A wild, reckless irony besieged her. This adventure would be exactly what she needed; it would sweep clear the fog separating one side of her brain from the other. For it was plain enough that part of her brain refused to cooperate with the other. A break in the trend of thought: she might succeed in getting hold of the puzzle if she could drop it absolutely for a little while and then pick it up again.
She had not gone home. She had not notified Bernini. She had checked her luggage in the station parcel room and come directly here. For what? To let the sense of luxury overcome the hidden repugnance of the idea of marrying Cutty, divorcing him, and living on his money. To put herself in the way of visible temptation. What fretted her so, what was wearing her down to the point of fatigue, was the patent imbecility of her reluctance.
There would have been some sense of it if Cutty had proposed a real marriage. All she had to do was mumble a few words, sign her name to a document, live out West for a few months, and be in comfortable circumstances all the rest of her life. And she doddered!
She would run the streets with Johnny Two-Hawks, return, and dine with him. Who cared? Proper or improper, whose business was it but Kitty Conover's? Danger? That was the peculiar attraction. She wanted to rush into danger, some tense excitement the strain of which would lift her out of her mood. A recurrent touch of the wild impulsiveness of her childhood. Hadn't she sometimes flown out into thunderstorms, after merited punishment, to punish the mother whom thunder terrorized? And now she was going to rush into unknown danger to punish Fate - like a silly child! Nevertheless, she would go into the streets with Johnny Two-Hawks.
"But are you strong enough to venture on the streets?"
"Rot! Dash it all, I'm no mollycoddle! All nonsense to keep me pinned in like this. Will you go with me - be my guide?"
"Yes!" She shot out the word and crossed the Rubicon before reason could begin to lecture. Besides, wasn't reason treating her shabbily in withholding the key to the riddle? "Johnny Two-Hawks, I will go as far as Harlem if you want me to."
"Johnny Two-Hawks!" He laughed joyously, then kissed her hands.
But he had to pay for this bending - a stab that filled his eyes with flying sparks. He must remember, once out of doors, not to stoop quickly. "I say, you're the jolliest girl I ever met! Just the two of us, what?"
"The way you speak English is wonderful!"
"Simple enough to explain. Had an English nurse from the beginning.
Spoke English and Italian before I spoke Russian."
He seized the wooden mallet and beat the Burmese gong - a flat piece of brass cut in the shape of a bell. The clear, whirring vibrations filled the room. Long before these spent themselves Kuroki appeared on the threshold. He bobbed.
"Kuroki, Miss Conover is dining here with me to-night. Seven o'clock sharp. The best you have in the larder."
"Yes, sair. You are going out, sair?"
"For a bit of fresh air."
"And I am going with him, Kuroki," said Kitty. Kuroki bobbed again.
"Dinner at seven, sair." Another bob, and he returned to the kitchen, smiling. The girl was free to come and go, of course, but the ancient enemy of Nippon would not pass the elevator door. Let him find that out for himself.
When the elevator arrived the boy did not open the door. He noted the derby on Hawksley's head.
"I can take you down, Miss Conover, but I cannot take Mr. Hawksley.
When the boss gives me an order I obey it - if I possibly can. On the day the boss tells me you can go strolling, I'll give you the key to the city. Until then, nix! No use arguing, Mr. Hawksley."
"I shan't argue," replied Hawksley, meekly. "I am really a prisoner, then?"
"For your own good, sir. Do you wish to go down, Miss Conover?"
"No."
The boy swung the lever, and the car dropped from sight.
"I'm sorry," said Kitty.
Hawksley smiled and laid a finger on his lips. "I wanted to know," he whispered. "There's another way down from this Matterhorn. Come with me. Off the living room is a storeroom. I found the key in the lock the other day and investigated. I still have the key. Now, then, there's a door that gives to the main loft. At the other end is the stairhead. There is a door at the foot of the first flight down. We can jolly well leave this way, but we shall have to return by the lift. That bally young ruffian can't refuse to carry us up, y' know!"
Kitty laughed. "This is going to be fun!"
"Rather!"
They groped their way through the dim loft - for it was growing dark outside - and made the stairhead. The door to the seventeenth floor opened, and they stepped forth into the lighted hallway.
"Now what?" asked Kitty, bubbling.
"The floor below, and one of the other lifts, what?" Twenty minutes later the two of them, arm in arm, turned into Broadway.
"This, sir," began Kitty with a gesture, "is Broadway - America's backyard in the daytime and Ali Baba's cave at night. The way of the gilded youth; the funnel for papa's money; the chorus lady; the starting point of the high cost of living. We New Yorkers despise it because we can't afford it."
"The lights!" gasped Hawksley.
