Not once again did the squat man glance at the man on the bed. He followed the policeman into the hall, his air that of one who had accepted a certain obligation to community welfare and cancelled it.
Kitty shut the door - and leaned against it weakly. Where had Cutty gone? Even as she expressed the query she smelt burning tobacco.
She ran out into the kitchen, to behold Cutty seated in a chair calmly smoking his infamous pipe!
"And I thought you were gone! What did you say to that policeman?"
"I hypnotized him, Kitty."
"The newspaper?"
"No. Just looked into his eye and made a few passes with my hands."
"Of course, if you believe you ought not to tell me - " said Kitty, which is the way all women start their wheedling.
Cutty looked into the bowl of his pipe.
"Kitty, when you throw a cobble into a pond, what happens? A splash.
But did you ever notice the way the ripples have of running on and on, until they touch the farthest shore?"
"Yes. And this is a ripple from some big stone cast into the pond of southeastern Europe. I understand."
"That's just the difficulty. If you understood nothing it would be much easier for me. But you know just enough to want to follow up on your own hook. I know nothing definitely; I have only suspicions.
I calmed that policeman by showing him a blanket police power issued by the commissioner. I want you to pack up and move out of this neighbourhood. It's not congenial to you."
"I'm afraid I can't afford to move until May."
"I'll take care of that gladly, to get you out of this garlicky ruin."
"No, Cutty; I'm going to stay here until the lease is up."
"Gee-whiz! The Irish are all alike," cried the war correspondent, hopelessly. "Petticoat or pantaloon, always looking for trouble."
"No, Cutty; simply we don't run away from it. And there's just as much Irish in you as there is in me."
"Sure! And for thirty years I've gone hunting for trouble, and never failed to find it. I don't like this affair, Kitty; and because I don't I'm going to risk my Samson locks in your lily-white hands. I am going to tell you two things: I am a secret foreign agent of the United States Government. Now don't light up that way.
Dark alleys and secret papers and beautiful adventuresses and bang-bang have nothing at all to do with my job. There isn't a grain of romance in it. Ostensibly I am a war correspondent. I have handled all the big events in Serbia and Bulgaria and Greece and southwestern Russia. Boiled down, I am a census taker of undesirables. Socialist, anarchist and Bolshevik - I photograph them in my mental 'fillums' and transmit to Washington. Thus, when Feodor Slopeski lands at Ellis Island with the idea of blowing up New York, he is returned with thanks. I didn't ask for the job; it was thrust upon me because of my knowledge of the foreign tongues. I accepted it because I am a loyal American citizen."
"And you left me because you' didn't know who might be at the door!"
"Precisely. I am known in lower New York under another name. I'm a rabid internationalist. Down with everything! I don't go out much these days; keep under cover as much as I can. Once recognized, my value would be nil. In a flannel shirt I'm a dangerous codger."
"And Gregor and this poor young man are in some way mixed up with internationalism!"
"Victims, probably."
"What is the other thing you wish to tell me?"
"Because your eyes are slate blue like your mother's. I loved your mother, Kitty," said Cutty, blinking into his pipe. "And the singular fact is, your father knew but your mother never did. I was never able to tell your mother after your father died. Their bodies were separated, but not their spirits."
Kitty nodded. So that was it? Poor Cutty!
"I make this confession because I want you to understand my attitude toward you. I am going to elect myself as your special guardian so long as I'm in New York. From now on, when I ask you to do something, understand that I believe it best for you. If my suspicions are correct we are not dealing with fools but with madmen.
The most dangerous human being, Kitty, is an honest man with a half-baked or crooked idea; and that's what this world pother, Bolshevism, is - honest men with crooked ideas, carrying the torch of anarchism and believing it enlightenment. What makes them tear down things? Every beautiful building is only a monument to their former wretchedness; and so they annihilate. None of them actually knows what he wants. A thousand will-o'-the-wisps in front of them, and all alike. A thousand years to throw off the shackles, and they expect Utopia in ten minutes! It makes you want to weep.
Socialism - the brotherhood of man - is a beautiful thing theoretically; but it is like some plays - they read well but do not act. Lopping off heads, believing them to be ideas!"
"The poor things!"
"That's it. Though I betray them I pity them. Democracy; slowly and surely. As prickly with faults as a cactus pear; but every year there are less prickles. We don't stand still or retrogress; we keep going on and up. Take this town. Think of It to-day and compare it with the town your father knew. There's the bell. I imagine that will be Harrison. If we can move this chap will you go to a hotel for the night?"
"I'm going to stay here, Cutty. That's final."
Cutty sighed.
