The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance

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In this statement, however, Mr. Kirkwood was fortunately mistaken; not
only Heaven, it appeared, had cognizance of the distance between the two
stations. While Kirkwood was still debating the question, with pessimistic
tendencies, the friendly guard had occasion to pass through the coach; and,
being tapped, yielded the desired information with entire tractability.

It would be a cab-ride of perhaps ten minutes. Monsieur, however, would
serve himself well if he offered the driver an advance tip as an incentive
to speedy driving. Why? Why because (here the guard consulted his watch;
and Kirkwood very keenly regretted the loss of his own)--because this
train, announced to arrive in Brussels some twenty minutes prior to the
departure of that other, was already late. But yes--a matter of some ten
minutes. Could that not be made up? Ah, Monsieur, but who should say?

The guard departed, doubtless with private views as to the madness of all
English-speaking travelers.

"And there we are!" commented Kirkwood in factitious resignation. "If we're
obliged to stop overnight in Brussels, our friends will be on our back
before we can get out in the morning, if they have to come by motor-car."
He reflected bitterly on the fact that with but a little more money at
his disposal, he too could hire a motor-car and cry defiance to their
persecutors. "However," he amended, with rising spirits, "so much the
better our chance of losing Mr. Hobbs. We must be ready to drop off the
instant the train stops."

He began to unfold another time-table, threatening again to lose himself
completely; and was thrown into the utmost confusion by the touch of
the girl's hand, in appeal placed lightly on his own. And had she been
observant, she might have seen a second time his knuckles whiten beneath
the skin as he asserted his self-control--though this time not over his
temper.

His eyes, dumbly eloquent, turned to meet hers. She was smiling.

"Please!" she iterated, with the least imperative pressure on his hand,
pushing the folder aside.

"I beg pardon?" he muttered blankly.

"Is it quite necessary, now, to study those schedules? Haven't you decided
to try for the Bruges express?"

"Why yes, but--"

"Then please don't leave me to my thoughts all the time, Mr. Kirkwood."
There was a tremor of laughter in her voice, but her eyes were grave and
earnest. "I'm very weary of thinking round in a circle--and that," she
concluded, with a nervous little laugh, "is all I've had to do for days!"

"I'm afraid I'm very stupid," he humored her. "This is the second time, you
know, in the course of a very brief acquaintance, that you have found it
necessary to remind me to talk to you."

"Oh-h!" She brightened. "That night, at the Pless? But that was _ages_
ago!"

"It seems so," he admitted.

"So much has happened!"

"Yes," he assented vaguely.

She watched him, a little piqued by his absent-minded mood, for a moment;
then, and not without a trace of malice: "Must I tell you again what to
talk about?" she asked.

"Forgive me. I was thinking about, if not talking to, you.... I've been
wondering just why it was that you left the _Alethea_ at Queensborough, to
go on by steamer."

And immediately he was sorry that his tactless query had swung the
conversation to bear upon her father, the thought of whom could not but
prove painful to her. But it was too late to mend matters; already her
evanescent flush of amusement had given place to remembrance.

"It was on my father's account," she told him in a steady voice, but with
averted eyes; "he is a very poor sailor, and the promise of a rough passage
terrified him. I believe there was a difference of opinion about it, he
disputing with Mr. Mulready and Captain Stryker. That was just after we had
left the anchorage. They both insisted that it was safer to continue by
the _Alethea_, but he wouldn't listen to them, and in the end had his way.
Captain Stryker ran the brigantine into the mouth of the Medway and put us
ashore just in time to catch the steamer."

"Were you sorry for the change?"

"I?" She shuddered slightly. "Hardly! I think I hated the ship from the
moment I set foot on board her. It was a dreadful place; it was all
night-marish, that night, but it seemed most terrible on the _Alethea_ with
Captain Stryker and that abominable Mr. Hobbs. I think that my unhappiness
had as much to do with my father's insistence on the change, as anything.
He ... he was very thoughtful, most of the time."

Kirkwood shut his teeth on what he knew of the blackguard.

"I don't know why," she continued, wholly without affectation, "but I was
wretched from the moment you left me in the cab, to wait while you went in
to see Mrs. Hallam. And when we left you, at Bermondsey Old Stairs, after
what you had said to me, I felt--I hardly know what to say--abandoned, in a
way."

"But you were with your father, in his care--"

"I know, but I was getting confused. Until then the excitement had kept me
from thinking. But you made me think. I began to wonder, to question ...
But what could I do?" She signified her helplessness with a quick and
dainty movement of her hands. "He is my father; and I'm not yet of age, you
know."

"I thought so," he confessed, troubled. "It's very inconsiderate of you,
you must admit."

