The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance

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To his way of thinking the behavior of the fiacre was quite unaccountable.
Hardly had the horse paced off the length of two blocks on the Quai ere
it was guided to the edge of the promenade and brought to a stop. And the
driver twisted the reins round his whip, thrust the latter in its socket,
turned sidewise on the box, and began to smoke and swing his heels,
surveying the panorama of river and sunset with complacency--a cabby, one
would venture, without a care in the world and serene in the assurance of
a generous _pour-boire_ when he lost his fare. But as for the latter, she
made no move; the door of the cab remained closed,--like its occupant's
mind, a mystery to the watcher.

Twilight shadows lengthened, darkling, over the land; street-lights flashed
up in long, radiant ranks. Across the promenade hotels and shops were
lighted up; people began to gather round the tables beneath the awnings of
an open-air café. In the distance, somewhere, a band swung into the dreamy
rhythm of a haunting waltz. Scattered couples moved slowly, arm in arm,
along the riverside walk, drinking in the fragrance of the night. Overhead
stars popped out in brilliance and dropped their reflections to swim lazily
on spellbound waters.... And still the fiacre lingered in inaction, still
the driver lorded it aloft, in care-free abandon.

In the course of time this inertia, where he had looked for action, this
dull suspense when he had forecast interesting developments, wore upon the
watcher's nerves and made him at once impatient and suspicious. Now that he
had begun to doubt, he conceived it as quite possible that Mrs. Hallam (who
was capable of anything) should have stolen out of the cab by the other
and, to him, invisible door. To resolve the matter, finally, he took
advantage of the darkness, turned up his coat collar, hunched up his
shoulders, hid his hands in pockets, pulled the visor of his cap well
forward over his eyes, and slouched past the fiacre.

Mrs. Hallam sat within. He could see her profile clearly silhouetted
against the light; she was bending forward and staring fixedly out of the
window, across the driveway. Mentally he calculated the direction of her
gaze, then, moved away and followed it with his own eyes; and found himself
staring at the façade of a third-rate hotel. Above its roof the gilded
letters of a sign, catching the illumination from below, spelled out the
title of "Hôtel du Commerce."

Mrs. Hallam was interested in the Hôtel du Commerce?

Thoughtfully Kirkwood fell back to his former point of observation, now
the richer by another object of suspicion, the hostelry. Mrs. Hallam was
waiting and watching for some one to enter or to leave that establishment.
It seemed a reasonable inference to draw. Well, then, so was Kirkwood, no
less than the lady; he deemed it quite conceivable that their objects were
identical.

He started to beguile the time by wondering what she would do, if...

Of a sudden he abandoned this line of speculation, and catching his breath,
held it, almost afraid to credit the truth that for once his anticipations
were being realized under his very eyes.

Against the lighted doorway of the Hôtel du Commerce, the figures of two
men were momentarily sketched, as they came hurriedly forth; and of the
two, one was short and stout, and even at a distance seemed to bear himself
with an accent of assertiveness, while the other was tall and heavy of
shoulder.

Side by side they marched in step across the embankment to the head of the
Quai gangway, descending without pause to the landing-stage. Kirkwood,
hanging breathlessly over the guard-rail, could hear their footfalls
ringing in hollow rhythm on the planks of the inclined way,--could even
discern Calendar's unlovely profile in dim relief beneath one of the
waterside lights; and he recognized unmistakably Mulready's deep voice,
grumbling inarticulately.

At the outset he had set after them, with intent to accost Calendar; but
their pace had been swift and his irresolute. He hung fire on the issue,
dreading to reveal himself, unable to decide which were the better course,
to pursue the men, or to wait and discover what Mrs. Hallam was about. In
the end he waited; and had his disappointment for recompense.

For Mrs. Hallam did nothing intelligible. Had she driven over to the hotel,
hard upon the departure of the men, he would have believed that she was
seeking Dorothy, and would, furthermore, have elected to crowd their
interview, if she succeeded in obtaining one with the girl. But she did
nothing of the sort. For a time the fiacre remained as it had been ever
since stopping; then, evidently admonished by his fare, the driver
straightened up, knocked out his pipe, disentangled reins and whip, and
wheeled the equipage back on the way it had come, disappearing in a dark
side street leading eastward from the embankment.

Kirkwood was, then, to believe that Mrs. Hallam, having taken all that
trouble and having waited for the two adventurers to appear, had been
content with sight of them? He could hardly believe that of the woman; it
wasn't like her.

