The Black Bag

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"Craven Street, please," said the girl, and added a house number. "I am to
meet my father there, with this,"--indicating the gladstone bag.

Kirkwood thrust head and shoulders out the window and instructed the cabby
accordingly; but his ruse had been ineffectual, as he found when he sat
back again. Quite composedly the girl took up the thread of conversation
where it had been broken off.

"It's rather hard to keep silence, when you've been so good. I don't want
you to think me less generous than yourself, but, truly, I can tell you
nothing." She sighed a trace resentfully; or so he thought. "There is
little enough in this--this wretched affair, that I understand myself; and
that little, I may not tell ... I want you to know that."

"I understand, Miss Calendar."

"There's one thing I may say, however. I have done nothing wrong to-night,
I believe," she added quickly.

"I've never for an instant questioned that," he returned with a qualm of
shame; for what he said was not true.

"Thank you ..."

The four-wheeler swung out of Oxford Street into Charing Cross Road.
Kirkwood noted the fact with a feeling of some relief that their ride
was to be so short; like many of his fellow-sufferers from "the artistic
temperament," he was acutely disconcerted by spoken words of praise and
gratitude; Miss Calendar, unintentionally enough, had succeeded only in
rendering him self-conscious and ill at ease.

Nor had she fully relieved her mind, nor voiced all that perturbed her.
"There's one thing more," she said presently: "my father. I--I hope you
will think charitably of him."

"Indeed, I've no reason or right to think otherwise."

"I was afraid--afraid his actions might have seemed peculiar, to-night ..."

"There are lots of things I don't understand, Miss Calendar. Some day,
perhaps, it will all clear up,--this trouble of yours. At least, one
supposes it is trouble, of some sort. And then you will tell me the whole
story.... Won't you?" Kirkwood insisted.

"I'm afraid not," she said, with a smile of shadowed sadness. "We are to
say good night in a moment or two, and--it will be good-by as well. It's
unlikely that we shall ever meet again."

"I refuse positively to take such a gloomy view of the case!"

She shook her head, laughing with him, but with shy regret. "It's so, none
the less. We are leaving London this very night, my father and I--leaving
England, for that matter."

"Leaving England?" he echoed. "You're not by any chance bound for America,
are you?"

"I ... can't tell you."

"But you can tell me this: are you booked on the _Minneapolis_?"

"No--o; it is a--quite another boat."

"Of course!" he commented savagely. "It wouldn't be me to have _any_ sort
of luck!"

She made no reply beyond a low laugh. He stared gloomily out of his window,
noting indifferently that they were passing the National Gallery. On their
left Trafalgar Square stretched, broad and bare, a wilderness of sooty
stone with an air of mutely tolerating its incongruous fountains. Through
Charing Cross roared a tide-rip of motor-busses and hackney carriages.

Glumly the young man foresaw the passing of his abbreviated romance; their
destination was near at hand. Brentwick had been right, to some extent, at
least; it was quite true that the curtain had been rung up that very night,
upon Kirkwood's Romance; unhappily, as Brentwick had not foreseen, it was
immediately to be rung down.

The cab rolled soberly into the Strand.

"Since we are to say good-by so very soon," suggested Kirkwood, "may I ask
a parting favor, Miss Calendar?"

She regarded him with friendly eyes. "You have every right," she affirmed
gently.

"Then please to tell me frankly: are you going into any further danger?"

"And is that the only boon you crave at my hands, Mr. Kirkwood?"

"Without impertinence ..."

For a little time, waiting for him to conclude his vague phrase, she
watched him in an expectant silence. But the man was diffident to a
degree--At length, somewhat unconsciously, "I think not," she answered.
"No; there will be no danger awaiting me at Mrs. Hallam's. You need not
fear for me any more--Thank you."

He lifted his brows at the unfamiliar name. "Mrs. Hallam--?"

"I am going to her house in Craven Street."

"Your father is to meet you there?"--persistently.

"He promised to."

"But if he shouldn't?"

"Why--" Her eyes clouded; she pursed her lips over the conjectural
annoyance. "Why, in that event, I suppose--It would be very embarrassing.
You see, I don't know Mrs. Hallam; I don't know that she expects me, unless
my father is already there. They are old friends--I could drive round for a
while and come back, I suppose."

But she made it plain that the prospect did not please her.

"Won't you let me ask if Mr. Calender is there, before you get out, then? I
don't like to be dismissed," he laughed; "and, you know, you shouldn't go
wandering round all alone."

The cab drew up. Kirkwood put a hand on the door and awaited her will.

"It--it would be very kind ... I hate to impose upon you."

