Steps on the stairs! She stood up, facing the door, the roots of her hair tingling. She heard the key turn in the lock; and then as in a nightmare she felt the planks under her feet stir slightly but with sinister persistence. She presently saw the toe of a boot insert, itself between the door and the jamb. The pressure increased; the space between the door and the jamb widened. Suddenly the boot vanished, the door closed, and the plank fell. Immediately thereafter Karlov stood inside the room, scowling suspiciously. CHAPTER XXX Cutty arrived at the apartment in time to share dinner with Hawksley. He had wisely decided to say nothing about the escapade of Hawksley and Kitty Conover, since it had terminated fortunately. Bernini had telegraphed the gist of the adventure. He could readily understand Hawksley's part; but Kitty's wasn't reducible to ordinary terms of expression. The young chap had run wild because his head still wobbled on his shoulders and because his isolation was beginning to scratch his nerves. But for Kitty to run wild with him offered a blank wall to speculation. (As if he could solve the riddle when Kitty herself could not!) So he determined to shut himself up in his study and shuffle the chrysoprase. Something might come of it. Looking backward, he recognized the salient, at no time had he been quite sure of Kitty. She seemed to be a combination of shallows and unfathomable deeps. From the Pennsylvania Station he had called up the office. Kitty had gone. Bernini informed him that Kitty was dining at a cafe on the way home. Cutty was thorough. He telephoned the restaurant and was advised that Miss Conover had reserved a table. He had forgotten to send down the operative who guarded Kitty at that end. But the distance from the office to the Subway was so insignificant! “You are looking fit,” he said across the table. “Ought to be off your hands by Monday. But what about Stefani Gregor? I can't stir, leaving him hanging on a peg.” “I am going into the study shortly to decide that. Head bother you?” “Occasionally.” “Ryan easy to get along with?” “Rather a good sort. I say, you know, you've seen a good deal of life. Which do you consider the stronger, the inherited traits or environment?” “Environment. That is the true mould. There is good and bad in all of us. It is brought into prominence by the way we live. An angel cannot touch pitch without becoming defiled. On the other hand, the worst gutter rats in the world saved France. Do you suppose that thought will not always be tugging at and uplifting those who returned from the first Marne?” “There is hope, then, for me!” “Hope?” “Yes. You know that my father, my uncle, and my grandfather were fine scoundrels.”