The Drums of Jeopardy

A fast train drew into Albany, on the New York Central, from the West. It was three-thirty of a chill March morning in the first year of peace. A pall of fog lay over the world...

“Murder your granny! Naw! Just a fight between 212 and 214, because both of 'em have flown the roost. But take a peek at what I found on the table.”

Hawksley heard the panting of an engine and turned his head. Dimly he saw a giant bridge and a long drab train moving across it. He picked up the fallen man's cap and tried it o...

Kitty Conover had inherited brains and beauty, and nothing else but the furniture. Her father had been a famous reporter, the admiration of cubs from New York to San Francisco;...

Kitty gasped, but she did not cry out. The five days' growth of blondish stubble, the discoloured eye--for all the orb itself was brilliant--and the hawky nose combined to send...

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 p...

Twice before in her life Kitty had looked upon death by violence; and it required only this present picture to convince her that she would never be able to gaze upon it callousl...

A phrase, apparently quite irrelevant to the situation, shot into Kitty's head. Moribund perspectives. Instantly she knew, with that foretasting mind of hers, that the man peeri...

At the precinct station the squat man gave a name and an address to the bored sergeant at the desk, passed out a cigar, lit one himself, expressed some innocuous opinions upon o...

“Very pleased, I'm sure. Luckily my case was in the coat room at the club. I took the liberty of telephoning for Miss Frances, who returned on the same ship with me. I concluded...

Kitty did not wrench herself loose at once. She wasn't quite sure that this was not a continuance of her nightmare. She knew that nightmares had a way of breaking off in the mid...

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...

To understand Kitty at this moment one must be able to understand the Irish; and nobody does or can or will. Consider her twenty-four years, her corpuscular inheritance, the lov...

For a long time Cutty sat perfectly motionless, his pipe at an upward angle--a fine commentary on the strength of his jaws--and his gaze boring into the shadows beyond his desk....

Early the next morning in a bedroom in a rooming house for aliens in Fifteenth Street, a man sat in a chair scanning the want columns of a newspaper. Occasionally he jotted down...

About nine o'clock that same night a certain rich man, having established himself comfortably under the reading lamp, a fine book in his hands and a fine after-dinner cigar betw...

A March day, sunny and cloudless, with fresh, bracing winds. Green things pushed up from the soil; an eternal something was happening to the tips of the tree branches; an eterna...

There are some men who know a little about all things and a great deal about many. Such a man was Cutty. But as he approached the counter behind which stood an expectant clerk h...

Kitty came home at nine that night, dreadfully tired. She had that day been rocked by so many emotions. She had viewed the parade from the windows of a theatrical agency, and sh...

Karlov moodily touched the shoulder of the man on the cot. Stefani Gregor puzzled him. He came to this room more often than was wise, driven by a curiosity born of a cynical phi...

From a window in one of the vacant warehouses, twenty-odd feet away Cutty, from an oblique angle, had witnessed the peculiar drama without being able to grasp head or tail to it...

“A trifling cut. But I'm hurt, nevertheless, that you should be so thoughtless as to come here against my orders. It doesn't matter that Karlov has given up the idea of having y...

When Cutty awoke--having had about two hours' sleep--he was instantly conscious that the zest had gone from the adventure. It had resolved itself into official business into whi...

Between Cutty's heart and his throat there was very little space at that moment for the propelment of sound. Kitty Conover had innocently--he understood that almost immediately...

Kitty hung up her hat and coat. She did not pat her hair or tuck in the loose ends before the mirror--a custom as invariable as sunrise. The coat tree stood at the right of the...

Hawksley heard the lift door close, and he knew that at last he was alone. He flung out his arms, ecstatically. Free! He would see no more of that nagging beggar Ryan until tomo...

Champagne in the glass is a beautiful thing to see. So is water, the morning after. That is the fault with frolic; there is always an inescapable rebound. The most violent love...

Decision is always a mental relief, hesitance a curse. Kitty, having shifted her burdens to the broad shoulders of Cutty, felt as she reached the lobby as if she had left storm...

Not unusually, when we burn our bridges, we have in the back of our minds the dim hope that there may be a shallow ford somewhere. Thus, bridges should not be burned impulsively...

Cutty arrived at the apartment in time to share dinner with Hawksley. He had wisely decided to say nothing about the escapade of Hawksley and Kitty Conover, since it had termina...

Karlov, upon forcing his way past Kitty's barricade, stared at her doubtfully. This was a clever girl; she had proved her cleverness frequently. She might have some reason other...

Because it was assumed that some of Karlov's pack might be at large and unsuspectingly return to the trap, Federal agents would remain on guard all night. They explored the hous...

Her fingers seemingly all thumbs, her heart swelling with misery and loneliness, wanting to go to him but fearing she would be misunderstood, Kitty scooped up the dazzling stone...