Читать книгу The Drums of Jeopardy - Harold MacGrath - Страница 8

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Kitty Conover had inherited brains and beauty, and nothing else but the furniture. Her father had been a famous reporter, the admiration of cubs from New York to San Francisco; handsome, happy-go-lucky, generous, rather improvident, and wholly lovable. Her mother had been a comedy actress noted for her beauty and wit and extravagance. Thus it will be seen that Kitty was in luck to inherit any furniture at all.

Kitty was twenty-four. A body is as old as it is, but a brain is as old as the facts it absorbs; and Kitty had absorbed enough facts to carry her brain well into the thirties.

Conover had been dead twenty years; and Kitty had scarcely any recollections of him. Improvident as the run of newspaper writers are, Conover had fulfilled one obligation to his family—he had kept up his endowment policies; and for eighteen years the insurance had taken care of Kitty and her mother, who because of a weak ankle had not been able to return to the scenes of her former triumphs. In 1915 this darling mother, whom Kitty loved to idolatry, had passed on.

There was enough for the funeral and the cleaning up of the bills; but that was all. The income ceased with Mrs. Conover's demise. Kitty saw that she must give up writing short stories which nobody wanted, and go to work. So she proceeded at once to the newspaper office where her father's name was still a tradition, and applied for a job. It was frankly a charity job, but Kitty was never to know that because she fell into the newspaper game naturally; and when they discovered her wide acquaintance among theatrical celebrities they switched her into the dramatic department, where she had astonishing success as a raconteur. She was now assistant dramatic editor of the Sunday issue, and her pay envelope had four crisp ten-dollar notes in it each Monday.

She still remained in the old apartment; sentiment as much as anything. She had been born in it and her happiest days had been spent there. She lived alone, without help, being one of that singular type of womanhood that is impervious to the rust of loneliness. Her daily activities sufficed the gregarious instincts, and it was often a relief to move about in silence.

Among other things Kitty had foresight. She had learned that a little money in the background was the most satisfying thing in existence. So many times she and her mother had just reached the insurance check, with grumbling bill collectors in the hall, that she was determined never to be poor. She had to fight constantly her love of finery inherited from her mother, and her love of good times inherited from her father. So she established a bank account, and to date had not drawn a check against it; which speaks well for her will power, an attribute cultivated, not inherited.

Kitty was as pleasing to the eye as a basket of fruit. Her beauty was animated. There was an expression in her eyes and on her lips that spoke of laughter always on tiptoe. An enviable inheritance, this, the desire to laugh, to be searching always for a vent to laughter; it is something money cannot buy, something not to be cultivated; a true gift of the gods. This desire to laugh is found invariably in the tender and valorous; and Kitty was both. Brown hair with running threads of gold that was always catching light; slate-blue eyes with heavy black fringe-Irish; colour that waxed and waned; and a healthy, shapely body. Topped by a sparkling intellect these gifts made Kitty desirable of men.

Kitty had no beau. After the adolescent days beaux ceased to interest her. This would indicate that she was inclined toward suffrage. Nothing of the kind. Intensely romantic, she determined to await the grand passion or go it alone. No experimental adventures for her. Be assured that she weighed every new man she met, and finding some flaw discarded him as a matrimonial possibility. Besides, her unusual facilities to view and judge men had shown her masculine phases the average woman would have discovered only after the fatal knot was tied. She did not suspect that she was romantical. She attributed her wariness to common sense.

If there is one place where a pretty young woman may labour without having to build a wall of liquid air about her to fend off amatory advances that place is the editorial room of a great metropolitan daily. One must have leisure to fall in love; and only the office boys could assemble enough idle time to call it leisure.

Her desk faced Burlingame's; and Burlingame was the dramatic editor, a scholar and a gentleman. He liked to hear Kitty talk, and often he lured her into the open; and he gathered information about theatrical folks that was outside even his wide range of knowledge.

A drizzly fog had hung over New York since morning. Kitty was finishing up some Sunday special. Burlingame was reading proofs. All day theatrical folks had been in and out of this little ten-by-twelve cubby-hole; and now there would be quiet.

