Big events were toward, and he must not stop to feel of his
pulse.

Three o'clock in the morning.

The man in the Gregor bedroom sat down on the bed, the pocket lamp
dangling from his hairy fingers. Not a nook or cranny in the apartment
had he overlooked. In every cupboard, drawer; in the beds and under; the
trunks; behind the radiators and the pictures; the shelves and clothes
in the closets. What he sought he had not found.

His vengeance would not be complete without those green stones in his
hands. Anna would call from her grave. Pretty little Anna, who had
trusted Stefani Gregor, and gone to her doom.

All these thousands of miles, by hook and crook, by forged passports, by
sums of money, sleepless nights and hungry days--for this! The last of
that branch of the breed out of his reach, and the stones vanished! A
queer superstition had taken lodgment in his brain; he recognized it now
for the first time. The possession of those stones would be a sign from
God to go on. Green stones for bread! Green stones for bread! The drums
of jeopardy! In his hands they would be talismanic.

But wait! That pretty girl across the way. Supposing he had intrusted
the stones to her? Or hidden them there without her being aware of it?

CHAPTER XII

Kitty Conover ate in the kitchen. First off, this statement is likely
to create the false impression that there was an ordinary grain here,
a wedge of base hemlock in the citron. Not so. She ate in the kitchen
because she could not yet face that vacant chair in the dining room
without choking and losing her appetite. She could not look at the chair
without visualizing that glorious, whimsical, fascinating mother of
hers, who could turn grumpy janitors into comedians and send importunate
bill collectors away with nothing but spangles in their heads.

So long as she stayed out of the dining room she could accept her
loneliness with sound philosophy. She knew, as all sensible people know,
that there were ghosts, that memory had haunted galleries, and that
empty chairs were evocations.

Her days were so busily active, there were so many first nights and
concerts, that she did not mind such evenings as she had to spend alone
in the apartment. Persons were in and out of the office all through
the day, and many of them entertaining. For only real persons ever
penetrated that well-guarded cubby-hole off the noisy city room. Many
of them were old friends of her mother. Of course th