What a pleasant intimacy hers and Cutty's promised to be! And if he hadn't casually dropped into the office that afternoon she would have surrendered the affair to the police, and that would have been the end of it. Amazing thought - you might jog along all your life at the side of a person and never know him half so well as someone you met m a tense episode, like that of the immaculate Cutty crossing the fire escape with Two-Hawks on his shoulders!
She heard the friendly coal heaver going down the corridor to the door. When he returned to the bedroom two men accompanied him. Not a word was said. The two men marched off with the prisoners and left Kitty alone with her saviour.
"Thank you," she said, simply.
"You poor little chicken, did you believe I had deserted you?" The voice wasn't gruff now.
"Cutty?" Kitty ran to him, flinging her arms round his neck. "Oh, Cutty!"
Cutty's heart, which had bumped along an astonishing number of million times in fifty-two years, registered a memorable bump against his ribs. The touch of her soft arms and the faint, indescribable perfume which emanates from a dainty woman's hair thrilled him beyond any thrill he had ever known. For Kitty's mother had never put her arms round old Cutty's neck. Of course he understood readily enough:
Molly's girl, flesh of her flesh. And she had rushed to him as she would have rushed to her father. He patted her shoulder clumsily, still a little dazzled for all the revelation in the analysis. The sweet intimacy of it! The door of Paradise opened for a moment, and then shut in his face.
"I did not recognize you at all!" she cried, standing off. "I shouldn't have known you on the street. And it is so ******. What a wonderful man you are!"
"For an old codger?" Cutty's heart registered another sizable bump.
Kitty laughed. "Never call yourself old to me again. Are you always doing these things?"
"Well, I keep moving. I suspected something like this might happen.
Those two will go to the Tombs to await deportation if they are aliens. Perhaps we can dig something out of them relative to this man Gregor. Anyhow, we'll try."
"Cutty, I saw a man in the court with a pocket lamp before I went to bed. He was hunting for something."
"I didn't find anything but a lot of fresh food someone had thrown out."
"It was you, then?"
"Yes. There was a vague possibility that your protege might have thrown out something valuable during the struggle."
"What?"
"Lord knows! A queer business, Kitty, you've lugged me into - my own! And there is one thing I want you to remember particularly:
Life means nothing to the men opposed, neither chivalry nor ethics.
Annihilation is their business. They don't want civilization; they want chaos. They have lost the sense of comparisons or they would not seek to thrust Bolshevism down the throats of the rest of the world. They say democracy has failed, and their substitute is murder and loot. Kitty, I want you to leave this roost."
"I shall stay until my lease expires."
"Why? In the face of real danger?"
"Because I intend to, Cutty - unless you kidnap me."
"Have you any good reason?"
"You'll laugh; but something tells me to stay here."
But Cutty did not laugh. "Very well. Tomorrow an assistant janitor will be installed. His name is Antonio Bernini. Every night he will whistle up the tube. Whistle back. If you are going out for the evening notify him where you intend to go and when you expect to be back. A wire from your bed to his cot will be installed. In danger, press the button. That's the best I can do for you, since you decide to stick. I don't believe anything more will happen to-night, but from now on you will be watched. Never come directly to my apartment. Break your journey two or three times with taxis.
Always use Elevator Four. The boy is mine; belongs to the service.
So our Bolshevik friends won't gather anything about you from him."
As a matter of fact, Cutty had now come to the conviction that it would be well to let Kitty remain here as a lure. He had urged her to leave, and she had refused, so his conscience was tolerably clear.
Besides, she would henceforth be guarded with a ceaseless efficiency second only to that which encompasses a President of the United States. Always some man of the service would be watching those who watched her. This was going to develop into a game of small nets, one or two victims at a time. Because these enemies of civilization lacked coherence in action there would be slim chance of rounding them up in bulk. But from now on men would vanish - one here, a pair there, perhaps on occasion four or five. And those who had known them would know them no more. The policy would be that employed by the British in the submarine campaign - mysterious silence after the evanishment.
"It's all so exciting!" said Kitty. "But that poor old man Gregor!
He had a wonderful violin, Cutty; and sometimes I used to hear him play folklore music - sad, haunting melodies."
"We'll know in a little while what's become of him. I doubt there is a foreign organization in the city that hasn't one or more of our men on the inside. A word will be dropped somewhere. I'm rarely active on this side of the Atlantic; and what I'm doing now is practically due to interest. But every active operative in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago is on the lookout for a man who, if left free, will stir up a lot of trouble. He has leadership, this Boris Karlov, a former intimate here of Trotzky's.
We have reason to believe that he slipped through the net in San Francisco. Probably under a cleverly forged passport. Now please describe the man who came in with the policeman. I haven't had time to make inquiries at the precinct, where they will have a minute description of him."
"He made me think of a gorilla, just as I told you. His face was pretty well banged up. Naturally I did not notice any scar. A dreadfully black beard, shaven."
