Those who place faith in the symbols and cabals of coincidence might have traced a triangle at that moment with Steccho at one point, Dmitri’s room the apex, and the other the unlighted studio where Griffeth sat by the open window, staring out at the Square. The Bulgarian felt oddly exhilarated now that he had made his get-away safely. He paused at Fifty-Ninth Street and Madison Avenue, like a racer, sure of his victory, resting at the first lap.
It had been strange, fate forcing the possession of the rubies upon him. He was fatalist enough to accept. And it would be better for the girl Carlota. They would find her in time. Ward had terrified her, but she was unhurt, he felt certain, except for the marks on her throat. He looked back over the way he had come. There was no sign of alarm yet, no shrill blowing of police whistles, nothing but the customary flow of crosstown traffic at that hour. He bought an early paper, and took a car bound downtown. The jewels themselves reminded him, as he touched them in his pockets, that he had not failed when the hour of fate had struck for him. He bore the wealth of a rajah on his body, and the knowledge gave him a suppressed braggadocio as if he had picked up life’s challenge and had won his first prize in the lists of opportunity. If only the girl, as she lay there, had not looked like Katinka, more like her than ever with the pallor and look of pain on her face. He shook off the sentiment and focused his attention on Jurka.
He had given him until morning. Good; then he should have the jewels three hours before dawn. Georges’s black eyes would show smouldering fires of envy when he, Ferad Steccho, carelessly poured forth the missing rubies from his pockets, the rubies of the queen, as if they had been pebbles. Doubtless another night, and they would all be on their way back. He shut his eyes, half imagining the lurch of the car was the first roll of the ship as it touched the deep sea, and the far-off city noises were the distant surge of ocean waves.
True, there would be an outcry when they found the body of Ward, but there was no one to tell who had stabbed him. The girl had been unconscious. His eyes narrowed suddenly. Would they, then, possibly accuse her? Would Ward, if by any chance the blow had not killed him, dare to revenge himself on her by swearing that she had stabbed him?
As the car reached Thirty-Fourth Street he shook off the depression and made direct for the Dupont, confident of his welcome. There was no response, he was told at the desk. He demanded that they call the Count’s private room. It was impossible, the clerk told him. Count Jurka’s orders were he was not to be disturbed. Would he send up a card with a message? He shrugged his shoulders, and wrote rapidly in Bulgarian:
They will not let me up to you. Send Georges at once. I fancy the yellow castle, excellenza.
The triangle of coincidence had become an isosceles. He walked over to Lexington Avenue, and walked down to Twenty-Eighth Street, taking his time, his usual surliness settling in a fog of resentment over his mood of happiness. So he must wait, wait while the Count had his unbroken rest, while the workers, the doers, waited on the whims of such as he like dogs on doormats. Well, they might come to him now, to him, Steccho, if they wanted the jewels. He would go to Dmitri’s room and stretch out by the fire and sleep the hours before daylight. He had not touched food since the previous day, nothing but black coffee and cigarettes. The plan struck him with pleasure, as a sort of revenge on Jurka. He would not tell Dmitri what he had done; merely sit and chat with him to prove he did not do the bidding of the Count.
When he mounted the steps of the red-brick house with the iron railing around its balcony, there came the low sound of violin-playing from within. Dmitri then was still awake. His grate was ablaze with a good fire of boxwood and charcoal. His coffee waited the whim of his desire, over the unlighted brazier. Meanwhile, he said hello, as he expressed it, to his consort, “Madame Harmony.”
“Behold, she never deserts me,” he would say to Ames. “She is the most patient yet alluring of mistresses, my madame. And when I caress her, ah, what she tells to me!”
There was no pathos in his music to-night. A Czech folk-dance spun from his fingers in curling, whirling, leaping strains of melody like some strange, intangible confetti of vibration expressed in notes. The lure of it held the boy and he waited in the doorway, his dark eyes filled with a passion of home yearning. So often he had danced with her, Katinka, to that same music. At the instant some one on another street blew a car whistle, and he slammed shut the door, locking it with shaking fingers.