his.

She was a thoroughbred, even if she had been born of middle-cla.s.s parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle cla.s.s. A homeless, countryless derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle cla.s.s! He was no better than a troglodyte, set down in a new wilderness.

He heard the curtain rings slither on the pole. Believing the intruder to be Kuroki he turned belligerently. And there she stood--the girl herself! The poise of her reminded him of the Winged Victory in the Louvre. Where there had been a cup of champagne in his veins circ.u.mstance now poured a magnum.

"You!" he cried.

"What has happened? Where are you going in those clothes?" demanded Kitty.

"I am running away--for an hour or so."

"But you must not! The risks--after all the trouble we've had to help you!"

"I shall be perfectly safe, for you are going with me. Aren't you my guardian angel? Well, rather! The two of us--people, lights, shop windows! Perfectly splendiferous! Honestly, now, where's the harm?" He approached her rapidly as he spoke, and before the spell of him could be shaken off Kitty found her hands imprisoned in his. "Please! I've been so d.a.m.nably bored. The two of us in the streets, among the crowds!

No one will dare touch us. Can't you see? And then--I say, this is ripping!--we'll have dinner together here. I will play for you on the old Amati. Please!"

The fire of him communicated to the combustibles in Kitty's soul. A wild, reckless irony besieged her. This adventure would be exactly what she needed; it would sweep clear the fog separating one side of her brain from the other. For it was plain enough that part of her brain refused to cooperate with the other. A break in the trend of thought: she might succeed in getting hold of the puzzle if she could drop it absolutely for a little while and then pick it up again.

She had not gone home. She had not notified Bernini. She had checked her luggage in the station parcel room and come directly here. For what? To let the sense of luxury overcome the hidden repugnance of the idea of marrying Cutty, divorcing him, and living on his money. To put herself in the way of visible temptation. What fretted her so, what was wearing her down to the point of fatigue, was the patent imbecility of her reluctance. There would have been some sense of it if Cutty had proposed a real marriage. All she had to do was mumble a few words, sign her name to a doc.u.ment, live out West for a few months, and be in comfortable circ.u.mstances all the rest of her life. And she doddered!

She would run the streets with Johnny Two-Hawks, return, and dine with him. Who cared? Proper or improper, whose business was it but Kitty Conover's? Danger? That was the peculiar attraction. She wanted to rush into danger, some tense excitement the strain of which would lift her out of her mood. A recurrent touch of the wild impulsiveness of her childhood. Hadn't she sometimes flown out into thunderstorms, after merited punishment, to punish the mother whom thunder terrorized? And now she was going to rush into unknown danger to punish Fate--like a silly child! Nevertheless, she would go into the streets with Johnny Two-Hawks.

"But are you strong enough to venture on the streets?"

"Rot! Dash it all, I'm no mollycoddle! All nonsense to keep me pinned in like this. Will you go with me--be my guide?"

"Yes!" She shot out the word and crossed the Rubicon before reason could begin to lecture. Besides, wasn't reason treating her shabbily in withholding the key to the riddle? "Johnny Two-Hawks, I will go as far as Harlem if you want me to."

"Johnny Two-Hawks!" He laughed joyously, then kissed her hands. But he had to pay for this bending--a stab that filled his eyes with flying sparks. He must remember, once out of doors, not to stoop quickly. "I say, you're the jolliest girl I ever met! Just the two of us, what?"

"The way you speak English is wonderful!"

"Simple enough to explain. Had an English nurse from the beginning.

Spoke English and Italian before I spoke Russian."

He seized the wooden mallet and beat the Burmese gong--a flat piece of bra.s.s cut in the shape of a bell. The clear, whirring vibrations filled the room. Long before these spent themselves Kuroki appeared on the threshold. He bobbed.

"Kuroki, Miss Conover is dining here with me to-night. Seven o'clock sharp. The best you have in the larder."

"Yes, sair. You are going out, sair?"

"For a bit of fresh air."

"And I am going with him, Kuroki," said Kitty. Kuroki bobbed again.

"Dinner at seven, sair." Another bob, and he returned to the kitchen, smiling. The girl was free to come and go, of course, but the ancient enemy of Nippon would not pa.s.s the elevator door. Let him find that out for himself.

When the elevator arrived the boy did not open the door. He noted the derby on Hawksley's head.

"I can take you down, Miss Conover, but I cannot take Mr. Hawksley. When the boss gives me an order I obey it--if I possibly can. On the day the boss tells me you can go strolling, I'll give you the key to the city.

Until then, nix! No use arguing, Mr. Hawksley."

"I shan't argue," replied Hawksley, meekly. "I am really a prisoner, then?"

"For your own good, sir. Do you wish to go down, Miss Conover?"

"No."

The boy swung the lever, and the car dropped from sight.

"I'm sorry," said Kitty.

Hawksley smiled and laid a finger on his lips. "I wanted to know," he whispered. "There's another way down from this Matterhorn. Come with me. Off the living room is a storeroom. I found the key in the lock the other day and investigated. I still have the key. Now, then, there's a door that gives to the main loft. At the other end is the stairhead.

There is a door at the foot of the first flight down. We can jolly well leave this way, but we shall have to return by the lift. That bally young ruffian can't refuse to carry us up, y' know!"

Kitty laughed. "This is going to be fun!"

"Rather!"

They groped their way through the dim loft--for it was growing dark outside--and made the stairhead. The door to the seventeenth floor opened, and they stepped forth into the lighted hallway.

"Now what?" asked Kitty, bubbling.

"The floor below, and one of the other lifts, what?" Twenty minutes later the two of them, arm in arm, turned into Broadway.

"This, sir," began Kitty with a gesture, "is Broadway--America's backyard in the daytime and Ali Baba's cave at night. The way of the gilded youth; the funnel for papa's money; the chorus lady; the starting point of the high cost of living. We New Yorkers despise it because we can't afford it."

"The lights!" gasped Hawksley.

"Wreckers' lights. Behold! Yonder is a highly nutritious whisky blinking its bloomin' farewell. Do you chew gum? Even if you don't, in a few minutes I'll give you a cud for thought. Chewing gum was invented by a man with a talkative wife. He missed the physiological point, however, that a body can chew and talk at the same time. Come on!"

They went on uptown, Hawksley highly amused, exhilarated, but frequently puzzled. The pungent irony of her observations conveyed to him that under this gayety was a current of extreme bitterness. "I say, are all American girls like you?"

"Heavens, no! Why?"

"Because I never met one like you before. Rather stilted--on their good behaviour, I fancy."

"And I interest you because I'm not on my good behaviour?" Kitty whipped back.

"Because you are as G.o.d made you--without camouflage."

"The poor innocent young man! I'm nothing but camouflage to-night. Why are you risking your life in the street? Why am I sharing that risk?

Because we both feel bound and are blindly trying to break through. What do you know about me? Nothing. What do I know about you? Nothing. But what do we care? Come on, come on!"

Tumpitum--tump! tumpitum--tump! drummed the Elevated. Kitty laughed. The tocsin! Always something happened when she heard it.

"Pearls!" she cried, dragging him toward a jeweller's window.

"No!" he said, holding back. "I hate--jewels! How I hate them!" He broke away from her and hurried on.