He turned the knob and got out. "If you'll wait one moment," he said
superfluously, as he closed the door.

Pausing only to verify the number, he sprang up the steps and found the
bell-button.

It was a modest little residence, in nothing more remarkable than its
neighbors, unless it was for a certain air of extra grooming: the area
railing was sleek with fresh black paint; the doorstep looked the better
for vigorous stoning; the door itself was immaculate, its brasses shining
lustrous against red-lacquered woodwork. A soft glow filled the fanlight.
Overhead the drawing-room windows shone with a cozy, warm radiance.

The door opened, framing the figure of a maid sketched broadly in masses of
somber black and dead white.

"Can you tell me, is Mr. Calendar here?"

The servant's eyes left his face, looked past him at the waiting cab, and
returned.

"I'm not sure, sir. If you will please step in."

Kirkwood hesitated briefly, then acceded. The maid closed the door.

"What name shall I say, sir?"

"Mr. Kirkwood."

"If you will please to wait one moment, sir--"

He was left in the entry hall, the servant hurrying to the staircase and
up. Three minutes elapsed; he was on the point of returning to the girl,
when the maid reappeared.

"Mrs. Hallam says, will you kindly step up-stairs, sir."

Disgruntled, he followed her; at the head of the stairs she bowed him into
the drawing-room and again left him to his own resources.

Nervous, annoyed, he paced the floor from wall to wall, his footfalls
silenced by heavy rugs. As the delay was prolonged he began to fume with
impatience, wondering, half regretting that he had left the girl outside,
definitely sorry that he had failed to name his errand more explicitly to
the maid. At another time, in another mood, he might have accorded more
appreciation to the charm of the apartment, which, betraying the feminine
touch in every detail of arrangement and furnishing, was very handsome in
an unconventional way. But he was quite heedless of externals.

Wearied, he deposited himself sulkily in an armchair by the hearth.

From a boudoir on the same floor there came murmurs of two voices, a man's
and a woman's. The latter laughed prettily.

"Oh, any time!" snorted the American. "Any time you're through with your
confounded flirtation, Mr. George B. Calendar!"

The voices rose, approaching. "Good night," said the woman gaily; "farewell
and--good luck go with you!"

"Thank you. Good night," replied the man more conservatively.

Kirkwood rose, expectant.

There was a swish of draperies, and a moment later he was acknowledging the
totally unlooked-for entrance of the mistress of the house. He had thought
to see Calendar, presuming him to be the man closeted with Mrs. Hallam;
but, whoever that had been, he did not accompany the woman. Indeed, as she
advanced from the doorway, Kirkwood could hear the man's footsteps on the
stairs.

"This is Mr. Kirkwood?" The note of inquiry in the well-trained voice--a
very alluring voice and one pleasant to listen to, he thought--made it seem
as though she had asked, point-blank, "Who is Mr. Kirkwood?"

He bowed, discovering himself in the presence of an extraordinarily
handsome and interesting woman; a woman of years which as yet had not told
upon her, of experience that had not availed to harden her, at least in so
far as her exterior charm of personality was involved; a woman, in brief,
who bore close inspection well, despite an elusive effect of maturity, not
without its attraction for men. Kirkwood was impressed that it would be
very easy to learn to like Mrs. Hallam more than well--with her approval.

Although he had not anticipated it, he was not at all surprised to
recognize in her the woman who, if he were not mistaken, had slipped to
Calendar that warning in the dining-room of the Pless. Kirkwood's state of
mind had come to be such, through his experiences of the past few
hours, that he would have accepted anything, however preposterous, as a
commonplace happening. But for that matter there was nothing particularly
astonishing in this _rencontre_.

"I am Mrs. Hallam. You were asking for Mr. Calendar?"

"He was to have been here at this hour, I believe," said Kirkwood.

"Yes?" There was just the right inflection of surprise in her carefully
controlled tone.

He became aware of an undercurrent of feeling; that the woman was
estimating him shrewdly with her fine direct eyes. He returned her regard
with admiring interest; they were gray-green eyes, deep-set but large, a
little shallow, a little changeable, calling to mind the sea on a windy,
cloudy day.

Below stairs a door slammed.

"I am not a detective, Mrs. Hallam," announced the young man suddenly.
"Mr. Calendar required a service of me this evening; I am here in natural
consequence. If it was Mr. Calendar who left this house just now, I am
wasting time."

"It was not Mr. Calendar." The fine-lined brows arched in surprise, real
or pretended, at his first blurted words, and relaxed; amused, the woman
laughed deliciously. "But I am expecting him any moment; he was to have
been here half an hour since.... Won't you wait?"

