The Drums of Jeopardy Part 48

"Your poor face!"

"Banged up? Well, honestly, it feels as it looks, Kitty, this chap was going to give himself up in exchange for you. Not a word of protest, not a question. All he said was: 'I am ready.' That's why I'm always going to be on his side."

"He did that--for me?"

"For you. Did it never occur to you that you're the sort folks always want to do things for if you'll let them?"

"G.o.d bless you, Cutty!"

"He's always blessing me, Kitty. He blessed me with your mother's friends.h.i.+p, now yours. Kitty, I'm going to jilt you."

"Jilt me?"--her heart leaping.

"Yes, ma'am. We can't go through with that mummery. We aren't built that way. I'll figure it out in some other fas.h.i.+on. But marriage is a sacred contract; and this farce would have left a scar on your honest mind.

You'd have to tell some man. Your kind can't go through life without being loved. Would he understand? I wonder. He'll be human or you wouldn't fall in love with him; and always he'll be pondering and bedevilling himself with queer ideas--because he'll be human. Of course there's a loophole--you can sue me for breach of promise."

"Please, Cutty; don't laugh! You're one of those men they call Greathearts. And now I'm going to tell you something. It wasn't going to be a farce. I intended to become your true wife, Cutty, make you as happy as I could."

Cutty patted her hand and got up. Lord, how bruised and sore his old body was!... His true wife! She might have been his if he had not missed that train. But for this hour, hot with life, she might never have discovered that she loved Hawksley. His true wife! Ah, she would have been all of that--Molly's girl!

"Will you mind waiting here until I see where old Stefani Gregor is?"

"No," answered Kitty, dreamily.

Cutty limped to the door. Outside he leaned against the part.i.tion. Done in, body and soul. Always opening the gates of paradise for somebody else... His true wife! Slowly he descended the stairs.

Alone, Kitty smoothed back the dank hair from Hawksley's brow, which she kissed. Benediction and good-bye.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

Because it was a.s.sumed that some of Karlov's pack might be at large and unsuspectingly return to the trap, Federal agents would remain on guard all night. They explored the house, hunting for chemicals, doc.u.ments, letters, and addresses. They found enough high explosive to blow up the district. And they found Stefani Gregor. They were standing by the cot as Cutty came in.

"Yes, sir. Just this minute went out."

"Did he speak?"

"A woman's name."

"Rosa?"

"Yes, sir. Looks to me as if he had been starved to death. Know who he was?"

"Yes. Tell the coroner to be gentle. Once upon a time Stefani Gregor spoke to kings by right of genius."

The thought that he himself might have been the indirect cause of Gregor's death shocked Cutty, who was above all things tender.

He had held back the raid for several days, to serve his own ends. He could have ordered the raid from Was.h.i.+ngton, and it would have gone through as smoothly as to-night. The drums of jeopardy. Well, that phase of the game was done with. He had held up this raid so that he might be on hand to search Karlov; and until now he had forgotten the drums.

Accurst! They were accurst. The death of Stefani Gregor would always be on his conscience.

Cutty stared--not very clearly--at the cameo-like face so beautifully calm. As in life, so it was in death; the calm that had brooked and beaten down the turbulent instincts of the boy, the imperturbable calm of a great soul. Rosa. The sublime unselfishness of the man! He had sacrificed wealth and fame for the love of the boy's mother--unspoken, unrequited love, the quality that pa.s.ses understanding. And his reward: to die on this cot, in horrid loneliness. Rosa.

All at once Cutty felt himself little, trivial, beside this forlorn bier. What did he know about love? He had never made any sacrifices; he had simply carried in his heart a bittersweet recollection. But here!

Twenty-odd years of unremitting devotion to the son of the woman he had loved--Stefani Gregor. Creating environments that would develop the n.o.ble qualities in the boy, interposing himself between the boy and the evil pleasures of the uncle, teaching him the beautiful, cleansing his soul of the inherited mud. Reverently Cutty drew the coverlet over the fine old head.

"What's this?" asked one of the operatives. "Looks like the pieces of a broken fiddle."

