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

the captain’s “Cheer-o!”

 

“Now, then,” Calendar proposed, “Mr. Kirkwood aside—peace be with

him!—let’s get down to cases.”

 

“Wot’s the row?” asked the captain.

 

“The row, Cap’n, is the Hallam female, who has unexpectedly shown up in

Antwerp, we have reason to believe with malicious intent and a private

detective to add to the gaiety of nations.”

 

“Wot’s the odds? She carn’t ‘urt us without lyin’ up trouble for ‘erself.”

 

“Damn little consolation to us when we’re working it out in Dartmoor.”

 

“Speak for yourself,” grunted Mulready surlily.

 

“I do,” returned Calendar easily; “we’re both in the shadow of Dartmoor,

Mul, my boy; since you choose to take the reference as personal. Sing Sing,

however, yawns for me alone; it’s going to keep on yawning, too, unless I

miss my guess. I love my native land most to death, but …”

 

“Ow, blow that!” interrupted the captain irritably. “Let’s ‘ear about the

‘Allam. Wot’re you afryd of?”

 

“‘Fraid she’ll set up a yell when she finds out we’re planting the loot,

Cap’n. She’s just that vindictive; you’d think she’d be satisfied with

her end of the stick, but you don’t know the Hallam. That milk-and-water

offspring of hers is the apple of her eye, and Freddie’s going to collar

the whole shooting-match or madam will kick over the traces.”

 

“Well?”

 

“Well, she’s queered us here. We can’t do anything if my lady is going to

camp on our trail and tell everybody we’re shady customers, can we? The

question now before the board is: Where now,—and how?”

 

“Amsterdam,” Mulready chimed in. “I told you that in the beginning.”

 

“But how?” argued Calendar. “The Lord knows I’m willing but … we can’t go

by rail, thanks to the Hallam. We’ve got to lose her first of all.”

 

“But wot I’m arskin’ is, wot’s the matter with—”

 

“The Alethea, Cap’n? Nothing, so far as Dick and I are concerned. But my

dutiful daughter is prejudiced; she’s been so long without proper paternal

discipline,” Calendar laughed, “that she’s rather high-spirited. Of course

I might overcome her objections, but the girl’s no fool, and every ounce

of pressure I bring to bear just now only helps make her more restless and

suspicious.”

 

“You leave her to me,” Mulready interposed, with a brutal laugh. “I’ll

guarantee to get her aboard, or…”

 

“Drop it, Dick!” Calendar advised quietly. “And go a bit easy with that

bottle for five minutes, can’t you?”

 

“Well, then,” Stryker resumed, apparently concurring in Calendar’s

attitude, “w’y don’t one of you tyke the stuff, go off quiet and dispose of

it to a proper fence, and come back to divide. I don’t see w’y that—”

 

“Naturally you wouldn’t,” chuckled Calendar. “Few people besides the two of

us understand the depth of affection existing between Dick, here, and

me. We just can’t bear to get out of sight of each other. We’re sure

inseparable—since night before last. Odd, isn’t it?”

 

“You drop it!” snarled Mulready, in accents so ugly that the listener was

startled. “Enough’s enough and—”

 

“There, there, Dick! All right; I’ll behave,” Calendar soothed him. “We’ll

forget and say no more about it.”

 

“Well, see you don’t.”

 

“But ‘as either of you a plan?” persisted Stryker.

 

“I have,” replied Mulready; “and it’s the simplest and best, if you could

only make this long-lost parent here see it.”

 

“Wot is it?”

 

Mulready seemed to ignore Calendar and address himself to the captain.

He articulated with some difficulty, slurring his words to the point of

indistinctness at times.

 

“Simple enough,” he propounded solemnly. “We’ve got the gladstone bag here;

Miss Dolly’s at the hotel—that’s her papa’s bright notion; he thinks she’s

to be trusted … Now then, what’s the matter with weighing anchor and

slipping quietly out to sea?”

 

“Leavin’ the dootiful darter?”

 

“Cert’n’y. She’s only a drag any way. ‘Better off without her…. Then we

can wait our time and get highest market prices—”

 

“You forget, Dick,” Calendar put it, “that there’s a thousand in it for

each of us if she’s kept out of England for six weeks. A thousand’s five

thousand in the land I hail from; I can use five thousand in my business.”

 

“Why can’t you be content with what you’ve got?” demanded Mulready

wrathfully.

 

“Because I’m a seventh son of a seventh son; I can see an inch or two

beyond my nose. If Dorothy ever finds her way back to England she’ll spoil

one of the finest fields of legitimate graft I ever licked my lips to look

at. The trouble with you, Mul, is you’re too high-toned. You want to play

the swell mobs-man from post to finish. A quick touch and a clean getaway

for yours. Now, that’s all right; that has its good points, but you don’t

want to underestimate the advantages of a good blackmailing connection….

If I can keep Dorothy quiet long enough, I look to the Hallam and precious

Freddie to be a great comfort to me in my old age.”

 

“Then, for God’s sake,” cried Mulready, “go to the hotel, get your brat by

the scruif of her pretty neck and drag her aboard. Let’s get out of this.”

 

“I won’t,” returned Calendar inflexibly.

 

The dispute continued, but the listener had heard enough. He had to get

away and think, could no longer listen; indeed, the voices of the three

blackguards below came but indistinctly to his ears, as if from a distance.

He was sick at heart and ablaze with indignation by turns. Unconsciously he

was trembling violently in every limb; swept by alternate waves of heat and

cold, feverish one minute, shivering the next. All of which phenomena were

due solely to the rage that welled inside his heart.

