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

of Kirkwood’s presence.

 

“Ow, there you are, eigh, little bright-eyes!” he exclaimed with surprised

animation.

 

“Good morning, Captain Stryker,” said Kirkwood, rising. “I want to tell

you—”

 

But Stryker waved one great red paw impatiently, with the effect of

sweeping aside and casting into the discard Kirkwood’s intended speech of

thanks; nor would he hear him further.

 

“Did you ‘ave a nice little nap?” he interrupted. “Come up bright and

smilin’, eigh? Now I guess”—the emphasis made it clear that the captain

believed himself to be employing an Americanism; and so successful was he

in his own esteem that he could not resist the temptation to improve upon

the imitation—“Na-ow I guess yeou’re abaout right ready, ben’t ye, to hev

a drink, sonny?”

 

“No, thank you,” said Kirkwood, smiling tolerantly. “I’ve got any amount of

appetite…”

 

“‘Ave you, now?” Stryker dropped his mimicry and glanced at the clock.

“Breakfast,” he announced, “will be served in the myne dinin’ saloon at

eyght a. m. Passingers is requested not to be lyte at tyble.”

 

Depositing the bottle on the said table, the captain searched until he

found another glass for Kirkwood, and sat down.

 

“Do you good,” he insinuated, pushing the bottle gently over.

 

“No, thank you,” reiterated Kirkwood shortly, a little annoyed.

 

Stryker seized his own glass, poured out a strong man’s dose of the

fiery concoction, gulped it down, and sighed. Then, with a glance at the

American’s woebegone countenance (Kirkwood was contemplating a four-hour

wait for breakfast, and, consequently, looking as if he had lost his last

friend), the captain bent over, placing both hands palm down before him and

wagging his head earnestly.

 

“Please,” he implored,—“Please don’t let me hinterrupt;” and filled his

pipe, pretending a pensive detachment from his company.

 

The fumes of burning shag sharpened the tooth of desire. Kirkwood stood it

as long as he could, then surrendered with an: “If you’ve got any more of

that tobacco, Captain, I’d be glad of a pipe.”

 

An intensely contemplative expression crept into the captain’s small blue

eyes.

 

“I only got one other pyper of this ‘ere ‘baccy,” he announced at length,

“and I carn’t get no more till I gets ‘ome. I simply couldn’t part with it

hunder ‘arf a quid.”

 

Kirkwood settled back with a hopeless lift of his shoulders. Abstractedly

Stryker puffed the smoke his way until he could endure the deprivation no

longer.

 

“I had about ten shillings in my pocket when I came aboard, captain,

and … a few other articles.”

 

“Ow, yes; so you ‘ad, now you mention it.”

 

Stryker rose, ambled into his room, and returned with Kirkwood’s

possessions and a fresh paper of shag. While the young man was hastily

filling, lighting, and inhaling the first strangling but delectable whiff,

the captain solemnly counted into his own palm all the loose change except

three large pennies. The latter he shoved over to Kirkwood in company with

a miscellaneous assortment of articles, which the American picked up piece

by piece and began to bestow about his clothing. When through, he sat back,

troubled and disgusted. Stryker met his regard blandly.

 

“Anything I can do?” he inquired, in suave concern.

 

“Why … there was a black pearl scarfpin—”

 

“W’y, don’t you remember? You gave that to me, ‘count of me ‘avin syved yer

life. ‘Twas me throwed you that line, you know.”

 

“Oh,” commented Kirkwood briefly. The pin had been among the most valuable

and cherished of his belongings.

 

“Yes,” nodded the captain in reminiscence. “You don’t remember? Likely

‘twas the brandy singing in yer ‘ead. You pushes it into my ‘ands,—almost

weepin’, you was,—and sez, sez you, ‘Stryker,’ you sez, ‘tyke this in

triflin’ toking of my gratichood; I wouldn’t hinsult you,’ you sez, ‘by

hofferin’ you money, but this I can insist on yer acceptin’, and no

refusal,’ says you.”

 

“Oh,” repeated Kirkwood.

 

“If I for a ninstant thought you wasn’t sober when you done it…. But no;

you’re a gent if there ever was one, and I’m not the man to offend you.”

 

“Oh, indeed.”

 

The captain let the implication pass, perhaps on the consideration that he

could afford to ignore it; and said no more. The pause held for several

minutes, Kirkwood having fallen into a mood of grave distraction. Finally

Captain Stryker thoughtfully measured out a second drink, limited only by

the capacity of the tumbler, engulfed it noisily, and got up.

 

“Guess I’ll be turnin’ in,” he volunteered affably, yawning and stretching.

 

“I was about to ask you to do me a service….” began Kirkwood.

 

“Yes?”—with the rising inflection of mockery.

 

Kirkwood quietly produced his cigar-case, a gold matchbox, gold card-case,

and slipped a signet ring from his finger. “Will you buy these?” he asked.

“Or will you lend me five pounds and hold them as security?”

 

Stryker examined the collection with exaggerated interest strongly

tinctured with mistrust. “I’ll buy ‘em,” he offered eventually, looking up.

 

“That’s kind of you—”

 

“Ow, they ain’t much use to me, but Bill Stryker’s allus willin’ to

accommodate a friend…. Four quid, you said?”

 

“Five….”

 

“They ain’t wuth over four to me.”

 

“Very well; make it four,” Kirkwood assented contemptuously.

 

The captain swept the articles into one capacious fist, pivoted on one heel

at the peril of his neck, and lumbered unsteadily off to his room. Pausing

at the door he turned back in inquiry.

 

“I sye, ‘ow did you come to get the impression there was a party named

Almanack aboard this wessel?”

