The Drums of Jeopardy Part 11

"What is the other thing you wish to tell me?"

"Because your eyes are slate blue like your mother's. I loved your mother, Kitty," said Cutty, blinking into his pipe. "And the singular fact is, your father knew but your mother never did. I was never able to tell your mother after your father died. Their bodies were separated, but not their spirits."

Kitty nodded. So that was it? Poor Cutty!

"I make this confession because I want you to understand my att.i.tude toward you. I am going to elect myself as your special guardian so long as I'm in New York. From now on, when I ask you to do something, understand that I believe it best for you. If my suspicions are correct we are not dealing with fools but with madmen. The most dangerous human being, Kitty, is an honest man with a half-baked or crooked idea; and that's what this world pother, Bolshevism, is--honest men with crooked ideas, carrying the torch of anarchism and believing it enlightenment.

What makes them tear down things? Every beautiful building is only a monument to their former wretchedness; and so they annihilate. None of them actually knows what he wants. A thousand will-o'-the-wisps in front of them, and all alike. A thousand years to throw off the shackles, and they expect Utopia in ten minutes! It makes you want to weep.

Socialism--the brotherhood of man--is a beautiful thing theoretically; but it is like some plays--they read well but do not act. Lopping off heads, believing them to be ideas!"

"The poor things!"

"That's it. Though I betray them I pity them. Democracy; slowly and surely. As p.r.i.c.kly with faults as a cactus pear; but every year there are less p.r.i.c.kles. We don't stand still or retrogress; we keep going on and up. Take this town. Think of It to-day and compare it with the town your father knew. There's the bell. I imagine that will be Harrison. If we can move this chap will you go to a hotel for the night?"

"I'm going to stay here, Cutty. That's final."

Cutty sighed.

CHAPTER IX

At the precinct station the squat man gave a name and an address to the bored sergeant at the desk, pa.s.sed out a cigar, lit one himself, expressed some innocuous opinions upon one or two topics of the day, and walked leisurely out of the precinct. He wanted to laugh. These pigheads had never thought to question his presence in the backyard of the house in Seventy-ninth Street. It was the way he had carried himself.

Those years in New York, prior to the war, had not been wasted. The bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned fools!

Serenely unconscious that he was at liberty by explicit orders, because the Department of Justice did not care to trap a werewolf before ascertaining where the pack was and what the kill, he proceeded leisurely to the corner, turned, and broke into a run, which carried him to a drug store in Eightieth Street. Here he was joined by two men, apparently coal heavers by the look of their hands and faces.

"They will take him to a hospital. Find where, then notify me. Remember, this is your business, and woe to you if you fail. Where is it?" One of the men extended an object wrapped in ordinary grocer's paper.

"Ha! That's good. I shall enjoy myself presently. Remember: telephone me the moment you learn where they take him. He is still alive, bunglers!

And you came away empty-handed."

"There was nothing on him. We searched."

"He has hidden them in one of those rooms. I'll attend to that later.

Watch the hospital for an hour or so, then telephone for information regarding his condition. Is that motor for me? Very good. Remember!"

Inside the taxicab the squat man patted the object on his knees, and chuckled from time to time audibly. It would be worth all that journey, all he had gone through since dawn that morning. Stefani Gregor! After these seven long years--the man who had betrayed him! To reach into his breast and squeeze his heart as one might squeeze a bit of cheese! Many things to tell, many pictures to paint. He rode far downtown, wound in and out of the warehouse district for a while, then dismissed the taxi and proceeded on foot to his destination--a decayed brick mansion of the 40's sandwiched in between two deserted warehouses. In the hall of the first landing a man sat in a chair under the gas, reading a newspaper.

At the approach of the squat man he sprang to his feet, but a phrase dissipated his apprehension and he nodded toward a door.

"Unlock it for me and see that I am not disturbed."

Presently the squat man stood inside the room, which was dark. He struck a match and peered about for the candle. The light discovered a room barren of all furniture excepting the table upon which stood the candle, and a single chair. In this chair was a man, bound. He was small and dapper, his gray hair swept back a la Liszt. His chin was on his breast, his body limp. Apparently the bonds alone held him in the chair.

The squat man laid his bundle on the table and approached the prisoner.

