The Drums of Jeopardy Part 25

"How long am I to be here?"

"If you're good, two weeks," interposed the nurse.

"Two weeks? I say, would you mind doing me a trifling favour? I'd like a violin to amuse myself with."

"A fiddle? I don't know a thing about 'em except that they sound good."

Cutty pulled at his chin.

"Whatever it costs I'll reimburse you the day I'm up."

"All right. I'll bring you a bundle of them, and you can do your own selecting."

Out in the corridor the nurse said: "I couldn't hold him. But he'll be easier now that he's got the questions off his mind. He will have to be humoured a lot. That's one of the characteristics of head wounds."

"What do you think of him?"

"He seems to be gentle and patient; and I imagine he's hard to resist when he wants anything. Winning, you'd call it. I suppose I mustn't ask who he really is?"

"No. Poor devil. The fewer that know, the better. I'll be home round three."

Once in the street, Cutty was besieged suddenly with the irresistible desire to mingle with the crowd over in the Avenue, to hear the military bands, the shouts, to witness the gamut of emotions which he knew would attend this epochal day. Of course he would view it all from the aloof vantage of the historian, and store away commentaries against future needs.

And what a crowd it was! He was elbowed and pushed, jostled and trod on, carried into the surges, relegated to the eddies; and always the metallic taptap of steel-shod boots on the asphalt, the bayonets throwing back the radiant suns.h.i.+ne in sharp, clear flashes. The keen, joyous faces of those boys. G.o.d, to be young like that! To have come through that h.e.l.l on earth with the ability still to smile! Cutty felt the tears running down his cheeks. Instinctively he knew that this was to be his last thrill of this order. He was fifty-two.

"Quit your crowding there!" barked a voice under his chin.

"Sorry, but it's those behind me," said Cutty, looking down into a florid countenance with a raggedy gray moustache and a pair of blue eyes that were blinking.

"I'm so d.a.m.ned short I can't see anything!"

"Neither can I."

"You could if you wiped your eyes."

"You're crying yourself," declared Cutty.

"Blinking jacka.s.s! Got anybody out there?"

"All of 'em."

"I get you, old son of a gun! No flesh and blood, but they're ours all the same. Couple of old fools; huh?"

"Sure pop! What right have two old codgers got here, anyhow? What brought you out?"

"What brought you?"

"Same thing."

"d.a.m.n it! If I could only see something!"

Cutty put his hands upon the shoulders of this chance acquaintance and propelled him toward the curb. There were cries of protest, curses, catcalls, but Cutty bored on ahead until he got his man where he could see the tin hats, the bayonets, and the colours; and thus they stood for a full hour. Each time the flag went by the little man yanked off his derby and turned truculently to see that Cutty did the same.

"Say," he said as they finally dropped back, "I'd offer to buy a drink, only it sounds flat."

"And it would taste flat after a mighty wine like this," replied Cutty.

"Maybe you've heard of the nectar of the G.o.ds. Well, you've just drunk it, my friend."

"I sure have. Those kids out there, smiling after all that h.e.l.l; and you and me on the sidewalk, blubbering over 'em! What's the answer? We're Americans!"

"You said it. Good-bye."

Cutty pressed on to the flow and went along with it, lighter in the heart than he had been in many a day. These two million who lined Fifth Avenue, who cheered, laughed, wept, went silent, cheered again, what did their presence here signify? That America's day had come; that as a people they were h.o.m.ogeneous at last; that that which laws had failed to bring forth had been accomplished by an ideal.

Bolshevism, socialism--call it what you will--would beat itself into fragments against this Rock of Democracy, which went down to the centre of the world and whose pinnacle touched the stars. Reincarnation; the simple ideals of the forefathers restored. And with this knowledge tingling in his thoughts--and perhaps there was a bit of spring in his heart--Cutty continued on, without destination, chin jutting, eyes s.h.i.+ning. He was an American!

He might have continued on indefinitely had he not seen obliquely a window filled with musical instruments.

Hawksley's fiddle! He had all but forgotten. All right. If the poor beggar wanted to sc.r.a.pe a fiddle, sc.r.a.pe it he should. The least he, Cutty, could do would be to accede to any and every whim Hawksley expressed. Wasn't he planning to rob the beggar of the drums, happen they ever turned up? But how the deuce to pick out a fiddle which would have a tune in it? Of all the hypercritical duffers the fiddler was the worst. Beside a fiddler of the first rank the rich old maid with the poodle was a hail fellow well met.

Of course Gregor had taught the chap. That meant he would know instantly; just as his host would instantly observe the difference between green gla.s.s and green beryl.

Cutty turned into the shop, infinitely amused. Fiddles! What next?

Having const.i.tuted a guardians.h.i.+p over Kitty, he was now playing impressario to Hawksley. As if he hadn't enough parts to play! Wouldn't he be risking his life to-night trying to find where Stefani Gregor was?

Fiddles! Fiddles and emeralds! What a choice old hypocrite he was!

Fate has a way of telling you all about it--afterward; conceivably, that humanity might continue to reproduce its species. Otherwise humanity would proceed to extinguish itself forthwith. Thus, Cutty was totally unaware upon entering the shop that he was about to tear off its hinges the door he was so carefully bolting and latching and padlocking between Kitty Conover and this duffer who wanted to fiddle his way through convalescence.

Where there is fiddling there is generally dancing. If it be not the feet, then it will be the soul.

CHAPTER XVIII

There are some men who know a little about all things and a great deal about many. Such a man was Cutty. But as he approached the counter behind which stood an expectant clerk he felt for once that he was in a far country. There were fiddles and fiddles, just as there were emeralds and emeralds. Never again would he laugh over the story of the man who thought Botticelli was a manufacturer of spool thread. He attacked the problem, however, like the thoroughbred he was--frankly.

"I want to buy a violin," he began, knowing that in polite musical circles the word fiddle was taboo. "I know absolutely nothing at all about quality or price. Understand, though, while you might be able to fool me, you wouldn't fool the man I'm buying it for. Now what would you suggest?"

The clerk--a salesman familiar with certain urban types, thinly including the Fifth Avenue, which came in for talking-machine records--recognized in this well-dressed, attractive elderly man that which he designated the swell. Hateful word, yes, but having a perfectly legitimate niche, since in the minds of the hoi polloi it nicely describes the differences between the poor gentleman and the gentleman of leisure. To proceed with the digression, to no one is the word more hateful than to the individual to whom it is applied. Cutty would have blushed at the clerk's thought.

"Perhaps I'd better get the proprietor," was the clerk's suggestion.

"Good idea," Cutty agreed. "Take my card along with you." This was a Fifth Avenue shop, and Cutty knew there would be a Who's Who or a Bradstreet somewhere about.

In the interim he inspected the case-lined walls. Trombones. He chuckled. Lucky that Hawksley's talent didn't extend in this direction.

True, he himself collected drums, but he did not play them. Something odd about music; human beings had to have it, the very lowest in the scale. A universal magic. He was himself very fond of good music; but these days he fought shy of it; it had the faculty of sweeping him back into the twenties and reincarnating vanished dreams.

After a certain length of time, from the corner of his eye he saw the clerk returning with the proprietor, the latter wearing an amiable smile, which probably connoted a delving into the aforesaid volumes of attainment and worth. Cutty hoped this was so, as it would obviate the necessity of going into details as to who he was and what he had.