Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa) - "The Argonauts"

Elinor Glyn - "Man and Maid"

Henry Beam Piper - "Oomphel in the Sky"

Rev. E. Donald Carr - "A Night in the Snow"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Black Bag

L >> Louis Joseph Vance >> The Black Bag




"In short, I suggest," he concluded, thoughtfully lacing his long white
fingers, "that, avoiding the hazards of cab and railway carriage, we motor
to Chiltern: the night being fine and the road, I am told, exceptionally
good. Miss Dorothy, what do you think?"

Instinctively the girl looked to Kirkwood; then shifted her glance to their
host. "I think you are wonderfully thoughtful and kind," she said simply.

"And you, Philip?"

"It's an inspiration," the younger man declared. "I can't think of anything
better calculated to throw them off, than to distance them by motor-car. It
would be always possible to trace our journey by rail."

"Then," announced Brentwick, making as if to rise, "we had best go. If
neither my hearing nor Captain Stryker's car deceives me, our fiery chariot
is panting at the door."

A little sobered from the confident spirit of quiet gaiety in which they
had dined, they left the table. Not that, in their hearts, either greatly
questioned their ultimate triumph; but they were allowing for the element
of error so apt to set at naught human calculations. Calendar himself had
already been proved fallible. Within the bounds of possibility, their turn
to stumble might now be imminent.

When he let himself dwell upon it, their utter helplessness to give
Calendar pause by commonplace methods, maddened Kirkwood. With another
scoundrel it had been so simple a matter to put a period to his activities
by a word to the police. But he was her father; for that reason he must
continually be spared ... Even though, in desperate extremity, she should
give consent to the arrest of the adventurers, retaliation would follow,
swift and sure. For they might not overlook nor gloze the fact that hers
had been the hands responsible for the theft of the jewels; innocent
though she had been in committing that larceny, a cat's-paw guided by an
intelligence unscrupulous and malign, the law would not hold her guiltless
were she once brought within its cognizance. Nor, possibly, would the
Hallams, mother and son.

Upon their knowledge and their fear of this, undoubtedly Calendar was
reckoning: witness the barefaced effrontery with which he operated against
them. His fear of the police might be genuine enough, but he was never for
an instant disturbed by any doubt lest his daughter should turn against
him. She would never dare that.

Before they left the house, while Dorothy was above stairs resuming her
hat and coat, Kirkwood and Brentwick reconnoitered from the drawing-room
windows, themselves screened from observation by the absence of light in
the room behind.

Before the door a motor-car waited, engines humming impatiently,
mechanician ready in his seat, an uncouth shape in goggles and leather
garments that shone like oilskins under the street lights.

At one corner another and a smaller car stood in waiting, its lamps like
baleful eyes glaring through the night.

In the shadows across the way, a lengthy shadow lurked: Stryker, beyond
reasonable question. Otherwise the street was deserted. Not even that
adventitous bobby of the early evening was now in evidence.

Dorothy presently joining them, Brentwick led the way to the door.

Wotton, apparently nerveless beneath his absolute immobility, let them
out--and slammed the door behind them with such promptitude as to give
cause for the suspicion that he was a fraud, a sham, beneath his icy
exterior desperately afraid lest the house be stormed by the adventurers.

Kirkwood to the right, Brentwick to the left of Dorothy, the former
carrying the treasure bag, they hastened down the walk and through the gate
to the car.

The watcher across the way was moved to whistle shrilly; the other car
lunged forward nervously.

Brentwick taking the front seat, beside the mechanician, left the tonneau
to Kirkwood and Dorothy. As the American slammed the door, the car swept
smoothly out into the middle of the way, while the pursuing car swerved in
to the other curb, slowing down to let Stryker jump aboard.

Kirkwood put himself in the seat by the girl's side and for a few moments
was occupied with the arrangement of the robes. Then, sitting back, he
found her eyes fixed upon him, pools of inscrutable night in the shadow of
her hat.

"You aren't afraid, Dorothy?"

She answered quietly: "I am with you, Philip."

Beneath the robe their hands met...

Exalted, excited, he turned and looked back. A hundred yards to the rear
four unwinking eyes trailed them, like some modern Nemesis in monstrous
guise.




XIX

I----THE UXBRIDGE ROAD

At a steady gait, now and again checked in deference to the street traffic,
Brentwick's motor-car rolled, with resonant humming of the engine, down
the Cromwell Road, swerved into Warwick Road and swung northward through
Kensington to Shepherd's Bush. Behind it Calendar's car clung as if towed
by an invisible cable, never gaining, never losing, mutely testifying to
the adventurer's unrelenting, grim determination to leave them no instant's
freedom from surveillance, to keep for ever at their shoulders, watching
his chance, biding his time with sinister patience until the moment when,
wearied, their vigilance should relax....

