"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 passion 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."