第66章 CHAPTER XXIII(2)

"Yes, mine, mine, mine!" - panting. "Damn them! Some day I'll tell you. But just now I can't toe the mark. I was trying to forget them! Against my heart, gnawing into my soul like the beetle of the Spanish Inquisition!" Silence. "But they were future bread and butter - for Gregor as well as for myself. They got them, and may they damn Karlov as they have damned me! I had no chance when I returned to Gregor's. They were on me instantly. I put up a fight, but I'd come from a lighted room and was practically blind. Let them go. Most of those stones came out of hell, anyhow. Let them go. There is an unknown grave between those stones and me."

The level despair of the tone appalled Cutty. A crime somewhere?

There was still a bottom to this affair he had not plumbed? He rose, deeply agitated.

"I'll fetch those togs for you. Miss Conover will breakfast with us, and the sight of her will give you a brace. I'm sorry. I had to ask you."

"Beefsteak and a pretty girl! That's something. I suppose she was trapped by the lift not running." Hawksley was trying to meet Cutty halfway to cover up the tragedy. "I say, why the deuce do you let her live where she does?"

"Because I'm not legally her guardian. She is the daughter of the man and woman I loved best. All I can do is to watch over her. She lives on her earnings as a newspaper writer. I'd give her half of all I have if I had the least idea she would accept it."

"Fond of her?"

"Fond of her!" repeated Cutty. "Why, of course I'm fond of her!"

There was a touch of indignation in his tone.

"Is she fond of you?"

"I suppose so." What was the chap driving at?

"Then marry her," suggested Hawksley with a cynical smile; "make a settlement and give her her freedom. Simple enough. What?"

Cutty stepped back, stunned and terrified. "She would laugh at me!"

"You never can tell," replied Hawksley, maintaining the crooked smile. The devil was blazing in his eyes now. "Try it. It's being done every day; even here in this big America of yours. From the European point of view you have compromised her - or she has compromised herself, by spending the night here. Convention has been disregarded. A ripping good chance, I call it. You tell me she wouldn't accept benefits, and you want to help her. If she's the kind I believe her to be, even if she refuses you she will not be angry. You never can tell what woman will or won't do."

An old and forgotten bit of mental machinery began to set up a ditter-datter in Cutty's brain. Marry Kitty? Make a settlement, and then give her her freedom? Rot! Girls of Kitty's calibre were above such expediencies. He tried to resurrect his interest in the drums of jeopardy, which he might now appropriate without having to shanghai his conscience. The clitter-clatter smothered it; indeed, this new racket upset and demoralized the well-ordered machinery of his thinking apparatus as applied daily. Marry Kitty!

"I'm old enough to be her father."

"What's that to do with it so long as convention is satisfied?"

Cutty was so shaken and confused that he missed the tragic irony of the voice. All the receptive avenues to his brain seemed to have shut down suddenly. He was conscious only of the clitter-clatter.

Marry Kitty!

"You can't settle money on her," went on Hawksley, "without scandal.

You can't offer her anything without offending her. And you can't let her go to rust without having her bit of good times."

"Utterly impossible," said Cutty, to the idea rather than to his tormentor.

"Oh, of course, if you have an affair - No, God forgive me, I don't mean that! I'm a damned ingrate! But your bringing up those stones and knocking off the top of all the misery piling up in my heart! I was only trying to hurt you, hurt myself, everybody. Please have a little patience with me, for I've come out of hell!" Hawksley turned aside his head.

"Buck up," said Cutty, his blazing wrath dropping to a smoulder.

"I'll fetch those togs."

What had the boy done to fill him with such tragic bitterness? Was he Two-Hawks? Cutty dismissed this doubt instantly. He recalled the episode of the boy's conduct when confronted by the photograph of his mother. No human being could be a play actor in such a moment. The boy's emotion had been deep and real. Cutty recognized the fact that he had become as a block in the middle of a Chinese puzzle; only Fate could move him to his appointed place.

But offer marriage to Kitty so that he could provide for her!

Mechanically he rummaged his clothes press for the suit he was to take to Hawksley. Well, why not? He could settle five thousand a year on her. His departure for the Balkans - he might be gone a year or more - could be legally construed as desertion. And with pretty clothes and freedom she would soon find some young chap to her liking. But would a girl like Kitty see it from his point of view? The marriage could take place an hour or two before he went aboard his ship. Hang it, Hawksley wasn't so far off. Kitty couldn't possibly be offended if he laid the business squarely on the table. To provide for Molly's girl!

When Kuroki announced that breakfast was ready, Cutty went into the living room for Kitty, whom he bad not yet seen. He found her by a window fascinated by the splendour of the panorama as seen in the morning light. Not a vestige of the tears and disorder in which he had left her. What had been behind those tears? Dainty and refreshing; to the eye as though she had stepped out of a bandbox.

Compromised? That was utter rot! Wasn't Miss Frances here?

Clitter-clatter, clitter-clatter. But Cutty was not aware that it was no longer in his head but in his heart.

"Breakfast is served, Your Highness," he announced with a grave salaam.

Kitty pirouetted. For some reason she could not explain to herself she wanted to laugh, sing, dance. Perhaps it was because she was only twenty-four. Or it might have had its origin in the tonicky awakening among all these beautiful furnishings.

She assumed a haughty expression - such as the Duchess of Gerolstein assumes when she appoints the private to the office of generalissimo - and with a careless wave of the hand said: "Summon His Highness!"