Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/361

Rh Your Highness into the middle of East River for putting that idea into my head. She has consented to it; and now, damn it, I've got to back out of it!"

Cutty rose and flung down his napkin.

"Why?" asked the bewildered Hawksley.

"Because there is in me the making of a first-rate scoundrel, and I never should have known it if you and your affairs hadn't turned up."

Cutty entered his study and slammed the door, leaving Hawksley prey to so many conflicting emotions that his head began to bother him. Back out of it! Why? Why should Kitty have a problem to solve over such a marriage of convenience, and why should the old thoroughbred want to back out?

Kitty would be free, then? A flash of fire, which subsided quickly under the smothering truth. What if she were free? He could not ask her to be his wife. Not because of last night's madness. That no longer troubled him. She was the sort who would understand, if he told her. She had a soul big with understanding. It was that he walked in the shadow of death, and would so long as Karlov was free; and he could not ask any woman to share that.

He pushed back his chair slowly. In the living room he took the Amati from its case and began improvising. What the chrysoprase did for Cutty the fiddle did for this derelict—solved problems.