She indicated, with a gracious gesture, a chair, and took for herself one
end of a davenport. "I'm sure he won't be long, now."

"Thank you, I will return, if I may." Kirkwood moved toward the door.

"But there's no necessity--" She seemed insistent on detaining him,
possibly because she questioned his motive, possibly for her own
divertisement.

Kirkwood deprecated his refusal with a smile. "The truth is, Miss Calendar
is waiting in a cab, outside. I--"

"Dorothy Calendar!" Mrs. Hallam rose alertly. "But why should she wait
there? To be sure, we've never met; but I have known her father for many
years." Her eyes held steadfast to his face; shallow, flawed by her every
thought, like the sea by a cat's-paw he found them altogether inscrutable;
yet received an impression that their owner was now unable to account for
him.

She swung about quickly, preceding him to the door and down the stairs. "I
am sure Dorothy will come in to wait, if I ask her," she told Kirkwood in a
high sweet voice. "I'm so anxious to know her. It's quite absurd, really,
of her--to stand on ceremony with me, when her father made an appointment
here. I'll run out and ask--"

Mrs. Hallam's slim white fingers turned latch and knob, opening the street
door, and her voice died away as she stepped out into the night. For a
moment, to Kirkwood, tagging after her with an uncomfortable sense of
having somehow done the wrong thing, her figure--full fair shoulders and
arms rising out of the glittering dinner gown--cut a gorgeous silhouette
against the darkness. Then, with a sudden, imperative gesture, she half
turned towards him.

"But," she exclaimed, perplexed, gazing to right and left, "but the cab,
Mr. Kirkwood?"

He was on the stoop a second later. Standing beside her, he stared blankly.

To the left the Strand roared, the stream of its night-life in high spate;
on the right lay the Embankment, comparatively silent and deserted, if
brilliant with its high-swung lights. Between the two, quiet Craven Street
ran, short and narrow, and wholly innocent of any form of equipage.

VI

"BELOW BRIDGE"

In silence Mrs. Hallam turned to Kirkwood, her pose in itself a question
and a peremptory one. Her eyes had narrowed; between their lashes the green
showed, a thin edge like jade, cold and calculating. The firm lines of her
mouth and chin had hardened.

Temporarily dumb with consternation, he returned her stare as silently.

"_Well_, Mr.--Kirkwood?"

"Mrs. Hallam," he stammered, "I--"

She lifted her shoulders impatiently and with a quick movement stepped back
across the threshold, where she paused, a rounded arm barring the entrance,
one hand grasping the door-knob, as if to shut him out at any moment.

"I'm awaiting your explanation," she said coldly.

[Illustration: "I'm waiting your explanation," she said coldly.]

He grinned with nervousness, striving to penetrate the mental processes of
this handsome Mrs. Hallam. She seemed to regard him with a suspicion which
he thought inexcusable. Did she suppose he had spirited Dorothy Calendar
away and then called to apprise her of the fact? Or that he was some sort
of an adventurer, who had manufactured a plausible yarn to gain him access
to her home? Or--harking back to her original theory--that he was an
emissary from Scotland Yard? ... Probably she distrusted him on the latter
hypothesis. The reflection left him more at ease.

"I am quite as mystified as you, Mrs. Hallam," he began. "Miss Calendar was
here, at this door, in a four-wheeler, not ten minutes ago, and--"

"Then where is she now?"

"Tell me where Calendar is," he retorted, inspired, "and I'll try to answer
you!"

But her eyes were blank. "You mean--?"

"That Calendar was in this house when I came; that he left, found his
daughter in the cab, and drove off with her. It's clear enough."

"You are quite mistaken," she said thoughtfully. "George Calendar has not
been here this night."

He wondered that she did not seem to resent his imputation. "I think not--"

"Listen!" she cried, raising a warning hand; and relaxing her vigilant
attitude, moved forward once more, to peer down toward the Embankment.

A cab had cut in from that direction and was bearing down upon them with
a brisk rumble of hoofs. As it approached, Kirkwood's heart, that
had lightened, was weighed upon again by disappointment. It was no
four-wheeler, but a hansom, and the open wings of the apron, disclosing a
white triangle of linen surmounted by a glowing spot of fire, betrayed the
sex of the fare too plainly to allow of further hope that it might be the
girl returning.

At the door, the cab pulled up sharply and a man tumbled hastily out upon
the sidewalk.

"Here!" he cried throatily, tossing the cabby his fare, and turned toward
the pair upon the doorstep, evidently surmising that something was amiss.
For he was Calendar in proper person, and a sight to upset in a twinkling
Kirkwood's ingeniously builded castle of suspicion.

