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Updated: June 20, 2025
It merely sent his thought galloping backward a score of years. He saw Stefani Gregor and a small boy in mountain costume footing it sturdily along the dizzy goat paths of the rugged hills; saw the two sitting on some ruddy promontory and munching black bread rubbed with garlic. Ambrosia! His mother's horror, when she smelt his breath as if garlic had not been one of her birthrights!
She sensed an undercurrent, and her first attempt to touch it had failed. The mere name of Stefani Gregor had not roused Cutty's astonishment. She was quite positive that the name was not wholly unfamiliar to her father's friend. Still, something warned her not to press in this direction. He would be on the alert. She must wait until he had forgotten the incident.
"Where did you first meet Stefani Gregor?" Captain Harrison laughed. He liked this girl. She was keen and could be depended upon, as witness last night's work. Her real danger lay in being conspicuously pretty, in looking upon this affair as merely a kind of exciting game, when it was tragedy. "What makes you think I know Stefani Gregor?" asked Cutty, genuinely curious.
Somewhere that day he had fought for his life. John Two-Hawks. And there was the mysterious evanishment of old Gregory, whose name was Stefani Gregor. In a humdrum, prosaic old apartment like this! Kitty had ideas about adventure an inheritance, though she was not aware of that. There had to be certain ingredients, principally mystery. Anything sordid must not be permitted to edge in.
Now the young woman's tears were falling fast, but silently still, as if she knew that her heart-break was unimportant in the great scheme of things, and she wished to make no noise about it. Her lips moved, but no words came. "She will not speak against me," Stefani said suddenly, "nor will my poor mother. But I will tell you the story.
Ten years of diplomacy, tact, patience. Stefani Gregor! There was the blood, predatory and untamed; and there was the spirit which the old musician had moulded. He could not harm this girl. Dead or alive, Stefani Gregor would not permit it. Hawksley rose slowly and without further speech walked to the corridor door. He leaned against the jamb for a moment, then went on to his bedroom.
What the chrysoprase did for Cutty the fiddle did for this derelict solved problems. He reviewed all the phases as he played. Something like tears. What about? An American girl, natural, humorous, and fanciful. Somehow he felt assured that it had not been his kisses; she had looked into his eyes and seen the taint. Always there, the beast that old Stefani had chained and subdued.
Will you come this way, please?" Signor Stefani continued to talk, but so rapidly and loudly now that Peter couldn't follow him. He merely shook his head and opened the door, saying, "This way, please. I can't understand you when you talk so fast." Signor Stefani, with a final angry shrug and expectoration, permitted himself to be ushered out of the room.
So she drew up a chair beside the bed and sat down. Cutty leaned against the footrail, his expression neutral. He sighed inaudibly. His delightful catnap was over. Stefani Gregor, Kitty's neighbour, a valet in a fashionable hotel! Stefani Gregor, who, upon a certain day, had placed the drums of jeopardy in the palms of a war correspondent known to his familiars as Cutty.
These were volcanic days, and a friend of Stefani Gregor who played the violin like Paganini might well be worth the trouble of a little courtesy. Then, too, there was that mark of the thong a charm, a military identification disk or something of value. Whatever it was, the rogues had got it. Murder and loot. And as soon as he returned to consciousness the young fellow would be making inquiries.
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