The Drums of Jeopardy - Page 54/202

Green stones, the sunlight breaking against the flaws in a shower of

golden sparks; green as the pulp of a Champagne grape; the drums of

jeopardy! Murder and loot; he could understand.

Immediately after the patient was put to bed Cutty changed. A

nondescript suit of the day-labourer type and a few deft touches of coal

dust completed his make-up.

"I shan't be back until morning," he announced. "Work to do. Kuroki will

be at your service through the night, Miss Frances. Strike that Burmese

gong once, at any hour. Come along, Harrison."

"Want any company?" asked Harrison, with a belligerent twist to his

moustache.

Cutty laughed. "No. You run along to your lambs. I'm running with

the wolves to-night, old scout, and you might get that spick-and-span

uniform considerably mussed up. Besides, it's raining."

"But what's to become of Miss Conover? She ought not to remain alone in

that apartment."

"Well, well! I thought of that, too. But she can take care of herself."

"Those ruffians may call up the hospital and learn that we tricked them.

"And then?"

"Try to force the truth from Miss Conover."

"That's precisely the wherefore of this coal dust. On your way!"

Eleven o'clock. Kitty was in the kitchen, without light, her chair by

the window, which she had thrown up. She had gone to bed, but sleep was

impossible. So she decided to watch the Gregor windows. Sometimes the

mind is like a movie camera set for a double exposure. The whole scene

is visible, but the camera sees only half of it. Thus, while she saw

the windows across the court there entered the other side of her mind

a picture of the immaculate Cutty crossing the platform with Johnny

Two-Hawks thrown over his shoulder. The mental picture obscured the

actual.

She had called him old. Well, he was old. And no doubt he looked upon

her as a child, wanting her to spend the night at a hotel! The affair

was over. No one would bother Kitty Conover. Why should they? But it

took strength to shoulder a man like that. What fun he and her father

must have had together! And Cutty had loved her mother! That made

Kitty exquisitely tender for a moment. All alone, at the age when new

friendships were impossible. A lovable man like that going down through

life alone!

Census taker of alien undesirables; a queer occupation for a man so

famous as Cutty. Patriotism--to plunge into that seething revolutionary

scum to sort the dangerous madmen from the harmless mad-men. Courage and

strength and mental resource; yes, Cutty possessed these; and he would

be the kind to laugh at a joke or a hurt.