第93章 CHAPTER XXXII(1)

Because it was assumed that some of Karlov's pack might be at large and unsuspectingly return to the trap, Federal agents would remain on guard all night. They explored the house, hunting for chemicals, documents, letters, and addresses. They found enough high explosive to blow up the district. And they found Stefani Gregor. They were standing by the cot as Cutty came in.

"Yes, sir. Just this minute went out."

"Did he speak?"

"A woman's name."

"Rosa?"

"Yes, sir. Looks to me as if he had been starved to death. Know who he was?"

"Yes. Tell the coroner to be gentle. Once upon a time Stefani Gregor spoke to kings by right of genius."

The thought that he himself might have been the indirect cause of Gregor's death shocked Cutty, who was above all things tender.

He had held back the raid for several days, to serve his own ends.

He could have ordered the raid from Washington, and it would have gone through as smoothly as to-night. The drums of jeopardy. Well, that phase of the game was done with. He had held up this raid so that he might be on hand to search Karlov; and until now he had forgotten the drums. Accurst! They were accurst. The death of Stefani Gregor would always be on his conscience.

Cutty stared - not very clearly - at the cameo-like face so beautifully calm. As in life, so it was in death; the calm that had brooked and beaten down the turbulent instincts of the boy, the imperturbable calm of a great soul. Rosa. The sublime unselfishness of the man! He had sacrificed wealth and fame for the love of the boy's mother - unspoken, unrequited love, the quality that passes understanding. And his reward: to die on this cot, in horrid loneliness. Rosa.

All at once Cutty felt himself little, trivial, beside this forlorn bier. What did he know about love? He had never made any sacrifices; he had simply carried in his heart a bittersweet recollection. But here! Twenty-odd years of unremitting devotion to the son of the woman he had loved - Stefani Gregor. Creating environments that would develop the noble qualities in the boy, interposing himself between the boy and the evil pleasures of the uncle, teaching him the beautiful, cleansing his soul of the inherited mud. Reverently Cutty drew the coverlet over the fine old head.

"What's this?" asked one of the operatives. "Looks like the pieces of a broken fiddle."

Out of those dark red bits of wood - some of them bearing the imprints of hobnails - Cutty constructed the scene. A wave of bitter rage rolled over him. The beast! Karlov had done this thing, with poor old Gregor looking on, too weak to intervene.

Not so many years ago these bits of wood, under the master's touch, had entranced the souls of thousands. Cutty recalled a fairy tale he had read when a boy about a prince whose soul had been transformed into a flower which, if plucked or broken, died.

Karlov had murdered Stefani Gregor, perhaps not legally but actually nevertheless.

Rehabilitated in soul, Cutty left the room. He had read a compelling lesson in self-sacrifice. He was going to pick up his cross and go on with it, smiling. After all, Kitty was only an interlude; the big thing was the game; and shortly he would be in the thick of great events again. But Kitty should be happy.

His old analytical philosophy resumed its functions. The contempt and jealousy of one race for another; what was God's idea in implanting that in souls? Hawksley was at base Russian. The boy's English education, his adopted outlook upon life, made it possible for Cutty to ignore the racial antagonism of the Anglo-Saxon for all other races. Stefani Gregor at one end of the world and he at the other, blindly working out the destinies of Kitty Conover and Ivan Mikhail Feodorovich and so forth and so on, with the blood of Catharine in his veins! Made a chap dizzy to think of it.

Traditions were piling up along with crowns and sceptres in the abyss.

When he returned to the attic he felt himself fortified against any inevitability. Hawksley was sitting up, his back to the wall, staring groggily but with reckless adoration into Kitty's lovely face. Youth will be served. As if, watching these two, there could be any doubt of it! And he had bent part of his energies toward keeping them separated.

"Ha!" he cried, cheerfully. "Back on top again, I see. How's the head?"

"Haven't any; no legs; I'm nothing at all but a bit of my own imagination. How do you feel?"

"Like the aftermath of an Irish wake." Then Cutty's battered face assumed an expression that was meant to typify gravity. "John," he aid, "I've bad news for you."

John. A glow went over the young man's aching body. John. What could that signify except that he had passed into the eternal friendship of this old thoroughbred? John.

"About Stefani?"

"Stefani is dead. He died speaking your mother's name."

Hawksley's head sank; his chin touched his chest. He spoke without looking up. "Something told me I would never see him alive again.

Old Stefani! If there is any good in me it will be his handiwork.

"I say," he added, his eyes now seeking Cutty's, "you called me John. Will you carry on?"

"Keep an eye on you? So long as you may need me."

"I come from a lawless race. Stefani had to fight. Even now I'm afraid sometimes. God knows I want to be all he tried to make me."

"You're all right, John. You've reached haven; the storms hereafter will be outside. Besides, Stefani will always be with you. You'll never pick up that old Amati without feeling Stefani near. Can you stand?"

"Between the two of you, perhaps."