第36章 CHAPTER XIII(3)

"So I observe. But if they ever should have the luck to kidnap you, tell all you know at once. There's only one way up here - the elevator. I can get out to the fire escape, but none can get in from that direction, as the door is of steel."

"And, of course, you'll take me into your confidence completely?"

"When the time comes. Half the fun in an adventure is the element of the unexpected," said Cutty.

"Where did you first meet Stefani Gregor?"

Captain Harrison laughed. He liked this girl. She was keen and could be depended upon, as witness last night's work. Her real danger lay in being conspicuously pretty, in looking upon this affair as merely a kind of exciting game, when it was tragedy.

"What makes you think I know Stefani Gregor?" asked Cutty, genuinely curious.

"When I pronounced that name you whirled upon me as if I had struck you."

"Very well. When we learn who Two-Hawks is I'll tell you what I know about Gregor. And in the meantime you will be ceaselessly under guard. You are an asset, Kitty, to whichever side holds you.

Captain Harrison is going to stay for dinner. Won't you join us?"

"I'm going to a studio potluck with some girls. And it's time I was on the way. I'll let your Tony Bernini know. Home probably at ten."

Cutty went with her to the elevator and when he returned to the tea table he sat down without speaking.

"Why not kidnap her yourself," suggested Harrison, "if you don't want her in this?"

"She would never forgive me."

"If she found it out."

"She's the kind who would. What do you think of her, Miss Frances?"

"I think she is wonderful. Frankly, I should tell her everything - if there is anything more to be told."

When dinner was over, the nurse gone back to the patient and Captain Harrison to his club, Cutty lit his odoriferous pipe and patrolled the windows of his study. Ever since Kitty's departure he had been mulling over in his mind a plan regarding her future - to add a codicil to his will, leaving her five thousand a year, so Molly's girl might always have a dainty frame for her unusual beauty. The pity of it was that convention denied him the pleasure of settling the income upon her at once, while she was young. He might outlive her; you never could tell. Anyhow, he would see to the codicil. An accident might step in.

He got out his chrysoprase. In one corner of the room there was a large portfolio such as artists use for their proofs and sketches; and from this he took a dozen twelve-by-fourteen-inch photographs of beautiful women, most of them stage beauties of bygone years.

The one on top happened to be Patti. The adorable Patti! ... Linda, Violetta, Lucia. Lord, what a nightingale she had been! He laughed laid the photograph on the desk, and dipped his hand into a canvas bag filled with polished green stones which would have great commercial value if people knew more about them; for nothing else in the world is quite so beautifully green.