"And a fat lot of watching you"ve done to date," jeered Burlingame.
"Couldn"t help that. But I can be on the job until I return to the Balkans."
Kitty laughed joyously and sat down, perhaps a little thrilled. She had always admired Cutty from afar, shyly. Once in a blue moon he had in the old days appeared for tea; and he and Mrs. Conover would spend the balance of the afternoon discussing the lovable qualities of Tommy Conover. Kitty had seen him but twice during the war.
"Every so often," began Cutty, "I have to find listeners. Fact. I used to hate crowds, listeners; but those ten days in an open boat, a thousand miles from anywhere, made me gregarious. I"m always wanting company and hating to go to bed, which is bad business for a man of fifty-two." Cutty"s ship had been torpedoed.
To Kitty, with his tired eyes and weather-bitten face, his bony, gangling body, he had the appearance of a lazy man. Actually she knew him to be a man of tremendous vitality and endurance. Eagles when they roost are heavy-lidded and clumsy. She wondered if there was a corner on the globe he had not peered into.
For thirty years he had been following two G.o.ds--Rumour and War. For thirty years he had been the slave of cables and telegrams. Even now he was preparing to return to the Balkans, where the great fire had started and where there were still some threatening embers to watch.
Cutty was not well known in America; his reputation was European. He played the game because he loved it, being comfortably fortified with worldly goods. He was a linguist of rare attainments, specializing in the polyglot of southeastern Europe. He came and went like cloud shadow.
His foresight was so keen he was seldom ordered to go here or there; he was generally on the spot when the orders arrived.
He was interested in socialism and its bewildering ramifications, but only as an a.n.a.lytical student. He could fit himself into any environment, interview a prime minister in the afternoon and take potluck that night with the anarchist who was planning to blow up the prime minister.
Burlingame, an intimate, often exposed for Kitty"s delectation the amazing and colourful facets of Cutty"s diamond-brilliant mind. Cutty wrote authoritatively on famous gems and collected drums. He had one of the finest collections of chrysoprase in the world. He loved these semi-precious stones because of their unmatchable, translucent green--like the pulp of a grape. From Burlingame Kitty had learned that Cutty, rather indifferent to women, carried about with him the photographs--large size--of famous professional beauties and a case filled with polished chrysoprase. He would lay a photograph on a table and adorn the lovely throat with astonishing necklaces and the head with wonderful tiaras, all the while his brain at work with some intricate political puzzle.
And he collected drums. The walls of his apartment--part of the loft of a midtown office building--were covered with a most startling a.s.sortment of drums: drums of war, of the dance, of the temples of the feast, ancient and modern, some of them dreadful looking objects, as Kitty had cause to remember.
Though Cutty had known her father and mother intimately, Kitty was a comparative stranger. He recollected seeing her perhaps a dozen times.
She had been a shy child, not given to climbing over visitors" knees; not the precocious offspring of the average theatrical mother. So in the past he had somewhat overlooked her. Then one day recently he had dropped in to see Burlingame and had seen Kitty instead; which accounts for his presence here this day. Neither Kitty nor Burlingame suspected the true attraction. The dramatic editor accepted the advent as a peculiar compliment to himself. And it is to be doubted if Cutty himself realized that there was a true magnetic pole in this cubbyhole of a room.
Kitty, however, had vivid recollections. Actually the first strange man she had ever met. But not having been visible on her horizon, except in flashes, she knew of the man only what she had read and what Burlingame had casually offered during discussions.
"Well, anyhow," said Burlingame, complacently, "the war is over."
Cutty smiled indulgently. "That"s the trouble with us chaps who tramp round the world for news. We can"t bamboozle ourselves like you folks who stay at home. The war was only the first phase. There"s a mess over there; wanting something and not knowing exactly what, those millions; milling cattle, with neither shed nor pasture. The Lord only knows how long it will take to clarify. Would you mind if I smoked?"
"Wow!" cried Burlingame.
"Not at all," answered Kitty. "I don"t see how any pipe could be worse than Mr. Burlingame"s."
"I apologize," said the dramatic editor, humbly.
"You needn"t," replied the girl. She turned to the war correspondent.
"Any new drums?"
"I remember that day. You were scared half to death at my walls."
"Small wonder! I was only twelve; and I dreamed of cannibals for weeks."
"Drums! I wonder if any living man has heard a greater variety than I? What a lot of them! I have heard them calling a jehad in the Sudan.
Tumpi-tum-tump! tumpitum-tump! Makes a white man"s hair stand up when he hears it in the night. I don"t know what it is, but the sound drives the Oriental mad. And that reminds me--I"ve had them in mind all day--the drums of jeopardy!"
"What an odd phrase! And what are the drums of jeopardy?" asked Kitty, leaning on her arms. Odd, but suddenly she felt a longing to go somewhere, thousands and thousands of miles away. She had never been west of Chicago or east of Boston. Until this moment she had never felt the call of the blood--her father"s. Cocoanut palms and birds of paradise! And drums in the night going tumpi-tum-tump! tumpi-tum-tump!
"I"ve always been mad over green things," began Cutty. "A wheat field in the spring, leafing maples. It"s Nature"s choice and mine. My pa.s.sion is emeralds; and I haven"t any because those I want are beyond reach.