But no. The door opened and an iron-gray head intruded.

“Will I be in the way?”

“Lord, no!” cried Burlingame, throwing down his proofs. “Come along in, Cutty.”

The great war correspondent came in and sat down, sighing gratefully.

Cutty was a nickname; he carried and smoked—everywhere they would permit him—the worst-looking and the worst-smelling pipe in Christendom. You may not realize it, but a nickname is a round-about Anglo-Saxon way of telling a fellow you love him. He was Cutty, but only among his dear intimates, mind you; to the world at large, to presidents, kings, ambassadors, generals, and capitalists he is known by another name. You will find it on the roster of the Royal Geographical; on the title page of several unique books on travel, jewels, and drums; in magazines and newspapers; on the membership roll of the Savage in London and the Lambs in New York. But you will not find it in this story; because it would not be fair to set his name against the unusual adventures that crossed his line of life with that of the young man who wore the tobacco pouch suspended from his neck.

Tall, bony, graceful enough except in a chair, where his angles became conspicuous; the ruddy, weather-bitten complexion of a deep-sea sailor, and a sailor man's blue eye; the brow of a thinker and the mouth of a humourist. Men often call another man handsome when a woman knows they mean manly. Among men Cutty was handsome.

Kitty considerately rose and gathered up her manuscript.

“No, no, Kitty! I'd rather talk to you than Burly, here. You're always reminding me of that father of yours. Best comrade I ever had. You laugh just like him. Did your mother ever tell you that old Cutty is your godfather?”

“Good gracious!”

“Fact. I told your dad I'd watch over you.”

“And a fat lot of watching you've done to date,” jeered Burlingame.

“Couldn't help that. But I can be on the job until I return to the Balkans.”

Kitty laughed joyously and sat down, perhaps a little thrilled. She had always admired Cutty from afar, shyly. Once in a blue moon he had in the old days appeared for tea; and he and Mrs. Conover would spend the balance of the afternoon discussing the lovable qualities of Tommy Conover. Kitty had seen him but twice during the war.

“Every so often,” began Cutty, “I have to find listeners. Fact. I used to hate crowds, listeners; but those ten days in an open boat, a thousand miles from anywhere, made me gregarious. I'm always wanting company and hating to go to bed, which is bad business for a man of fifty-two.” Cutty's ship had been torpedoed.

To Kitty, with his tired eyes and weather-bitten face, his bony, gangling body, he had the appearance of a lazy man. Actually she knew him to be a man of tremendous vitality and endurance. Eagles when they roost are heavy-lidded and clumsy. She wondered if there was a corner on the globe he had not peered into.

For thirty years he had been following two gods—Rumour and War. For thirty years he had been the slave of cables and telegrams. Even now he was preparing to return to the Balkans, where the great fire had started and where there were still some threatening embers to watch.

Cutty was not well known in America; his reputation was European. He played the game because he loved it, being comfortably fortified with worldly goods. He was a linguist of rare attainments, specializing in the polyglot of southeastern Europe. He came and went like cloud shadow. His foresight was so keen he was seldom ordered to go here or there; he was generally on the spot when the orders arrived.

He was interested in socialism and its bewildering ramifications, but only as an analytical student. He could fit himself into any environment, interview a prime minister in the afternoon and take potluck that night with the anarchist who was planning to blow up the prime minister.

Burlingame, an intimate, often exposed for Kitty's delectation the amazing and colourful facets of Cutty's diamond-brilliant mind. Cutty wrote authoritatively on famous gems and collected drums. He had one of the finest collections of chrysoprase in the world. He loved these semi-precious stones because of their unmatchable, translucent green—like the pulp of a grape. From Burlingame Kitty had learned that Cutty, rather indifferent to women, carried about with him the photographs—large size—of famous professional beauties and a case filled with polished chrysoprase. He would lay a photograph on a table and adorn the lovely throat with astonishing necklaces and the head with wonderful tiaras, all the while his brain at work with some intricate political puzzle.

