The Drums of Jeopardy by Harold MacGrath (best classic literature TXT) 📕

escaped - into China, Sweden, India, wherever they could find an open route. To his story there are many loose ends, and Hawksley is not the talking kind. You mustn't repeat what I tell you. Hawksley, with all that money and a forged English passport, would have a good deal of trouble explaining if he ran afoul the police. There is no real proof that the money is his or Gregor's. As a matter of fact, it is Gregor's, and Hawksley was bringing it to him. Hawksley is Gregor's protege."

Kitty nodded. This dovetailed with what Johnny Two-Hawks had told her that night.

"How the two came together originally I don't know. Gregor was in his younger days a great violinist, but unknown to the American public. Early in his career he speculated with his concert earnings and turned a pot of money. He dropped the professional career for that of a country gentleman. He had a handsome estate, and lived sensibly. He sent Hawksley to England to school and spent a good deal of time there with him, teaching him how to play the fiddle, for which it seems Hawksley had a natural bent. He had to Anglicize his name; for Two-Hawks would have made people laugh. To be a gentleman, Kitty, one does not have to be a prince or a grand duke. Gregor was a polished gentleman, and he turned Hawksley into one."

Again Kitty nodded, her eyes sparkling.

"The Russ - the educated Russ - is a queer biscuit. Got to have a finger in some political pie, and political pies in Russia before the war were lese-majesty. The result - Gregor got in wrong with his secret society and the political police and was forced to fly to save his life. But before he fled he had all his convertible funds transferred. Only his estate was confiscated. Hawksley was in London when the war broke out. There was a lot of red tape, naturally, regarding the funds. I shan't bother you with that, Hawksley, hoping to better his protector's future, returned to Russia and joined his regiment and fought until the Czar abdicated. Foretasting the trend of events, he tried to get back to England, but that was impossible. He was permitted to retire to the Gregor estate, where he remained until the uprising of the Bolsheviki. Then he started across the world to join Gregor."

"That was brave."

"It certainly was. I imagine that Hawksley's journey has that of Ulysses laid away on the shelf. Karlov was the head of the society which had voted Gregor's death. So he had agents watching Hawksley. And Karlov himself undertook the chase across Russia, China, and the Pacific."

"I'm glad I gave him something to eat. But Gregor, a valet in a hotel, with all that money!"

"The red tape."

"What a dizzy world we live in, Cutty!"

"Dizzy is the word." Cutty sighed. His yarn had passed a very shrewd censor. "Karlov feels it his duty to kill off all his countryman who do not agree with his theories. He wanted these funds here, but Hawksley was too clever for him. Remember, now, not a word of this to Hawksley. I tell you this in confidence."

"I promise."

"You'll have to spend the night here. It's round four, and the power has been shut off. There's the stairs, but it would be dawn before you reach the street."

"Who cares?"

"I do. I don't believe you're in a good mood to send back to that garlicky warren. I wish to the Lord you'd leave it!"

"It's difficult to find anything desirable within my means. Rents are terrifying. I'll sleep on the divan. A rug or a blanket. I'm a silly fool, I suppose."

"You can have a guest room."

"I'd rather the divan; less scandalous. Cutty, I forgot. He played for me."

"What? He did?"

"I had to run out of the room because some things he said choked me up. Didn't care whether he died or not. He was even lonelier than I. I lay down on the divan, and then I heard music. Funny, but somehow I fancied he was calling me back; and I had to hang on to the divan. Cutty, he is a great violinist."

"Are you fond of music?"

"I am mad about it! I'm always running round to concerts; and I'd walk from Battery to Bronx to hear a good violinist."

Fiddles and Irish hearts. Swiftly came the vision of Hawksley fiddling the heart out of this lonely girl - if he had the chance. And he, Cutty, was going to fascinate her - with what? He rose and took her by the shoulders, bringing her round so that the light was full in her face. Slate-blue eyes.

"Kitty, what would you say if I kissed you?" Inwardly he asked: "Now, what the devil made me say that?"

The sinister and cynical idea leaped from its ambush. "Why, Cutty, I - I don't believe I should mind. It's - it's you!" Vile wretch that she was!

Cutty, noting the lily succeeding the rose, did not kiss her. Fate has a way of reversing the illogical and giving it logical semblance. It was perfectly logical that he should not kiss her; and yet that was exactly what he should have done. The fatherliness of the salute - and he couldn't have made it anything else - would have shamed Kitty's peculiar state of mind out of existence and probably sent back to its eternal sleep that which was strangely reawaking in his lonely heart.

