The Drums of Jeopardy Part 14

"Enough! Do you want us to bundle you up in the bedclothes and carry you off? It will not be a pleasant experience for a pretty young woman like yourself. Something happened to the man you knew as Gregory. Will that make you understand?"

"You know what abduction means?"

"Your police will not catch us."

"But I might give you the wrong address."

"Try it and see what happens. Young lady, this is a bad affair for a woman to be mixed up in. Be sensible. We are in a hurry."

"Well, you seem to have acquired at least one American habit!" said a gruff voice from the bedroom doorway. "Raise your hands quickly, and don't turn," went on the gruff voice. "If I shoot it will be to kill.

It is a rough game, as you say. That's it; and keep them up. Now, then, young lady, slip on your kimono. Get up and search these men. I'm in a hurry, too."

Kitty obeyed, very lovely in her dishevelment. Repugnant as the task was she disarmed the two men and flung their weapons on the bed.

"Now something to tie their hands; anything that will hold."

Kitty could see the speaker now. Another coal heaver, but evidently on her side.

"Tie their hands behind them... I warn you not to move, men. When I say I'll shoot I mean it. Don't be afraid of hurting them, miss. Very good.

Now bandage their eyes. Handkerchiefs."

But Kitty's handkerchiefs did not run to the dimensions' required; so she ripped up a petticoat. Torn between her eagerness to complete a disagreeable task and her offended modesty, Kitty went through the performance with creditable alacrity. Then she jumped back into bed, doubled her knees, and once more drew up the bedclothes to her chin, content to be a spectator, her eyes as wide as ever they possibly could be.

Some secret-service man Cutty had sent to protect her. Dear old Cutty!

Small wonder he had urged her to spend the night at a hotel. The admiration of her childhood returned, but without the shackles of shyness. She had always trusted him absolutely, and to this trust was now added understanding. To have him pop into her life again in this fas.h.i.+on, all the ordinary approaches to intimacy wiped out by these amazing episodes; the years bridged in an hour! If only he were younger!

"Watch them, miss. Don't be afraid to shoot. I'll return in a moment"--still gruffly. The secret-service man pushed his prisoners into chairs and left the bedroom.

Kitty did not care how gruff the voice was; it was decidedly pleasant in her ears. Gingerly she picked up one of the revolvers. Kitty Conover with shooting irons in her hands, like a movie actress! She heard a whistle. After this an interval of silence, save for the ticking of the alarm clock on the stand. She eyed the blindfolded men speculatively, swung out of bed, and put on her stockings and sandals; then she sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the sequence. Kitty Conover was going to have some queer recollections to tell her grandchildren, providing she had any. That morning she had risen to face a humdrum normal day.

And here she was, at midnight, hobn.o.bbing with quiescent murder and sudden death! To-morrow Burlingame would ask her to hustle up the Sunday stuff, and she would hustle. She wanted to laugh, but was a little afraid that this laughter might degenerate into incipient hysteria.

There was still in her mind a vivid recollection of her dream--the fire of diamonds and the blonde girl with the tiara of rubies. Olga, Olga!

Russian; the whole affair was Russian. She s.h.i.+vered. Always that land and people had appeared to her in sinister aspect; no doubt an impression acquired from reading melodramas written by Englishmen who, once upon a time, had given Russia preeminence as a political menace.

Russia, in all things--music, art, literature--the tragic note. Stefani Gregor and Johnny Two-Hawks had roused the enmity of some political society with this result. Nihilist or Bolshevist or socialist, there was little choice; and Cutty sensibly did not want her drawn into the whirlpool.

What a pleasant intimacy hers and Cutty's promised to be! And if he hadn't casually dropped into the office that afternoon she would have surrendered the affair to the police, and that would have been the end of it. Amazing thought--you might jog along all your life at the side of a person and never know him half so well as someone you met m a tense episode, like that of the immaculate Cutty crossing the fire escape with Two-Hawks on his shoulders!

She heard the friendly coal heaver going down the corridor to the door.

When he returned to the bedroom two men accompanied him. Not a word was said. The two men marched off with the prisoners and left Kitty alone with her saviour.

"Thank you," she said, simply.

"You poor little chicken, did you believe I had deserted you?" The voice wasn't gruff now.

"Cutty?" Kitty ran to him, flinging her arms round his neck. "Oh, Cutty!"

Cutty's heart, which had b.u.mped along an astonis.h.i.+ng number of million times in fifty-two years, registered a memorable b.u.mp against his ribs.

