The Black Bag - Louis Joseph Vance (best reads of all time txt) 📗
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slab, and rest her cheeks between hands that remained clenched, as they had
been in the greatest stress of her emotion. The color had returned to
her face, with a slightly enhanced depth of hue to the credit of her
excitement. Her cheeks were hot, her eyes starlike beneath the woven, massy
sunlight of her hair. Temporarily unconscious of her surroundings she
stared steadfastly before her, thoughts astray in the irridescent glamour
of the dreams that were to come….
Brentwick had slipped down in his chair, resting his silvered head upon its
back, and was smiling serenely up at the low yellow ceiling. Before him on
the table his long white fingers were drumming an inaudible tune. Presently
rousing, he caught Kirkwood’s eye and smiled sheepishly, like a child
caught in innocent mischief.
The younger man grinned broadly. “And you were responsible for all that!”
he commented, infinitely amused.
Brentwick nodded, twinkling self-satisfaction. “I contrived it all,” he
said; “neat, I call it, too.” His old eyes brightened with reminiscent
enjoyment. “Inspiration!” he crowed softly. “Inspiration, pure and simple.
I’d been worrying my wits for fully five minutes before Wotton settled the
matter by telling me about the captain’s hiring of the motor-car. Then,
in a flash, I had it…. I talked with Charles by telephone,—his name is
really Charles, by, the bye,—overcame his conscientious scruples about
playing his fish when they were already all but landed, and settled the
artistic details.”
He chuckled delightedly. “It’s the instinct,” he declared emphatically,
“the instinct for adventure. I knew it was in me, latent somewhere, but
never till this day did it get the opportunity to assert itself. A born
adventurer—that’s what I am!… You see, it was essential that they should
believe we were frightened and running from them; that way, they would be
sure to run after us. Why, we might have baited a dozen traps and failed
to lure them into my house, after that stout scoundrel knew you’d had the
chance to tell me the whole yarn… Odd!”
“Weren’t you taking chances, you and Charles?” asked Kirkwood curiously.
“Precious few. There was another motor from Scotland Yard trailing Captain
Stryker’s. If they had run past, or turned aside, they would have been
overhauled in short order.”
He relapsed into his whimsical reverie; the wistful look returned to his
eyes, replacing the glow of triumph and pleasure. And he sighed a little
regretfully.
“What I don’t understand,” contended Kirkwood, “is how you convinced
Calendar that he couldn’t get revenge by pressing his charge against Miss
Calendar—Dorothy.”
“Oh-h?” Mr. Brentwick elevated his fine white eyebrows and sat up briskly.
“My dear boy, that was the most delectable dish on the entire menu. I have
been reserving it, I don’t mind owning, that I might better enjoy the full
relish of it…. I may answer you best, perhaps, by asking you to scan what
I offered to the fat scoundrel’s respectful consideration, my dear sir.”
He leveled a forefinger at the card.
At first glance it conveyed nothing to the younger man’s benighted
intelligence. He puzzled over it, twisting his brows out of alignment.
An ordinary oblong slip of thin white cardboard, it was engraved in fine
script as follows:
MR. GEORGE BURGOYNE CALENDAR
81, ASPEN VILLAS, S. W.
“Oh!” exclaimed Kirkwood at length, standing up, his face bright with
understanding. “You—!”
“I,” laconically assented the elder man.
Impulsively Kirkwood leaned across the table. “Dorothy,” he said tenderly;
and when the girl’s happy eyes met his, quietly drew her attention to the
card.
Then he rose hastily, and went over to stand by the window, staring mistily
into the blank face of night beyond its unseen panes.
Behind him there was a confusion of little noises; the sound of a chair
pushed hurriedly aside, a rustle of skirts, a happy sob or two, low voices
intermingling; sighs…. Out of it finally came the father’s accents.
“There, there, my dear! My dearest dear!” protested the old gentleman.
“Positively I don’t deserve a tithe of this. I—” The young old voice
quavered and broke, in a happy laugh…. “You must understand,” he
continued more soberly, “that no consideration of any sort is due me. When
we married, I was too old for your mother, child; we both knew it, both
believed it would never matter. But it did. By her wish, I went back
to America; we were to see what separation would do to heal the wounds
dissension had caused. It was a very foolish experiment. Your mother died
before I could return….”
