Anarchists -- Fiction; Jewel thieves -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Precious stones -- Fiction; Suspense fiction
Kitty's quick brain reached out for a similitude--water rushing over
ragged boulders.
“Olga!” she whispered. “He is a Russian!”
“There are Serbian Olgas and Bulgarian Olgas and Rumanian Olgas.
Probably his sweetheart.”
“The poor thing!”
“Sounds like Russian,” added Cutty, his conscience pricking him. But
he welcomed that “Olga.” It would naturally put a damper on Kitty's
interest. “There's Harrison with the nurse.”
Quarter of an hour later the patient was taken down to the ambulance
and conveyed to the private hospital. Cutty had no way of ascertaining
whether they were followed; but he hoped they would be. The knowledge
that their victim was in a near-by hospital would naturally serve to
relax the enemy vigilance temporarily; and this would permit safely and
secretly the second leg of the journey--that to his own apartment.
He decided to let an hour go past; then Two-Hawks was taken through the
building to the rear and transferred to the truck. Cutty sat with
the driver while Captain Harrison and the nurse rode inside with the
patient.
On the way Cutty was rather disturbed by the deep impression Kitty
Conover had made upon his heart and mind. That afternoon he had looked
upon her with fatherly condescension, as the pretty daughter of the two
he had loved most. From the altitude of his fifty-two he had gazed
down upon her twenty-four, weighing her as like all young women of
twenty-four--pleasure-loving and beau-hunting and fashion-scorched;
and in a flash she had revealed the formed mind of a woman of thirty.
Altitude. He had forgotten that relative to altitudes there are always
two angles of vision--that from the summit and that from the green
valley below. Kitty saw him beyond the tree line, but just this side
of the snows--and matched his condescension with pity! He chuckled.
Doddering old ass, what did it matter how she looked at him?
Beautiful and young and full of common sense, yet dangerously
romantical. To wait for the man she wanted, what did that signify but
romance? And there was her Irish blood to consider. The association
of pretty nurse and interesting patient always afforded excellent
background for sentimental nonsense, the obligations of the one and the
gratitude of the other. Well, he had nipped that in the bud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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