"Stefani Gregor, look up; it is I!" He drummed on his chest like a challenging gorilla. "I, Boris Karlov!"

Slowly the eyelids of the prisoner went up, revealing mild blue eyes.

But almost instantly the mildness was replaced by an agate hardness, and the body became upright.

"Yes, it is Boris, whom you betrayed. But I escaped by a hair, Stefani; and we meet again."

What good to tell this poor madman that Stefani Gregor had not betrayed him, that he had only warned those marked for death? There was no longer reason inside that skull. To die, probably in a few moments. So be it.

Had he not been ready for seven years? But that poor boy--to have come all these thousands of miles, only to walk into a trap! Had he found that note? Had they killed him? Doubtless they had or Boris Karlov would not be in this room.

"We killed him to-night, Stefani, in your rooms. We threw out the food so he would have to seek something to eat. The last of that breed, stem and branch! We are no longer the mud; we ourselves are the heels. We are conquering the world. Today Europe is ours; to-morrow, America!"

A wintry little smile stirred the lips of the man in the chair. America, with its keen perceptions of the ridiculous, its withering humour!

"No more the dissolute opera dancers will dance to your fiddling, Stefani, while we starve in the town. Fiddler, valet, tutor, the rivers and seas of Russia are red. We roll east and west, and our emblem is red. Stem and branch! We ground our heels in their faces as for centuries they ground theirs in ours. He escaped us there--but I was Nemesis. He died to-night."

The body in the chair relaxed a little. "He was clean and honest, Boris.

I made him so. He would have done fine things if you had let him live."

"That breed?"

"Why, you yourself loved him when he was a boy!"

"Stem and branch! I loved my little sister Anna, too. But what did they do to her behind those marble walls? Did you fiddle for her? What was she when they let her go? My pretty little Anna! The fires of h.e.l.l for those d.a.m.ned green stones of yours, Stefani! She heard of them and wanted to see them, and you promised."

"I? I never promised Anna! ... So that was it? Boris, I only saw her there. I never knew what brought her. But the boy was in England then."

"The breed, the breed!" roared the squat man. "Ha, but you should have seen! Those gay officers and their d.a.m.ned master--we left them with their faces in the mud, Stefani; in the mud! And the women begged. Fine music! Those proud hearts, begging Boris Karlov for their lives--their faces in the mud! You, born of us in those Astrakhan Hills, you denied us because you liked your fiddle and a full belly, and to play keeper of those emeralds. The winding paths of torture and misery and death by which they came into the possession of that house! And always the proletariat has had to pay in blood and daughters. You, of the people, to betray us!"

"I did not betray you. I only tried to save those who had been kind to me."

A cunning light shot into Karlov's eyes. "The emeralds!" He struck his pocket. "Here, Stefani; and they shall be broken up to buy bread for our people."

"That poor boy! So he brought them! What are you going to do with me?"

"Watch you grow thin, Stefani. You want death; you shall want food instead. Oh, a little; enough to keep you alive. You must learn what it is to be hungry."

The squat man picked up the bundle from the table and tore off the wrapping paper. A violin the colour of old Burgundy lay revealed.

"Boris!" The man in the chair writhed.

"Have I waked you, Stefani?"--tenderly. "The Stradivarius--the very grand duke of fiddles! And he and his d.a.m.ned officers, how they used to call out--'Get Stefani to fiddle for us!' And you fiddled, dragged your genius though the mud to keep your belly warm!"

"To save a soul, Boris--the boy's. When I fiddled his uncle forgot to drag him into an orgy. Ah, yes; I fiddled, fiddled because I had promised his mother!"

"The Italian singer! She was lucky to die when she did. She did not see the torch, the bayonet, and the mud. But the boy did--with his English accent! How he escaped I don't know; but he died to-night, and the emeralds are in my pocket. See!" Karlov held the instrument close to the other's face. "Look at it well, this grand duke of fiddles. Look, fiddler, look!"

The huge hands pressed suddenly. There was brittle crackling, and a rare violin became kindling. A sob broke from the prisoner's lips. What to Karlov was a fiddle to him was a soul. He saw the madman fling the wreckage to the floor and grind his heels into the fragments. Gregor shut his eyes, but he could not shut his ears; and he sensed in that cold, demoniacal fury of the crunching heel the rising of maddened peoples.

CHAPTER X