He started across the driveway, after the fiacre, but it was lost in a
tangle of side streets before he could make up his mind whether it was
worth while chasing or not; and, pondering the woman's singular action, he
retraced his steps to the promenade rail.

Presently he told himself he understood. Dorothy was no longer of her
father's party; he had a suspicion that Mulready's attitude had made it
seem advisable to Calendar either to leave the girl behind, in England, or
to segregate her from his associates in Antwerp. If not lodged in another
quarter of the city, or left behind, she was probably traveling on ahead,
to a destination which he could by no means guess. And Mrs. Hallam was
looking for the girl; if there were really jewels in that gladstone bag,
Calendar would naturally have had no hesitation about intrusting them to
his daughter's care; and Mrs. Hallam avowedly sought nothing else. How
the woman had found out that such was the case, Kirkwood did not stop to
reckon; unless he explained it on the proposition that she was a person of
remarkable address. It made no matter, one way or the other; he had lost
Mrs. Hallam; but Calendar and Mulready he could put his finger on; they had
undoubtedly gone off to the _Alethea_ to confer again with Stryker,--that
was, unless they proposed sailing on the brigantine, possibly at turn of
tide that night.

Panic gripped his soul and shook it, as a terrier shakes a rat, when he
conceived this frightful proposition.

In his confusion of mind he evolved spontaneously an entirely new
hypothesis: Dorothy had already been spirited aboard the vessel; Calendar
and his confederate, delaying to join her from enigmatic motives, were now
aboard; and presently the word would be, Up-anchor and away!

Were they again to elude him? Not, he swore, if he had to swim for it. And
he had no wish to swim. The clothes he stood in, with what was left of his
self-respect, were all that he could call his own on that side of the North
Sea. Not a boatman on the Scheldt would so much as consider accepting three
English pennies in exchange for boat-hire. In brief, it began to look as if
he were either to swim or ... to steal a boat.

Upon such slender threads of circumstance depends our boasted moral health.
In one fleeting minute Kirkwood's conception of the law of _meum et tuum_,
its foundations already insidiously undermined by a series of cumulative
misfortunes, toppled crashing to its fall; and was not.

He was wholly unconscious of the change. Beneath him, in a space between
the quays bridged by the gangway, a number of rowboats, a putative score,
lay moored for the night and gently rubbing against each other with the
soundless lift and fall of the river. For all that Kirkwood could determine
to the contrary, the lot lay at the mercy of the public; nowhere about was
he able to discern a figure in anything resembling a watchman.

Without a quiver of hesitation--moments were invaluable, if what he feared
were true--he strode to the gangway, passed down, and with absolute
nonchalance dropped into the nearest boat, stepping from one to another
until he had gained the outermost. To his joy he found a pair of oars
stowed beneath the thwarts.

If he had paused to moralize--which he didn't--upon the discovery, he would
have laid it all at the door of his lucky star; and would have been wrong.
We who have never stooped to petty larceny know that the oars had been
placed there at the direction of his evil genius bent upon facilitating his
descent into the avernus of crime. Let us, then, pity the poor young man
without condoning his offense.

Unhitching the painter he set one oar against the gunwale of the next boat,
and with a powerful thrust sent his own (let us so call it for convenience)
stern-first out upon the river; then sat him composedly down, fitted the
oars to their locks, and began to pull straight across-stream, trusting to
the current to carry him down to the _Alethea_. He had already marked down
that vessel's riding-light; and that not without a glow of gratitude to see
it still aloft and in proper juxtaposition to the river-bank; proof that it
had not moved.

He pulled a good oar, reckoned his distance prettily, and shipping the
blades at just the right moment, brought the little boat in under the
brigantine's counter with scarce a jar. An element of surprise he held
essential to the success of his plan, whatever that might turn out to be.

Standing up, he caught the brigantine's after-rail with both hands, one of
which held the painter of the purloined boat, and lifted his head above
the deck line. A short survey of the deserted after-deck gave him further
assurance. The anchor-watch was not in sight; he may have been keeping
well forward by Stryker's instructions, or he may have crept off for forty
winks. Whatever the reason for his absence from the post of duty, Kirkwood
was relieved not to have him to deal with; and drawing himself gently in
over the rail, made the painter fast, and stepped noiselessly over toward
the lighted oblong of the companionway. A murmur of voices from below
comforted him with the knowledge that he had not miscalculated, this time;
at last he stood within striking distance of his quarry.

