The Drums of Jeopardy - Page 30/202

Kitty, at a mental impasse, could only stare into the night beyond the

window. This mesmeric state endured for a minute; then a gentle and

continuous sound dissipated the spell. It was raining. Obliquely she

saw the burnt egg in the pan. The thing had happened; she had not been

dreaming.

Her brain awoke. Thought crowded thought; before one matured another

displaced it; and all as futile as the sparks from the anvil. An

avalanche of conjecture; and out of it all eventually emerged one

concrete fact. The man Was honest. His hunger had been honest; his

laughter. Who was he, what was he? For all his speech, not English; for

all his gestures, not Italian. Moribund perspectives. Somewhere that day

he had fought for his life. John Two-Hawks.

And there was the mysterious evanishment of old Gregory, whose name was

Stefani Gregor. In a humdrum, prosaic old apartment like this!

Kitty had ideas about adventure--an inheritance, though she was not

aware of that. There had to be certain ingredients, principally mystery.

Anything sordid must not be permitted to edge in. She had often gone

forth upon semi-perilous enterprises as a reporter, entered sinister

houses where crimes had been committed, but always calculating how much

copy at eight dollars a column could be squeezed out of the affair. But

this promised to be something like those tales which were always clear

and wonderful in her head but more or less opaque when she attempted to

transfer them to paper. A secret society? Vengeance? An echo of the war?

"Johnny Two-Hawks," she murmured aloud. "And he hopes we'll never meet

again!"

There was a mirror over the sink, and she threw a glance into it. Very

well; if he thought like that about it.

Here the doorbell tinkled. That would be the faithful janitor. She ran

to the door.

"Whadjuh wanta see me about, Miz Conover?"

"What has happened to old Mr. Gregory?"

"Him? Why, some amb'lance fellers carted him off this afternoon. Didn't

know nawthin' was the matter with 'im until I runs into them in the

hall."

"He'd been hurt?"

"Couldn't say, miz. He was on a stretcher when I seen 'im. Under a

sheet."

"But he might have been dead!"

"Nope. I ast 'em, an' they said a shock of some sort."

"What hospital?"

"Gee, I forgot t'ast that!"

"I'll find out. Good-night."

But Kitty did not find out. She called up all the known private and

public hospitals, but no Gregor or Gregory had been received that

afternoon, nor anybody answering his description. The fog had swallowed

up Stefani Gregor.