The Black Bag - Louis Joseph Vance (best reads of all time txt) 📗

will tell me the whole

story…. Won’t you?” Kirkwood insisted.

 

“I’m afraid not,” she said, with a smile of shadowed sadness. “We are to

say good night in a moment or two, and—it will be good-by as well. It’s

unlikely that we shall ever meet again.”

 

“I refuse positively to take such a gloomy view of the case!”

 

She shook her head, laughing with him, but with shy regret. “It’s so, none

the less. We are leaving London this very night, my father and I—leaving

England, for that matter.”

 

“Leaving England?” he echoed. “You’re not by any chance bound for America,

are you?”

 

“I … can’t tell you.”

 

“But you can tell me this: are you booked on the Minneapolis?”

 

“No—o; it is a—quite another boat.”

 

“Of course!” he commented savagely. “It wouldn’t be me to have any sort

of luck!”

 

She made no reply beyond a low laugh. He stared gloomily out of his window,

noting indifferently that they were passing the National Gallery. On their

left Trafalgar Square stretched, broad and bare, a wilderness of sooty

stone with an air of mutely tolerating its incongruous fountains. Through

Charing Cross roared a tide-rip of motor-busses and hackney carriages.

 

Glumly the young man foresaw the passing of his abbreviated romance; their

destination was near at hand. Brentwick had been right, to some extent, at

least; it was quite true that the curtain had been rung up that very night,

upon Kirkwood’s Romance; unhappily, as Brentwick had not foreseen, it was

immediately to be rung down.

 

The cab rolled soberly into the Strand.

 

“Since we are to say good-by so very soon,” suggested Kirkwood, “may I ask

a parting favor, Miss Calendar?”

 

She regarded him with friendly eyes. “You have every right,” she affirmed

gently.

 

“Then please to tell me frankly: are you going into any further danger?”

 

“And is that the only boon you crave at my hands, Mr. Kirkwood?”

 

“Without impertinence …”

 

For a little time, waiting for him to conclude his vague phrase, she

watched him in an expectant silence. But the man was diffident to a

degree—At length, somewhat unconsciously, “I think not,” she answered.

“No; there will be no danger awaiting me at Mrs. Hallam’s. You need not

fear for me any more—Thank you.”

 

He lifted his brows at the unfamiliar name. “Mrs. Hallam—?”

 

“I am going to her house in Craven Street.”

 

“Your father is to meet you there?”—persistently.

 

“He promised to.”

 

“But if he shouldn’t?”

 

“Why—” Her eyes clouded; she pursed her lips over the conjectural

annoyance. “Why, in that event, I suppose—It would be very embarrassing.

You see, I don’t know Mrs. Hallam; I don’t know that she expects me, unless

my father is already there. They are old friends—I could drive round for a

while and come back, I suppose.”

 

But she made it plain that the prospect did not please her.

 

“Won’t you let me ask if Mr. Calender is there, before you get out, then? I

don’t like to be dismissed,” he laughed; “and, you know, you shouldn’t go

wandering round all alone.”

 

The cab drew up. Kirkwood put a hand on the door and awaited her will.

 

“It—it would be very kind … I hate to impose upon you.”

 

He turned the knob and got out. “If you’ll wait one moment,” he said

superfluously, as he closed the door.

 

Pausing only to verify the number, he sprang up the steps and found the

bell-button.

 

It was a modest little residence, in nothing more remarkable than its

neighbors, unless it was for a certain air of extra grooming: the area

railing was sleek with fresh black paint; the doorstep looked the better

for vigorous stoning; the door itself was immaculate, its brasses shining

lustrous against red-lacquered woodwork. A soft glow filled the fanlight.

Overhead the drawing-room windows shone with a cozy, warm radiance.

 

The door opened, framing the figure of a maid sketched broadly in masses of

somber black and dead white.

 

“Can you tell me, is Mr. Calendar here?”

 

The servant’s eyes left his face, looked past him at the waiting cab, and

returned.

 

“I’m not sure, sir. If you will please step in.”

 

Kirkwood hesitated briefly, then acceded. The maid closed the door.

 

“What name shall I say, sir?”

 

“Mr. Kirkwood.”

 

“If you will please to wait one moment, sir—”

 

He was left in the entry hall, the servant hurrying to the staircase and

up. Three minutes elapsed; he was on the point of returning to the girl,

when the maid reappeared.

 

“Mrs. Hallam says, will you kindly step up-stairs, sir.”

 

Disgruntled, he followed her; at the head of the stairs she bowed him into

the drawing-room and again left him to his own resources.

 

Nervous, annoyed, he paced the floor from wall to wall, his footfalls

silenced by heavy rugs. As the delay was prolonged he began to fume with

impatience, wondering, half regretting that he had left the girl outside,

definitely sorry that he had failed to name his errand more explicitly to

the maid. At another time, in another mood, he might have accorded more

appreciation to the charm of the apartment, which, betraying the feminine

touch in every detail of arrangement and furnishing, was very handsome in

an unconventional way. But he was quite heedless of externals.

 

Wearied, he deposited himself sulkily in an armchair by the hearth.

 

From a boudoir on the same floor there came murmurs of two voices, a man’s

and a woman’s. The latter laughed prettily.

 

“Oh, any time!” snorted the American. “Any time you’re through with your

confounded flirtation, Mr. George B. Calendar!”

 

The voices rose, approaching. “Good night,” said the woman gaily; “farewell

and—good luck go with you!”

