The Black Bag

L >> Louis Joseph Vance >> The Black Bag

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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--Heaven-sent visitation."

Accepting the revolver with his left hand and settling his forefinger on
the trigger, Kirkwood beamed with pure enjoyment. He found the deference
of the older man, tempered though it was by his indomitable swagger,
refreshing in the extreme.

"A little appreciation isn't exactly out of place, come to think of it,"
he commented, adding, with an eye for the captain: "Stryker, you bold, bad
butterfly, have you got a gun concealed about your unclean person?"

The captain shook visibly with contrition. "No, Mr. Kirkwood," he managed
to reply in a voice singularly lacking in his wonted bluster.

"Say 'sir'!" suggested Kirkwood.

"No, Mr. Kirkwood, sir," amended Stryker eagerly.

"Now come round here and let's have a look at you. Please stay where you
are, Calendar.... Why, Captain, you're shivering from head to foot! Not ill
are you, you wag? Step over to the table there, Stryker, and turn out your
pockets; turn 'em inside out and let's see what you carry in the way of
offensive artillery. And, Stryker, don't be rash; don't do anything you'd
be sorry for afterwards."

"No fear of that," mumbled the captain, meekly shambling toward the table,
and, in his anxiety to give no cause for unpleasantness, beginning to empty
his pockets on the way.

"Don't forget the 'sir,' Stryker. And, Stryker, if you happen to think of
anything in the line of one of your merry quips or jests, don't strain
yourself holding in; get it right off your chest, and you'll feel better."

Kirkwood chuckled, in high conceit with himself, watching Calendar out of
the corner of his eye, but with his attention centered on the infinitely
diverting spectacle afforded by Stryker, whose predacious hands were
trembling violently as, one by one, they brought to light the articles of
which he had despoiled his erstwhile victim.

"Come, come, Stryker! Surely you can think of something witty, surely you
haven't exhausted the possibilities of that almanac joke! Couldn't you
ring another variation on the lunatic wheeze? Don't hesitate out of
consideration for me, Captain; I'm joke proof--perhaps you've noticed?"

Stryker turned upon him an expression at once ludicrous, piteous and
hateful. "That's all, sir," he snarled, displaying his empty palms in token
of his absolute tractability.

"Good enough. Now right about face--quick! Your back's prettier than your
face, and besides, I want to know whether your hip-pockets are empty. I've
heard it's the habit of you gentry to pack guns in your clothes.... None?
That's all right, then. Now roost on the transom, over there in the corner,
Stryker, and don't move. Don't let me hear a word from you. Understand?"

Submissively the captain retired to the indicated spot. Kirkwood turned
to Calendar; of whose attitude, however, he had not been for an instant
unmindful.

"Won't you sit down, Mr. Calendar?" he suggested pleasantly. "Forgive me
for keeping you waiting."

For his own part, as the adventurer dropped passively into his chair,
Kirkwood stepped over Mulready and advanced to the middle of the cabin, at
the same time thrusting Calendar's revolver into his own coat pocket. The
other, Mulready's, he nursed significantly with both hands, while he stood
temporarily quiet, surveying the fleshy face of the prime factor in the
intrigue.

A quaint, grim smile played about the American's lips, a smile a little
contemptuous, more than a little inscrutable. In its light Calendar grew
restive and lost something of his assurance. His feet shifted uneasily
beneath the table and his dark eyes wavered, evading Kirkwood's. At length
he seemed to find the suspense unendurable.

"Well?" he demanded testily. "What d'you want of me?"

"I was just wondering at you, Calendar. In the last few days you've given
me enough cause to wonder, as you'll admit."

The adventurer plucked up spirit, deluded by Kirkwood's pacific tone. "I
wonder at you, Mr. Kirkwood," he retorted. "It was good of you to save my
life and--"

"I'm not so sure of that! Perhaps it had been more humane--"

Calendar owned the touch with a wry grimace. "But I'm damned if I
understand this high-handed attitude of yours!" he concluded heatedly.

"Don't you?" Kirkwood's humor became less apparent, the smile sobering.
"You will," he told the man, adding abruptly: "Calendar, where's your
daughter?"

The restless eyes sought the companionway.

"Dorothy," the man lied spontaneously, without a tremor, "is with friends
in England. Why? Did you want to see her?"

"I rather expected to."

"Well, I thought it best to leave her home, after all."

"I'm glad to hear she's in safe hands," commented Kirkwood.

The adventurer's glance analyzed his face. "Ah," he said slowly, "I see.
You followed me on Dorothy's account, Mr. Kirkwood?"

"Partly; partly on my own. Let me put it to you fairly. When you forced
yourself upon me, back there in London, you offered me some sort of
employment; when I rejected it, you used me to your advantage for the
furtherance of your purposes (which I confess I don't understand), and made
me miss my steamer. Naturally, when I found myself penniless and friendless
in a strange country, I thought again of your offer; and tried to find you,
to accept it."

"Despite the fact that you're an honest man, Kirkwood?" The fat lips
twitched with premature enjoyment.

"I'm a desperate man to-night, whatever I may have been yesterday." The
young man's tone was both earnest and convincing. "I think I've shown that
by my pertinacity in hunting you down."

"Well--yes." Calendar's thick fingers caressed his lips, trying to hide the
dawning smile.

"Is that offer still open?"

His nonchalance completely restored by the very naivete of the proposition,
Calendar laughed openly and with a trace of irony. The episode seemed to be
turning out better than he had anticipated. Gently his mottled fat fingers
played about his mouth and chins as he looked Kirkwood up and down.

