Kitty, at a mental impa.s.se, could only stare into the night beyond the window. This mesmeric state endured for a minute; then a gentle and continuous sound dissipated the spell. It was raining. Obliquely she saw the burnt egg in the pan. The thing had happened; she had not been dreaming.
Her brain awoke. Thought crowded thought; before one matured another displaced it; and all as futile as the sparks from the anvil. An avalanche of conjecture; and out of it all eventually emerged one concrete fact. The man Was honest. His hunger had been honest; his laughter. Who was he, what was he? For all his speech, not English; for all his gestures, not Italian. Moribund perspectives. Somewhere that day he had fought for his life. John Two-Hawks.
And there was the mysterious evanishment of old Gregory, whose name was Stefani Gregor. In a humdrum, prosaic old apartment like this!
Kitty had ideas about adventure--an inheritance, though she was not aware of that. There had to be certain ingredients, princ.i.p.ally mystery.
Anything sordid must not be permitted to edge in. She had often gone forth upon semi-perilous enterprises as a reporter, entered sinister houses where crimes had been committed, but always calculating how much copy at eight dollars a column could be squeezed out of the affair. But this promised to be something like those tales which were always clear and wonderful in her head but more or less opaque when she attempted to transfer them to paper. A secret society? Vengeance? An echo of the war?
"Johnny Two-Hawks," she murmured aloud. "And he hopes we"ll never meet again!"
There was a mirror over the sink, and she threw a glance into it. Very well; if he thought like that about it.
Here the doorbell tinkled. That would be the faithful janitor. She ran to the door.
"Whadjuh wanta see me about, Miz Conover?"
"What has happened to old Mr. Gregory?"
"Him? Why, some amb"lance fellers carted him off this afternoon. Didn"t know nawthin" was the matter with "im until I runs into them in the hall."
"He"d been hurt?"
"Couldn"t say, miz. He was on a stretcher when I seen "im. Under a sheet."
"But he might have been dead!"
"Nope. I ast "em, an" they said a shock of some sort."
"What hospital?"
"Gee, I forgot t"ast that!"
"I"ll find out. Good-night."
But Kitty did not find out. She called up all the known private and public hospitals, but no Gregor or Gregory had been received that afternoon, nor anybody answering his description. The fog had swallowed up Stefani Gregor.
CHAPTER VI
The reportorial instinct in Kitty Conover, combined with her natural feminine curiosity, impelled her to seek to the bottom of affair. Her newspaper was as far from her as the poles; simply a paramount desire to translate the incomprehensible into sequence and consequence. Harmless old Gregor"s disappearance and the advent of John Two-Hawks--the absurdity of that name!--with his impeccable English accent, his Latin gestures, and his black eye, convinced her that it was political; an electrical cross current out of that broken world over there. Moribund perspectives. What did that signify save that Johnny Two-Hawks had fought somewhere that day for his life? Had Gregor been spirited away so as to leave Two-Hawks without support, to confuse and discourage him and break down his powers of resistance? Or had there been something of great value in the Gregor apartment, and Johnny Two-Hawks had come too late to save his friend?
A word slipped into her mind like a whiff of miasma off an evil swamp.
As she recognized the word she felt the same horror and repugnance one senses upon being unexpectedly confronted by a cobra. Internationalism.
The sc.u.m of the world boiling to the top. A half-blind viper striking venomously at everything--even itself! A destroyer who tore down but who knew not how or what to build. Kitty knew that lower New York was seething with this species of terrorism--thousands of noisome European rats trying to burrow into the granary of democracy. But she had no particular fear of the result. The reacting chemicals of American humour and common sense would neutralize that virus. Supposing a ripple from this indecent eddy had touched her feet? The torch of liberty in the hands of Anarch!
Johnny Two-Hawks. Somehow--even if she never saw him again--she knew she would always remember him by that name. Phases of the encounter began to return. Fine hands; perhaps he painted or played. The oblong head of well-balanced mentality. A pleasant voice. Breeding. To be sure, he had laughed at that fan popping out. Anybody would have laughed. Never had she felt so idiotic. He had gravely expressed the hope that they might never meet again because his life was in danger. What danger?
Conceivably the enmity of a society--internationalism. The word having found lodgment in her thoughts took root. Internationalism--Utopia while you wait! Anarchism and Bolshevism offering nostrums for humanity"s ills! And there were sane men who defended the cult on the basis that the intention was honest. Who can say that the rattlesnake does not consider his intentions honourable?
The attribute lacking in the ape to make him human is continuity of thought and action in all things save one. He often starts out well but he never arrives. His interest is never sustained. He drops one thing and turns to another. The exception is his enmity, savage and cunning, relentless and enduring.
Kitty was awake to one fact. She could not venture to dig into this affair alone. On the other hand, she did not want one of the men from the city room--a reporter who would see nothing but news. If Gregor was only a prisoner publicity might be the cause of his death; and publicity would certainly react hardily against Johnny Two-Hawks. To whom might she turn?
Cutty!--with his great physical strength, his shrewd and alert mentality, and his wide knowledge of peoples and tongues. There was the man for her--Kitty Conover"s G.o.dfather. She dumped the contents of her handbag upon the stand in the hallway in her impatience to find Cutty"s card with his telephone number. It was not in the directory. She might catch him before he went out for the evening.
A j.a.panese voice answered her call.
""Souse, but he iss out."
"Where?"
"No tell me."
"How long has he been gone?"
""Scuse!"
Kitty heard the click of the receiver as it went down upon the hook.
But she wasn"t the daughter of Conover for nothing. She called up the University Club. No. The Harvard Club. No. The Players, the Lambs; and in the latter club she found him.
"Who is it?" Cutty spoke impatiently.
"Kitty Conover."
"Oh! What"s the matter? Can"t you have lunch with me?"
"Something very strange is happening in this old apartment house, Cutty.
I"m afraid it is a matter of life and death. Otherwise I shouldn"t have bothered you. Can you come up right away?"
"As soon as a taxi can take me!"
"Thanks."
Kitty then went through the apartment and turned out all the lights.
Next she drew up a chair to the kitchen window and sat down to watch.
All was dark across the way. But there was nothing singular in this fact. Johnny Two-Hawks would have sense enough to realize that it would be safer to move about in the dark. It was even probable that he was lying down.
Tumpitum-tump! Tumpitum-tump! went the racing Elevated; and Kitty"s heart raced along with it. Queer how the echo of Cutty"s description of the drums calling a jehad--a holy war--should adapt itself to that Elevated. Drums! Perhaps the echo clung because she had been interested beyond measure in his tale of those two emeralds, the drums of jeopardy.
Mobs sacking palaces and museums and banks and homes; all the sc.u.m of the world boiling to the top; the Red Night that wasn"t over.
She uttered a shaky little laugh. She would tell Cutty. The real drums of jeopardy weren"t emeralds but the roll of warning that prescience taps upon the spine, the occult sense of impending danger. That was why the Elevated went tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! She would tell Cutty.
The drums of fear.
He over there and she here, in darkness; both of them waiting for something to happen; and the invisible drumsticks beating the tattoo of fear. If he were in her thoughts might not she be a little in his?
She stood up. She would do it. Convention in a moment like this was nonsense. Hadn"t he kept his side of the line scrupulously?
Nonchalance. It occurred to her for the first time that there must be good material in a man who could come through in a contest with death, nonchalant. She would fetch him and have him here to meet Cutty, this rather forlorn Johnny Two-Hawks, with his unshaven face, his black eye, and his nonchalance. She would fetch him at once. It would save a good deal of time.