To some extent he reckoned without his motor-car. As long as they traveled
within the metropolitan limits, constrained to observe a decorous pace
in view of the prejudices of the County Council, it was a matter of no
difficulty whatever to maintain his distance. But once they had won through
Shepherd's Bush and, paced by huge doubledeck trolley trams, were flying
through Hammersmith on the Uxbridge Road; once they had run through Acton,
and knew beyond dispute that now they were without the city boundaries,
then the complexion of the business was suddenly changed.

Not too soon for honest sport; Calendar was to have (Kirkwood would have
said in lurid American idiom) a run for his money. The scattered lights of
Southall were winking out behind them before Brentwick chose to give the
word to the mechanician.

Quietly the latter threw in the clutch for the third speed--and the fourth.
The car leaped forward like a startled race-horse. The motor lilted merrily
into its deep-throated song of the open road, its contented, silken humming
passing into a sonorous and sustained purr.

Kirkwood and the girl were first jarred violently forward, then thrown
together. She caught his arm to steady herself; it seemed the most natural
thing imaginable that he should take her hand and pass it beneath his
arm, holding her so, his fingers closed above her own. Before they had
recovered, or had time to catch their breath, a mile of Middlesex had
dropped to the rear.

Not quite so far had they distanced Calendar's trailing Nemesis of the four
glaring eyes; the pursuers put forth a gallant effort to hold their place.
At intervals during the first few minutes a heavy roaring and crashing
could be heard behind them; gradually it subsided, dying on the wings of
the free rushing wind that buffeted their faces as mile after mile was
reeled off and the wide, darkling English countryside opened out before
them, sweet and wonderful.

Once Kirkwood looked back; in the winking of an eye he saw four faded disks
of light, pallid with despair, top a distant rise and glide down into
darkness. When he turned, Dorothy was interrogating him with eyes whose
melting, shadowed loveliness, revealed to him in the light of the far,
still stars, seemed to incite him to that madness which he had bade himself
resist with all his strength.

He shook his head, as if to say: They can not catch us.

His hour was not yet; time enough to think of love and marriage (as if he
were capable of consecutive thought on any other subject!)--time enough to
think of them when he had gene back to his place, or rather when he should
have found it, in the ranks of bread-winners, and so have proved his right
to mortal happiness; time enough then to lay whatever he might have to
offer at her feet. Now he could conceive of no baser treachery to his
soul's-desire than to advantage himself of her gratitude.

Resolutely he turned his face forward, striving with all his will and might
to forget the temptation of her lips, weary as they were and petulant with
waiting; and so sat rigid in his time of trial, clinging with what strength
he could to the standards of his honor, and trying to lose his dream
in dreaming of the bitter struggle that seemed likely to be his future
portion.

Perhaps she guessed a little of the fortunes of the battle that was being
waged within him. Perhaps not. Whatever the trend of her thoughts, she did
not draw away from him.... Perhaps the breath of night, fresh and clean and
fragrant with the odor of the fields and hedges, sweeping into her face
with velvety caress, rendered her drowsy. Presently the silken lashes
drooped, fluttering upon her cheeks, the tired and happy smile hovered
about her lips....

In something less than half an hour of this wild driving, Kirkwood roused
out of his reverie sufficiently to become sensible that the speed was
slackening. Incoherent snatches of sentences, fragments of words and
phrases spoken by Brentwick and the mechanician, were flung back past his
ears by the rushing wind. Shielding his eyes he could see dimly that the
mechanician was tinkering (apparently) with the driving gear. Then, their
pace continuing steadily to abate, he heard Brentwick fling at the man a
sharp-toned and querulously impatient question: What was the trouble? His
reply came in a single word, not distinguishable.

The girl sat up, opening her eyes, disengaging her arm.

Kirkwood bent forward and touched Brentwick on the shoulder; the latter
turned to him a face lined with deep concern.

"Trouble," he announced superfluously. "I fear we have blundered."

"What is it?" asked Dorothy in a troubled voice.

"Petrol seems to be running low. Charles here" (he referred to the
mechanician) "says the tank must be leaking. We'll go on as best we can and
try to find an inn. Fortunately, most of the inns nowadays keep supplies of
petrol for just such emergencies."

"Are we--? Do you think--?"

