There were two physicians in the block; one or the other would be in.
She ran to the door, to find it locked. She had forgotten. Next she
found the telephone wire cut and the speaking tube battered and inutile.
She would have to return to her own apartment to summon help. She dared
not leave the light on. The scoundrels might possibly return, and
the light would warn them that their victim had been discovered; and
naturally they would wish to ascertain whether or not they had succeeded
in their murderous assault.
As she was passing the first-landing windows she saw Cutty emerging
from the elevator. She flew across the fire-escape platform with the
resilient step of one crossing thin ice.
Probably the most astonished man in New York was the war correspondent
when the door opened and a pair of arms were flung about him, and a
voice smothered in the lapel of his coat cried: "Oh, Cutty, I never was
so glad to see any one!"
"What in the name of--"
"Come! We'll handle this ourselves. Hurry!" She dragged him along by the
sleeve.
"But--"
"It is life and death! No talk now!"
Cutty, immaculate in his evening clothes, very much perturbed, went
along after her. As she passed through the kitchen window and beckoned
him to follow he demurred.
"Kitty, what the deuce is going on here?"
"I'll answer your questions when we get him into my apartment. They
tried to murder him; left him there to die!"
Cutty possessed a great art, an art highly developed only in explorers
and newspaper reporters of the first order--adaptability; of being able
to cast aside instantly the conventions of civilization and let down the
bars to the primordial, the instinctive, and the natural. Thus the Cutty
who stepped out beside Kitty into the drizzle was not the Cutty she
had admitted into the apartment. She did not recognize this remarkable
transition until later; and then she discovered that Cutty, the suave
and lackadaisical in idleness, was a tremendous animal hibernating
behind a crackle shell.
Ordinarily Cutty would have declined to come through this shell, thin as
it was; he liked these catnaps between great activities. But this
lovely creature was Conover's daughter, and she would have the seventh
sense-divination of the born reporter. Something big was in the air.
"Go on!" he said, briskly. "I'm at your heels. And stoop as you pass
those hall windows. No use throwing a silhouette for somebody in those
rear houses to see.... Old Tommy Conover's daughter, sure pop!...
There you go, under the ladder! You've dished the whole affair, whatever
it is.... No, no! Just spoofing, Kitty. A long face is no good anywhere,
even at a funeral.... This window? All right. Know where the lights are?
Very good."