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

before she seemed able to

continue.

 

“I was told that my great-uncle’s collection of jewels had been my mother’s

property. He had in life a passion for collecting jewels, and it had been

his whim to carry them with him, wherever he went. When he died in Frognall

Street, they were in the safe by the head of his bed. I, in my grief, at

first forgot them, and then afterwards carelessly put off removing them.

 

“To come back to my father: Night before last we were to call on Mrs.

Hallam. It was to be our last night in England; we were to sail for the

Continent on the private yacht of a friend of my father’s, the next

morning…. This is what I was told—and believed, you understand.

 

“That night Mrs. Hallam was dining at another table at the Pless, it seems.

I did not then know her. When leaving, she put a note on our table, by my

father’s elbow. I was astonished beyond words…. He seemed much agitated,

told me that he was called away on urgent business, a matter of life and

death, and begged me to go alone to Frognall Street, get the jewels and

meet him at Mrs. Hallam’s later…. I wasn’t altogether a fool, for I began

dimly to suspect, then, that something was wrong; but I was a fool, for I

consented to do as he desired. You understand—you know—?”

 

“I do, indeed,” replied Kirkwood grimly. “I understand a lot of things now

that I didn’t five minutes ago. Please let me think…”

 

But the time he took for deliberation was short. He had hoped to find a way

to spare her, by sparing Calendar; but momentarily he was becoming more

impressed with the futility of dealing with her save in terms of candor,

merciful though they might seem harsh.

 

“I must tell you,” he said, “that you have been outrageously misled,

swindled and deceived. I have heard from your father’s own lips that Mrs.

Hallam was to pay him two thousand pounds for keeping you out of England

and losing you your inheritance. I’m inclined to question, furthermore, the

assertion that these jewels were your mother’s. Frederick Hallam was the

man who followed you into the Frognall Street house and attacked me on the

stairs; Mrs. Hallam admits that he went there to get the jewels. But he

didn’t want anybody to know it.”

 

“But that doesn’t prove—”

 

“Just a minute.” Rapidly and concisely Kirkwood recounted the events

wherein he had played a part, subsequent to the adventure of Bermondsey Old

Stairs. He was guilty of but one evasion; on one point only did he slur the

truth: he conceived it his honorable duty to keep the girl in ignorance of

his straitened circumstances; she was not to be distressed by knowledge of

his distress, nor could he tolerate the suggestion of seeming to play for

her sympathy. It was necessary, then, to invent a motive to excuse his

return to 9, Frognall Street. I believe he chose to exaggerate the

inquisitiveness of his nature and threw in for good measure a desire

to recover a prized trinket of no particular moment, esteemed for its

associations, and so forth. But whatever the fabrication, it passed muster;

to the girl his motives seemed less important than the discoveries that

resulted from them.

 

“I am afraid,” he concluded the summary of the confabulation he had

overheard at the skylight of the Alethea’s cabin, “you’d best make up your

mind that your father—”

 

“Yes,” whispered the girl huskily; and turned her face to the window, a

quivering muscle in the firm young throat alone betraying her emotion.

 

“It’s a bad business,” he pursued relentlessly: “bad all round. Mulready,

in your father’s pay, tries to have him arrested, the better to rob him.

Mrs. Hallam, to secure your property for that precious pet, Freddie,

connives at, if she doesn’t instigate, a kidnapping. Your father takes her

money to deprive you of yours,—which could profit him nothing so long as

you remained in lawful possession of it; and at the same time he conspires

to rob, through you, the rightful owners—if they are rightful owners. And

if they are, why does Freddie Hallam go like a thief in the night to secure

property that’s his beyond dispute?… I don’t really think you owe your

father any further consideration.”

 

He waited patiently. Eventually, “No-o,” the girl sobbed assent.

 

“It’s this way: Calendar, counting on your sparing him in the end, is going

to hound us. He’s doing it now: there’s Hobbs in the next car, for proof.

Until these jewels are returned, whether to Frognall Street or to young

Hallam, we’re both in danger, both thieves in the sight of the law. And

your father knows that, too. There’s no profit to be had by discounting the

temper of these people; they’re as desperate a gang of swindlers as ever

lived. They’ll have those jewels if they have to go as far as murder—”

 

“Mr. Kirkwood!” she deprecated, in horror.

 

He wagged his head stubbornly, ominously. “I’ve seen them in the raw.

They’re hot on our trail now; ten to one, they’ll be on our backs before we

can get across the Channel. Once in England we will be comparatively safe.

Until then … But I’m a brute—I’m frightening you!”

 

“You are, dreadfully,” she confessed in a tremulous voice.

 

“Forgive me. If you look at the dark side first, the other seems all the

brighter. Please don’t worry; we’ll pull through with flying colors, or my

name’s not Philip Kirkwood!”

 

“I have every faith in you,” she informed him, flawlessly sincere. “When

I think of all you’ve done and dared for me, on the mere suspicion that I

needed your help—”

 

“We’d best be getting ready,” he interrupted hastily. “Here’s Brussels.”

