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Title: The Black Bag

 

Author: Louis Joseph Vance

 

Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9779]

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[This file was first posted on October 15, 2003]

 

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Language: English

 

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK BAG ***

 

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Leonard Johnson

and PG Distributed Proofreading.

THE BLACK BAG

By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOMAS FOGARTY

1908

TO MY MOTHER CONTENTS CHAPTER

I. DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN

 

II. “AND SOME THERE BE WHO HAVE ADVENTURES THRUST UPON THEM”

 

III. CALENDAR’S DAUGHTER

 

IV. 9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C.

 

V. THE MYSTERY OF A FOUR-WHEELER

 

VI. “BELOW BRIDGE”

 

VII. DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN—RESUMED

 

VIII. MADAME L’INTRIGANTE

 

IX. AGAIN “BELOW BRIDGE”; AND BEYOND

 

X. DESPERATE MEASURES

 

XI. OFF THE NORE

 

XII. PICARESQUE PASSAGES

 

XIII. A PRIMER OF PROGRESSIVE CRIME

 

XIV. STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS

 

XV. REFUGEES

 

XVI. TRAVELS WITH A CHAPERON

 

XVII. ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

 

XVIII. ADVENTURERS’ LUCK

 

XIX. i—THE UXBRIDGE ROAD

 

ii—THE CROWN AND MITRE

 

iii—THE JOURNEY’S END

THE BLACK BAG I DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN

Upon a certain dreary April afternoon in the year of grace, 1906, the

apprehensions of Philip Kirkwood, Esquire, Artist-peintre, were enlivened

by the discovery that he was occupying that singularly distressing social

position, which may be summed up succinctly in a phrase through long usage

grown proverbial: “Alone in London.” These three words have come to connote

in our understanding so much of human misery, that to Mr. Kirkwood they

seemed to epitomize absolutely, if not happily, the various circumstances

attendant upon the predicament wherein he found himself. Inevitably an

extremist, because of his youth, (he had just turned twenty-five), he

took no count of mitigating matters, and would hotly have resented the

suggestion that his case was anything but altogether deplorable and

forlorn.

 

That he was not actually at the end of his resources went for nothing; he

held the distinction a quibble, mockingly immaterial,—like the store of

guineas in his pocket, too insignificant for mention when contrasted with

his needs. And his base of supplies, the American city of his nativity,

whence—and not without a glow of pride in his secret heart—he was wont to

register at foreign hostelries, had been arbitrarily cut off from him by

one of those accidents sardonically classified by insurance and express

corporations as Acts of God.

 

Now to one who has lived all his days serenely in accord with the dictates

of his own sweet will, taking no thought for the morrow, such a situation

naturally seems both appalling and intolerable, at the first blush. It must

be confessed that, to begin with, Kirkwood drew a long and disconsolate

face over his fix. And in that black hour, primitive of its kind in his

brief span, he became conscious of a sinister apparition taking shape at

his elbow—a shade of darkness which, clouting him on the back with a

skeleton hand, croaked hollow salutations in his ear.

 

“Come, Mr. Kirkwood, come!” its mirthless accents rallied him. “Have you

no welcome for me?—you, who have been permitted to live the quarter of a

century without making my acquaintance? Surely, now, it’s high time we were

learning something of one another, you and I!” “But I don’t understand,”

returned Kirkwood blankly. “I don’t know you—”

 

“True! But you shall: I am the Shade of Care—”

 

“Dull Care!” murmured Kirkwood, bewildered and dismayed; for the visitation

had come upon him with little presage and no invitation whatever.

 

“Dull Care,” the Shade assured him. “Dull Care am I—and Care that’s

anything but dull, into the bargain: Care that’s like a keen pain in your

body, Care that lives a horror in your mind, Care that darkens your days

and flavors with bitter poison all your nights, Care that—”

 

But Kirkwood would not listen further. Courageously submissive to his

destiny, knowing in his heart that the Shade had come to stay, he yet found

spirit to shake himself with a dogged air, to lift his chin, set the strong

muscles of his jaw, and smile that homely wholesome smile which was his

peculiarly.

 

“Very well,” he accepted the irremediable with grim humor; “what must be,

must. I don’t pretend to be glad to see you, but—you’re free to stay as

long as you find the climate agreeable. I warn you I shan’t whine. Lots of

men, hundreds and hundreds of ‘em, have slept tight o’ nights with you for

bedfellow; if they could grin and bear you, I believe I can.”

 

Now Care mocked him with a sardonic laugh, and sought to tighten upon his

shoulders its bony grasp; but Kirkwood resolutely shrugged it off and went

in search of man’s most faithful dumb friend, to wit, his pipe; the which,

when found and filled, he lighted with a spill twisted from the envelope of

a cable message which had been vicariously responsible for his introduction

to the Shade of Care.