And he collected drums. The walls of his apartment—part of the loft of a midtown office building—were covered with a most startling assortment of drums: drums of war, of the dance, of the temples of the feast, ancient and modern, some of them dreadful looking objects, as Kitty had cause to remember.

Though Cutty had known her father and mother intimately, Kitty was a comparative stranger. He recollected seeing her perhaps a dozen times. She had been a shy child, not given to climbing over visitors' knees; not the precocious offspring of the average theatrical mother. So in the past he had somewhat overlooked her. Then one day recently he had dropped in to see Burlingame and had seen Kitty instead; which accounts for his presence here this day. Neither Kitty nor Burlingame suspected the true attraction. The dramatic editor accepted the advent as a peculiar compliment to himself. And it is to be doubted if Cutty himself realized that there was a true magnetic pole in this cubbyhole of a room.

Kitty, however, had vivid recollections. Actually the first strange man she had ever met. But not having been visible on her horizon, except in flashes, she knew of the man only what she had read and what Burlingame had casually offered during discussions.

“Well, anyhow,” said Burlingame, complacently, “the war is over.”

Cutty smiled indulgently. “That's the trouble with us chaps who tramp round the world for news. We can't bamboozle ourselves like you folks who stay at home. The war was only the first phase. There's a mess over there; wanting something and not knowing exactly what, those millions; milling cattle, with neither shed nor pasture. The Lord only knows how long it will take to clarify. Would you mind if I smoked?”

“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.”

“But the drums of jeopardy!” said Kitty.

“Emeralds, green as an English lawn in May after a shower, Kitty. By the way, do you mind if I call you Kitty? I used to.”

“And I've always thought of you as Cutty. Fifty-fifty.”

“It's a bargain. Well, the drums to my thinking are the finest two examples of the green beryl in the world. Polished, of course, as emeralds always should be. I should say that they were about the size of those peppermint chocolate drops there.”

“Have one?” said Kitty.

“No. Spoil the taste of the pipe.”

“You ought to spoil that taste once in a while,” was Burlingame's observation. “But go on.”

“I suppose originally there was a single stone, later cut into halves, because they are perfect matches. The drums proper are exquisitely carved ivory statuettes, of Hindu or Mohammedan drummers, squatting, the golden base of the drums between the knees, and the drumheads the emeralds. Lord, how they got to me! I wanted to run off with them. The history of murder and loot they could tell! Some Delhi mogul owned them first. Then Nadir Shah carried them off to Persia, along with the famous peacock throne. I saw them in a palace on the Caspian in 1912. Russia was very strong in Persia at one time. Perhaps they were gifts; perhaps they were stolen—these emeralds. Anyhow, I'd never heard of them until that year. And I travelled all the way up from Constantinople to get a glimpse of them if it were possible. I had to do some mighty fine wire-pulling. For one of those stones I would give half of all I own. To see them in the possession of another man would be a supreme test to my honesty.”

“You old pirate!” said Burlingame.

“But why the word jeopardy?” persisted Kitty, who was intrigued by the phrase.

“Probably some Hindu trick. It is a language of flowery metaphors. It means, I suppose, that when you touch the drums they bite. In journeying from one spot to another they always leave misfortune behind, as I understand it. Just coincidence; but you couldn't drive that into an Oriental skull. This is what makes the study of precious stones so interesting. There is always some enchantment, some evil spell. To handle the drums is to invite a minor accident. Call it twaddle; probably is; and yet I have reason to believe that there's something to the superstition.”

Burlingame sniffed.

“I can prove it,” Cutty declared. “I held those drums in my hands one day. I carried them to a window the better to observe them. On my return to the hotel I was knocked down by a horse and laid up in bed for a week. That same night someone tried to kill the man who showed me the emeralds. Coincidence? Perhaps. But these days I'm shying at thirteen, the wrong side of the street, ladders, and religious curses.”

“An old hard-boiled egg like you?” Burlingame threw up his hands in mock despair.

