Kitty was awake to one fact. She could not venture to dig into this
affair alone. On the other hand, she did not want one of the men from
the city room--a reporter who would see nothing but news. If Gregor was
only a prisoner publicity might be the cause of his death; and publicity
would certainly react hardily against Johnny Two-Hawks. To whom might
she turn?
Cutty!--with his great physical strength, his shrewd and alert
mentality, and his wide knowledge of peoples and tongues. There was the
man for her--Kitty Conover's godfather. She dumped the contents of her
handbag upon the stand in the hallway in her impatience to find Cutty's
card with his telephone number. It was not in the directory. She might
catch him before he went out for the evening.
A Japanese voice answered her call.
"'Souse, but he iss out."
"Where?"
"No tell me."
"How long has he been gone?"
"'Scuse!"
Kitty heard the click of the receiver as it went down upon the hook.
But she wasn't the daughter of Conover for nothing. She called up the
University Club. No. The Harvard Club. No. The Players, the Lambs; and
in the latter club she found him.
"Who is it?" Cutty spoke impatiently.
"Kitty Conover."
"Oh! What's the matter? Can't you have lunch with me?"
"Something very strange is happening in this old apartment house, Cutty.
I'm afraid it is a matter of life and death. Otherwise I shouldn't have
bothered you. Can you come up right away?"
"As soon as a taxi can take me!"
"Thanks."
Kitty then went through the apartment and turned out all the lights.
Next she drew up a chair to the kitchen window and sat down to watch.
All was dark across the way. But there was nothing singular in this
fact. Johnny Two-Hawks would have sense enough to realize that it would
be safer to move about in the dark. It was even probable that he was
lying down.
Tumpitum-tump! Tumpitum-tump! went the racing Elevated; and Kitty's
heart raced along with it. Queer how the echo of Cutty's description
of the drums calling a jehad--a holy war--should adapt itself to that
Elevated. Drums! Perhaps the echo clung because she had been interested
beyond measure in his tale of those two emeralds, the drums of jeopardy.
Mobs sacking palaces and museums and banks and homes; all the scum of
the world boiling to the top; the Red Night that wasn't over.
She uttered a shaky little laugh. She would tell Cutty. The real drums
of jeopardy weren't emeralds but the roll of warning that prescience
taps upon the spine, the occult sense of impending danger. That was why
the Elevated went tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! She would tell Cutty.
The drums of fear.