 

“It’s about time,” he announced, watching the paper blacken and burn in the

grate fire, “that I was doing something to prove my title to a living.” And

this was all his valedictory to a vanished competence. “Anyway,” he added

hastily, as if fearful lest Care, overhearing, might have read into his

tone a trace of vain repining, “anyway, I’m a sight better off than those

poor devils over there! I really have a great deal to be thankful for, now

that my attention’s drawn to it.”

 

For the ensuing few minutes he thought it all over, soberly but with a

stout heart; standing at a window of his bedroom in the Hotel Pless, hands

deep in trouser pockets, pipe fuming voluminously, his gaze wandering out

over a blurred infinitude of wet shining roofs and sooty chimney-pots: all

of London that a lowering drizzle would let him see, and withal by no means

a cheering prospect, nor yet one calculated to offset the disheartening

influence of the indomitable Shade of Care. But the truth is that

Kirkwood’s brain comprehended little that his eyes perceived; his thoughts

were with his heart, and that was half a world away and sick with pity

for another and a fairer city, stricken in the flower of her loveliness,

writhing in Promethean agony upon her storied hills.

 

There came a rapping at the door.

 

Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say “Come

in!” pleasantly.

 

The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, swinging on one heel,

beheld hesitant upon the threshold a diminutive figure in the livery of the

Pless pages.

 

“Mister Kirkwood?”

 

Kirkwood nodded.

 

“Gentleman to see you, sir.”

 

Kirkwood nodded again, smiling. “Show him up, please,” he said. But before

the words were fairly out of his mouth a footfall sounded in the corridor,

a hand was placed upon the shoulder of the page, gently but with decision

swinging him out of the way, and a man stepped into the room.

 

“Mr. Brentwick!” Kirkwood almost shouted, jumping forward to seize his

visitor’s hand.

 

“My dear boy!” replied the latter. “I’m delighted to see you. ‘Got your

note not an hour ago, and came at once—you see!”

 

“It was mighty good of you. Sit down, please. Here are cigars…. Why, a

moment ago I was the most miserable and lonely mortal on the footstool!”

 

“I can fancy.” The elder man looked up, smiling at Kirkwood from the depths

of his armchair, as the latter stood above him, resting an elbow on

the mantel. “The management knows me,” he offered explanation of his

unceremonious appearance; “so I took the liberty of following on the heels

of the bellhop, dear boy. And how are you? Why are you in London, enjoying

our abominable spring weather? And why the anxious undertone I detected in

your note?”

 

He continued to stare curiously into Kirkwood’s face. At a glance, this

Mr. Brentwick was a man of tallish figure and rather slender; with a

countenance thin and flushed a sensitive pink, out of which his eyes shone,

keen, alert, humorous, and a trace wistful behind his glasses. His years

were indeterminate; with the aspect of fifty, the spirit and the verve of

thirty assorted oddly. But his hands were old, delicate, fine and fragile;

and the lips beneath the drooping white mustache at times trembled, almost

imperceptibly, with the generous sentiments that come with mellow age. He

held his back straight and his head with an air—an air that was not a

swagger but the sign-token of seasoned experience in the world. The most

carping could have found no flaw in the quiet taste of his attire. To sum

up, Kirkwood’s very good friend—and his only one then in London—Mr.

Brentwick looked and was an English gentleman.

 

“Why?” he persisted, as the younger man hesitated. “I am here to find out.

To-night I leave for the Continent. In the meantime …”

 

“And at midnight I sail for the States,” added Kirkwood. “That is mainly

why I wished to see you—to say good-by, for the time.”

 

“You’re going home—” A shadow clouded Brentwick’s clear eyes.

 

“To fight it out, shoulder to shoulder with my brethren in adversity.”

 

The cloud lifted. “That is the spirit!” declared the elder man. “For the

moment I did you the injustice to believe that you were running away. But

now I understand. Forgive me…. Pardon, too, the stupidity which I must

lay at the door of my advancing years; to me the thought of you as a

Parisian fixture has become such a commonplace, Philip, that the news of

the disaster hardly stirred me. Now I remember that you are a Californian!”

 

“I was born in San Francisco,” affirmed Kirkwood a bit sadly. “My father

and mother were buried there …”

 

“And your fortune—?”

 

“I inherited my father’s interest in the firm of Kirkwood & Vanderlip; when

I came over to study painting, I left everything in Vanderlip’s hands. The

business afforded me a handsome living.”

 

“You have heard from Mr. Vanderlip?”

 

“Fifteen minutes ago.” Kirkwood took a cable-form, still damp, from his

pocket, and handed it to his guest. Unfolding it, the