There was still in her mind a vivid recollection of her dream--the fire
of diamonds and the blonde girl with the tiara of rubies. Olga, Olga!
Russian; the whole affair was Russian. She shivered. Always that
land and people had appeared to her in sinister aspect; no doubt an
impression acquired from reading melodramas written by Englishmen who,
once upon a time, had given Russia preeminence as a political menace.
Russia, in all things--music, art, literature--the tragic note. Stefani
Gregor and Johnny Two-Hawks had roused the enmity of some political
society with this result. Nihilist or Bolshevist or socialist, there
was little choice; and Cutty sensibly did not want her drawn into the
whirlpool.
What a pleasant intimacy hers and Cutty's promised to be! And if he
hadn't casually dropped into the office that afternoon she would have
surrendered the affair to the police, and that would have been the end
of it. Amazing thought--you might jog along all your life at the side
of a person and never know him half so well as someone you met m a tense
episode, like that of the immaculate Cutty crossing the fire escape with
Two-Hawks on his shoulders!
She heard the friendly coal heaver going down the corridor to the door.
When he returned to the bedroom two men accompanied him. Not a word was
said. The two men marched off with the prisoners and left Kitty alone
with her saviour.
"Thank you," she said, simply.
"You poor little chicken, did you believe I had deserted you?" The voice
wasn't gruff now.
"Cutty?" Kitty ran to him, flinging her arms round his neck. "Oh,
Cutty!"
Cutty's heart, which had bumped along an astonishing number of million
times in fifty-two years, registered a memorable bump against his ribs.
The touch of her soft arms and the faint, indescribable perfume which
emanates from a dainty woman's hair thrilled him beyond any thrill he
had ever known. For Kitty's mother had never put her arms round old
Cutty's neck. Of course he understood readily enough: Molly's girl,
flesh of her flesh. And she had rushed to him as she would have rushed
to her father. He patted her shoulder clumsily, still a little dazzled
for all the revelation in the analysis. The sweet intimacy of it! The
door of Paradise opened for a moment, and then shut in his face.
"I did not recognize you at all!" she cried, standing off. "I shouldn't
have known you on the street. And it is so simple. What a wonderful man
you are!"
"For an old codger?" Cutty's heart registered another sizable bump.