The syllables of his surname ringing clearly in his ears and followed by
Stryker's fleeting laugh, brought him to a pause. He flushed hotly in the
darkness; the captain was retailing with relish some of his most successful
witticisms at Kirkwood's expense.... "You'd ought to've seed the wye'e
looked at me!" concluded the _raconteur_ in a gale of mirth.

Mulready laughed with him, if a little uncertainly. Calendar's chuckle was
not audible, but he broke the pause that followed.

"I don't know," he said with doubting emphasis. "You say you landed him
without a penny in his pocket? I don't call that a good plan at all. Of
course, he ain't a factor, but ... Well, it might've been as well to give
him his fare home. He might make trouble for us, somehow.... I don't mind
telling you, Cap'n, that you're an ass."

The tensity of certain situations numbs the sensibilities. Kirkwood had
never in his weirdest dreams thought of himself as an eavesdropper; he did
not think of himself as such in the present instance; he merely listened,
edging nearer the skylight, of which the wings were slightly raised, and
keeping as far as possible in shadow.

"Ow, I sye!" the captain was remonstrating, aggrieved. "'Ow was I to know
'e didn't 'ave it in for you? First off, when 'e comes on board (I'll sye
this for 'im, 'e's as plucky as they myke 'em), I thought 'e was from the
Yard. Then, when I see wot a bally hinnocent 'e was, I mykes up my mind
'e's just some one you've been ply in' one of your little gymes on, and 'oo
was lookin' to square 'is account. So I did 'im proper."

"Evidently," assented Calendar dryly. "You're a bit of a heavy-handed
brute, Stryker. Personally I'm kind of sorry for the boy; he wasn't a bad
sort, as his kind runs, and he was no fool, from what little I saw of
him.... I wonder what he wanted."

"Possibly," Mulready chimed in suavely, "you can explain what you wanted
of him, in the first place. How did you come to drag him into _this_
business?"

"Oh, that!" Calendar laughed shortly. "That was partly accident, partly
inspiration. I happened to see his name on the Pless register; he'd put
himself down as from 'Frisco. I figured it out that he would be next door
to broke and getting desperate, ready to do anything to get home; and
thought we might utilize him; to smuggle some of the stuff into the States.
Once before, if you'll remember--no; that was before we got together,
Mulready--I picked up a fellow-countryman on the Strand. He was down and
out, jumped at the job, and we made a neat little wad on it."

"The more fool you, to take outsiders into your confidence," grumbled
Mulready.

"Ow?" interrogated Calendar, mimicking Stryker's accent inimitably. "Well,
you've got a heap to learn about this game, Mul; about the first thing
is that you must trust Old Man Know-it-all, which is me. I've run more
diamonds into the States, in one way or another, in my time, than you ever
pinched out of the shirt-front of a toff on the Empire Prom., before they
made the graft too hot for you and you came to take lessons from me in the
gentle art of living easy."

"Oh, cut that, cawn't you?"

"Delighted, dear boy.... One of the first principles, next to profiting by
the admirable example I set you, is to make the fellows in your own line
trust you. Now, if this boy had taken on with me, I could have got a bunch
of the sparklers on my mere say-so, from old Morganthau up on Finsbury
Pavement. He does a steady business hoodwinking the Customs for the benefit
of his American clients--and himself. And I'd've made a neat little profit
besides: something to fall back on, if this fell through. I don't mind
having two strings to my bow."

"Yes," argued Mulready; "but suppose this Kirkwood had taken on with you
and then peached?"

"That's another secret; you've got to know your man, be able to size him
up. I called on this chap for that very purpose; but I saw at a glance he
wasn't our man. He smelt a nigger in the woodpile and most politely told
me to go to the devil. But if he _had_ come in, he'd've died before he
squealed. I know the breed; there's honor among gentlemen that knocks the
honor of thieves higher'n a kite, the old saw to the contrary--nothing
doing.... You understand me, I'm sure, Mulready?" he concluded with
envenomed sweetness.

"I don't see yet how Kirkwood got anything to do with Dorothy."

"Miss Calendar to you, _Mister_ Mulready!" snapped Calendar. "There, there,
now! Don't get excited.... It was when the Hallam passed me word that a man
from the Yard was waiting on the altar steps for me, that Kirkwood came in.
He was dining close by; I went over and worked on his feelings until he
agreed to take Dorothy off my hands. If I had attempted to leave the place
with her, they'd've spotted me for sure.... My compliments to you, Dick
Mulready."

