The Drums of Jeopardy

He built tiaras above the lovely head and laid necklaces across the

marvellous throat. Suddenly a phenomenon took place. The roguish eyes of

the prima donna receded and vanished and slate-blue ones replaced them.

The odd part of it was, he could not dissipate the fancied eyes for the

replacement of the actual. Patti, with slate-blue eyes! He discarded

the photograph and selected another. He began the game anew and was

just beginning the attack on the problem uppermost in his mind when the

phenomenon occurred again. Kitty's eyes! What infernal nonsense! Kitty

had served merely to enliven his tender recollections of her

mother. Twenty-four and fifty-two. And yet, hadn't he just read that

Maeterlinck, fifty-six, had married Mademoiselle Dahon, many years

younger?

In a kind of resentful fury he pushed back his chair and fell to pacing,

eddies and loops and spirals of smoke whirling and sweeping behind him.

The only light was centred upon the desk, so he might have been some god

pacing cloud-riven Olympus in the twilight. By and by he laughed; and

the atmosphere--mental--cleared. Maeterlinck, fifty-six, and Cutty,

fifty-two, were two different men. Cutty might mix his metaphors

occasionally, but he wasn't going to mix his ghosts.

He returned to his singular game. More tiaras and necklaces; and his

brain took firm hold of the theme which had in the beginning lured him

to the green stones.

Two-Hawks. That name bothered him. He knew he had heard it before, but

never in the Russian tongue. It might be that the chap had been spoofing

Kitty. Still, he had also called himself Hawksley.

The smoke thickened; there were frequent flares of matches. One by one

Cutty discarded the photographs, dropping them on the floor beside his

chair, his mind boring this way and that for a solution. He had now come

to the point where he ceased to see the photographs or the green stones.

The movements of his hands were almost automatic. And in this abstract

manner he came to the last photograph. He built a necklace and even

ventured an earring.

It was a glorious face--black eyes that followed you; full lipped; every

indication of fire and genius. It must be understood that he rarely saw

the photographs when he played this game. It wasn't an amusing pastime,

a mental relaxation. It was a unique game of solitaire, the photographs

and chrysoprase being substituted for cards; and in some inexplicable

manner it permitted him to concentrate upon whatever problem filled

his thoughts. It was purely accidental that he saw Patti to-night or

recalled her art. Coming upon the last photograph without having found a

solution of the riddle of Two-Hawks he relaxed the mental pressure; and

his sight reestablished its ability to focus.