Miss Frances held out her hand. "You've handled men," she said, with
reluctant admiration.
"Oh, boy!--millions of 'em, an' each guy different. Believe me! Make 'em
wanta."
Cutty attended his conferences. He learned immediately that he was
booked to sail the first week in May. His itinerary began at Piraeus,
in Greece, and might end in Vladivostok. But they detained him
in Washington overtime because he was a fount of information the
departments found it necessary to draw upon constantly. The political
and commercial aspects of the polyglot peoples, what they wanted, what
they expected, what they needed; racial enmities. The bugaboo of the
undesirable alien was no longer bothering official heads in Washington.
Stringent immigration laws were in the making. What they wanted to
know was an American's point of view, based upon long and intimate
associations.
Washington reminded him of nothing so much as a big sheep dog. The
hazardous day was over; the wolves had been driven off and the sheep
into the fold; and now the valiant guardian was turning round and round
and round preparatory to lying down to sleep. For Washington would go to
sleep again, naturally.
Often it occurred to him what a remarkable piece of machinery the human
brain was. He could dig up all this dry information with the precise
accuracy of an economist, all the while his actual thoughts upon Kitty.
His nights were nightmares. And all this unhappiness because he had been
touched with the lust for loot. Fundamentally, this catastrophe could be
laid to the drums of jeopardy.
The alluring possibility of finding those damnable green stones--the
unsuspected kink in his moral rectitude--had tumbled him into this pit.
Had not Kitty pronounced the name Stefani Gregor--in his mind always
linked with the emeralds--he would have summoned an ambulance and had
Hawksley carried off, despite Kitty's protests; and perhaps he would
have seen her but two or three times before sailing, seen her in
conventional and unemotional parts. At any rate, there would have been
none of this peculiar intimacy--Kitty coming to him in tears, opening
her young heart to him and discovering all its loneliness. If she
loved some chap it would not be so hard, the temptation would not be
so keen--to cheat her. Marry her, and then tell her. This dogged his
thoughts like a murderer's deed, terrible in the watches of the night.
Marry her, and then tell her. Cheat her. Break her heart and break his
own.
Fifty-two. Never before had he thought old. His splendid health and
vigorous mentality were the results of thinking young. But now he heard
the avalanche stirring, the whispering slither of the first pebbles. He
would grow old swiftly, thunderously. Kitty's youth would shore up the
debacle, suspend it indefinitely. Marry her, cheat her, and stay young.
Green stones, accursed.