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

soon

again.”

 

Kirkwood, turning the key in the lock, withdrew it and dropped it on the

cabin table; at the same time he swept into his pocket the money he had

extorted of Calendar. Then he paused an instant, listening; from the

captain’s room came a sound of murmurs and scuffling. He debated what they

were about in there—but time pressed. Not improbably they, were crowding

for place at the keyhole, he reflected, as he crossed to the port locker

forward.

 

He had its lid up in a twinkling, and in another had lifted out the

well-remembered black gladstone bag.

 

This seems to have been his first compound larceny.

 

As if stimulated by some such reflection he sprang for the companionway,

dropping the lid of the locker with a bang which must have been

excruciatingly edifying to the men in the captain’s room. Whatever their

emotions, the bang was mocked by a mighty kick, shaking the door; which,

Kirkwood reflected, opened outward and was held only by the frailest kind

of a lock: it would not hold long.

 

Spurred onward by a storm of curses, Stryker’s voice chanting infuriated

cacophony with Calendar’s, Kirkwood leapt up the companionway even as the

second tremendous kick threatened to shatter the panels. Heart in mouth, a

chill shiver of guilt running up and down his spine, he gained the deck,

cast loose the painter, drew in his rowboat, and dropped over the side;

then, the gladstone bag nestling between his feet, sat down and bent to the

oars.

 

And doubts assailed him, pressing close upon the ebb of his

excitement—doubts and fears innumerable.

 

There was no longer a distinction to be drawn between himself and Calendar;

no more could he esteem himself a better and more honest man than that

accomplished swindler. He was not advised as to the Belgian code, but

English law, he understood, made no allowance for the good intent of those

caught in possession of stolen property; though he was acting with the most

honorable motives in the world, the law, if he came within its cognizance,

would undoubtedly place him on Calendar’s plane and judge him by the same

standard. To all intents and purposes he was a thief, and thief he would

remain until the gladstone bag with its contents should be restored to its

rightful owner.

 

Voluntarily, then, he had stepped from the ranks of the hunters to those of

the hunted. He now feared police interference as abjectly as did Calendar

and his set of rogues; and Kirkwood felt wholly warranted in assuming that

the adventurer, with his keen intelligence, would not handicap himself by

ignoring this point. Indeed, if he were to be judged by what Kirkwood had

inferred of his character, Calendar would let nothing whatever hinder him,

neither fear of bodily hurt nor danger of apprehension at the hands of the

police, from making a determined and savage play to regain possession of

his booty.

 

Well! (Kirkwood set his mouth savagely) Calendar should have a run for his

money!

 

For the present he could compliment himself with the knowledge that he had

outwitted the rogues, had lifted the jewels and probably two-thirds of

their armament; he had also the start, the knowledge of their criminal

guilt and intent, and his own plans, to comfort him. As for the latter, he

did not believe that Calendar would immediately fathom them; so he took

heart of grace and tugged at the oars with a will, pulling directly for the

city and permitting the current to drift him downstream at its pleasure.

There could be no more inexcusable folly than to return to the Quai Steen

landing and (possibly) the arms of the despoiled boat-owner.

 

At first he could hear crash after splintering crash sounding dully muffled

from the cabin of the Alethea: a veritable devil’s tattoo beaten out by

the feet of the prisoners. Evidently the fastening was serving him better

than he had dared hope. But as the black rushing waters widened between

boat and brigantine, the clamor aboard the latter subsided, indicating

that Calendar and Stryker had broken out or been released by the crew. In

ignorance as to whether he were seen or being pursued, Kirkwood pulled on,

winning in under the shadow of the quais and permitting the boat to drift

down to a lonely landing on the edge of the dockyard quarter of Antwerp.

 

Here alighting, he made the boat fast and, soothing his conscience with a

surmise that its owner would find it there in the morning, strode swiftly

over to the train line that runs along the embankment, swung aboard an

adventitious car and broke his first ten-franc piece in order to pay his

fare.

 

The car made a leisurely progress up past the old Steen castle and the Quai

landing, Kirkwood sitting quietly, the gladstone bag under his hand, a

searching gaze sweeping the waterside. No sign of the adventurers rewarded

him, but it was now all chance, all hazard. He had no more heart for

confidence.

 

They passed the H�tel du Commerce. Kirkwood stared up at its windows,

wondering….

 

A little farther on, a disengaged fiacre, its driver alert for possible

fares, turned a corner into the esplanade. At sight of it Kirkwood,

inspired, hopped nimbly off the tram-car and signaled the cabby. The latter

pulled up and Kirkwood started to charge him with instructions; something

which he did haltingly, hampered by a slight haziness of purpose. While

thus engaged, and at rest in the stark glare of the street-lamps, with

no chance of concealing himself, he was aware of a rising tumult in the

direction of the landing, and glancing round, discovered a number of people

running toward him. With no time to wonder whether or no he was really the

object of the hue-and-cry, he tossed the driver three silver francs.

 

“Gare Centrale!” he cried. “And drive like the devil!”