There came the noise of chair legs scraped harshly on the cabin deck.
Apparently Mulready had leaped to his feet in a rage.

"I've told you--" he began in a voice thick with passion.

"Oh, sit down!" Calendar cut in contemptuously. "Sit down, d'you hear?
That's all over and done with. We understand each other now, and you won't
try any more monkey-shines. It's a square deal and a square divide, so
far's I'm concerned; if we stick together there'll be profit enough for all
concerned. Sit down, Mul, and have another slug of the captain's bum rum."

Although Mulready consented to be pacified, Kirkwood got the impression
that the man was far gone in drink. A moment later he heard him growl
"Chin-chin!" antiphonal to the captain's "Cheer-o!"

"Now, then," Calendar proposed, "Mr. Kirkwood aside--peace be with
him!--let's get down to cases."

"Wot's the row?" asked the captain.

"The row, Cap'n, is the Hallam female, who has unexpectedly shown up in
Antwerp, we have reason to believe with malicious intent and a private
detective to add to the gaiety of nations."

"Wot's the odds? She carn't 'urt us without lyin' up trouble for 'erself."

"Damn little consolation to us when we're working it out in Dartmoor."

"Speak for yourself," grunted Mulready surlily.

"I do," returned Calendar easily; "we're both in the shadow of Dartmoor,
Mul, my boy; since you choose to take the reference as personal. Sing Sing,
however, yawns for me alone; it's going to keep on yawning, too, unless I
miss my guess. I love my native land most to death, _but_ ..."

"Ow, blow that!" interrupted the captain irritably. "Let's 'ear about the
'Allam. Wot're you afryd of?"

"'Fraid she'll set up a yell when she finds out we're planting the loot,
Cap'n. She's just that vindictive; you'd think she'd be satisfied with
her end of the stick, but you don't know the Hallam. That milk-and-water
offspring of hers is the apple of her eye, and Freddie's going to collar
the whole shooting-match or madam will kick over the traces."

"Well?"

"Well, she's queered us here. We can't do anything if my lady is going to
camp on our trail and tell everybody we're shady customers, can we? The
question now before the board is: Where now,--and how?"

"Amsterdam," Mulready chimed in. "I told you that in the beginning."

"But how?" argued Calendar. "The Lord knows I'm willing but ... we can't go
by rail, thanks to the Hallam. We've got to lose her first of all."

"But wot I'm arskin' is, wot's the matter with--"

"The _Alethea_, Cap'n? Nothing, so far as Dick and I are concerned. But my
dutiful daughter is prejudiced; she's been so long without proper paternal
discipline," Calendar laughed, "that she's rather high-spirited. Of course
I might overcome her objections, but the girl's no fool, and every ounce
of pressure I bring to bear just now only helps make her more restless and
suspicious."

"You leave her to me," Mulready interposed, with a brutal laugh. "I'll
guarantee to get her aboard, or..."

"Drop it, Dick!" Calendar advised quietly. "And go a bit easy with that
bottle for five minutes, can't you?"

"Well, then," Stryker resumed, apparently concurring in Calendar's
attitude, "w'y don't one of you tyke the stuff, go off quiet and dispose of
it to a proper fence, and come back to divide. I don't see w'y that--"

"Naturally you wouldn't," chuckled Calendar. "Few people besides the two of
us understand the depth of affection existing between Dick, here, and
me. We just can't bear to get out of sight of each other. We're sure
inseparable--since night before last. Odd, isn't it?"

"You drop it!" snarled Mulready, in accents so ugly that the listener was
startled. "Enough's enough and--"

"There, there, Dick! All right; I'll behave," Calendar soothed him. "We'll
forget and say no more about it."

"Well, see you don't."

"But 'as either of you a plan?" persisted Stryker.

"I have," replied Mulready; "and it's the simplest and best, if you could
only make this long-lost parent here see it."

"Wot is it?"

Mulready seemed to ignore Calendar and address himself to the captain.
He articulated with some difficulty, slurring his words to the point of
indistinctness at times.

"Simple enough," he propounded solemnly. "We've got the gladstone bag here;
Miss Dolly's at the hotel--that's her papa's bright notion; he thinks she's
to be trusted ... Now then, what's the matter with weighing anchor and
slipping quietly out to sea?"

"Leavin' the dootiful darter?"

"Cert'n'y. She's only a drag any way. 'Better off without her.... Then we
can wait our time and get highest market prices--"

"You forget, Dick," Calendar put it, "that there's a thousand in it for
each of us if she's kept out of England for six weeks. A thousand's five
thousand in the land I hail from; I can use five thousand in my business."