“I laugh, too; but I duck, nevertheless. The chap who showed me the stones was what you'd call the honorary custodian; a privileged character because of his genius. Before approaching him I sent him a copy of my monograph on green stones. I found that he was quite as crazy over green as I. That brought us together; and while I drew him out I kept wondering where I had seen him before. Both his name and his face were vaguely familiar. It seems a superstition had come along with the stones, from India to Persia, from there to Russia. A maid fortunate enough to see the drums would marry and be happy. The old fellow confessed that occasionally he secretly admitted a peasant maid to gaze upon the stones. But he never let the male inmates of the palace find this out. He knew them a little too intimately. A bad lot.”

“And this palace?” asked Kitty.

“Not one stone on another. The proletariat rose up and destroyed it. To mobs anything beautiful is offensive. Palaces looted, banks, museums, houses. The ignorant toying with hand grenades, thinking them sceptres. All the scum in the world boiling to the top. After the Red Day comes the Red Night.”

“Whatever will become of them—the little kings and princes and dukes?” After all, thought Kitty, they were human beings; they would not suffer any the less because they had been born to the purple.

“Maybe they'll go to work,” said Cutty, dryly. “Sooner or later, all parasites will have to work if they want bread. And yet I've met some men among them, big in the heart and the mind, who would have made bully farmers and professors. The beautiful thing about the Anglo-Saxon education is that the whole structure is based upon fair play. In eastern and southeastern Europe few of them can play solitaire without cheating. But I would give a good deal to know what has happened to those emeralds—the drums of jeopardy. They'll probably be broken up and sold in carat weights. The whole family was wiped out in a night. … I say, will you take lunch with me to-morrow?”

“Gladly.”

“All right. I'll drop in here at half after twelve. Here's my telephone number, should anything alter your plans. If I'm going to be godfather I might as well start right in.”

“The drums of jeopardy; what a haunting phrase!”

“Haunting stones, too, Kitty. For picking them up in my hands I went to bed with a banged-up leg. I can't forget that. We Occidentals laugh at Orientals and their superstitions. We don't believe in the curse. And yet, by George, those emeralds were accursed!”

“Piffle!” snorted Burlingame. “Mush! It's greed, pure and simple, that gives precious stones their sinister histories. You'd have been hit by that horse if you had picked up nothing more valuable than a rhinestone buckle. Take away the gold lure, and precious stones wouldn't sell at the price of window glass.”

“Is that so? How about me? It isn't because a stone is worth so much that makes me want it. I want it for the sheer beauty; I want it for the tremendous panorama the sight of it unfolds in my mind. I imagine what happened from the hour the stone was mined to the hour it came into my possession. To me—to all genuine collectors—the intrinsic value is nil. Can't you see? It is for me what Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin would be to you if you had fallen on it for the first time—money, love, tragedy, death.”

An interruption came in the form of one of the office boys. The chief was on the wire and wanted Cutty at once.

“At half after twelve, Kitty. And by the way,” added Cutty as he rose, “they say about the drums that a beautiful woman is immune to their danger.”

“There's your chance, Kitty,” said Burlingame.

“Am I beautiful?” asked Kitty, demurely.

“Lord love the minx!” shouted Cutty. “A corner in Mouquin's.”

“Rain or shine.” After Cutty had departed Kitty said: “He's the most fascinating man I know. What fun it would be to jog round the world with a man like that, who knew everybody and everything. As a little girl I was violently in love with him; but don't you ever dare give me away.”

“You'll probably have nightmare to-night. And honestly you ought not to live in that den alone. But Cutty has seen things,” Burlingame admitted; “things no white man ought to see. He's been shot up, mauled by animals, marooned, torpedoed at sea, made prisoner by old Fuzzy-Wuzzy. An ordinary man would have died of fatigue. Cutty is as tough and strong as a gorilla and as active as a cat. But this jewel superstition is all rot. Odd, though; he'll travel halfway round the world to see a ruby or an emerald. He says no true collector cares a cent for a diamond. Says they are vulgar.”