 

“Calendar—”

 

“‘Ave it yer own wye,” Stryker conceded gracefully.

 

“There isn’t, is there?”

 

“You ‘eard me.”

 

“Then,” said Kirkwood sweetly, “I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested.”

 

The captain pondered this at leisure. “You seemed pretty keen abaht seein’

‘im,” he remarked conclusively.

 

“I was.”

 

“Seems to me I did ‘ear the nyme sumw’eres afore.” The captain appeared to

wrestle with an obdurate memory. “Ow!” he triumphed. “I know. ‘E was a chap

up Manchester wye. Keeper in a loonatic asylum, ‘e was. ‘That yer party?”

 

“No,” said Kirkwood wearily.

 

“I didn’t know but mebbe ‘twas. Excuse me. ‘Thought as ‘ow mebbe you’d

escyped from ‘is tender care, but, findin’ the world cold, chynged yer mind

and wanted to gow back.”

 

Without waiting for a reply he lurched into his room and banged the door

to. Kirkwood, divided between amusement and irritation, heard him stumbling

about for some time; and then a hush fell, grateful enough while it lasted;

which was not long. For no sooner did the captain sleep than a penetrating

snore added itself unto the cacophony of waves and wind and tortured ship.

 

Kirkwood, comforted at first by the blessed tobacco, lapsed insensibly

into dreary meditations. Coming after the swift movement and sustained

excitement of the eighteen hours preceding his long sleep, the monotony

of shipboard confinement seemed irksome to a maddening degree. There was

absolutely nothing he could discover to occupy his mind. If there were

books aboard, none was in evidence; beyond the report of Mr. Stranger’s

Manhattan night’s entertainment the walls were devoid of reading matter;

and a round of the picture gallery proved a diversion weariful enough when

not purely revolting.

 

Wherefore Mr. Kirkwood stretched himself out on the transom and smoked and

reviewed his adventures in detail and seriatim, and was by turns indignant,

sore, anxious on his own account as well as on Dorothy’s, and out of all

patience with himself. Mystified he remained throughout, and the edge of

his curiosity held as keen as ever, you may believe.

 

Consistently the affair presented itself to his fancy in the guise of a

puzzle-picture, which, though you study it never so diligently, remains

incomprehensible, until by chance you view it from an unexpected angle,

when it reveals itself intelligibly. It had not yet been his good fortune

to see it from the right viewpoint. To hold the metaphor, he walked endless

circles round it, patiently seeking, but ever failing to find the proper

perspective…. Each incident, however insignificant, in connection with

it, he handled over and over, examining its every facet, bright or dull, as

an expert might inspect a clever imitation of a diamond; and like a perfect

imitation it defied analysis.

 

Of one or two things he was convinced; for one, that Stryker was a liar

worthy of classification with Calendar and Mrs. Hallam. Kirkwood had

not only the testimony of his sense to assure him that the ship’s name,

Alethea (not a common one, by the bye), had been mentioned by both

Calendar and Mulready during their altercation on Bermondsey Old Stairs,

but he had the confirmatory testimony of the sleepy waterman, William, who

had directed Old Bob and Young William to the anchorage off Bow Creek. That

there should have been two vessels of the same unusual name at one and

the same time in the Port of London, was a coincidence too preposterous

altogether to find place in his calculations.

 

His second impregnable conclusion was that those whom he sought had boarded

the Alethea, but had left her before she tripped her anchor. That they

were not stowed away aboard her seemed unquestionable. The brigantine was

hardly large enough for the presence of three persons aboard her to be long

kept a secret from an inquisitive fourth,—unless, indeed, they lay in

hiding in the hold; for which, once the ship got under way, there could be

scant excuse. And Kirkwood did not believe himself a person of sufficient

importance in Calendar’s eyes, to make that worthy endure the discomforts

of a’tween-decks imprisonment throughout the voyage, even to escape

recognition.

 

With every second, then, he was traveling farther from her to whose aid he

had rushed, impelled by motives so hot-headed, so innately, chivalric, so

unthinkingly gallant, so exceptionally idiotic!

 

Idiot! Kirkwood groaned with despair of his inability to fathom the abyss

of his self-contempt. There seemed to be positively no excuse for him.

Stryker had befriended him indeed, had he permitted him to drown. Yet

he had acted for the best, as he saw it. The fault lay in himself: an

admirable fault, that of harboring and nurturing generous and compassionate

instincts. But, of course, Kirkwood couldn’t see it that way.

 

“What else could I do?” he defended himself against the indictment

of common sense. “I couldn’t leave her to the mercies of that set of

rogues!… And Heaven knows I was given every reason to believe she would

be aboard this ship! Why, she herself told me that she was sailing …!”

 

Heaven knew, too, that this folly of his had cost him a pretty penny,

first and last. His watch was gone beyond recovery, his homeward passage

forfeited; he no longer harbored illusions as to the steamship company

presenting him with another berth in lieu of that called for by that

water-soaked slip of paper then in his pocket—courtesy of Stryker. He had

sold for a pittance, a tithe of its value, his personal jewelry, and had

spent every penny he could call his own. With the money Stryker was to give

him he would be able to get back to London and his third-rate hostelry, but

not with enough over to pay that one week’s room-rent, or …

 

“Oh, the devil!” he groaned, head in hands.

 

The future loomed wrapped in unspeakable darkness, lightened by no least

ray of hope. It had been bad enough to lose a comfortable living through

a gigantic convulsion of Nature; but to think that he had lost all else

through his own egregious folly, to find himself reduced to the kennels—!

 

So Care found him again in those