There fell a silence, again broken by the father. “After that I was in
no haste to return. But some years ago, I came to London to live. I
communicated with the old colonel, asking permission to see you. It was
refused in a manner which precluded the subject being reopened by me: I
was informed that if I persisted in attempting to see you, you would be
disinherited…. He was very angry with me—justly, I admit…. One must
grow old before one can see how unforgivably one was wrong in youth…. So
I settled down to a quiet old age, determined not to disturb you in your
happiness…. Ah—Kirkwood!”
The old gentleman was standing, his arm around his daughter’s shoulders,
when Kirkwood turned.
“Come here, Philip; I’m explaining to Dorothy, but you should hear…. The
evening I called on you, dear boy, at the Pless, returning home I received
a message from my solicitors, whom I had instructed to keep an eye on
Dorothy’s welfare. They informed me that she had disappeared. Naturally I
canceled my plans to go to Munich, and stayed, employing detectives. One
of the first things they discovered was that Dorothy had run off with an
elderly person calling himself George Burgoyne Calendar—the name I had
discarded when I found that to acknowledge me would imperil my daughter’s
fortune…. The investigations went deeper; Charles—let us continue to
call him—had been to see me only this afternoon, to inform me of the plot
they had discovered. This Hallam woman and her son—it seems that they were
legitimately in the line of inheritance, Dorothy out of the way. But the
woman was—ah—a bad lot. Somehow she got into communication with this fat
rogue and together they plotted it out. Charles doesn’t believe that the
Hallam woman expected to enjoy the Burgoyne estates for very many days. Her
plan was to step in when Dorothy stepped out, gather up what she could,
realize on it, and decamp. That is why there was so much excitement about
the jewels: naturally the most valuable item on her list, the most easy to
convert into cash…. The man Mulready we do not place; he seems to have
been a shady character the fat rogue picked up somewhere. The latter’s
ordinary line of business was diamond smuggling, though he would condescend
to almost anything in order to turn a dishonest penny….
“That seems to exhaust the subject. But one word more…. Dorothy, I am
old enough and have suffered enough to know the wisdom of seizing one’s
happiness when one may. My dear, a little while ago, you did a very brave
deed. Under fire you said a most courageous, womanly, creditable thing. And
Philip’s rejoinder was only second in nobility to yours…. I do hope to
goodness that you two blessed youngsters won’t let any addlepated scruples
stand between yourselves and—the prize of Romance, your inalienable
inheritance!”
Abruptly Brentwick, who was no longer Brentwick, but the actual Calendar,
released the girl from his embrace and hopped nimbly toward the door.
“Really, I must see about that petrol!” he cried. “While it’s perfectly
true that Charles lied about it’s running out, we must be getting on. I’ll
call you when we’re ready to start.”
And the door crashed to behind him….
Between them was the table. Beyond it the girl stood with head erect, dim
tears glimmering on the lashes of those eyes with which she met Philip’s
steady gaze so fearlessly.
Singing about them, the silence deepened. Fascinated, though his heart was
faint with longing, Kirkwood faltered on the threshold of his kingdom.
“Dorothy!… You did mean it, dear?”
She laughed, a little, low, sobbing laugh that had its source deep in the
hidden sanctuary of her heart of a child.
“I meant it, my dearest…. If you’ll have a girl so bold and forward, who
can’t wait till she’s asked but throws herself into the arms of the man she
loves—Philip, I meant it, every word!…”
And as he went to her swiftly, round the table, she turned to meet him,
arms uplifted, her scarlet lips a-tremble, the brown and bewitching lashes
drooping over her wondrously lighted eyes….
After a time Philip Kirkwood laughed aloud.
And there was that quality in the ring of his laughter that caused the
Shade of Care, which had for the past ten minutes been uneasily luffing and
filling in the offing and, on the whole, steadily diminishing and becoming
more pale and wan and emaciated and indistinct—there was that in the
laughter of Philip Kirkwood, I say, which caused the Shade of Care to utter
a hollow croak of despair as, incontinently, it vanished out of his life.
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