 

It was so. Lights, in little clusters and long, wheeling lines, were

leaping out of the darkness and flashing back as the train rumbled through

the suburbs of the little Paris of the North. Already the other passengers

were bestirring themselves, gathering together wraps and hand luggage, and

preparing for the journey’s end.

 

Rising, Kirkwood took down their two satchels from the overhead rack,

and waited, in grim abstraction planning and counterplanning against the

machinations in whose wiles they two had become so perilously entangled.

 

Primarily, there was Hobbs to be dealt with; no easy task, for Kirkwood

dared not resort to violence nor in any way invite the attention of the

authorities; and threats would be an idle waste of breath, in the case of

that corrupt and malignant, little cockney, himself as keen as any needle,

adept in all the artful resources of the underworld whence he had sprung,

and further primed for action by that master rogue, Calendar.

 

The train was pulling slowly into the station when he reluctantly abandoned

his latest unfeasible scheme for shaking off the little Englishman,

and concluded that their salvation was only to be worked out through

everlasting vigilance, incessant movement, and the favor of the blind

goddess, Fortune. There was comfort of a sort in the reflection that

the divinity of chance is at least blind; her favors are impartially

distributed; the swing of the wheel of the world is not always to the

advantage of the wrongdoer and the scamp.

 

He saw nothing of Hobbs as they alighted and hastened from the station, and

hardly had time to waste looking for him, since their train had failed to

make up the precious ten minutes. Consequently he dismissed the fellow from

his thoughts until—with Brussels lingering in their memories a garish

vision of brilliant streets and glowing caf�s, glimpsed furtively

from their cab windows during its wild dash over the broad mid-city,

boulevards—at midnight they settled themselves in a carriage of the Bruges

express. They were speeding along through the open country with a noisy

clatter; then a minute’s investigation sufficed to discover the mate of the

Alethea serenely ensconced in the coach behind.

 

The little man seemed rarely complacent, and impudently greeted Kirkwood’s

scowling visage, as the latter peered through the window in the coach-door,

with a smirk and a waggish wave of his hand. The American by main strength

of will-power mastered an impulse to enter and wring his neck, and returned

to the girl, more disturbed than he cared to let her know.

 

There resulted from his review of the case but one plan for outwitting Mr.

Hobbs, and that lay in trusting to his confidence that Kirkwood and Dorothy

Calendar would proceed as far toward Ostend as the train would take

them—namely, to the limit of the run, Bruges.

 

Thus inspired, Kirkwood took counsel with the girl, and when the train

paused at Ghent, they made an unostentatious exit from their coach, finding

themselves, when the express had rolled on into the west, upon a station

platform in a foreign city at nine minutes past one o’clock in the

morning—but at length without their shadow. Mr. Hobbs had gone on to

Bruges.

 

Kirkwood sped his journeyings with an unspoken malediction, and collected

himself to cope with a situation which was to prove hardly more happy for

them than the espionage they had just eluded. The primal flush of triumph

which had saturated the American’s humor on this signal success, proved but

fictive and transitory when inquiry of the station attendants educed the

information that the two earliest trains to be obtained were the 5:09 for

Dunkerque and the 5:37 for Ostend. A minimum delay of four hours was to be

endured in the face of many contingent features singularly unpleasant to

contemplate. The station waiting-room was on the point of closing for the

night, and Kirkwood, already alarmed by the rapid ebb of the money he had

had of Calendar, dared not subject his finances to the strain of a night’s

lodging at one of Ghent’s hotels. He found himself forced to be cruel to

be kind to the girl, and Dorothy’s cheerful acquiescence to their sole

alternative of tramping the street until daybreak did nothing to alleviate

Kirkwood’s exasperation.

 

It was permitted them to occupy a bench outside the station. There the

girl, her head pillowed on the treasure bag, napped uneasily, while

Kirkwood plodded restlessly to and fro, up and down the platform, communing

with the Shade of Care and addling his poor, weary wits with the problem

of the future,—not so much his own as the future of the unhappy child for

whose welfare he had assumed responsibility. Dark for both of them, in his

understanding To-morrow loomed darkest for her.

 

Not until the gray, formless light of the dawn-dusk was wavering over the

land, did he cease his perambulations. Then a gradual stir of life in the

city streets, together with the appearance of a station porter or two,

opening the waiting-rooms and preparing them against the traffic of the

day, warned him that he must rouse his charge. He paused and stood over

her, reluctant to disturb her rest, such as it was, his heart torn with

compassion for her, his soul embittered by the cruel irony of their estate.

 

If what he understood were true, a king’s ransom was secreted within the

cheap, imitation-leather satchel which served her for a pillow. But it

availed her nothing for her comfort. If what he believed were true, she was

absolute mistress of that treasure of jewels; yet that night she had been

forced to sleep on a hard, uncushioned bench, in the open air, and this

morning he must waken her to the life of a hunted thing. A week ago she had

had at her command every luxury known to the civilized world; to-day she

was friendless, but for his inefficient, worthless self, and in