Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/348

336, the man who held Stefani Gregor a prisoner! For the present these facts were sufficient.

"Don't get too near," said Kitty through the speaking tube. "Just keep the cab in sight." A perfectly logical compensation. She herself had set in motion the machinery of this amazing adventure; it was logically right that she should end it. Poor dear old Cutty—to fancy he could pull the wool over Kitty Conover's eyes! Cutty, the most honest man alive, had set his foot upon an unethical bypath and now found himself among nettles. To keep Johnny Two-Hawks prisoner in that lofty apartment while he hunted for the drums of jeopardy! Hadn't he said he had seen emeralds he would steal with half a chance? Cutty, playing at this sort of game, his conscience biting whichever way he turned! He had been hunting unsuccessfully for the stones that night he had come in with his face and hands bloody. Why hadn't he kissed her?

Johnny Two-Hawks—bourgeois? Utter nonsense! Of course it did not matter now what he was; he had dug a bridgeless chasm with that smile. Sometime to-morrow he and Stefani Gregor would be on their way to Montana; and that would be the last of them both. To-morrow would mark the fork in the road. But life would never again be humdrum for Kitty Conover.

The taxicabs were bumping over cobbles, through empty streets. It was six by now; at that hour this