 

Diving into the fiacre he shut the door and stuck his head out of the

window, taking observations. A ragged fringe of silly rabble was bearing

down upon them, with one or two gendarmes in the forefront, and a giant,

who might or might not be Stryker, a close second. Furthermore, another

cab seemed to have been requisitioned for the chase. His heart misgave him

momentarily; but his driver had taken him at his word and generosity,

and in a breath the fiacre had turned the corner on two wheels, and the

glittering reaches of the embankment, drive and promenade, were blotted

out, as if smudged with lamp-black, by the obscurity of a narrow and

tortuous side street.

 

He drew in his head the better to preserve his brains against further

emergencies.

 

After a block or two Kirkwood picked up the gladstone bag, gently opened

the door, and put a foot on the step, pausing to look back. The other cab

was pelting after him with all the enthusiasm of a hound on a fresh

trail. He reflected that this mad progress through the thoroughfares of a

civilized city would not long endure without police intervention. So he

waited, watching his opportunity. The fiacre hurtled onward, the driver

leaning forward from his box to urge the horse with lash of whip and

tongue, entirely unconscious of his fare’s intentions.

 

Between two streets the mouth of a narrow and darksome byway flashed into

view. Kirkwood threw wide the door, and leaped, trusting to the night to

hide his stratagem, to luck to save his limbs. Neither failed him; in a

twinkling he was on all fours in the mouth of the alley, and as he picked

himself up, the second fiacre passed, Calendar himself poking a round bald

poll out of the window to incite his driver’s cupidity with promises of

redoubled fare.

 

Kirkwood mopped his dripping forehead and whistled low with dismay; it

seemed that from that instant on it was to be a vendetta with a vengeance.

Calendar, as he had foreseen, was stopping at nothing.

 

At a dog trot he sped down the alley to the next street, on which he turned

back—more sedately—toward the river, debouching on the esplanade just one

block from the H�tel du Commerce. As he swung past the serried tables of a

caf�, whatever fears he had harbored were banished by the discovery that

the excitement occasioned by the chase had already subsided. Beneath the

garish awnings the crowd was laughing and chattering, eating and sipping

its bock with complete unconcern, heedless altogether of the haggard and

shabby young man carrying a black hand-bag, with the black Shade of Care

for company and a blacker threat of disaster dogging his footsteps. Without

attracting any attention whatever, indeed, he mingled with the strolling

crowds, making his way toward the H�tel du Commerce. Yet he was not at all

at ease; his uneasy conscience invested the gladstone bag with a magnetic

attraction for the public eye. To carry it unconcealed in his hand

furnished him with a sensation as disturbing as though its worn black sides

had been stenciled STOLEN! in letters of flame. He felt it rendered him a

cynosure of public interest, an object of suspicion to the wide cold world,

that the gaze which lit upon the bag traveled to his face only to espy

thereon the brand of guilt.

 

For ease of mind, presently, he turned into a convenient shop and spent ten

invaluable francs for a hand satchel big enough to hold the gladstone bag.

 

With more courage, now that he had the hateful thing under cover, he found

and entered the H�tel du Commerce.

 

In the little closet which served for an office, over a desk visibly

groaning with the weight of an enormous and grimy registry book, a sleepy,

fat, bland and good-natured woman of the Belgian bourgeoisie presided,

a benign and drowsy divinity of even-tempered courtesy. To his misleading

inquiry for Monsieur Calendar she returned a cheerful permission to seek

that gentleman for himself.

 

“Three flights, M’sieu’, in the front; suite seventeen it is. M’sieu’ does

not mind walking up?” she inquired.

 

M’sieu’ did not in the least, though by no strain of the imagination could

it, be truthfully said that he walked up those steep and redolent stairways

of the H�tel du Commerce d’Anvers. More literally, he flew with winged

feet, spurning each third padded step with a force that raised a tiny cloud

of fine white dust from the carpeting.

 

Breathless, at last he paused at the top of the third flight. His heart

was hammering, his pulses drumming like wild things; there was a queer

constriction in his throat, a fire of hope in his heart alternating with

the ice of doubt. Suppose she were not there! What if he were mistaken,

what if he had misunderstood, what if Mulready and Calendar had referred to

another lodging-house?

 

Pausing, he gripped the balustrade fiercely, forcing his self-control,

forcing himself to reflect that the girl (presuming, for the sake of

argument, he were presently to find her) could not be expected to

understand how ardently he had discounted this moment of meeting, or how

strangely it affected him. Indeed, he himself was more than a little

disturbed by the latter phenomenon, though he was no longer blind to its

cause. But he was not to let her see the evidences of his agitation, lest

she be frightened.

 

Slowly schooling himself to assume a masque of illuding self-possession and

composure, he passed down the corridor to the door whose panels wore the

painted legend, 17; and there knocked.

 

Believing that he overheard from within a sudden startled exclamation, he

smiled patiently, tolerant of her surprise.

 

Burning with impatience as with a fever, he endured a long minute’s wait.

 

Misgivings were prompting him to knock again