The touch of her soft arms and the faint, indescribable perfume which emanates from a dainty woman's hair thrilled him beyond any thrill he had ever known. For Kitty's mother had never put her arms round old Cutty's neck. Of course he understood readily enough: Molly's girl, flesh of her flesh. And she had rushed to him as she would have rushed to her father. He patted her shoulder clumsily, still a little dazzled for all the revelation in the a.n.a.lysis. The sweet intimacy of it! The door of Paradise opened for a moment, and then shut in his face.

"I did not recognize you at all!" she cried, standing off. "I shouldn't have known you on the street. And it is so simple. What a wonderful man you are!"

"For an old codger?" Cutty's heart registered another sizable b.u.mp.

Kitty laughed. "Never call yourself old to me again. Are you always doing these things?"

"Well, I keep moving. I suspected something like this might happen.

Those two will go to the Tombs to await deportation if they are aliens.

Perhaps we can dig something out of them relative to this man Gregor.

Anyhow, we'll try."

"Cutty, I saw a man in the court with a pocket lamp before I went to bed. He was hunting for something."

"I didn't find anything but a lot of fresh food someone had thrown out."

"It was you, then?"

"Yes. There was a vague possibility that your protege might have thrown out something valuable during the struggle."

"What?"

"Lord knows! A queer business, Kitty, you've lugged me into--my own!

And there is one thing I want you to remember particularly: Life means nothing to the men opposed, neither chivalry nor ethics. Annihilation is their business. They don't want civilization; they want chaos. They have lost the sense of comparisons or they would not seek to thrust Bolshevism down the throats of the rest of the world. They say democracy has failed, and their subst.i.tute is murder and loot. Kitty, I want you to leave this roost."

"I shall stay until my lease expires."

"Why? In the face of real danger?"

"Because I intend to, Cutty--unless you kidnap me."

"Have you any good reason?"

"You'll laugh; but something tells me to stay here."

But Cutty did not laugh. "Very well. Tomorrow an a.s.sistant janitor will be installed. His name is Antonio Bernini. Every night he will whistle up the tube. Whistle back. If you are going out for the evening notify him where you intend to go and when you expect to be back. A wire from your bed to his cot will be installed. In danger, press the b.u.t.ton.

That's the best I can do for you, since you decide to stick. I don't believe anything more will happen to-night, but from now on you will be watched. Never come directly to my apartment. Break your journey two or three times with taxis. Always use Elevator Four. The boy is mine; belongs to the service. So our Bolshevik friends won't gather anything about you from him."

As a matter of fact, Cutty had now come to the conviction that it would be well to let Kitty remain here as a lure. He had urged her to leave, and she had refused, so his conscience was tolerably clear. Besides, she would henceforth be guarded with a ceaseless efficiency second only to that which encompa.s.ses a President of the United States. Always some man of the service would be watching those who watched her. This was going to develop into a game of small nets, one or two victims at a time.

Because these enemies of civilization lacked coherence in action there would be slim chance of rounding them up in bulk. But from now on men would vanish--one here, a pair there, perhaps on occasion four or five.

And those who had known them would know them no more. The policy would be that employed by the British in the submarine campaign--mysterious silence after the evanishment.

"It's all so exciting!" said Kitty. "But that poor old man Gregor! He had a wonderful violin, Cutty; and sometimes I used to hear him play folklore music--sad, haunting melodies."

"We'll know in a little while what's become of him. I doubt there is a foreign organization in the city that hasn't one or more of our men on the inside. A word will be dropped somewhere. I'm rarely active on this side of the Atlantic; and what I'm doing now is practically due to interest. But every active operative in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago is on the lookout for a man who, if left free, will stir up a lot of trouble. He has leaders.h.i.+p, this Boris Karlov, a former intimate here of Trotzky's. We have reason to believe that he slipped through the net in San Francisco. Probably under a cleverly forged pa.s.sport. Now please describe the man who came in with the policeman. I haven't had time to make inquiries at the precinct, where they will have a minute description of him."

"He made me think of a gorilla, just as I told you. His face was pretty well banged up. Naturally I did not notice any scar. A dreadfully black beard, shaven."

"Squat, powerful, like a gorilla. Lord, I wish I'd had a glimpse of him!

He's one of the few topnotchers I haven't met. He's the spark, the hand on the plunger. The powder is all ready in this land of ours; our job is to keep off the sparks until we can spread the stuff so it will only go puff instead of bang. This man Karlov is bad medicine for democracy.