Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/154

144 —mental—cleared. Maeterlinck, fifty-six, and Cutty, fifty-two, were two different men. Cutty might mix his metaphors occasionally, but he wasn't going to mix his ghosts.

He returned to his singular game. More tiaras and necklaces; and his brain took firm hold of the theme which had in the beginning lured him to the green stones.

Two-Hawks. That name bothered him. He knew he had heard it before, but never in the Russian tongue. It might be that the chap had been spoofing Kitty. Still, he had also called himself Hawksley.

The smoke thickened; there were frequent flares of matches. One by one Cutty discarded the photographs, dropping them on the floor beside his chair, his mind boring this way and that for a solution. He had now come to the point where he ceased to see the photographs or the green stones. The movements of his hands were almost automatic. And in this abstract manner he came to the last photograph. He built a necklace and even ventured an earring.

It was a glorious face—black eyes that followed you; full lipped; every indication of fire and genius. It must be understood that he rarely saw the photographs when he played this game. It wasn't an amusing pastime, a mental relaxation. It was a unique game of solitaire, the photographs and chrysoprase being substituted for cards; and in some inexplicable manner it permitted him to concentrate