asked Kitty.

"Not one stone on another. The proletariat rose up and destroyed it. To
mobs anything beautiful is offensive. Palaces looted, banks, museums,
houses. The ignorant toying with hand grenades, thinking them sceptres.
All the scum in the world boiling to the top. After the Red Day comes
the Red Night."

"Whatever will become of them--the little kings and princes and dukes?"
After all, thought Kitty, they were human beings; they would not suffer
any the less because they had been born to the purple.

"Maybe they'll go to work," said Cutty, dryly. "Sooner or later, all
parasites will have to work if they want bread. And yet I've met some
men among them, big in the heart and the mind, who would have made
bully farmers and professors. The beautiful thing about the Anglo-Saxon
education is that the whole structure is based upon fair play. In
eastern and southeastern Europe few of them can play solitaire without
cheating. But I would give a good deal to know what has happened to
those emeralds--the drums of jeopardy. They'll probably be broken up and
sold in carat weights. The whole family was wiped out in a night.... I
say, will you take lunch with me to-morrow?"

"Gladly."

"All right. I'll drop in here at half after twelve. Here's my telephone
number, should anything alter your plans. If I'm going to be godfather I
might as well start right in."

"The drums of jeopardy; what a haunting phrase!"

"Haunting stones, too, Kitty. For picking them up in my hands I went to
bed with a banged-up leg. I can't forget that. We Occidentals laugh at
Orientals and their superstitions. We don't believe in the curse. And
yet, by George, those emeralds were accursed!"

"Piffle!" snorted Burlingame. "Mush! It's greed, pure and simple, that
gives precious stones their sinister histories. You'd have been hit by
that horse if you had picked up nothing more valuable than a rhinestone
buckle. Take away the gold lure, and precious stones wouldn't sell at
the price of window glass."

"Is that so? How about me? It isn't because a stone is worth so much
that makes me want it. I want it for the sheer beauty; I want it for the
tremendous panorama the sight of it unfolds in my mind. I imagine what
happened from the hour the stone was mined to the hour it came into my
possession. To me--to all genuine collectors--the intrinsic value is
nil. Can't you see? It is for me what Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin would
be to you if you had fallen