"I'm sorry," he replied, "that it isn't--now. You're too late, Kirkwood;
I've made other arrangements."

"Too bad." Kirkwood's eyes narrowed. "You force me to harsher measures,
Calendar."

Genuinely diverted, the adventurer laughed a second time, tipping back
in his chair, his huge frame shaking with ponderous enjoyment. "Don't do
anything you'd be sorry for," he parroted, sarcastical, the young man's
recent admonition to the captain.

"No fear, Calendar. I'm just going to use my advantage, which you won't
dispute,"--the pistol described an eloquent circle, gleaming in the
lamplight--"to levy on you a little legitimate blackmail. Don't be alarmed;
I shan't hit you any harder than I have to."

"What?" stammered Calendar, astonished. "What in hell _are_ you driving
at?"

"Recompense for my time and trouble. You've cost me a pretty penny, first
and last, with your nasty little conspiracy--whatever it's all about. Now,
needing the money, I purpose getting some of it back. I shan't precisely
rob you, but this is a hold-up, all right.... Stryker," reproachfully, "I
don't see my pearl pin."

"I got it 'ere," responded the sailor hastily, fumbling with his tie.

"Give it me, then." Kirkwood held out his hand and received the trinket.
Then, moving over to the table, the young man, while abating nothing of
his watchfulness, sorted out his belongings from the mass of odds and ends
Stryker had disgorged. The tale of them was complete; the captain had
obeyed him faithfully. Kirkwood looked up, pleased.

"Now see here, Calendar; this collection of truck that I was robbed of by
this resurrected Joe Miller here, cost me upwards of a hundred and fifty.
I'm going to sell it to you at a bargain--say fifty dollars, two hundred
and fifty francs."

"The juice you are!" Calendar's eyes opened wide, partly in admiration.
"D'you realize that this is next door to highway robbery, my young friend?"

"High-seas piracy, if you prefer," assented Kirkwood with entire
equanimity. "I'm going to have the money, and you're going to give it up.
The transaction by any name would smell no sweeter, Calendar. Come--fork
over!"

"And if I refuse?"

"I wouldn't refuse, if I were you."

"Why not?"

"The consequences would be too painful."

"You mean you'd puncture me with that gun?"

"Not unless you attack or attempt to follow me. I mean to say that the
Belgian police are notoriously a most efficient body, and that I'll make
it my duty and pleasure to introduce 'em to you, if you refuse. But you
won't," Kirkwood added soothingly, "will you, Calendar?"

"No." The adventurer had become suddenly thoughtful. "No, I won't. 'Glad to
oblige you."

He tilted his chair still farther back, straightening out his elephantine
legs, inserted one fat hand into his trouser pocket and with some
difficulty extracted a combined bill-fold and coin-purse, at once heavy
with gold and bulky with notes. Moistening thumb and forefinger, "How'll
you have it?" he inquired with a lift of his cunning eyes; and when
Kirkwood had advised him, slowly counted out four fifty-franc notes, placed
them near the edge of the table, and weighted them with five ten-franc
pieces. And, "'That all?" he asked, replacing the pocket-book.

"That will be about all. I leave you presently to your unholy devices, you
and that gay dog, over there." The captain squirmed, reddening. "Just by
way of precaution, however, I'll ask you to wait in here till I'm off."
Kirkwood stepped backwards to the door of the captain's room, opened it and
removed the key from the inside. "Please take Mulready in with you," he
continued. "By the time you get out, I'll be clear of Antwerp. Please don't
think of refusing me,--I really mean it!"

The latter clause came sharply as Calendar seemed to hesitate, his weary,
wary eyes glimmering with doubt. Kirkwood, watching him as a cat her prey,
intercepted a lightning-swift sidelong glance that shifted from his face
to the port lockers, forward. But the fat adventurer was evidently to a
considerable degree deluded by the very child-like simplicity of Kirkwood's
attitude. If the possibility that his altercation with Mulready had been
overheard, crossed his mind, Calendar had little choice other than to
accept the chance. Either way he moved, the risk was great; if he refused
to be locked in the captain's room, there was the danger of the police,
to which Kirkwood had convincingly drawn attention; if he accepted the
temporary imprisonment, he took a risk with the gladstone bag. On the other
hand, he had estimated Kirkwood's honesty as thorough-going, from their
first interview; he had appraised him as a gentleman and a man of honor.
And he did not believe the young man knew, after all ... Perplexed, at
length he chose the smoother way, and with an indulgent lifting of eyebrows
and fat shoulders, rose and waddled over to Mulready.

"Oh, all right," he conceded with deep toleration in his tone for the
idiosyncrasies of youth. "It's all the same to me, beau." He laughed a
nervous laugh. "Come along and lend us a hand, Stryker."

The latter glanced timidly at Kirkwood, his eyes pleading for leave to
move; which Kirkwood accorded with an imperative nod and a fine flourish of
the revolver. Promptly the captain, sprang to Calendar's assistance; and
between the two of them, the one taking Mulready's head, the other his
feet, they lugged him quickly into the stuffy little state-room. Kirkwood,
watching and following to the threshold, inserted the key.

"One word more," he counseled, a hand on the knob. "Don't forget I've
warned you what'll happen if you try to break even with me."

"Never fear, little one!" Calendar's laugh was nervously cheerful. "The
Lord knows you're welcome."

"Thank you 'most to death," responded Kirkwood politely. "Good-by--and
good-by to you, Stryker. 'Glad to have humored your desire to meet me 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 down-stream 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 Hotel 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 Hotel du Commerce. As he swung past the serried tables of a
cafe, 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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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.

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