The Drums of Jeopardy

To understand Kitty at this moment one must be able to understand the

Irish; and nobody does or can or will. Consider her twenty-four

years, her corpuscular inheritance, the love of drama and the love of

adventure. Imagine possessing sound ideas of life and the ability

to apply them, and spiritually always galloping off on some broad

highway--more often than not furnished by some engaging scoundrel of

a novelist--and you will be able to construct a half tone of Kitty

Conover.

That civilization might be actually on its deathbed, that positively

half of the world was starving and dying and going mad through the

reaction of the German blight touched her in a detached way. She felt

sorry, dreadfully sorry, for the poor things; but as she could not help

them she dismissed them from her thoughts every morning after she had

read the paper, the way most of us do here in these United States. You

cannot grapple with the misery of an unknown person several thousand

miles away.

That which had taken place during the past twenty-four hours was to her

a lark, a blindman's buff for grown-ups. It was not in her to tremble,

to shudder, to hesitate, to weigh this and to balance that. Irish

curiosity. Perhaps in the original that immortal line read: "The

Irish rush in where angels fear to tread," and some proofreader had a

particular grudge against the race.

When the elevator reached the seventeenth floor, the passengers surged

forth. All except Kitty, who tarried.

"We don't carry to the eighteenth, miss.

"I am Miss Conover," she replied. "I dared not tell you until we were

alone."

"I see." The boy nodded, swept her with an appraising glance, and sent

the elevator up to the loft.

"You understand? If any one inquires about me, you don't remember."

"Yes, miss. The boss's orders."

"And if any one does inquire you are to report at once."

"That, too."

The boy rolled back the door and Kitty stepped out upon a Laristan

runner of rose hues and cobalt blue. She wondered what it cost Cutty

to keep up an establishment like this. There were fourteen rooms, seven

facing the north and seven facing the west, with glorious vistas of

steam-wreathed roofs and brick Matterhorns and the dim horizon touching

the sea. Fine rugs and tapestries and furniture gathered from the four

ends of the world; but wholly livable and in no sense atmospheric of the

museum. Cutty had excellent taste.

She had visited the apartment but twice before, once in her childhood

and again when she was eighteen. Cutty had given a dinner in honour of

her mother's birthday. She smiled as she recalled the incident. Cutty

had placed a box of candles at the side of her mother's plate and told

her to stick as many into the cake as she thought best.