"Mrs. Hallam!" he cried, out of breath. "'S my daughter here?" And then,
catching sight of Kirkwood's countenance: "Why, hello, Kirkwood!" he
saluted him with a dubious air.

The woman interrupted hastily. "Please come in, Mr. Calendar. This
gentleman has been inquiring for you, with an astonishing tale about your
daughter."

"Dorothy!" Calendar's moon-like visage was momentarily divested of any
trace of color. "What of her?"

"You had better come in," advised Mrs. Hallam brusquely.

The fat adventurer hopped hurriedly across the threshold, Kirkwood
following. The woman shut the door, and turned with back to it, nodding
significantly at Kirkwood as her eyes met Calendar's.

"Well, well?" snapped the latter impatiently, turning to the young man.

But Kirkwood was thinking quickly. For the present he contented himself
with a deliberate statement of fact: "Miss Calendar has disappeared." It
gave him an instant's time ... "There's something damned fishy!" he told
himself. "These two are playing at cross-purposes. Calendar's no fool; he's
evidently a crook, to boot. As for the woman, she's had her eyes open for
a number of years. The main thing's Dorothy. She didn't vanish of her own
initiative. And Mrs. Hallam knows, or suspects, more than she's going to
tell. I don't think she wants Dorothy found. Calendar does. So do I. Ergo:
I'm for Calendar."

"Disappeared?" Calendar was barking at him. "How? When? Where?"

"Within ten minutes," said Kirkwood. "Here, let's get it straight.... With
her permission I brought her here in a four-wheeler." He was carefully
suppressing all mention of Frognall Street, and in Calendar's glance read
approval of the elision. "She didn't want to get out, unless you were here.
I asked for you. The maid showed me up-stairs. I left your daughter in the
cab--and by the way, I hadn't paid the driver. That's funny, too! Perhaps
six or seven minutes after I came in Mrs. Hallam found out that Miss
Calendar was with me and wanted to ask her in. When we got to the door--no
cab. There you have it all."

"Thanks--it's plenty," said Calendar dryly. He bent his head in thought for
an instant, then looked up and fixed Mrs. Hallam with an unprejudiced
eye, "I say!" he demanded explosively. "There wasn't any one here that
knew--eh?"

Her fine eyes wavered and fell before his; and Kirkwood remarked that her
under lip was curiously drawn in.

"I heard a man leave as Mrs. Hallam joined me," he volunteered helpfully,
and with a suspicion of malice. "And after that--I paid no attention at the
time--it seems to me I did hear a cab in the street--"

"Ow?" interjected Calendar, eying the woman steadfastly and employing an
exclamation of combined illumination and inquiry more typically British
than anything Kirkwood had yet heard from the man.

For her part, the look she gave Kirkwood was sharp with fury. It was more;
it was a mistake, a flaw in her diplomacy; for Calendar intercepted it.
Unceremoniously he grasped her bare arm with his fat hand.

"Tell me who it was," he demanded in an ugly tone.

She freed herself with a twist, and stepped back, a higher color in her
cheeks, a flash of anger in her eyes.

"Mr. Mulready," she retorted defiantly. "What of that?"

"I wish I was sure," declared the fat adventurer, exasperated. "As it is,
I bet a dollar you've put your foot in it, my lady. I warned you of that
blackguard.... There! The mischief's done; we won't row over it. One
moment." He begged it with a wave of his hand; stood pondering briefly,
fumbled for his watch, found and consulted it. "It's the barest chance," he
muttered. "Perhaps we can make it."

"What are you going to do?" asked the woman.

"Give _Mister_ Mulready a run for his money. Come along, Kirkwood; we
haven't a minute. Mrs. Hallam, permit us...." She stepped aside and he
brushed past her to the door. "Come, Kirkwood!"

He seemed to take Kirkwood's company for granted; and the young man was not
inclined to argue the point. Meekly enough he fell in with Calendar on the
sidewalk. Mrs. Hallam followed them out. "You won't forget?" she called
tentatively.

"I'll 'phone you if we find out anything." Calendar jerked the words
unceremoniously over his shoulder as, linking arms with Kirkwood, he drew
him swiftly along. They heard her shut the door; instantly Calendar
stopped. "Look here, did Dorothy have a--a small parcel with her?"

"She had a gladstone bag."

"Oh, the devil, the devil!" Calendar started on again, muttering
distractedly. As they reached the corner he disengaged his arm. "We've a
minute and a half to reach Charing Cross Pier; and I think it's the last
boat. You set the pace, will you? But remember I'm an oldish man and--and
fat."

They began to run, the one easily, the other lumbering after like an
old-fashioned square-rigged ship paced by a liner.

