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

crowd and, entering the

tenement, stumbled through a gloomy and unsavory passage, to come out at

last upon a scanty, unrailed veranda overlooking the river. Ten feet below,

perhaps, foul waters purred and eddied round the piles supporting the

rear of the building. On one hand a ladder-like flight of rickety steps

descended to a floating stage to which a heavy rowboat lay moored. In the

latter a second waterman was seated bailing out bilge with a rusty can.

 

“‘Ere we are, sir,” said the cabman’s nephew, pausing at the head of the

steps. “Now, where’s it to be?”

 

The American explained tersely that he had a message to deliver a friend,

who had shipped aboard a vessel known as the Alethea, scheduled to sail

at floodtide; further than which deponent averred naught.

 

The waterman scratched his head. “A ‘ard job, sir; not knowin’ wot kind of

a boat she are mykes it ‘arder.” He waited hopefully.

 

“Ten shillings,” volunteered Kirkwood promptly; “ten shillings if you get

me aboard her before she weighs anchor; fifteen if I keep you out more than

an hour, and still you put me aboard. After that we’ll make other terms.”

 

The man promptly turned his back to hail his mate. “‘Arf a quid, Bob, if we

puts this gent aboard a wessel name o’ Allytheer afore she syles at turn

o’ tide.”

 

In the boat the man with the bailing can turned up an impassive

countenance. “Coom down,” he clenched the bargain; and set about shipping

the sweeps.

 

Kirkwood crept down the shaky ladder and deposited himself in the stern of

the boat; the younger boatman settled himself on the midship thwart.

 

“Ready?”

 

“Ready,” assented old Bob from the bows. He cast off the painter, placed

one sweep against the edge of the stage, and with a vigorous thrust pushed

off; then took his seat.

 

Bows swinging downstream, the boat shot out from the shore.

 

“How’s the tide?” demanded Kirkwood, his impatience growing.

 

“On th’ turn, sir,” he was told.

 

For a long moment broadside to the current, the boat responded to the

sturdy pulling of the port sweeps. Another moment, and it was in full

swing, the watermen bending lustily to their task. Under their unceasing

urge, the broad-beamed, heavy craft, aided by the ebbing tide, surged more

and more rapidly through the water; the banks, grim and unsightly with

their towering, impassive warehouses broken by toppling wooden tenements,

slipped swiftly up-stream. Ship after ship was passed, sailing vessels

in the majority, swinging sluggishly at anchor, drifting slowly with the

river, or made fast to the goods-stages of the shore; and in keen anxiety

lest he should overlook the right one, Kirkwood searched their bows and

sterns for names, which in more than one case proved hardly legible.

 

The Alethea was not of their number.

 

In the course of some ten minutes, the watermen drove the boat sharply

inshore, bringing her up alongside another floating stage, in the shadow

of another tenement.—both so like those from which they had embarked that

Kirkwood would have been unable to distinguish one from another.

 

In the bows old Bob lifted up a stentorian voice, summoning one William.

 

Recognizing that there was some design in this, the passenger subdued his

disapproval of the delay, and sat quiet.

 

In answer to the third ear-racking hail, a man, clothed simply in dirty

shirt and disreputable trousers, showed himself in the doorway above,

rubbing the sleep out of a red, bloated countenance with a mighty and grimy

fist.

 

“‘Ello,” he said surlily. “Wot’s th’ row?”

 

“‘Oo,” interrogated old Bob, holding the boat steady by grasping the stage,

“was th’ party wot engyged yer larst night, Bill?”

 

“Party name o’ Allytheer,” growled the drowsy one. “W’y?”

 

“Party ‘ere’s lookin’ for ‘im. Where’ll I find this Allytheer?”

 

“Best look sharp ‘r yer won’t find ‘im,” retorted the one above. “‘E was

at anchor off Bow Creek larst night.”

 

Kirkwood’s heart leaped in hope. “What sort of a vessel was she?” he asked,

half rising in his eagerness.

 

“Brigantine, sir.”

 

“Thank—you!” replied Kirkwood explosively, resuming his seat with

uncalculated haste as old Bob, deaf to the amenities of social intercourse

in an emergency involving as much as ten-bob, shoved off again.

 

And again the boat was flying down in midstream, the leaden waters, shot

with gold of the morning sun, parting sullenly beneath its bows.

 

The air was still, heavy and tepid; the least exertion brought out beaded

moisture on face and hands. In the east hung a turgid sky, dull with haze,

through which the mounting sun swam like a plaque of brass; overhead it

was clear and cloudless, but besmirched as if the polished mirror of the

heavens had been fouled by the breath of departing night.

 

On the right, ahead, Greenwich Naval College loomed up, the great

gray-stone buildings beyond the embankment impressively dominating the

scene, in happy relief against the wearisome monotony of the river-banks;

it came abreast; and ebbed into the backwards of the scene.

 

The watermen straining at the sweeps, the boat sped into Blackwall Reach,

Bugsby Marshes a splash of lurid green to port, dreary Cubitt Town and the

West India Docks to starboard. Here the river ran thick with shipping.

 

“Are we near?” Kirkwood would know; and by way of reply had a grunt of the

younger waterman.

 

Again, “Will we make it?” he asked.

 

The identical grunt answered him; he was free to interpret it as he would;

young William—as old Bob named him—had no breath for idle words. Kirkwood

subsided, controlling his impatience to the best of his ability; the men,

he told himself again and again, were earning their pay, whether or not

they gained the goal of his desire…. Their labors were titanic; on

their temples and foreheads the knotted veins stood out like discolored

whip-cord; their faces were the shade of raw beef, steaming with sweat;

their eyes protruded with the strain that set their jaws like vises; their

chests heaved and shrank like bellows; their backs curved, straightened,

and bent again in rhythmic unison as tiring to the eye as the swinging of a

pendulum.