"Forgive me, Kitty. That wasn't exactly nice of me, even if I was trying to be funny."

She tore away from him, flung herself upon the divan, her face in the pillows, and let down the dam.

This wild sobbing - apparently without any reason terrified Cutty. He put both hands into his hair, but he drew them out immediately without retaining any of the thinning gray locks. Done up, both of them; that was the matter. He longed to console her, but knew not what to say or how to act. He had not seen a woman weep like this in so many years that he had forgotten the remedies.

Should he call the nurse? But that would only add to Kitty's embarrassment, and the nurse would naturally misinterpret the situation. He couldn't kneel and put his arms round her; and yet it was a situation that called for arms and endearments. He had sense enough to recognize that. Molly's girl crying like that, and he able to do nothing! It was intolerable. But what was she weeping about?

Covering the divan was a fine piece of Bokhara embroidery. He drew this down over Kitty and tucked her in, turned off the light, and proceeded to his bedroom.

Kitty's sobs died eventually. There was an occasional hiccup. That, too, disappeared. To play - or even think of playing - a game like that! She was despicable. A silly little fool, too, to suppose that so keen a mind as Cutty's would not see through the artifice! What was happening to her that she could let such a thought into her head?

By and by she was able to pick up Cutty's narrative and review it. Not a word about the drums of jeopardy, the mark of the thong round Hawksley's neck. Hadn't she let him know that she knew the author of that advertisement offering to buy the drums, no questions asked? Very well, then; if he would not tell her the truth she would have to find it out herself.

Meanwhile, Cutty sat on the edge of his bed staring blankly at the rug, trying to find a pick-up to the emotions that beset him. One thing issued clearly: He had wanted to kiss the child. He still wanted to kiss her. Why hadn't he? Unanswerable. It was still unanswerable even when the pallor of dawn began slowly to absorb the artificial light of his bed lamp.


CHAPTER XXIII


When Cutty awoke - having had about two hours' sleep - he was instantly conscious that the zest had gone from the adventure. It had resolved itself into official business into which he had projected himself gratuitously; and having assumed the offices of chief factor, he would have to see the affair through, victim of his own greediness. It did not serve to marshal excuses. He had frankly entered the affair in the role of buccaneer; and here he was, high and dry on the reef.

The drums of jeopardy, so far as he was concerned, had been shot into the moon two hundred thousand miles out of reach. He found himself resenting Hawksley's honesty in the matter of the customs.

But immediately this sense of resentment caused him to chuckle. Certainly some ancestor of his had been a Black Bart or a Galloping Dick.

He would put a few straight questions to Hawksley, however. To have lost all those precious stones and not to have inquired about them was a bit foggy, wasn't normal, human. Unless - bang on the plexus came the thought! - the beggar had hidden them himself. He had been exceedingly clever in hiding the wallet. Come to think of it, he hadn't mentioned that, either. Of course he had hidden the stones
- either in Gregor's apartment or m Kitty's. Blind as a bat. Now he understood why Karlov had made a prisoner of Coles. The old buzzard had sensed a trap and had countered it. The way of the transgressor was hard. His punishment for entertaining a looter's idea would be work when he wanted to loaf and enjoy himself.

Arriving at Hawksley's door he was confronted by a spectacle not without its humorous touch: The nurse extending a bowl and Hawksley staring at the sky beyond the window, stonily.

"But you must!" insisted Miss Frances.

"Chops or beefsteak!"

"It will give you nausea."

"Permit me to find out. Dash it, I'm hungry!" Hawksley declared. "I'm no fever patient. A smart rap on the head; nothing more than that. Healthy food will draw the blood down from there. Haven't lost anything but a few hours of consciousness, and you treat me as though I'd been jolly well peppered with shrapnel and gassed. Touch that stuff? Rather not! Chops or beefsteak!"

"Let him have it, Miss Frances," advised Cutty from the doorway.

"But it's unusual," replied the nurse as a final protest.

"Give it a try. Is he strong enough to sit up through breakfast?"

"He's really not fit. But if he insists on doing the one he might as well do the other."

"Righto!" - from the patient.

"Will you tell Kuroki to make it a beefsteak breakfast for four? I know how Mr. Hawksley feels. Been through the same bout." Cutty wanted Miss Frances out of the room.

"Very well. Only, I've warned him." Miss Frances left, somewhat miffed.

"Thanks," said Hawksley, smiling. "She thinks I'm