"Oh, no; not a bit of danger of that," returned Brentwick hastily. "They'll
not catch up with us this night. That is a very inferior car they have,--so
Charles says, at least; nothing to compare with this. If I'm not in error,
there's the Crown and Mitre just ahead; we'll make it, fill our tanks, and
be off again before they can make up half their loss."

Dorothy looked anxiously to Kirkwood, her lips forming an unuttered query:
What did he think?

"Don't worry; we'll have no trouble," he assured her stoutly; "the
chauffeur knows, undoubtedly."

None the less he was moved to stand up in the tonneau, conscious of the
presence of the traveling bag, snug between his feet, as well as of the
weight of Calendar's revolver in his pocket, while he stared back along the
road.

There was nothing to be seen of their persecutors.

The car continued to crawl. Five minutes dragged out tediously. Gradually
they, drew abreast a tavern standing back a distance from the road,
embowered in a grove of trees between whose ancient boles the tap-room
windows shone enticingly, aglow with comfortable light. A creaking
sign-board, much worn by weather and age, swinging from a roadside post,
confirmed the accuracy of Brentwick's surmise, announcing that here stood
the Crown and Mitre, house of entertainment for man and beast.

Sluggishly the car rolled up before it and came to a dead and silent halt.
Charles, the mechanician, jumping out, ran hastily up the path towards the
inn. In the car Brentwick turned again, his eyes curiously bright in the
starlight, his forehead quaintly furrowed, his voice apologetic.

"It may take a few minutes," he said undecidedly, plainly endeavoring to
cover up his own dark doubts. "My dear," to the girl, "if I have brought
trouble upon you in this wise, I shall never earn my own forgiveness."

Kirkwood stood up again, watchful, attentive to the sounds of night; but
the voice of the pursuing motor-car was not of their company. "I hear
nothing," he announced.

"You will forgive me,--won't you, my dear?--for causing you these few
moments of needless anxiety?" pleaded the old gentleman, his tone
tremulous.

"As if you could be blamed!" protested the girl. "You mustn't think of it
that way. Fancy, what should we have done without you!"

"I'm afraid I have been very clumsy," sighed Brentwick, "clumsy and
impulsive ... Kirkwood, do you hear anything?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Perhaps," suggested Brentwick a little later, "perhaps we had better
alight and go up to the inn. It would be more cosy there, especially if the
petrol proves hard to obtain, and we have long to wait."

"I should like that," assented the girl decidedly.

Kirkwood nodded his approval, opened the door and jumped out to assist her;
then picked up the bag and followed the pair,--Brentwick leading the way
with Dorothy on his arm.

At the doorway of the Crown and Mitre, Charles met them evidently seriously
disturbed. "No petrol to be had here, sir," he announced reluctantly; "but
the landlord will send to the next inn, a mile up the road, for some. You
will have to be patient, I'm afraid, sir."

"Very well. Get some one to help you push the car in from the road,"
ordered Brentwick; "we will be waiting in one of the private parlors."

"Yes, sir; thank you, sir." The mechanician touched the visor of his cap
and hurried off.

"Come, Kirkwood." Gently Brentwick drew the girl in with him.

Kirkwood lingered momentarily on the doorstep, to listen acutely. But the
wind was blowing into that quarter whence they had come, and he could hear
naught save the soughing in the trees, together with an occasional burst
of rude rustic laughter from the tap-room. Lifting his shoulders in dumb
dismay, and endeavoring to compose his features, he entered the tavern.




II----THE CROWN AND MITRE

A rosy-cheeked and beaming landlady met him in the corridor and, all bows
and smiles, ushered him into a private parlor reserved for the party,
immediately bustling off in a desperate flurry, to secure refreshments
desired by Brentwick.

The girl had seated herself on one end of an extremely comfortless lounge
and was making a palpable effort to seem at ease. Brentwick stood at one of
the windows, shoulders rounded and head bent, hands clasped behind his back
as he peered out into the night. Kirkwood dropped the traveling bag beneath
a chair the farthest removed from the doorway, and took to pacing the
floor.

In a corner of the room a tall grandfather's clock ticked off ten
interminable minutes. For some reason unconscionably delaying, the landlady
did not reappear. Brentwick, abruptly turning from the window, remarked
the fact querulously, then drew a chair up to a marble-topped table in the
middle of the floor.

"My dear," he requested the girl, "will you oblige me by sitting over here?
And Philip, bring up a chair, if you will. We must not permit ourselves to
worry, and I have something here which may, perhaps, engage your interest
for a while."