"I don't understand..."

"Because of the legal complication. I've no doubt your father can 'have
the law on me'"--Kirkwood laughed uneasily--"for taking you from his
protection."

"Protection!" she echoed warmly. "If you call it that!"

"Kidnapping," he said thoughtfully: "I presume that'd be the charge."

"Oh!" She laughed the notion to scorn. "Besides, they must catch us first,
mustn't they?"

"Of course; and"--with a simulation of confidence sadly deceitful--"they
shan't, Mr. Hobbs to the contrary notwithstanding."

"You make me share your confidence, against my better judgment."

"I wish your better judgment would counsel you to share your confidence
with me," he caught her up. "If you would only tell me what it's all about,
as far as you know, I'd be better able to figure out what we ought to do."

Briefly the girl sat silent, staring before her with sweet somber eyes.
Then, "In the very beginning," she told him with a conscious laugh,--"this
sounds very story-bookish, I know--in the very beginning, George Burgoyne
Calendar, an American, married his cousin a dozen times removed, and an
Englishwoman, Alice Burgoyne Hallam."

"Hallam!"

"Wait, please." She sat up, bending forward and frowning down upon her
interlacing, gloved fingers; she was finding it difficult to say what she
must. Kirkwood, watching hungrily the fair drooping head, the flawless
profile clear and radiant against the night-blackened window, saw hot
signals of shame burning on her cheek and throat and forehead.

"But never mind," he began awkwardly.

"No," she told him with decision. "Please let me go on...." She continued,
stumbling, trusting to his sympathy to bridge the gaps in her narrative.
"My father ... There was trouble of some sort.... At all events, he
disappeared when I was a baby. My mother ... died. I was brought up in
the home of my great-uncle, Colonel George Burgoyne, of the Indian
Army--retired. My mother had been his favorite niece, they say; I presume
that was why he cared for me. I grew up in his home in Cornwall; it was my
home, just as he was my father in everything but fact.

"A year ago he died, leaving me everything,--the town house in Frognall
Street, his estate in Cornwall: everything was willed to me on condition
that I must never live with my father, nor in any way contribute to his
support. If I disobeyed, the entire estate without reserve was to go to his
nearest of kin.... Colonel Burgoyne was unmarried and had no children."

The girl paused, lifting to Kirkwood's face her eyes, clear, fearless,
truthful. "I never was given to understand that there was anybody who might
have inherited, other than myself," she declared.

"I see..."

"Last week I received a letter, signed with my father's name, begging me to
appoint an interview with him in London. I did so,--guess how gladly! I was
alone in the world, and he, my father, whom I had never thought to see....
We met at his hotel, the Pless. He wanted me to come and live with
him,--said that he was growing old and lonely and needed a daughter's love
and care. He told me that he had made a fortune in America and was amply
able to provide for us both. As for my inheritance, he persuaded me that it
was by rights the property of Frederick Hallam, Mrs. Hallam's son."

"I have met the young gentleman," interpolated Kirkwood.

"His name was new to me, but my father assured me that he was the next of
kin mentioned in Colonel Burgoyne's will, and convinced me that I had no
real right to the property.... After all, he was my father; I agreed; I
could not bear the thought of wronging anybody. I was to give up everything
but my mother's jewels. It seems,--my father said,--I don't--I can't
believe it now--"

She choked on a little, dry sob. It was some time before she seemed able to
continue.

"I was told that my great-uncle's collection of jewels had been my mother's
property. He had in life a passion for collecting jewels, and it had been
his whim to carry them with him, wherever he went. When he died in Frognall
Street, they were in the safe by the head of his bed. I, in my grief, at
first forgot them, and then afterwards carelessly put off removing them.

"To come back to my father: Night before last we were to call on Mrs.
Hallam. It was to be our last night in England; we were to sail for the
Continent on the private yacht of a friend of my father's, the next
morning.... This is what I was told--and believed, you understand.

"That night Mrs. Hallam was dining at another table at the Pless, it seems.
I did not then know her. When leaving, she put a note on our table, by my
father's elbow. I was astonished beyond words.... He seemed much agitated,
told me that he was called away on urgent business, a matter of life and
death, and begged me to go alone to Frognall Street, get the jewels and
meet him at Mrs. Hallam's later.... I wasn't altogether a fool, for I began
dimly to suspect, then, that something was wrong; but I was a fool, for I
consented to do as he desired. You understand--you know--?"

"I do, indeed," replied Kirkwood grimly. "I understand a lot of things now
that I didn't five minutes ago. Please let me think..."

