u're to call me up twice a day and report the news.
Don't go out nights if you can avoid it."

"I'll be good," Kitty agreed. "And now I must hie me to the job.
Imagine, Cutty!--writing personalities about stage folks and gabfesting
with Burlingame and all the while my brain boiling with this affair!
The city room will kill me, Cutty, if it ever finds out that I held back
such a yarn. But it wouldn't be fair to Johnny Two-Hawks. Cutty, did you
know that your wonderful drums of jeopardy are here in New York?"

"What?" barked Cutty.

"Somebody is offering to buy them. There was an advertisement in the
paper this morning. Cutty?"

"Yes."

"The first problem in arithmetic is two and two make four. By-by!"

Dizzily Cutty hung up the receiver. He had not reckoned on the
possibility of Kitty seeing that damfool advertisement. Two and two made
four; and four and four made eight; so on indefinitely. That is to say,
Kitty already had a glimmer of the startling truth. The initial misstep
on his part had been made upon her pronouncement of the name Stefani
Gregor. He hadn't been able to control his surprise. And yesterday,
having frankly admitted that he knew Gregor, all that was needed
to complete the circle was that advertisement. Cutty tore his hair,
literally. The very door he hoped she might overlook he had thrown open
to her.

Thaddeus of Warsaw. But it should not be. He would continue to offer
a haven to that chap; but no nonsense. None of that sinister and
unfortunate blood should meddle with Kitty Conover's happiness. Her
self-appointed guardian would attend to that.

He realized that his attitude was rather inexplicable; but there were
some adventures which hypnotized women; and one of this sort was
now unfolding for Kitty. That she had her share of common sense was
negligible in face of the facts that she was imaginative and romantical
and adventuresome, and that for the first time she was riding one of the
great middle currents in human events. She was Molly's girl; Cutty was
going to look out for her.

Mighty odd that this fear for her should have sprung into being that
night, quite illogically. Prescience? He could not say. Perhaps it was
a borrowed instinct--fatherly; the same instinct that would have stirred
her father into action--the protection of that dearest to him.

If he told her who Hawksley really was, that would intrigue her. If he
made a mystery of the affair, that, too, would intrigue her. And