For a long time Cutty sat perfectly motionless, his pipe at an upward

angle--a fine commentary on the strength of his jaws--and his gaze

boring into the shadows beyond his desk. What was uppermost in his

thoughts now was the fateful twist of events that had brought the young

man to the assured haven of this towering loft.

All based, singularly enough, upon his wanting to see Molly's girl for

a few moments; and thus he had established himself in Kitty's thoughts.

Instead of turning to the police she had turned to him. Old Cutty,

reaching round vaguely for something to stay the current--age; hoping

by seeing this living link 'twixt the present and the past to stay the

afterglow of youth. As if that could be done! He, who had never paid any

attention to gray hairs and wrinkles and time, all at once found

himself in a position similar to that of the man who supposes he has

an inexhaustible sum at the bank and has just been notified that he has

overdrawn.

Cutty knew that life wasn't really coordination and premeditation so

much as it was coincident. Trivials. Nothing was absolute and dependable

but death; between birth and death a series of accidents and incidents

and coincidents which men called life.

He tapped his pipe on the ash tray and stood up. He gathered the

chrysoprase and restored the stones to the canvas bag. Then he carefully

stacked the photographs and carried them to the portfolio. The green

stones he deposited in a safe, from which he took a considerable

bundle of small notebooks, returning to the desk with these. Denatured

dynamite, these notebooks, full of political secrets, solutions of

mysteries that baffle historians. A truly great journalist never writes

history as a historian; he is afraid to. Sometimes conjecture is safer

than fact. And these little notebooks were the repository of suppressed

facts ranging over twenty-odd years. Gerald Stanley Lee would have

recognized them instantly as coming under the head of what he calls Sh!

An hour later Cutty returned the notebooks to their abiding place,

his memory refreshed. The poor devil! A dissolute father and uncle,

dissolute forbears, corrupt blood weakened by intermarriage, what hope

was there? Only one--the rich, fiery blood of the Calabrian mother.

But why had the chap come to America? Why not England or the Riviera,

where rank, even if shorn of its prerogatives, is still treated

respectfully? But America!

Cutty's head went up. Perhaps that was it--to barter his phantom

greatness for money, to dazzle some rich fool of an American girl. In

that case Karlov would be welcome. But wait a moment. The chap had come

in from the west. In that event there should be an Odyssey of some kind

tucked away in the affair.




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