From a window in one of the vacant warehouses, twenty-odd feet away

Cutty, from an oblique angle, had witnessed the peculiar drama without

being able to grasp head or tail to it. For two hours he had crouched

behind his window, watching the man on the cot and wondering if he would

ever turn his face toward the candlelight. Then Karlov had entered.

Gregor's ironic calm--with the exception of the time he had bared his

throat--and Karlov's tempestuous exit baffled him. To the eye it had the

appearance of a victory for Gregor and a defeat for Karlov, but Cutty

had long ago ceased to believe his eyes without some corroborative

evidence of auricular character.

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He had recognized both men. Karlov answered to Kitty's description as

an old glove answers to the hand. And no man, once having seen Gregor,

could possibly forget his picturesque head. The old chap was alive! This

fact made the night's adventure tally one hundred per cent. How to get a

cheery word to him, to buck him up with, the promise of help? A hard

nut to crack; so many obstacles. Primarily, this was a Federal affair.

Yonder hid the werewolf and his pack, and it would be folly to send

them scattering just for the sake of advising Gregor that he was being

watched over.

Underneath the official obligation there was a personal interest in not

risking the game to warn Gregor. Cutty was now positive that the drums

of jeopardy were hidden somewhere in this house. To perform three acts,

then: Save Gregor, capture Karlov and his pack, and privately confiscate

the emeralds. Findings were keepings. No compromise regarding those

green stones. It would not particularly hurt his reputation with St.

Peter to play the half rogue once in a lifetime. Besides, St. Peter,

hadn't he stolen something himself back there in the Biblical days;

or got into a scrape or something? The old boy would understand. Cutty

grinned in the dark.

Any obsession is a blindfold. A straight course lay open to Cutty,

but he chose the labyrinthian because he was obsessed. He wanted

those emeralds. Nothing less than the possession of them would, to his

thinking, round out a varied and active career. Later, perhaps, he would

declare the stones to the customs and pay the duty; perhaps. Thus his

subsequent mishaps this night may be laid to the fact that he thought

and saw through green spectacles.

The idea that the jewels were hidden near by made it imperative that he

should handle this affair exclusively. Coles, the operative he had sent

to negotiate with Karlov, was conceivably a prisoner upstairs or down.

Coles knew about the drums, and they must not turn up under his eye.

Federal property, in that event.




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