 

“Thank you. Good night,” replied the man more conservatively.

 

Kirkwood rose, expectant.

 

There was a swish of draperies, and a moment later he was acknowledging the

totally unlooked-for entrance of the mistress of the house. He had thought

to see Calendar, presuming him to be the man closeted with Mrs. Hallam;

but, whoever that had been, he did not accompany the woman. Indeed, as she

advanced from the doorway, Kirkwood could hear the man’s footsteps on the

stairs.

 

“This is Mr. Kirkwood?” The note of inquiry in the well-trained voice—a

very alluring voice and one pleasant to listen to, he thought—made it seem

as though she had asked, point-blank, “Who is Mr. Kirkwood?”

 

He bowed, discovering himself in the presence of an extraordinarily

handsome and interesting woman; a woman of years which as yet had not told

upon her, of experience that had not availed to harden her, at least in so

far as her exterior charm of personality was involved; a woman, in brief,

who bore close inspection well, despite an elusive effect of maturity, not

without its attraction for men. Kirkwood was impressed that it would be

very easy to learn to like Mrs. Hallam more than well—with her approval.

 

Although he had not anticipated it, he was not at all surprised to

recognize in her the woman who, if he were not mistaken, had slipped to

Calendar that warning in the dining-room of the Pless. Kirkwood’s state of

mind had come to be such, through his experiences of the past few

hours, that he would have accepted anything, however preposterous, as a

commonplace happening. But for that matter there was nothing particularly

astonishing in this rencontre.

 

“I am Mrs. Hallam. You were asking for Mr. Calendar?”

 

“He was to have been here at this hour, I believe,” said Kirkwood.

 

“Yes?” There was just the right inflection of surprise in her carefully

controlled tone.

 

He became aware of an undercurrent of feeling; that the woman was

estimating him shrewdly with her fine direct eyes. He returned her regard

with admiring interest; they were gray-green eyes, deep-set but large, a

little shallow, a little changeable, calling to mind the sea on a windy,

cloudy day.

 

Below stairs a door slammed.

 

“I am not a detective, Mrs. Hallam,” announced the young man suddenly.

“Mr. Calendar required a service of me this evening; I am here in natural

consequence. If it was Mr. Calendar who left this house just now, I am

wasting time.”

 

“It was not Mr. Calendar.” The fine-lined brows arched in surprise, real

or pretended, at his first blurted words, and relaxed; amused, the woman

laughed deliciously. “But I am expecting him any moment; he was to have

been here half an hour since…. Won’t you wait?”

 

She indicated, with a gracious gesture, a chair, and took for herself one

end of a davenport. “I’m sure he won’t be long, now.”

 

“Thank you, I will return, if I may.” Kirkwood moved toward the door.

 

“But there’s no necessity—” She seemed insistent on detaining him,

possibly because she questioned his motive, possibly for her own

divertisement.

 

Kirkwood deprecated his refusal with a smile. “The truth is, Miss Calendar

is waiting in a cab, outside. I—”

 

“Dorothy Calendar!” Mrs. Hallam rose alertly. “But why should she wait

there? To be sure, we’ve never met; but I have known her father for many

years.” Her eyes held steadfast to his face; shallow, flawed by her every

thought, like the sea by a cat’s-paw he found them altogether inscrutable;

yet received an impression that their owner was now unable to account for

him.

 

She swung about quickly, preceding him to the door and down the stairs. “I

am sure Dorothy will come in to wait, if I ask her,” she told Kirkwood in a

high sweet voice. “I’m so anxious to know her. It’s quite absurd, really,

of her—to stand on ceremony with me, when her father made an appointment

here. I’ll run out and ask—”

 

Mrs. Hallam’s slim white fingers turned latch and knob, opening the street

door, and her voice died away as she stepped out into the night. For a

moment, to Kirkwood, tagging after her with an uncomfortable sense of

having somehow done the wrong thing, her figure—full fair shoulders and

arms rising out of the glittering dinner gown—cut a gorgeous silhouette

against the darkness. Then, with a sudden, imperative gesture, she half

turned towards him.

 

“But,” she exclaimed, perplexed, gazing to right and left, “but the cab,

Mr. Kirkwood?”

 

He was on the stoop a second later. Standing beside her, he stared blankly.

 

To the left the Strand roared, the stream of its night-life in high spate;

on the right lay the Embankment, comparatively silent and deserted, if

brilliant with its high-swung lights. Between the two, quiet Craven Street

ran, short and narrow, and wholly innocent of any form of equipage.

VI

“BELOW BRIDGE”

 

In silence Mrs. Hallam turned to Kirkwood, her pose in itself a question

and a peremptory one. Her eyes had narrowed; between their lashes the green

showed, a thin edge like jade, cold and calculating. The firm lines of her

mouth and chin had hardened.

 

Temporarily dumb with consternation, he returned her stare as silently.

 

“Well, Mr.—Kirkwood?”

 

“Mrs. Hallam,” he stammered, “I—”

 

She lifted her shoulders impatiently and with a quick movement stepped back

across the threshold, where she paused, a rounded arm barring the entrance,

one hand grasping the doorknob, as if to shut him out at any moment.

 

“I’m awaiting your explanation,” she said coldly.

 

[Illustration: “I’m waiting your explanation,” she said coldly.]

 

He grinned with nervousness, striving to penetrate the mental processes of

this handsome Mrs. Hallam. She seemed to regard him with a suspicion which

he thought inexcusable. Did she suppose he had spirited Dorothy Calendar

away