The Drums of Jeopardy

Miss Frances held out her hand. "You've handled men," she said, with

reluctant admiration.

"Oh, boy!--millions of 'em, an' each guy different. Believe me! Make 'em

wanta."

Cutty attended his conferences. He learned immediately that he was

booked to sail the first week in May. His itinerary began at Piraeus,

in Greece, and might end in Vladivostok. But they detained him

in Washington overtime because he was a fount of information the

departments found it necessary to draw upon constantly. The political

and commercial aspects of the polyglot peoples, what they wanted, what

they expected, what they needed; racial enmities. The bugaboo of the

undesirable alien was no longer bothering official heads in Washington.

Stringent immigration laws were in the making. What they wanted to

know was an American's point of view, based upon long and intimate

associations.

Washington reminded him of nothing so much as a big sheep dog. The

hazardous day was over; the wolves had been driven off and the sheep

into the fold; and now the valiant guardian was turning round and round

and round preparatory to lying down to sleep. For Washington would go to

sleep again, naturally.

Often it occurred to him what a remarkable piece of machinery the human

brain was. He could dig up all this dry information with the precise

accuracy of an economist, all the while his actual thoughts upon Kitty.

His nights were nightmares. And all this unhappiness because he had been

touched with the lust for loot. Fundamentally, this catastrophe could be

laid to the drums of jeopardy.

The alluring possibility of finding those damnable green stones--the

unsuspected kink in his moral rectitude--had tumbled him into this pit.

Had not Kitty pronounced the name Stefani Gregor--in his mind always

linked with the emeralds--he would have summoned an ambulance and had

Hawksley carried off, despite Kitty's protests; and perhaps he would

have seen her but two or three times before sailing, seen her in

conventional and unemotional parts. At any rate, there would have been

none of this peculiar intimacy--Kitty coming to him in tears, opening

her young heart to him and discovering all its loneliness. If she

loved some chap it would not be so hard, the temptation would not be

so keen--to cheat her. Marry her, and then tell her. This dogged his

thoughts like a murderer's deed, terrible in the watches of the night.

Marry her, and then tell her. Cheat her. Break her heart and break his

own.

Fifty-two. Never before had he thought old. His splendid health and

vigorous mentality were the results of thinking young. But now he heard

the avalanche stirring, the whispering slither of the first pebbles. He

would grow old swiftly, thunderously. Kitty's youth would shore up the

debacle, suspend it indefinitely. Marry her, cheat her, and stay young.

Green stones, accursed.