Out of those dark red bits of wood--some of them bearing the imprints of hobnails--Cutty constructed the scene. A wave of bitter rage rolled over him. The beast! Karlov had done this thing, with poor old Gregor looking on, too weak to intervene. Not so many years ago these bits of wood, under the master's touch, had entranced the souls of thousands. Cutty recalled a fairy tale he had read when a boy about a prince whose soul had been transformed into a flower which, if plucked or broken, died.

Karlov had murdered Stefani Gregor, perhaps not legally but actually nevertheless.

Rehabilitated in soul, Cutty left the room. He had read a compelling lesson in self-sacrifice. He was going to pick up his cross and go on with it, smiling. After all, Kitty was only an interlude; the big thing was the game; and shortly he would be in the thick of great events again. But Kitty should be happy.

His old a.n.a.lytical philosophy resumed its functions. The contempt and jealousy of one race for another; what was G.o.d's idea in implanting that in souls? Hawksley was at base Russian. The boy's English education, his adopted outlook upon life, made it possible for Cutty to ignore the racial antagonism of the Anglo-Saxon for all other races. Stefani Gregor at one end of the world and he at the other, blindly working out the destinies of Kitty Conover and Ivan Mikhail Feodorovich and so forth and so on, with the blood of Catharine in his veins! Made a chap dizzy to think of it. Traditions were piling up along with crowns and sceptres in the abyss.

When he returned to the attic he felt himself fortified against any inevitability. Hawksley was sitting up, his back to the wall, staring groggily but with reckless adoration into Kitty's lovely face. Youth will be served. As if, watching these two, there could be any doubt of it! And he had bent part of his energies toward keeping them separated.

"Ha!" he cried, cheerfully. "Back on top again, I see. How's the head?"

"Haven't any; no legs; I'm nothing at all but a bit of my own imagination. How do you feel?"

"Like the aftermath of an Irish wake." Then Cutty's battered face a.s.sumed an expression that was meant to typify gravity. "John," he aid, "I've bad news for you."

John. A glow went over the young man's aching body. John. What could that signify except that he had pa.s.sed into the eternal friends.h.i.+p of this old thoroughbred? John.

"About Stefani?"

"Stefani is dead. He died speaking your mother's name."

Hawksley's head sank; his chin touched his chest. He spoke without looking up. "Something told me I would never see him alive again. Old Stefani! If there is any good in me it will be his handiwork. I say,"

he added, his eyes now seeking Cutty's, "you called me John. Will you carry on?"

"Keep an eye on you? So long as you may need me."

"I come from a lawless race. Stefani had to fight. Even now I'm afraid sometimes. G.o.d knows I want to be all he tried to make me."

"You're all right, John. You've reached haven; the storms hereafter will be outside. Besides, Stefani will always be with you. You'll never pick up that old Amati without feeling Stefani near. Can you stand?"

"Between the two of you, perhaps."

With Kitty on one side and Cutty on the other Hawksley managed the descent tolerably well. Often a foot dragged. How strong she was, this girl! No hysterics, no confusion, after all that racket, with death--or something worse--reaching out toward her; calmly telling him that there was another step, warning him not to bear too heavily on Cutty! Holding him up physically and morally, these two, now all he had in life to care for. Yesterday, unknown to him; this night, bound by hoops of steel.

The girl had forgiven him; he knew it by the touch of her arm.... Old Stefani! A sob escaped him. Their arms tightened.

"No; I was thinking of Stefani. Rather hard--to die all alone--because he loved me."

Kitty longed to be alone. There were still many unshed tears--some for Cutty, some for Stefani Gregor, some for Johnny Two-Hawks, and some for herself.

In the limousine Cutty sat in the middle, Kitty on his left and Hawksley on his right, his arms round them both. Presently Hawksley's head touched his shoulder and rested there; a little later Kitty did likewise. His children! Lord, he was going to have a tremendous interest in life, after all! He smiled with kindly irony at the back of the chauffeur. His children, these two; and he knew as he planned their future that they were thinking over and round but not of him, which is the way of youth.