Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/53

Rh interesting. There is always some enchantment, some evil spell. To handle the drums is to invite a minor accident. Call it twaddle; probably is; and yet I have reason to believe that there's something to the superstition."

Burlingame sniffed.

"I can prove it," Cutty declared. "I held those drums in my hands one day. I carried them to a window the better to observe them. On my return to the hotel I was knocked down by a horse and laid up in bed for a week. That same night someone tried to kill the man who showed me the emeralds. Coincidence? Perhaps. But these days I'm shying at thirteen, the wrong side of the street, ladders, and religious curses."

"An old hard-boiled egg like you?" Burlingame threw up his hands in mock despair.

"I laugh, too; but I duck, nevertheless. The chap who showed me the stones was what you'd call the honorary custodian; a privileged character because of his genius. Before approaching him I sent him a copy of my monograph on green stones. I found that he was quite as crazy over green as I. That brought us together; and while I drew him out I kept wondering where I had seen him before. Both his name and his face were vaguely familiar. It seems a superstition had come along with the stones, from India to Persia, from there to Russia. A maid fortunate enough to see the drums would marry and