 

Stealthily he crept away to the rail, to stand grasping it and staring

across the water with unseeing eyes at the gay old city twinkling back with

her thousand eyes of light. The cool night breeze, sweeping down unhindered

over the level Netherlands from the bleak North Sea, was comforting to

his throbbing temples. By degrees his head cleared, his rioting pulses

subsided, he could think; and he did.

 

Over there, across the water, in the dingy and disreputable H�tel du

Commerce, Dorothy waited in her room, doubtless the prey of unnumbered

nameless terrors, while aboard the brigantine her fate was being decided by

a council of three unspeakable scoundrels, one of whom, professing himself

her father, openly declared his intention of using her to further his

selfish and criminal ends.

 

His first and natural thought, to steal away to her and induce her to

accompany him back to England, Kirkwood perforce discarded. He could

have wept over the realization of his unqualified impotency. He had no

money,—not even cab-fare from the hotel to the railway station. Something

subtler, more crafty, had to be contrived to meet the emergency. And there

was one way, one only; he could see none other. Temporarily he must make

himself one of the company of her enemies, force himself upon them,

ingratiate himself into their good graces, gain their confidence, then,

when opportunity offered, betray them. And the power to make them tolerate

him, if not receive him as a fellow, the knowledge of them and their plans

that they had unwittingly given him, was his.

 

And Dorothy, was waiting….

 

He swung round and without attempting to muffle his footfalls strode toward

the companionway. He must pretend he had just come aboard.

 

Subconsciously he had been aware, during his time of pondering, that the

voices in the cabin had been steadily gaining in volume, rising louder and

yet more loud, Mulready’s ominous, drink-blurred accents dominating the

others. There was a quarrel afoot; as soon as he gave it heed, Kirkwood

understood that Mulready, in the madness of his inflamed brain, was forcing

the issue while Calendar sought vainly to calm and soothe him.

 

The American arrived at the head of the companionway at a critical

juncture. As he moved to descend some low, cool-toned retort of Calendar’s

seemed to enrage his confederate beyond reason. He yelped aloud with wrath,

sprang to his feet, knocking over a chair, and leaping back toward the foot

of the steps, flashed an adroit hand behind him and found his revolver.

 

“I’ve stood enough from you!” he screamed, his voice oddly clear in that

moment of insanity. “You’ve played with me as long as you will, you hulking

American hog! And now I’m going to show—”

 

As he held his fire to permit his denunciation to bite home, Kirkwood,

appalled to find himself standing on the threshold of a tragedy, gathered

himself together and launched through the air, straight for the madman’s

shoulders.

 

As they went down together, sprawling, Mulready’s head struck against a

transom and the revolver fell from his limp fingers.

XIV STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS

Prepared as he had been for the shock, Kirkwood was able to pick himself up

quickly, uninjured, Mulready’s revolver in his grasp.

 

On his feet, straddling Mulready’s insentient body, he confronted Calendar

and Stryker. The face of the latter was a sickly green, the gift of his

fright. The former seemed coldly composed, already recovering from his

surprise and bringing his wits to bear upon the new factor which had been

so unceremoniously injected into the situation.

 

[Illustration: Straddling Mulready’s body, he confronted Calendar and

Stryker.]

 

Standing, but leaning heavily upon a hand that rested flat on the table,

in the other he likewise held a revolver, which he had apparently drawn in

self-defense, at the crisis of Mulready’s frenzy. Its muzzle was deflected.

He looked Kirkwood over with a cool gray eye, the color gradually returning

to his fat, clean-shaven cheeks, replacing the pardonable pallor which had

momentarily rested thereon.

 

As for Kirkwood, he had covered the fat adventurer before he knew it.

Stryker, who had been standing immediately in the rear of Calendar,

immediately cowered and cringed to find himself in the line of fire.

 

Of the three conscious men in the brigantine’s cabin, Calendar was probably

the least confused or excited. Stryker was palpably unmanned. Kirkwood was

tingling with a sense of mastery, but collected and rapidly revolving the

combinations for the reversed conditions which had been brought about by

Mulready’s drunken folly. His elation was apparent in his shining, boyish

eyes, as well as in the bright color that glowed in his cheeks. When he

decided to speak it was with rapid enunciation, but clearly and concisely.

 

“Calendar,” he began, “if a single shot is fired about this vessel the

river police will be buzzing round your ears in a brace of shakes.”

 

The fat adventurer nodded assent, his eyes contracting.

 

“Very well!” continued Kirkwood brusquely. “You must know that I have

personally nothing to fear from the police; if arrested, I wouldn’t be

detained a day. On the other hand, you … Hand me that pistol, Calendar,

butt first, please. Look sharp, my man! If you don’t…”

 

He left the ellipsis to be filled in by the corpulent blackguard’s

intelligence. The latter, gray eyes still intent on the younger man’s face,

wavered, plainly impressed, but still wondering.

 

“Quick! I’m not patient to-night…”

 

No longer was Calendar of two minds. In the face of Kirkwood’s attitude

there was but one course to be followed: that of obedience. Calendar

surrendered an untenable position as gracefully as could be wished.

 

“I guess you know what you mean by this,” he said, tendering the weapon as

per instructions; “I’m doggoned if I do…. You’ll allow a certain

latitude in consideration of my relief; I can’t say we were anticipating

this—ah—Heavensent visitation.”

 

Accepting the revolver with his left hand and