"An old hard-boiled egg like you?" Burlingame threw up his hands in mock
despair.
"I laugh, too; but I duck, nevertheless. The chap who showed me
the stones was what you'd call the honorary custodian; a privileged
character because of his genius. Before approaching him I sent him a
copy of my monograph on green stones. I found that he was quite as crazy
over green as I. That brought us together; and while I drew him out I
kept wondering where I had seen him before. Both his name and his face
were vaguely familiar. It seems a superstition had come along with the
stones, from India to Persia, from there to Russia. A maid fortunate
enough to see the drums would marry and be happy. The old fellow
confessed that occasionally he secretly admitted a peasant maid to gaze
upon the stones. But he never let the male inmates of the palace find
this out. He knew them a little too intimately. A bad lot."
"And this palace?" asked Kitty.
"Not one stone on another. The proletariat rose up and destroyed it. To
mobs anything beautiful is offensive. Palaces looted, banks, museums,
houses. The ignorant toying with hand grenades, thinking them sceptres.
All the scum in the world boiling to the top. After the Red Day comes
the Red Night."
"Whatever will become of them--the little kings and princes and dukes?"
After all, thought Kitty, they were human beings; they would not suffer
any the less because they had been born to the purple.
"Maybe they'll go to work," said Cutty, dryly. "Sooner or later, all
parasites will have to work if they want bread. And yet I've met some
men among them, big in the heart and the mind, who would have made
bully farmers and professors. The beautiful thing about the Anglo-Saxon
education is that the whole structure is based upon fair play. In
eastern and southeastern Europe few of them can play solitaire without
cheating. But I would give a good deal to know what has happened to
those emeralds--the drums of jeopardy. They'll probably be broken up and
sold in carat weights. The whole family was wiped out in a night.... I
say, will you take lunch with me to-morrow?"
"Gladly."
"All right. I'll drop in here at half after twelve. Here's my telephone
number, should anything alter your plans. If I'm going to be godfather I
might as well start right in."
"The drums of jeopardy; what a haunting phrase!"
"Haunting stones, too, Kitty. For picking them up in my hands I went to
bed with a banged-up leg. I can't forget that. We Occidentals laugh at
Orientals and their superstitions. We don't believe in the curse. And
yet, by George, those emeralds were accursed!"