 

Hugging the marshy shore, they rounded the Blackwall Point. Young William

looked to Kirkwood, caught his eye, and nodded.

 

“Here?”

 

Kirkwood rose, balancing himself against the leap and sway of the boat.

 

“Sumwhere’s … ‘long … o’ ‘ere.”

 

From right to left his eager glance swept the river’s widening reach.

Vessels were there in abundance, odd, unwieldy, blunt-bowed craft with

huge, rakish, tawny sails; long strings of flat barges, pyramidal mounds of

coal on each, lashed to another and convoyed by panting tugs; steam cargo

boats, battered, worn, rusted sore through their age-old paint; a steel

leviathan of the deep seas, half cargo, half passenger boat, warping

reluctantly into the mouth of the Victoria Dock tidal basin,—but no

brigantine, no sailing vessel of any type.

 

The young man’s lips checked a cry that was half a sob of bitter

disappointment. He had entered into the spirit of the chase heart and soul,

with an enthusiasm that was strange to him, when he came to look back

upon the time; and to fail, even though failure had been discounted a

hundredfold since the inception of his mad adventure, seemed hard, very

hard.

 

He sat down suddenly. “She’s gone!” he cried in a hollow gasp.

 

The boatmen eased upon their oars, and old Bob stood up in the bows,

scanning the river-scape with keen eyes shielded by a level palm.

Young William drooped forward suddenly, head upon knees, and breathed

convulsively. The boat drifted listlessly with the current.

 

Old Bob panted: “‘Dawn’t—see—nawthin’—o’ ‘er.” He resumed his seat.

 

“There’s no hope, I suppose?”

 

The elder waterman shook his head. “‘Carn’t sye…. Might be round—nex’

bend—might be—passin’ Purfleet…. ‘Point is—me an’ young Wilyum

‘ere—carn’t do no more—‘n we ‘as. We be wore out.”

 

“Yes,” Kirkwood assented, disconsolate, “You’ve certainly earned your pay.”

Then hope revived; he was very young in heart, you know. “Can’t you suggest

something? I’ve got to catch that ship!”

 

Old Bob wagged his head in slow negation; young William lifted his.

 

“There’s a rylewye runs by Woolwich,” he ventured. “Yer might tyke tryne

an’ go to Sheerness, sir. Yer’d be positive o’ passin’ ‘er if she didn’t

syle afore ‘igh-tide. ‘Ire a boat at Sheerness an’ put out an’ look for

‘er.”

 

“How far’s Woolwich?” Kirkwood demanded instantly.

 

“Mile,” said the elder man. “Tyke yer for five-bob extry.”

 

“Done!”

 

Young William dashed the sweat from his eyes, wiped his palms on his hips,

and fitted the sweeps again to the wooden tholes. Old Bob was as ready.

With an inarticulate cry they gave way.

X DESPERATE MEASURES

Old Bob seemed something inclined toward optimism, when the boat lay

alongside a landing-stage at Woolwich, and Kirkwood had clambered ashore.

 

“Yer’ll mebbe myke it,” the waterman told him with a weatherwise survey of

the skies. “Wind’s freshenin’ from the east’rds, an’ that’ll ‘old ‘er back

a bit, sir.”

 

“Arsk th’ wye to th’ Dorkyard Styshun,” young William volunteered. “‘Tis

th’ shortest walk, sir. I ‘opes yer catches ‘er…. Thanky, sir.”

 

He caught dextrously the sovereign which Kirkwood, in ungrudging

liberality, spared them of his store of two. The American nodded

acknowledgments and adieux, with a faded smile deprecating his chances of

winning the race, sorely handicapped as he was. He was very, very tired,

and in his heart suspected that he would fail. But, if he did, he would at

least be able to comfort himself that it was not for lack of trying. He

set his teeth on that covenant, in grim determination; either there was a

strain of the bulldog latent in the Kirkwood breed or else his infatuation

gripped him more strongly than he guessed.

 

Yet he suspected something of its power; he knew that this was altogether

an insane proceeding, and that the lure that led him on was Dorothy

Calendar. A strange dull light glowed in his weary eyes, on the thought of

her. He’d go through fire and water in her service. She was costing him

dear, perhaps was to cost him dearer still; and perhaps there’d be for

his guerdon no more than a “Thank you, Mr. Kirkwood!” at the end of the

passage. But that would be no less than his deserts; he was not to forget

that he was interfering unwarrantably; the girl was in her father’s hands,

surely safe enough there—to the casual mind. If her partnership in her

parent’s fortunes were distasteful, she endured it passively, without

complaint.

 

He decided that it was his duty to remind himself, from time to time,

that his main interest must be in the game itself, in the solution of

the riddle; whatever should befall, he must look for no reward for his

gratuitous and self-appointed part. Indeed he was all but successful in

persuading himself that it was the fascination of adventure alone that drew

him on.

 

Whatever the lure, it was inexorable; instead of doing as a sensible person

would have done—returning to London for a long rest in his hotel room, ere

striving to retrieve his shattered fortunes—Philip Kirkwood turned up the

village street, intent only to find the railway station and catch the first

available train for Sheerness, were that an early one or a late.

 

A hapchance native whom he presently encountered, furnished minute

directions for reaching the Dockyard Station of the Southeastern and

Chatham Railway, adding comfortable information to the effect that the

next east-bound train would pass through in ten minutes; if Kirkwood would

mend