“Except on the third finger of a lady's left hand; and then they are just perfectly splendid!”

“Oho! Well, when you get yours I hope it's as big as the Koh-i-noor.”

“Thank you! You might just as well wish a brick on me!”

Kitty left the office at a quarter of six. The phrase kept running through her head—the drums of jeopardy. A little shiver ran up her spine. Money, love, tragedy, death! This terrible and wonderful old world, of which she had seen little else than city streets, suddenly exhibited wide vistas. She knew now why she had begun to save—travel. Just as soon as she had a thousand she would go somewhere. A great longing to hear native drums in the night.

Even as the wish entered her mind a new sound entered her ears. The Subway car wheels began to beat—tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! Fudge! She opened her evening paper and scanned the fashions, the dramatic news, and the comics. Being a woman she read the world news last. On the front page she saw a queer story, dated at Albany: Mysterious guests at a hotel; how they had fought and fled in the early morning. There had been left behind a case with foreign orders incrusted with several thousand dollars' worth of gems. Bolsheviki, said the police; just as they said auto bandits a few years ago when confronted with something they could not understand. The orders had been turned over to the Federal authorities from whom it was learned that they were all royal and demi-royal. Neither of the two guests had returned up to noon, and one had fled, leaving even his hat and coat. But there was nothing to indicate his identity.

“Loot!” murmured Kitty. “All the scum in the world rising to the top”—quoting Cutty. “Poor things!” as she thought of the gentle ladies who had died horribly in bedrooms and cellars.

Kitty was beginning to cast about for more congenial quarters. There were too many foreigners in the apartments, and none of them especially good housekeepers. Always, nowadays, somebody had a washing out on the line, the odour of garlic was continuously in the air, and there were noisy children under foot in the halls. The families she and her mother had known were all gone; and Kitty was perhaps the oldest inhabitant in the block.

The living-room windows faced Eightieth Street; bedrooms, dining room, and kitchen looked out upon the court. From the latter windows one could step out upon the fire-escape platform, which ran round the three sides of the court.

Among the present tenants she knew but one, an old man by the name of Gregory, who lived opposite. The acquaintance had never ripened into friendship; but sometimes Kitty would borrow an egg and he would borrow some sugar. In the summertime, when the windows were open at night, she had frequently heard the music of a violin swimming across the court. Polish, Russian, and Hungarian music, always speaking with a tragic note; nothing she had ever heard in concerts. Once, however, she had heard him begin something from Thais, and stop in the middle of it; and that convinced her that he was a master. She was fond of good music. One day she asked Gregory why he did not teach music instead of valeting at a hotel. His answer had been illuminative. It was only his body that pressed clothes; but it would have torn his soul to listen daily to the agonized bow of the novice. Kitty was lonely through pride as much as anything. As for friends, she had a regiment of them. But she rarely accepted their hospitality, realizing that she could not return it. No young men called because she never invited them. All this, however, was going to change when she moved.

As she turned on the hail light she saw an envelope on the floor. Evidently it had been shoved under the door. It was unstamped. She opened it, and stepped out of the humdrum into the whirligig.

DEAR MISS CONOVER:

If anything should happen to me all the things in my apartment

I give to you without reservation.

STEPHEN GREGORY.

She read the letter a dozen times to make sure that it meant exactly what it said. He might be ill. After she had cooked her supper she would run round and inquire. The poor lonely old man!

She went into the kitchen and took inventory. There was nothing but bacon and eggs and coffee. She had forgotten to order that morning. She lit the gas range and began to prepare the meal. As she broke an egg against the rim of the pan the nearby Elevated train rushed by, drumming tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! She laughed, but it wasn't honest laughter. She laughed because she was conscious that she was afraid of something. Impulse drove her to the window. Contact with men—her unusual experiences as a reporter—had developed her natural fearlessness to a point where it was aggressive. As she pressed the tip of her nose against the pane, however, she found herself gazing squarely into a pair of exceedingly brilliant dark eyes; and all the blood in her body seemed to rush violently into her throat.

Tableau!