He leaned against the side of the window. Roofs, thousands of them,
flat, domed, pinnacled; and somewhere under one of these roofs Stefani
Gregor was eating his heart out. It did not matter that this queer old
eagle whom everybody called Cutty had promised to bring Stefani home.
It might be too late. Stefani was old, highly strung. Who knew what
infernal lies Karlov had told him? Stefani could stand up under physical
torture; but to tear at his soul, to twist and rend his spirit!
The bubble in the champagne died down--as it always will if one permits
it to stand. He felt the old mood seep through the dikes of his gayety.
Alone. A familiar face--he would have dropped on his knees and thanked
God for the sight of a familiar face. These people, kindly as they
were--what were they but strangers? Yesterday he had not known them;
to-morrow he would leave them behind forever. All at once the mystery
of this bubbling idea was bared: he was going to risk his life in the
streets in the vague hope of seeing some face he had known in the days
before the world had gone drunk on blood. One familiar face.
Of course he would never forget--at any rate, not the girl whose courage
had made possible this hour. Those chaps, scared off temporarily, might
have returned. What had become of her? He was always seeing her lovely
face in the shadows, now tender, now resolute, now mocking. Doubtless he
thought of her constantly because his freedom of action was limited.
He hadn't diversion enough. Books and fiddling, these carried him but
halfway through the boredom. Where was she? Daily he had called her by
telephone; no answer. The Jap shook his head; the slangy boy in the lift
shook his.
She was a thoroughbred, even if she had been born of middle-class
parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless
derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no
longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The
final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still
thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a
troglodyte, set down in a new wilderness.
He heard the curtain rings slither on the pole. Believing the intruder
to be Kuroki he turned belligerently. And there she stood--the girl
herself! The poise of her reminded him of the Winged Victory in
the Louvre. Where there had been a cup of champagne in his veins
circumstance now poured a magnum.
"You!" he cried.