They are owned by the great houses of Europe and Asia, and lie in royal caskets; or did. If I could go into a mine and find an emerald as big as my fist I should be only partly happy if it chanced to be of fine colour. In a little while I should lose interest in it. It wouldn"t be alive, if you can get what I mean. Just as a man would rather have a homely woman to talk to than a beautiful window dummy to admire. A stone to interest me must have a story--a story of murder and loot, of beautiful women, palaces.
"Br-r-r!" cried Burlingame.
"Why, I"ve seen emeralds I would steal with half a chance. I couldn"t help it. Fact," declared Cutty, earnestly. "Think of the loot in the Romanoff palaces! What"s become of all those magnificent stones? In a little while they"ll be turning up in Amsterdam to be cut--some of them.
Or maybe Mister Bolsheviki"s inamorata will be stringing them round her neck. Loot."
"But the drums of jeopardy!" said Kitty.
"Emeralds, green as an English lawn in May after a shower, Kitty. By the way, do you mind if I call you Kitty? I used to."
"And I"ve always thought of you as Cutty. Fifty-fifty."
"It"s a bargain. Well, the drums to my thinking are the finest two examples of the green beryl in the world. Polished, of course, as emeralds always should be. I should say that they were about the size of those peppermint chocolate drops there."
"Have one?" said Kitty.
"No. Spoil the taste of the pipe."
"You ought to spoil that taste once in a while," was Burlingame"s observation. "But go on."
"I suppose originally there was a single stone, later cut into halves, because they are perfect matches. The drums proper are exquisitely carved ivory statuettes, of Hindu or Mohammedan drummers, squatting, the golden base of the drums between the knees, and the drumheads the emeralds. Lord, how they got to me! I wanted to run off with them. The history of murder and loot they could tell! Some Delhi mogul owned them first. Then Nadir Shah carried them off to Persia, along with the famous peac.o.c.k throne. I saw them in a palace on the Caspian in 1912. Russia was very strong in Persia at one time. Perhaps they were gifts; perhaps they were stolen--these emeralds. Anyhow, I"d never heard of them until that year. And I travelled all the way up from Constantinople to get a glimpse of them if it were possible. I had to do some mighty fine wire-pulling. For one of those stones I would give half of all I own. To see them in the possession of another man would be a supreme test to my honesty."
"You old pirate!" said Burlingame.
"But why the word jeopardy?" persisted Kitty, who was intrigued by the phrase.
"Probably some Hindu trick. It is a language of flowery metaphors. It means, I suppose, that when you touch the drums they bite. In journeying from one spot to another they always leave misfortune behind, as I understand it. Just coincidence; but you couldn"t drive that into an Oriental skull. This is what makes the study of precious stones so interesting. There is always some enchantment, some evil spell. To handle the drums is to invite a minor accident. Call it twaddle; probably is; and yet I have reason to believe that there"s something to the superst.i.tion."
Burlingame sniffed.
"I can prove it," Cutty declared. "I held those drums in my hands one day. I carried them to a window the better to observe them. On my return to the hotel I was knocked down by a horse and laid up in bed for a week. That same night someone tried to kill the man who showed me the emeralds. Coincidence? Perhaps. But these days I"m shying at thirteen, the wrong side of the street, ladders, and religious curses."
"An old hard-boiled egg like you?" Burlingame threw up his hands in mock despair.
"I laugh, too; but I duck, nevertheless. The chap who showed me the stones was what you"d call the honorary custodian; a privileged character because of his genius. Before approaching him I sent him a copy of my monograph on green stones. I found that he was quite as crazy over green as I. That brought us together; and while I drew him out I kept wondering where I had seen him before. Both his name and his face were vaguely familiar. It seems a superst.i.tion had come along with the stones, from India to Persia, from there to Russia. A maid fortunate enough to see the drums would marry and be happy. The old fellow confessed that occasionally he secretly admitted a peasant maid to gaze upon the stones. But he never let the male inmates of the palace find this out. He knew them a little too intimately. A bad lot."
"And this palace?" asked Kitty.
"Not one stone on another. The proletariat rose up and destroyed it. To mobs anything beautiful is offensive. Palaces looted, banks, museums, houses. The ignorant toying with hand grenades, thinking them sceptres.
All the sc.u.m in the world boiling to the top. After the Red Day comes the Red Night."
"Whatever will become of them--the little kings and princes and dukes?"
After all, thought Kitty, they were human beings; they would not suffer any the less because they had been born to the purple.
"Maybe they"ll go to work," said Cutty, dryly. "Sooner or later, all parasites will have to work if they want bread. And yet I"ve met some men among them, big in the heart and the mind, who would have made bully farmers and professors. The beautiful thing about the Anglo-Saxon education is that the whole structure is based upon fair play. In eastern and southeastern Europe few of them can play solitaire without cheating. But I would give a good deal to know what has happened to those emeralds--the drums of jeopardy. They"ll probably be broken up and sold in carat weights. The whole family was wiped out in a night.... I say, will you take lunch with me to-morrow?"
"Gladly."
"All right. I"ll drop in here at half after twelve. Here"s my telephone number, should anything alter your plans. If I"m going to be G.o.dfather I might as well start right in."