ueezed out of the affair. But
this promised to be something like those tales which were always clear
and wonderful in her head but more or less opaque when she attempted to
transfer them to paper. A secret society? Vengeance? An echo of the war?

"Johnny Two-Hawks," she murmured aloud. "And he hopes we'll never meet
again!"

There was a mirror over the sink, and she threw a glance into it. Very
well; if he thought like that about it.

Here the doorbell tinkled. That would be the faithful janitor. She ran
to the door.

"Whadjuh wanta see me about, Miz Conover?"

"What has happened to old Mr. Gregory?"

"Him? Why, some amb'lance fellers carted him off this afternoon. Didn't
know nawthin' was the matter with 'im until I runs into them in the
hall."

"He'd been hurt?"

"Couldn't say, miz. He was on a stretcher when I seen 'im. Under a
sheet."

"But he might have been dead!"

"Nope. I ast 'em, an' they said a shock of some sort."

"What hospital?"

"Gee, I forgot t'ast that!"

"I'll find out. Good-night."

But Kitty did not find out. She called up all the known private and
public hospitals, but no Gregor or Gregory had been received that
afternoon, nor anybody answering his description. The fog had swallowed
up Stefani Gregor.

CHAPTER VI

The reportorial instinct in Kitty Conover, combined with her natural
feminine curiosity, impelled her to seek to the bottom of affair. Her
newspaper was as far from her as the poles; simply a paramount desire to
translate the incomprehensible into sequence and consequence. Harmless
old Gregor's disappearance and the advent of John Two-Hawks--the
absurdity of that name!--with his impeccable English accent, his Latin
gestures, and his black eye, convinced her that it was political; an
electrical cross current out of that broken world over there. Moribund
perspectives. What did that signify save that Johnny Two-Hawks had
fought somewhere that day for his life? Had Gregor been spirited away so
as to leave Two-Hawks without support, to confuse and discourage him
and break down his powers of resistance? Or had there been something of
great value in the Gregor apartment, and Johnny Two-Hawks had come too
late to save his friend?

A word slipped into her mind like a whiff of miasma off an evil swamp.
As she recognized the word she felt the same horror and repugnance one
senses upon being unexpectedly confronted by a cobra. Internationalism.
The scum of the world boil