For a long time Cutty sat perfectly motionless, his pipe at an upward angle - a fine commentary on the strength of his jaws - and his gaze boring into the shadows beyond his desk. What was uppermost in his thoughts now was the fateful twist of events that had brought the young man to the assured haven of this towering loft.
All based, singularly enough, upon his wanting to see Molly's girl for a few moments; and thus he had established himself in Kitty's thoughts. Instead of turning to the police she had turned to him.
Old Cutty, reaching round vaguely for something to stay the current - age; hoping by seeing this living link 'twixt the present and the past to stay the afterglow of youth. As if that could be done! He, who had never paid any attention to gray hairs and wrinkles and time, all at once found himself in a position similar to that of the man who supposes he has an inexhaustible sum at the bank and has just been notified that he has overdrawn.
Cutty knew that life wasn't really coordination and premeditation so much as it was coincident. Trivials. Nothing was absolute and dependable but death; between birth and death a series of accidents and incidents and coincidents which men called life.
He tapped his pipe on the ash tray and stood up. He gathered the chrysoprase and restored the stones to the canvas bag. Then he carefully stacked the photographs and carried them to the portfolio.
The green stones he deposited in a safe, from which he took a considerable bundle of small notebooks, returning to the desk with these. Denatured dynamite, these notebooks, full of political secrets, solutions of mysteries that baffle historians. A truly great journalist never writes history as a historian; he is afraid to. Sometimes conjecture is safer than fact. And these little notebooks were the repository of suppressed facts ranging over twenty-odd years. Gerald Stanley Lee would have recognized them instantly as coming under the head of what he calls Sh!
An hour later Cutty returned the notebooks to their abiding place, his memory refreshed. The poor devil! A dissolute father and uncle, dissolute forbears, corrupt blood weakened by intermarriage, what hope was there? Only one - the rich, fiery blood of the Calabrian mother.
But why had the chap come to America? Why not England or the Riviera, where rank, even if shorn of its prerogatives, is still treated respectfully? But America!
Cutty's head went up. Perhaps that was it - to barter his phantom greatness for money, to dazzle some rich fool of an American girl.
In that case Karlov would be welcome. But wait a moment. The chap had come in from the west. In that event there should be an Odyssey of some kind tucked away in the affair.
Cutty resumed his pacing. The moment his imagination caught the essentials he visualized the Odyssey. Across mountains and deserts, rivers and seas, he followed Two-Hawks in fancy, pursued by an implacable hatred, more or less historical, of which the lad was less a cause than an abstract object. And Karlov - Cutty understood Karlov now - always span near, his hate reenergizing his faltering feet.
There was evidently some iron in this Two-Hawks' blood. Fear never would have carried him thus far. Fear would have whispered, "Futility! Futility!" And he would have bent his head to the stroke.
So then there was resource and there was courage. And he lay in yonder room, beaten and penniless. The top piece in the grim irony - to have come all these thousands of miles unscathed, to be dropped at the goal. But America? Well, that would be solved later.
"By the Lord Harry!" Cutty stopped and struck his hands together.
"The drums!"
>From the hour Kitty had pronounced the name Stefani Gregor an idea had taken lodgment, an irrepressible idea, that somewhere in this drama would be the drums of jeopardy. The mark of the thong! Never any doubt of it now. Those magnificent emeralds were here in New York, The mob - the Red Guard - hammering on the doors, what would have been Two-Hawks' most natural first thought? To gather what treasures the hand could be laid to and flee. Here in New York, and in Karlov's hands, ultimately to be cut up for Bolshevik propaganda! The infernal pity of it!
The passion of the gem hunter blazed forth, dimming all other phases of the drama. Here was a real game, a man's game; sport! Cutty rubbed his hands together pleasurably. To recover those green flames before they could be broken up; under the ancient ruling that "Findings is keepings." The stones, of course, meant nothing to Karlov beyond the monetary value; and upon this fact Cutty began developing a plan. He stood ready to buy those stones if he could draw them into the open. Lord, how he wanted them! Murder and loot, always murder and loot!
The thought of those two incomparable emeralds being broken up distressed him profoundly. He must act at once, before the desecration could be consummated. Two-Hawks - Hawksley hereafter, for the sake of convenience - had an equity in the gems; but what of that? In smuggling them in - and how the deuce had he done it?
- he had thrown away his legal right to them. Cutty kneaded his conscience into a satisfactory condition of quiescence and went on with his planning. If he succeeded in recovering the stones and his conscience bit a little too deeply for comfort - why, he could pay over to Hawksley twenty per cent. of the price Karlov demanded. He could take it or leave it. In a case like this - to a bachelor without dependents - money was no object. All his life he had wanted a fine emerald to play with, and here was an opportunity to acquire two!