To humor him and alleviate his evident distress of mind, they acceded.
Kirkwood found himself seated opposite Dorothy, Brentwick between them.
After some hesitation, made the more notable by an air of uneasiness
which sat oddly on his shoulders, whose composure and confident mien had
theretofore been so complete and so reassuring, the elder gentleman fumbled
in an inner coat-pocket and brought to light a small black leather wallet.
He seemed to be on the point of opening it when hurried footfalls sounded
in the hallway. Brentwick placed the wallet, still with its secret intact,
on the table before him, as Charles burst unceremoniously in, leaving the
door wide open.

"Mr. Brentwick, sir!" he cried gustily. "That other car--"

With a smothered ejaculation Kirkwood leaped to his feet, tugging at the
weapon in his pocket. In another instant he had the revolver exposed.
The girl's cry of alarm, interrupting the machinist, fixed Brentwick's
attention on the young man. He, too, stood up, reaching over very quickly,
to clamp strong supple fingers round Kirkwood's wrist, while with the other
hand he laid hold of the revolver and by a single twist wrenched it away.

Kirkwood turned upon him in fury. "So!" he cried, shaking with passion.
"This is what your hospitality meant! You're going to--"

"My dear young friend," interrupted Brentwick with a flash of impatience,
"remember that if I had designed to betray you, I could have asked no
better opportunity than when you were my guest under my own roof."

"But--hang it all, Brentwick!" expostulated Kirkwood, ashamed and contrite,
but worked upon by desperate apprehension; "I didn't mean that, but--"

"Would you have bullets flying when she is near?" demanded Brentwick
scathingly. Hastily he slipped the revolver upon a little shelf beneath the
table-top. "Sir!" he informed Kirkwood with some heat, "I love you as my
own son, but you're a young fool!... as I have been, in my time ... and as
I would to Heaven I might be again! Be advised, Philip,--be calm. Can't you
see it's the only way to save your treasure?"

"Hang the jewels!" retorted Kirkwood warmly. "What--"

"Sir, who said anything about the jewels?"

As Brentwick spoke, Calendar's corpulent figure filled the doorway;
Stryker's weather-worn features loomed over his shoulder, distorted in a
cheerful leer.

"As to the jewels," announced the fat adventurer, "I've got a word to say,
if you put it to me that way."

He paused on the threshold, partly for dramatic effect, partly for his own
satisfaction, his quick eyes darting from face to face of the four people
whom he had caught so unexpectedly. A shade of complacency colored his
expression, and he smiled evilly beneath the coarse short thatch of his
gray mustache. In his hand a revolver appeared, poised for immediate use if
there were need.

There was none. Brentwick, at his primal appearance, had dropped a
peremptory hand on Kirkwood's shoulder, forcing the young man back to his
seat; at the same time he resumed his own. The girl had not stirred from
hers since the first alarm; she sat as if transfixed with terror, leaning
forward with her elbows on the table, her hands tightly clasped, her face,
a little blanched, turned to the door. But her scarlet lips were set and
firm with inflexible purpose, and her brown eyes met Calendar's with a look
level and unflinching. Beyond this she gave no sign of recognition.

Nearest of the four to the adventurers was Charles, the mechanician, paused
in affrighted astonishment at sight of the revolver. Calendar, choosing to
advance suddenly, poked the muzzle of the weapon jocularly in the man's
ribs. "Beat it, Four-eyes!" he snapped. "This is your cue to duck! Get out
of my way."

The mechanician jumped as if shot, then hastily, retreated to the table,
his sallow features working beneath the goggle-mask which had excited the
fat adventurer's scorn.

"Come right in, Cap'n," Calendar threw over one shoulder; "come in, shut
the door and lock it. Let's all be sociable, and have a nice quiet time."

Stryker obeyed, with a derisive grimace for Kirkwood.

Calendar, advancing jauntily to a point within a yard of the table,
stopped, smiling affably down upon his prospective victims, and airily
twirling his revolver.

"_Good_ evening, all!" he saluted them blandly. "Dorothy, my child," with
assumed concern, "you're looking a trifle upset; I'm afraid you've been
keeping late hours. Little girls must be careful, you know, or they lose
the bloom of roses in their cheeks.... Mr. Kirkwood, it's a pleasure to
meet you again! Permit me to paraphrase your most sound advice, and remind
you that pistol-shots are apt to attract undesirable attention. It wouldn't
be wise for _you_ to bring the police about our ears. I believe that
in substance such was your sapient counsel to me in the cabin of the
_Alethea_; was it not?... And you, sir!"--fixing Brentwick with a cold
unfriendly eye. "You animated fossil, what d'you mean by telling me to go
to the devil?... But let that pass; I hold no grudge. What might your name
be?"