Beneath the railway bridge, in front of the Underground station, the
cab-rank cried them on with sardonic view-halloos; and a bobby remarked
them with suspicion, turning to watch as they plunged round the corner and
across the wide Embankment.

The Thames appeared before them, a river of ink on whose burnished surface
lights swam in long winding streaks and oily blobs. By the floating pier a
County Council steamboat strained its hawsers, snoring huskily. Bells were
jingling in her engine-room as the two gained the head of the sloping
gangway.

Kirkwood slapped a shilling down on the ticket-window ledge. "Where to?" he
cried back to Calendar.

"Cherry Gardens Pier," rasped the winded man. He stumbled after Kirkwood,
groaning with exhaustion. Only the tolerance of the pier employees gained
them their end; the steamer was held some seconds for them; as Calendar
staggered to its deck, the gangway was jerked in, the last hawser cast off.
The boat sheered wide out on the river, then shot in, arrow-like, to the
pier beneath Waterloo Bridge.

The deck was crowded and additional passengers embarked at every stop. In
the circumstances conversation, save on the most impersonal topics, was
impossible; and even had it been necessary or advisable to discuss the
affair which occupied their minds, where so many ears could hear, Calendar
had breath enough neither to answer nor to catechize Kirkwood. They found
seats on the forward deck and rested there in grim silence, both fretting
under the enforced restraint, while the boat darted, like some illuminated
and exceptionally active water insect, from pier to pier.

As it snorted beneath London Bridge, Calendar's impatience drove him from
his seat back to the gangway. "Next stop," he told Kirkwood curtly; and
rested his heavy bulk against the paddle-box, brooding morosely, until,
after an uninterrupted run of more than a mile, the steamer swept in,
side-wheels backing water furiously against the ebbing tide, to Cherry
Gardens landing.

Sweet name for a locality unsavory beyond credence! ... As they emerged on
the street level and turned west on Bermondsey Wall, Kirkwood was fain to
tug his top-coat over his chest and button it tight, to hide his linen. In
a guarded tone he counseled his companion to do likewise; and Calendar,
after a moment's blank, uncomprehending stare, acknowledged the wisdom of
the advice with a grunt.

The very air they breathed was rank with fetid odors bred of the gaunt dark
warehouses that lined their way; the lights were few; beneath the looming
buildings the shadows were many and dense. Here and there dreary and
cheerless public houses appeared, with lighted windows conspicuous in a
lightless waste. From time to time, as they hurried on, they encountered,
and made wide detours to escape contact with knots of wayfarers--men
debased and begrimed, with dreary and slatternly women, arm in arm,
zigzaging widely across the sidewalks, chorusing with sodden voices the
burden of some popularized ballad. The cheapened, sentimental refrains
echoed sadly between benighted walls....

Kirkwood shuddered, sticking close to Calendar's side. Life's naked
brutalities had theretofore been largely out of his ken. He had heard of
slums, had even ventured to mouth politely moral platitudes on the subject
of overcrowding in great centers of population, but in the darkest flights
of imagination had never pictured to himself anything so unspeakably
foul and hopeless as this.... And they were come hither seeking--Dorothy
Calendar! He was unable to conceive what manner of villainy could be
directed against her, that she must be looked for in such surroundings.

After some ten minutes' steady walking, Calendar turned aside with a
muttered word, and dived down a covered, dark and evil-smelling passageway
that seemed to lead toward the river.

Mastering his involuntary qualms, Kirkwood followed.

Some ten or twelve paces from its entrance the passageway swerved at a
right angle, continuing three yards or so to end in a blank wall, wherefrom
a flickering, inadequate gas-lamp jutted. At this point a stone platform,
perhaps four feet square, was discovered, from the edge of which a flight
of worn and slimy stone steps led down to a permanent boat-landing, where
another gas-light flared gustily despite the protection of its frame of
begrimed glass.

"Good Lord!" exclaimed the young man. "What, in Heaven's name, Calendar--?"

"Bermondsey Old Stairs. Come on."

They descended to the landing-stage. Beneath them the Pool slept, a sheet
of polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small stealthy
gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall
warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged
profile relieved here and there by tapering mastheads. A few, scattering,
feeble lights were visible. Nothing moved save the river and the wind.

The landing itself they found quite deserted; something which the
adventurer comprehended with a nod which, like its accompanying,
inarticulate ejaculation, might have been taken to indicate either
satisfaction or disgust. He ignored Kirkwood altogether, for the time
being, and presently produced a small, bright object, which, applied to his
lips, proved to be a boatswain's whistle. He sounded two blasts, one long,
one brief.

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