Résumé
Résumé de Les Tambours du péril
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who like old-fashioned adventure with a heart, chases through city streets, a clever heroine, a gentleman hero and an Irish sense of humor, and who enjoy jewels with a curse and a good love story.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
The Drums of Jeopardy is a spy adventure by the American novelist Harold MacGrath. It is set in New York in the uneasy spring after the First World War, when the guns have stopped but the old empires of Europe are still falling apart. The book puts a fugitive, a newspaperwoman and a veteran war correspondent into one chase, and it gives you romance, danger and a good deal of humor along the way.
The prize in the chase is a pair of huge green emeralds, set as the drumheads of two ivory drummers and known as the drums of jeopardy. They come from a looted Russian palace, and they leave trouble behind them wherever they travel. A hunted young man carries them across half the world. A fanatic named Boris Karlov follows him with a grudge that is part politics and part private grief.
You will meet Kitty Conover, a quick-witted young woman who writes about the theater and lives alone in a shabby apartment. You will meet Cutty, her godfather, who collects drums and secretly works for the government. Their lives change on the night a stranger knocks at her kitchen window and asks for something to eat.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A fugitive vanishes into the Albany fogFree
- 2A starving stranger comes to Kitty's window
- 3Cutty tells Kitty about the drums of jeopardy
- 4Karlov appears, and Cutty shows his hand
- 5The loft in the clouds and the name Two-Hawks
- 6Hawksley wants to be an American
- 7A burglar on the roof and a strange proposal
- 8Two April fools on Broadway
- 9What the story is really about and how it is told
Point clé 1 sur 9
A fugitive vanishes into the Albany fog
The story opens at half past three on a cold March morning, when a fast train from the West pulls into Albany. Fog lies so thick that the station lamps look like dim stars. A man in a long dark coat steps off with a scarred English kitbag and waits against a wall until the other passengers have gone. He has traveled sixteen thousand miles to get here, by horse, camel, ship and rail, always heading east toward New York.
He is not alone. A short, thickset man with a blue-black beard slips out of the fog and follows him. The first traveler takes a taxi to a hotel and signs the register as John Hawksley of London. The squat man arrives soon after, scrawls a name no one can read, and is handed the key to the room next door. He has no luggage at all, and the sleepy night clerk does not notice.
Inside his room, Hawksley takes a bath and then opens a brown tobacco pouch that hangs from his neck. Wrapped in cotton wool are many bright stones, and at the end lie two emeralds the size of half-dollars. He looks at them as if they held a spirit that wanted out. He curses them, yet he knows they are his future bread and butter. A photograph of a fair-haired girl is hidden in his coat lining, and he kisses it.
He sets chairs and glassware against the doors as alarms. Still, a sound at the window wakes him, and the squat man comes in from the fire escape. The two circle each other through the room. Hawksley throws a bedsheet like a fisherman's net and drops to the street. A race follows downhill toward the Hudson River in the fog.
Hawksley is not running away. He is leading his enemy to a quiet place. On a laid-up passenger steamer he turns and fights with his fists, and the heavy man goes down. Hawksley takes everything from the man's pockets and tosses it into the river. Then he runs to the station. The hotel staff find only a case of jeweled medals, and the newspapers call it a Bolshevik mystery.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Les Tambours du péril
What is The Drums of Jeopardy about?
It follows a hunted young man who brings two valuable emeralds to New York, and the newspaperwoman and war correspondent who shelter him. A fanatic named Karlov chases them all, and the story mixes danger, humor and romance.
What are the drums of jeopardy?
They are two matched emeralds carved as the drumheads of ivory drummers, said to leave misfortune behind wherever they go. Cutty first hears of them as a collector, and the phrase becomes the book's symbol of danger.
Who is Cutty in The Drums of Jeopardy?
Cutty is a fifty-two-year-old war correspondent who collects drums and green stones. He is also a secret government agent, and he promises to watch over Kitty Conover because he was a close friend of her parents.
Is The Drums of Jeopardy a true story?
No, it is a work of fiction by Harold MacGrath. It is set in the unsettled months after the First World War, when many readers feared revolution, and it uses that setting for a lively adventure.
Is The Drums of Jeopardy easy to read?
Yes, in the sense that the chapters are short, the dialogue is quick and the plot moves from one scene to the next. The humor and the clear characters make it welcoming for readers who enjoy classic adventure.