A March day, sunny and cloudless, with fresh, bracing winds. Green things pushed up from the soil; an eternal something was happening to the tips of the tree branches; an eternal something was happening in young hearts. A robin shook the dust of travel from his wings and bathed publicly in a park basin.
Here and there under the ten thousand roofs of the great city poets were busy with inkpots, trying to say an old thing in a new way.
Woe to the pinched soul that did not expand this day, for it was spring. Expansion! Nature - perhaps she was relenting a little, perhaps she saw that humanity was sliding down the scale, withering, and a bit of extra sunshine would serve to check the descension and breed a little optimism.
Cutty's study. The sunlight, thrown westward, turned windows and roofs and towers into incomparable bijoux. The double reflection cast a white light into the room, lifting out the blue and old-rose tints of the Ispahan rug.
Cutty shifted the chrysoprase, irresolutely for him. A dozen problems, and it was mighty hard to decide which to tackle first.
Principally there was Kitty. He had not seen her in four days, deeming it advisable for her not to call for the present. The Bolshevik agent who had followed him from the banker's might decide, without the aid of some connecting episode, that he had wasted his time.
It did not matter that Kitty herself was no longer watched and followed from her home to the office, from the office home. Was Karlov afraid or had he some new trick up his sleeve? It was not possible that he had given up Hawksley. He was probably planning an attack from some unexpected angle. To be sure that Karlov would not find reason to associate him with Kitty, Cutty had remained indoors during the daytime and gone forth at night in his dungarees.
Problem Two was quite as formidable. The secret agent who had passed as a negotiator for the drums of jeopardy had disappeared.
That had sinister significance. Karlov did not intend to sell the drums; merely wanted precise information regarding the man who had advertised for them. If the secret-service man weakened under torture, Cutty recognized that his own usefulness would be at an end. He would have to step aside and let the great currents sweep on without him. In that event these fifty-two years would pile upon his head, full measure; for the only thing that kept him vigorous was action, interest. Without some great incentive he would shrivel up and blow away - like some exhumed mummy.
Problem Three. How the deuce was he going to fascinate Kitty if he couldn't see her? But there was a bit of silver lining here.
If he couldn't see her, what chance had Hawksley? The whole sense and prompting of this problem was to keep Kitty and Hawksley apart.
How this was accomplished was of no vital importance. Problem Three, then, hung fire for the present. Funny, how this idea stuck in his head, that Hawksley was a menace to Kitty. One of those fool ideas, probably, but worth trying out.
Problem Four. That night, all on his own, he would make an attempt to enter that old house sandwiched between the two vacant warehouses.
Through pressure of authority he had obtained keys to both warehouses.
There would be a trap on the roof of that house. Doubtless it would be covered with tin; fairly impregnable if latched below. But he could find out. From the third-floor windows of either warehouse the drop was not more than six feet. If anywhere in town poor old Stefani Gregor would be in one of those rooms. But to storm the house frontally, without being absolutely sure, would be folly.
Gregor would be killed. The house was in fact an insane asylum, occupied by super-insane men. Warned, they were capable of blowing the house to kingdom come, themselves with it.
Problem Five was a mere vanishing point. He doubted if he would ever see those emeralds. What an infernal pity!
He built a coronet and leaned back, a wisp of smoke darting up from the bowl of his pipe.
"I say, you know, but that's a ripping game to play!" drawled a tired voice over his shoulder.
Cutty turned his head, to behold Hawksley, shaven, pale, and handsome, wrapped in a bed quilt and swaying slightly.
"What the deuce are you doing out of your room?" growled Cutty, but with the growl of a friendly dog.
Hawksley dropped into a chair weakly. "End of my rope. Got to talk to someone. Go dotty, else. Questions. Skull aches with 'em. Want to know whether this is a foretaste of the life I have a right to live - or the beginning of death. Be a good sport, and let's have it out."
"What is it you wish to know?" asked Cutty, gently. The poor beggar!
"Where I am. Who you are. What happened to me. What is going to happen to me," rather breathlessly. "Don't want any more suspense.
Don't want to look over my shoulder any more. Straight ahead. All the cards on the table, please."
Cutty rose and pushed the invalid's chair to a window and drew another up beside it.
"My word, the top of the world! Bally odd roost."
"You will find it safer here than you would on the shores of Kaspuskoi More," replied Cutty, gravely. "The Caspian wouldn't be a healthy place for you now."
With wide eyes Hawksley stared across the shining, wavering roofs. A pause. "What do you know?" he asked, faintly.
"Everything. But wait!" Cutty fetched one of the photographs and laid it upon the young man's knees. "Know who this is - Two-Hawks?"
A strained, tense gesture as Hawksley seized the photograph; then his chin sank slowly to his chest. A moment later Cutty was profoundly astonished to see something sparkle on its way down the bed quilt. Tears!
"I'm sorry!" cried Cutty, troubled and embarrassed. "I'm terribly sorry! I should have had the decency to wait a day or two."
"On the contrary, thank you!" Hawksley flung up his head. "Nothing in all God's muddied world could be more timely - the face of my mother! I am not ashamed of these tears. I am not afraid to die.
I am not even afraid to live. But all the things I loved - the familiar earth, the human beings, my dog - gone. I am alone."
