“This is not the right ending for the opera. I have passed the wall of Tittani and found you and there is no peril or suspense at all, just the two of us here in the dear old studio, and Ptolemy to turn his back and not look at us. He is a gentleman, isn’t he, Griffeth?”
Across the Square along the diagonal path to the old studio building Dmitri walked with an easy, long-stepped gait. The troops that had surged over the Belachrista Pass had the same stride. The collar of his coat was turned up, his brown felt hat pulled low over his eyes, his cigarette pointing upward. He had passed a pleasant and profitable night. So engrossed he was in smiling at the future that he failed to observe Signora Roma waiting in the circle by the fountain, failed to notice three loiterers about the old studio row. One watched the dormer windows of the garret. One stood at the corner of MacDougal Street to take note of possible exits over adjacent roofs in case of need. One leaned against the iron railing in the front yard and chatted with the unwitting caretaker, and Dmitri passed them all by jauntily. Would it be wiser, he mused, to tell Griffeth Ames everything? He had trained him for months in the new law of humanity’s rights, yet was he not too young to recognize the imperative need for silence. The breaking dawn called to Dmitri’s imagination. The chant of the oppressed sounded in his ears, not the old galley chorus that had kept time to the rhythm of an Attic boatswain’s flute, nor the call from the steppe prisons that had been the newborn wail of Russia’s freedom. The old order had already changed. The heavens were rolling away as a parchment before the new dayspring. A little struggling here and there, he told himself, over the earth’s surface, a little blindness in the new light from eyes long used to darkness, but steadily, inevitably the daybreak would sweep on and in the full sunlight men should find themselves gazing into one another’s eyes without fear and hatred and greed.
He mounted the three flights rapidly, two steps at a time, tapped on the door, and opened before Griffeth could reach it.
“Aha!” cried Dmitri. “And so we may be sure that spring will come again! Are you Harlequin or Pierrot this afternoon, or all the immortal lovers of romance at once? And have you coffee for a wayfarer? I have walked all over the city since daybreak. I see that in spite of my precautions, Columbine has found her way right straight back to the chimney-pot and the cat and the melody of one Pierrot.”
He sank down in the old dusty velvet chair by the fireplace, his hair tousled into curls. Carlota gazed at him with wondering, questioning eyes. Dmitri, no subtle, terrified criminal hiding from the law, but as she had ever known him, the happy, confident, scholarly friend. She forgot everything but his danger.
“Why”—she turned appealingly to Griffeth—“it’s almost laughable—it’s like some horrible dream—that I am here with you both just as always, and you are safe, Dmitri—”
“Why should I not be safe?” He smiled at her with keen, brilliant eyes. “It is a most charming surprise to find you here, I admit. I was only going to drop in and see my favorite friend before I leave. I was going to entrust to him a commission, but since you are here—”
The door of the studio opened noiselessly. Dmitri’s lips were silenced by the sight behind Griffeth and the girl. Lorrie, of the Central Bureau, was not a person of dramatic instincts or emotional possibilities. He stood in the patch of sunlight from the hall skylight, his hands in his pockets, his hat pushed back on his head. The hands grasped two automatics, but Lorrie never obtruded them on the sensibilities of those he was sent to find until he found it necessary. He stepped into the room, a slight smile on his lips as he took in the group. Behind him stood two of his men.
“Kavec,” he said curtly, “you’re under arrest for the double murder of Jurka and Steccho.”
Dmitri never stirred.