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

a table by

the bed, and immediately passed out into the hall. Kirkwood took the case

containing the gladstone bag in one hand, the girl’s valise in the other,

and followed.

 

As he turned the head of the stairs he looked back. Mrs. Hallam was still

at the window, her back turned. From her very passiveness he received an

impression of something ominous and forbidding; if she had lost a trick or

two of the game she played, she still held cards, was not at the end of her

resources. She stuck in his imagination for many an hour as a force to be

reckoned with.

 

For the present he understood that she was waiting to apprise Calendar and

Mulready of their flight. With the more haste, then, he followed Dorothy

down the three flights, through the tiny office, where Madam sat sound

asleep at her over-burdened desk, and out.

 

Opposite the door they were fortunate enough to find a fiacre drawn up in

waiting at the curb. Kirkwood opened the door for the girl to enter.

 

“Gare du Sud,” he directed the driver. “Drive your fastest—double fare for

quick time!”

 

The driver awoke with a start from profound reverie, looked Kirkwood over,

and bowed with gesticulative palms.

 

“M’sieu’, I am desolated, but engaged!” he protested.

 

“Precisely.” Kirkwood deposited the two bags on the forward seat of the

conveyance, and stood back to convince the man. “Precisely,” said he,

undismayed. “The lady who engaged you is remaining for a time; I will

settle her bill.”

 

“Very well, M’sieu’!” The driver disclaimed responsibility and accepted the

favor of the gods with a speaking shrug. “M’sieu’ said the Gare du Sud? _En

voiture_!”

 

Kirkwood jumped in and shut the door; the vehicle drew slowly away from

the curb, then with gratifying speed hammered up-stream on the embankment.

Bending forward, elbows on knees, Kirkwood watched the sidewalks narrowly,

partly to cover the girl’s constraint, due to Mrs. Hallam’s attitude,

partly on the lookout for Calendar and his confederates. In a few moments

they passed a public clock.

 

“We’ve missed the Flushing boat,” he announced. “I’m making a try for the

Hoek van Holland line. We may possibly make it. I know that it leaves by

the Sud Quai, and that’s all I do know,” he concluded with an apologetic

laugh.

 

“And if we miss that?” asked the girl, breaking silence for the first time

since they had left the hotel.

 

“We’ll take the first train out of Antwerp.”

 

“Where to?”

 

“Wherever the first train goes, Miss Calendar…. The main point is to get

away to-night. That we must do, no matter where we land, or how we get

there. To-morrow we can plan with more certainty.”

 

“Yes…” Her assent was more a sigh than a word.

 

The cab, dashing down the Rue Leopold de Wael, swung into the Place du Sud,

before the station. Kirkwood, acutely watchful, suddenly thrust head and

shoulders out of his window (fortunately it was the one away from the

depot), and called up to the driver.

 

“Don’t stop! Gare Centrale now—and treble fare!”

 

“Oui, M’sieu’! Allons!”

 

The whip cracked and the horse swerved sharply round the corner into the

Avenue du Sud. The young man, with a hushed exclamation, turned in his

seat, lifting the flap over the little peephole in the back of the

carriage.

 

He had not been mistaken. Calendar was standing in front of the station;

and it was plain to be seen, from his pose, that the madly careering fiacre

interested him more than slightly. Irresolute, perturbed, the man took

a step or two after it, changed his mind, and returned to his post of

observation.

 

Kirkwood dropped the flap and turned back to find the girl’s wide eyes

searching his face. He said nothing.

 

“What was that?” she asked after a patient moment.

 

“Your father, Miss Calendar,” he returned uncomfortably.

 

There fell a short pause; then: “Why—will you tell me—is it necessary to

run away from my father, Mr. Kirkwood?” she demanded, with a moving little

break in her voice.

 

Kirkwood hesitated. It were unfeeling to tell her why; yet it was essential

that she should know, however painful the knowledge might prove to her.

 

And she was insistent; he might not dodge the issue. “Why?” she repeated as

he paused.

 

“I wish you wouldn’t press me for an answer just now, Miss Calendar.”

 

“Don’t you think I had better know?”

 

Instinctively he inclined his head in assent.

 

“Then why—?”

 

Kirkwood bent forward and patted the flank of the satchel that held the

gladstone bag.

 

“What does that mean, Mr. Kirkwood?”

 

“That I have the jewels,” he told her tersely, looking straight ahead.

 

At his shoulder he heard a low gasp of amazement and incredulity

commingled.

 

“But—! How did you get them? My father deposited them in bank this

morning?”

 

“He must have taken them out again…. I got them on board the Alethea,

where your father was conferring with Mulready and Captain Stryker.”

 

“The Alethea!”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You took them from those men?—you!… But didn’t my father—?”

 

“I had to persuade him,” said Kirkwood simply.

 

“But there were three of them against you!”

 

“Mulready wasn’t—ah—feeling very well, and Stryker’s a coward. They gave

me no trouble. I locked them in Stryker’s room, lifted the bag of jewels,

and came away…. I ought to tell you that they were discussing the

advisability of sailing away without you—leaving you here, friendless and

without means. That’s why I considered it my duty to take a hand…. I

don’t like to tell you this so brutally, but you ought to know, and I can’t

see how to tone it down,” he concluded awkwardly.

 

“I understand….”

 

But for some moments she did not speak. He avoided looking at her.

