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.
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.