[Illustration: "_Good_ evening, all!" he saluted them blandly.]

"It might be Brentwick," said that gentleman placidly.

"Brentwick, eh? Well, I like a man of spirit. But permit me to advise
you--"

"Gladly," nodded Brentwick.

"Eh?... Don't come a second time between father and daughter; another man
might not be as patient as I, Mister Brentwick. There's a law in the land,
if you don't happen to know it."

"I congratulate you on your success in evading it," observed Brentwick,
undisturbed. "And it was considerate of you not to employ it in this
instance." Then, with a sharp change of tone, "Come, sir!" he demanded.
"You have unwarrantably intruded in this room, which I have engaged for my
private use. Get through with your business and be off with you."

"All in my good time, my antediluvian friend. When I've wound up my
business here I'll go--not before. But, just to oblige you, we'll get down
to it.... Kirkwood, you have a revolver of mine. Be good enough to return
it."

"I have it here,--under the table," interrupted Brentwick suavely. "Shall I
hand it to you?"

"By the muzzle, if you please. Be very careful; this one's loaded, too--apt
to explode any minute."

To Kirkwood's intense disgust Brentwick quietly slipped one hand beneath
the table and, placing the revolver on its top, delicately with his
finger-tips shoved it toward the farther edge. With a grunt of approval,
Calendar swept the weapon up and into his pocket.

"Any more ordnance?" he inquired briskly, eyes moving alertly from face to
face. "No matter; you wouldn't dare use 'em anyway. And I'm about done.
Dorothy, my dear, it's high time you returned to your father's protection.
Where's that gladstone bag?"

"In my traveling bag," the girl told him in a toneless voice.

"Then you may bring it along. You may also say good night to the kind
gentlemen."

Dorothy did not move; her pallor grew more intense and Kirkwood saw her
knuckles tighten beneath the gloves. Otherwise her mouth seemed to grow
more straight and hard.

"Dorothy!" cried the adventurer with a touch of displeasure. "You heard
me?"

"I heard you," she replied a little wearily, more than a little
contemptuously. "Don't mind him, please, Mr. Kirkwood!"--with an appealing
gesture, as Kirkwood, unable to contain himself, moved restlessly in his
chair, threatening to rise. "Don't say anything. I have no intention
whatever of going with this man."

Calendar's features twitched nervously; he chewed a corner of his mustache,
fixing the girl with a black stare. "I presume," he remarked after a
moment, with slow deliberation, "you're aware that, as your father, I am in
a position to compel you to accompany me."

"I shall not go with you," iterated Dorothy in a level tone. "You may
threaten me, but--I shall not go. Mr. Brentwick and Mr. Kirkwood are taking
me to--friends, who will give me a home until I can find a way to take care
of myself. That is all I have to say to you."

"Bravo, my dear!" cried Brentwick encouragingly.

"Mind your business, sir!" thundered Calendar, his face darkening. Then, to
Dorothy, "You understand, I trust, what this means?" he demanded. "I offer
you a home--and a good one. Refuse, and you work for your living, my girl!
You've forfeited your legacy--"

"I know, I know," she told him in cold disdain. "I am content. Won't you be
kind enough to leave me alone?"

For a breath, Calendar glowered over her; then, "I presume," he observed,
"that all these heroics are inspired by that whipper-snapper, Kirkwood. Do
you know that he hasn't a brass farthing to bless himself with?"

"What has that--?" cried the girl indignantly.

"Why, it has everything to do with me, my child. As your doting parent, I
can't consent to your marrying nothing-a-year.... For I surmise you intend
to marry this Mr. Kirkwood, don't you?"

There followed a little interval of silence, while the warm blood flamed in
the girl's face and the red lips trembled as she faced her tormentor. Then,
with a quaver that escaped her control, "If Mr. Kirkwood asks me, I shall,"
she stated very simply.

"That," interposed Kirkwood, "is completely understood." His gaze sought
her eyes, but she looked away.

"You forget that I am your father," sneered Calendar; "and that you are a
minor. I can refuse my consent."

"But you won't," Kirkwood told him with assurance.

The adventurer stared. "No," he agreed, after slight hesitation; "no,
I shan't interfere. Take her, my boy, if you want her--and a father's
blessing into the bargain. The Lord knows I've troubles enough; a parent's
lot is not what it's cracked up to be." He paused, leering, ironic.
"But,"--deliberately, "there's still this other matter of the gladstone
bag. I don't mind abandoning my parental authority, when my child's
happiness is concerned, but as for my property--"

"It is not your property," interrupted the girl.

"It was your mother's, dear child. It's now mine."

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