Hawksley smiled, revealing beautifully white teeth. “I say, it is a bit off, isn't it! I received it”—a twinkle coming into his eyes—“in a situation that had moribund perspectives.”
“Moribund perspectives,” repeated Kitty, casting the phrase about in her mind in search of an equivalent less academic.
“I am young and healthy, and I wanted to live,” he said, gravely. “I am curious to know what is going to happen to-morrow and other to-morrows.”
Somewhere near by a door was slammed violently. Kitty, every muscle in her body tense, jumped convulsively, with the result that her finger pressed automatically the trigger of her pistol. The fan popped out gayly.
Hawksley stared at the fan, quite as astonished as Kitty. Then he broke into low, rollicking laughter, which Kitty, because her basic corpuscle was Irish, perforce had to join. For all her laughter she retreated, furious and alarmed.
“Fancy! I say, now, you're jolly plucky to face a scoundrel like me with that.”
“I don't just know what to make of you,” said Kitty, irresolutely, flinging the fan into a corner.
“You have revivified a celestial spark—my faith in human beings. I beg of you not to be afraid of me. I am quite harmless. I am very grateful for the meal. Yours is the one act of kindness I have known in weeks. I will return to Gregor's apartment at once. But before I go please accept this. I rather suspect, you know, that you live alone, and that fan is amusing and not particularly suitable.” He rose and unsmilingly laid upon the table one of those heavy blue-black bull-dogs of war, a regulation revolver. Kitty understood what this courteous act signified; he was disarming himself to reassure her.
“Sit down,” she ordered. Either he was harmless or he wasn't. If he wasn't she was utterly at his mercy. She might be able to lift that terrible-looking engine of murder, battle, and sudden death with the aid of both hands, but to aim and fire it—never in this world! “As I came in to-night I found a note in the hall from Mr. Gregory. I will fetch it. But you call him Gregor?”
“His name is Stefani Gregor; and years and years ago he dandled me on his knees. I promise not to move until you return.”
Subdued by she knew not what, no longer afraid, Kitty moved out of the kitchen. She had offered Gregory's letter as an excuse to reach the telephone. Once there, however, she did not take the receiver off the hook. Instead she whistled down the tube for the janitor.
“This is Miss Conover. Come up to my apartment in ten minutes. … No; it's not the water pipes. … In ten minutes.”
Nothing very serious could happen inside of ten minutes; and the janitor was reliable and not the sort one reads about in the comic weeklies. Her confidence reenforced by the knowledge that a friend was near, she took the letter into the kitchen. Apparently her unwelcome guest had not stirred. The revolver was where he had laid it.
“Read this,” she said.
The visitor glanced through it. “It is Gregor's hand. Poor old chap! I shall never forgive my self.”
“For what?”
“For dragging him into this. They must have intercepted one of my telegrams.” He stared dejectedly at the strip of oilcloth in front of the range. “You are an American?”
“Yes.”
“God has been exceedingly kind to your country. I doubt if you will ever know how kind. I'll take myself off. No sense in compromising you.” He laid a folded handkerchief inside his cap which he put on. “Know anything about this?”—indicating the revolver.
“Nothing whatever.”
“Permit me to show you. It is loaded; there are five bullets in the clip. See this little latch? So, it is harmless. So, and you kill with it.”
“It is horrible!” cried Kitty. “Take it with you please. I could not keep my eyes open to shoot it.”
“These are troublous times. All women should know something about small arms. Again I thank you. For your own sake I trust that we may never meet again. Good-bye.” He stepped out of the window and vanished.
Kitty, at a mental impasse, could only stare into the night beyond the window. This mesmeric state endured for a minute; then a gentle and continuous sound dissipated the spell. It was raining. Obliquely she saw the burnt egg in the pan. The thing had happened; she had not been dreaming.
Her brain awoke. Thought crowded thought; before one matured another displaced it; and all as futile as the sparks from the anvil. An avalanche of conjecture; and out of it all eventually emerged one concrete fact. The man Was honest. His hunger had been honest; his laughter. Who was he, what was he? For all his speech, not English; for all his gestures, not Italian. Moribund perspectives. Somewhere that day he had fought for his life. John Two-Hawks.
And there was the mysterious evanishment of old Gregory, whose name was Stefani Gregor. In a humdrum, prosaic old apartment like this!
Kitty had ideas about adventure—an inheritance, though she was not aware of that. There had to be certain ingredients, principally mystery. Anything sordid must not be permitted to edge in. She had often gone forth upon semi-perilous enterprises as a reporter, entered sinister houses where crimes had been committed, but always calculating how much copy at eight dollars a column could be squeezed out of the affair. But this promised to be something like those tales which were always clear and wonderful in her head but more or less opaque when she attempted to transfer them to paper. A secret society? Vengeance? An echo of the war?
“Johnny Two-Hawks,” she murmured aloud. “And he hopes we'll never meet again!”
There was a mirror over the sink, and she threw a glance into it. Very well; if he thought like that about it.
Here the doorbell tinkled. That would be the faithful janitor. She ran to the door.
“Whadjuh wanta see me about, Miz Conover?”
“What has happened to old Mr. Gregory?”
“Him? Why, some amb'lance fellers carted him off this afternoon. Didn't know nawthin' was the matter with 'im until I runs into them in the hall.”
“He'd been hurt?”
“Couldn't say, miz. He was on a stretcher when I seen 'im. Under a sheet.”
“But he might have been dead!”
“Nope. I ast 'em, an' they said a shock of some sort.”
“What hospital?”
“Gee, I forgot t'ast that!”
“I'll find out. Good-night.”
But Kitty did not find out. She called up all the known private and public hospitals, but no Gregor or Gregory had been received that afternoon, nor anybody answering his description. The fog had swallowed up Stefani Gregor.
CHAPTER VI
The reportorial instinct in Kitty Conover, combined with her natural feminine curiosity, impelled her to seek to the bottom of affair. Her newspaper was as far from her as the poles; simply a paramount desire to translate the incomprehensible into sequence and consequence. Harmless old Gregor's disappearance and the advent of John Two-Hawks—the absurdity of that name!—with his impeccable English accent, his Latin gestures, and his black eye, convinced her that it was political; an electrical cross current out of that broken world over there. Moribund perspectives. What did that signify save that Johnny Two-Hawks had fought somewhere that day for his life? Had Gregor been spirited away so as to leave Two-Hawks without support, to confuse and discourage him and break down his powers