"Why can't you be content with what you've got?" demanded Mulready
wrathfully.

"Because I'm a seventh son of a seventh son; I can see an inch or two
beyond my nose. If Dorothy ever finds her way back to England she'll spoil
one of the finest fields of legitimate graft I ever licked my lips to look
at. The trouble with you, Mul, is you're too high-toned. You want to play
the swell mobs-man from post to finish. A quick touch and a clean getaway
for yours. Now, that's all right; that has its good points, but you don't
want to underestimate the advantages of a good blackmailing connection....
If I can keep Dorothy quiet long enough, I look to the Hallam and precious
Freddie to be a great comfort to me in my old age."

"Then, for God's sake," cried Mulready, "go to the hotel, get your brat by
the scruif of her pretty neck and drag her aboard. Let's get out of this."

"I won't," returned Calendar inflexibly.

The dispute continued, but the listener had heard enough. He had to get
away and think, could no longer listen; indeed, the voices of the three
blackguards below came but indistinctly to his ears, as if from a distance.
He was sick at heart and ablaze with indignation by turns. Unconsciously he
was trembling violently in every limb; swept by alternate waves of heat and
cold, feverish one minute, shivering the next. All of which phenomena were
due solely to the rage that welled inside his heart.

Stealthily he crept away to the rail, to stand grasping it and staring
across the water with unseeing eyes at the gay old city twinkling back with
her thousand eyes of light. The cool night breeze, sweeping down unhindered
over the level Netherlands from the bleak North Sea, was comforting to
his throbbing temples. By degrees his head cleared, his rioting pulses
subsided, he could think; and he did.

Over there, across the water, in the dingy and disreputable Hôtel du
Commerce, Dorothy waited in her room, doubtless the prey of unnumbered
nameless terrors, while aboard the brigantine her fate was being decided by
a council of three unspeakable scoundrels, one of whom, professing himself
her father, openly declared his intention of using her to further his
selfish and criminal ends.

His first and natural thought, to steal away to her and induce her to
accompany him back to England, Kirkwood perforce discarded. He could
have wept over the realization of his unqualified impotency. He had no
money,--not even cab-fare from the hotel to the railway station. Something
subtler, more crafty, had to be contrived to meet the emergency. And there
was one way, one only; he could see none other. Temporarily he must make
himself one of the company of her enemies, force himself upon them,
ingratiate himself into their good graces, gain their confidence, then,
when opportunity offered, betray them. And the power to make them tolerate
him, if not receive him as a fellow, the knowledge of them and their plans
that they had unwittingly given him, was his.

And Dorothy, was waiting....

He swung round and without attempting to muffle his footfalls strode toward
the companionway. He must pretend he had just come aboard.

Subconsciously he had been aware, during his time of pondering, that the
voices in the cabin had been steadily gaining in volume, rising louder and
yet more loud, Mulready's ominous, drink-blurred accents dominating the
others. There was a quarrel afoot; as soon as he gave it heed, Kirkwood
understood that Mulready, in the madness of his inflamed brain, was forcing
the issue while Calendar sought vainly to calm and soothe him.

The American arrived at the head of the companionway at a critical
juncture. As he moved to descend some low, cool-toned retort of Calendar's
seemed to enrage his confederate beyond reason. He yelped aloud with wrath,
sprang to his feet, knocking over a chair, and leaping back toward the foot
of the steps, flashed an adroit hand behind him and found his revolver.

"I've stood enough from you!" he screamed, his voice oddly clear in that
moment of insanity. "You've played with me as long as you will, you hulking
American hog! And now I'm going to show--"

As he held his fire to permit his denunciation to bite home, Kirkwood,
appalled to find himself standing on the threshold of a tragedy, gathered
himself together and launched through the air, straight for the madman's
shoulders.

As they went down together, sprawling, Mulready's head struck against a
transom and the revolver fell from his limp fingers.

XIV

STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS

Prepared as he had been for the shock, Kirkwood was able to pick himself up
quickly, uninjured, Mulready's revolver in his grasp.

On his feet, straddling Mulready's insentient body, he confronted Calendar
and Stryker. The face of the latter was a sickly green, the gift of his
fright. The former seemed coldly composed, already recovering from his
surprise and bringing his wits to bear upon the new factor which had been
so unceremoniously injected into the situation.

[Illustration: Straddling Mulready's body, he confronted Calendar and
Stryker.]

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