第18章 CHAPTER VII(1)

Twice before in her life Kitty had looked upon death by violence; and it required only this present picture to convince her that she would never be able to gaze upon it callously, without pity and terror. Newspaper life - at least the reportorial side of it - has an odd effect upon men and women; it sharpens their tragical instincts and perceptions and dulls eternally the edge of tenderness and sentimentality. It was natural for Kitty to possess the keenest perceptions of tragedy; but she had been taken out of the reportorial field in time to preserve all her tenderness and romanticism.

Otherwise she would have seen in that crumpled object with the sinister daub of blood on the forehead merely a story, and would have approached it from that angle. But was he dead? She literally forced her steps toward the body and stared. She dropped to her knees because they were threatening to buckle in one of those flashes of physical incoordination to which the strongest will must bow occasionally. She was no longer afraid of the tragedy, but she feared the great surging pity that was striving to express itself in sobs; and she knew that if she surrendered she would forthwith become hysterical for the rest of the evening and incompetent to carry out the plan in her head.

A strong, healthy young man done to death in this fashion only a few minutes after he had left her kitchen! Somehow she could not look upon him as a stranger. She had given him food; she had talked to him; she had even laughed with him. He was not like those dead she had seen in her reportorial days. Her orbit and Johnny Two-Hawks' had indeterminately touched; she had known old Gregory, or Gregor, who had been this unfortunate young man's friend. And he had hoped they might never meet again!

The murderous scoundrels had been watching. They must have entered the apartment shortly after he had entered hers. Conceivably they would have Gregor's key. And they had watched and waited, striking him down it may have been at the very moment he had crossed the sill of the window.

Her hand shook so idiotically that it was impossible for a time to tell if the man's heart was beating. All at once a wave of hot fury rushed over her - fury at the cowardliness of the assault - and the vertigo passed. She laid her palm firmly over Johnny Two-Hawks' heart. Alive! He was alive! She straightened his body and put a pillow under his head. Then she sought water and towels.

There was no cut on his forehead, only blood; but the top of his head had been cruelly beaten. He was alive, but without immediate aid he might die. The poor young man!

There were two physicians in the block; one or the other would be in. She ran to the door, to find it locked. She had forgotten.

Next she found the telephone wire cut and the speaking tube battered and inutile. She would have to return to her own apartment to summon help. She dared not leave the light on. The scoundrels might possibly return, and the light would warn them that their victim had been discovered; and naturally they would wish to ascertain whether or not they had succeeded in their murderous assault.

As she was passing the first-landing windows she saw Cutty emerging from the elevator. She flew across the fire-escape platform with the resilient step of one crossing thin ice.

Probably the most astonished man in New York was the war correspondent when the door opened and a pair of arms were flung about him, and a voice smothered in the lapel of his coat cried:

"Oh, Cutty, I never was so glad to see any one!"

"What in the name of - "

"Come! We'll handle this ourselves. Hurry!" She dragged him along by the sleeve.

"But - "

"It is life and death! No talk now!"

Cutty, immaculate in his evening clothes, very much perturbed, went along after her. As she passed through the kitchen window and beckoned him to follow he demurred.

"Kitty, what the deuce is going on here?"

"I'll answer your questions when we get him into my apartment. They tried to murder him; left him there to die!"

Cutty possessed a great art, an art highly developed only in explorers and newspaper reporters of the first order - adaptability; of being able to cast aside instantly the conventions of civilization and let down the bars to the primordial, the instinctive, and the natural. Thus the Cutty who stepped out beside Kitty into the drizzle was not the Cutty she had admitted into the apartment. She did not recognize this remarkable transition until later; and then she discovered that Cutty, the suave and lackadaisical in idleness, was a tremendous animal hibernating behind a crackle shell.

Ordinarily Cutty would have declined to come through this shell, thin as it was; he liked these catnaps between great activities.

But this lovely creature was Conover's daughter, and she would have the seventh sense-divination of the born reporter. Something big was in the air.

"Go on!" he said, briskly. "I'm at your heels. And stoop as you pass those hall windows. No use throwing a silhouette for somebody in those rear houses to see." . . . Old Tommy Conover's daughter, sure pop! . . . There you go, under the ladder! You've dished the whole affair, whatever it is.... No, no! Just spoofing, Kitty. A long face is no good anywhere, even at a funeral.... This window?

All right. Know where the lights are? Very good."

When Cutty saw the man on the floor he knelt quickly. "Nasty bang on the head, but he's alive. What's this? His cap. Poughkeepsie.

By George, padded with his handkerchief! Must have known something was going to fall on him. Now, what's it all about?"

"When we get him to my apartment."

"Yours? Good Lord, what's the matter with this?"

"They tried to kill him here. They might return to see if they had succeeded. They mustn't find where he has gone. I'm strong. I can take hold of his knees."