 

The fiacre, rolling at top speed but smoothly on the broad avenues that

encircle the ancient city, turned into the Avenue de Keyser, bringing into

sight the Gare Centrale.

 

“You don’t—k-know—” began the girl without warning, in a voice gusty with

sobs.

 

“Steady on!” said Kirkwood gently. “I do know, but don’t let’s talk about

it now. We’ll be at the station in a minute, and I’ll get out and see

what’s to be done about a train, if neither Mulready or Stryker are about.

You stay in the carriage…. No!” He changed his mind suddenly. “I’ll not

risk losing you again. It’s a risk we’ll have to run in company.”

 

“Please!” she agreed brokenly.

 

The fiacre slowed up and stopped.

 

“Are you all right, Miss Calendar?” Kirkwood asked.

 

The girl sat up, lifting her head proudly. “I am quite ready,” she said,

steadying her voice.

 

Kirkwood reconnoitered through the window, while the driver was descending.

 

“Gare Centrale, M’sieu’,” he said, opening the door.

 

“No one in sight,” Kirkwood told the girl. “Come, please.”

 

He got out and gave her his hand, then paid the driver, picked up the two

bags, and hurried with Dorothy into the station, to find in waiting a

string of cars into which people were moving at leisurely rate. His

inquiries at the ticket-window developed the fact that it was the 22:26 for

Brussels, the last train leaving the Gare Centrale that night, and due to

start in ten minutes.

 

The information settled their plans for once and all; Kirkwood promptly

secured through tickets, also purchasing “Reserve” supplementary tickets

which entitled them to the use of those modern corridor coaches which take

the place of first-class compartments on the Belgian state railways.

 

“It’s a pleasure,” said Kirkwood lightly, as he followed the girl into one

of these, “to find one’s self in a common-sense sort of a train again.

‘Feels like home.” He put their luggage in one of the racks and sat down

beside her, chattering with simulated cheerfulness in a vain endeavor to

lighten her evident depression of spirit. “I always feel like a traveling

anachronism in one of your English trains,” he said. “You can’t

appreciate—”

 

The girl smiled bravely…. “And after Brussels?” she inquired.

 

“First train for the coast,” he said promptly. “Dover, Ostend,

Boulogne,—whichever proves handiest, no matter which, so long as it gets

us on English soil without undue delay.”

 

She said “Yes” abstractedly, resting an elbow on the window-sill and her

chin in her palm, to stare with serious, sweet brown eyes out into the

arc-smitten night that hung beneath the echoing roof.

 

Kirkwood fidgeted in despite of the constraint he placed himself under, to

be still and not disturb her needlessly. Impatience and apprehension of

misfortune obsessed his mental processes in equal degree. The ten minutes

seemed interminable that elapsed ere the grinding couplings advertised the

imminence of their start.

 

The guards began to bawl, the doors to slam, belated travelers to dash

madly for the coaches. The train gave a preliminary lurch ere settling down

to its league-long inland dash.

 

Kirkwood, in a fever of hope and an ague of fear, saw a man sprint

furiously across the platform and throw himself on the forward steps of

their coach, on the very instant of the start.

 

Presently he entered by the forward door and walked slowly through,

narrowly inspecting the various passengers. As he approached the seats

occupied by Kirkwood and Dorothy Calendar, his eyes encountered the young

man’s, and he leered evilly. Kirkwood met the look with one that was like a

kick, and the fellow passed with some haste into the car behind.

 

“Who was that?” demanded the girl, without moving her head.

 

“How did you know?” he asked, astonished. “You didn’t look—”

 

“I saw your knuckles whiten beneath the skin…. Who was it?”

 

“Hobbs,” he acknowledged bitterly; “the mate of the Alethea.”

 

“I know…. And you think—?”

 

“Yes. He must have been ashore when I was on board the brigantine; he

certainly wasn’t in the cabin. Evidently they hunted him up, or ran across

him, and pressed him into service…. You see, they’re watching every

outlet…. But we’ll win through, never fear!”

XVI TRAVELS WITH A CHAPERON

The train, escaping the outskirts of the city, remarked the event with an

exultant shriek, then settled down, droning steadily, to night-devouring

flight. In the corridor-car the few passengers disposed themselves to

drowse away the coming hour—the short hour’s ride that, in these piping

days of frantic traveling, separates Antwerp from the capital city of

Belgium.

 

A guard, slamming gustily in through the front door, reeled unsteadily down

the aisle. Kirkwood, rousing from a profound reverie, detained him with a

gesture and began to interrogate him in French. When he departed presently

it transpired that the girl was unaquainted with that tongue.

 

“I didn’t understand, you know,” she told him with a slow, shy smile.

 

“I was merely questioning him about the trains from Brussels to-night. We

daren’t stop, you see; we must go on,—keep Hobbs on the jump and lose him,

if possible. There’s where our advantage lies—in having only Hobbs to deal

with. He’s not particularly intellectual; and we’ve two heads to his one,

besides. If we can prevent him from guessing our destination and wiring

back to Antwerp, we may win away. You understand?”

 

“Perfectly,” she said, brightening. “And what do you purpose doing now?”

 

“I can’t tell yet. The guard’s gone to get me some information about the

night trains on other lines. In the meantime, don’t fret about Hobbs; I’ll

answer for Hobbs.”

 

“I shan’t be worried,” she said simply, “with you here….”

 

Whatever answer he would have made he was obliged to postpone because of

the return of the