But the time he took for deliberation was short. He had hoped to find a way
to spare her, by sparing Calendar; but momentarily he was becoming more
impressed with the futility of dealing with her save in terms of candor,
merciful though they might seem harsh.

"I must tell you," he said, "that you have been outrageously misled,
swindled and deceived. I have heard from your father's own lips that Mrs.
Hallam was to pay him two thousand pounds for keeping you out of England
and losing you your inheritance. I'm inclined to question, furthermore, the
assertion that these jewels were your mother's. Frederick Hallam was the
man who followed you into the Frognall Street house and attacked me on the
stairs; Mrs. Hallam admits that he went there to get the jewels. But he
didn't want anybody to know it."

"But that doesn't prove--"

"Just a minute." Rapidly and concisely Kirkwood recounted the events
wherein he had played a part, subsequent to the adventure of Bermondsey Old
Stairs. He was guilty of but one evasion; on one point only did he slur the
truth: he conceived it his honorable duty to keep the girl in ignorance of
his straitened circumstances; she was not to be distressed by knowledge of
his distress, nor could he tolerate the suggestion of seeming to play for
her sympathy. It was necessary, then, to invent a motive to excuse his
return to 9, Frognall Street. I believe he chose to exaggerate the
inquisitiveness of his nature and threw in for good measure a desire
to recover a prized trinket of no particular moment, esteemed for its
associations, and so forth. But whatever the fabrication, it passed muster;
to the girl his motives seemed less important than the discoveries that
resulted from them.

"I am afraid," he concluded the summary of the confabulation he had
overheard at the skylight of the Alethea's cabin, "you'd best make up your
mind that your father--"

"Yes," whispered the girl huskily; and turned her face to the window, a
quivering muscle in the firm young throat alone betraying her emotion.

"It's a bad business," he pursued relentlessly: "bad all round. Mulready,
in your father's pay, tries to have him arrested, the better to rob him.
Mrs. Hallam, to secure your property for that precious pet, Freddie,
connives at, if she doesn't instigate, a kidnapping. Your father takes her
money to deprive you of yours,--which could profit him nothing so long as
you remained in lawful possession of it; and at the same time he conspires
to rob, through you, the rightful owners--if they are rightful owners. And
if they are, why does Freddie Hallam go like a thief in the night to secure
property that's his beyond dispute?... I don't really think you owe your
father any further consideration."

He waited patiently. Eventually, "No-o," the girl sobbed assent.

"It's this way: Calendar, counting on your sparing him in the end, is going
to hound us. He's doing it now: there's Hobbs in the next car, for proof.
Until these jewels are returned, whether to Frognall Street or to young
Hallam, we're both in danger, both thieves in the sight of the law. And
your father knows that, too. There's no profit to be had by discounting the
temper of these people; they're as desperate a gang of swindlers as ever
lived. They'll have those jewels if they have to go as far as murder--"

"Mr. Kirkwood!" she deprecated, in horror.

He wagged his head stubbornly, ominously. "I've seen them in the raw.
They're hot on our trail now; ten to one, they'll be on our backs before we
can get across the Channel. Once in England we will be comparatively safe.
Until then ... But I'm a brute--I'm frightening you!"

"You are, dreadfully," she confessed in a tremulous voice.

"Forgive me. If you look at the dark side first, the other seems all the
brighter. Please don't worry; we'll pull through with flying colors, or my
name's not Philip Kirkwood!"

"I have every faith in you," she informed him, flawlessly sincere. "When
I think of all you've done and dared for me, on the mere suspicion that I
needed your help--"

"We'd best be getting ready," he interrupted hastily. "Here's Brussels."

It was so. Lights, in little clusters and long, wheeling lines, were
leaping out of the darkness and flashing back as the train rumbled through
the suburbs of the little Paris of the North. Already the other passengers
were bestirring themselves, gathering together wraps and hand luggage, and
preparing for the journey's end.

Rising, Kirkwood took down their two satchels from the overhead rack,
and waited, in grim abstraction planning and counterplanning against the
machinations in whose wiles they two had become so perilously entangled.

Primarily, there was Hobbs to be dealt with; no easy task, for Kirkwood
dared not resort to violence nor in any way invite the attention of the
authorities; and threats would be an idle waste of breath, in the case of
that corrupt and malignant, little cockney, himself as keen as any needle,
adept in all the artful resources of the underworld whence he had sprung,
and further primed for action by that master rogue, Calendar.

The train was pulling slowly into the station when he reluctantly abandoned
his latest unfeasible scheme for shaking off the little Englishman,
and concluded that their salvation was only to be worked out through
everlasting vigilance, incessant movement, and the favor of the blind
goddess, Fortune. There was comfort of a sort in the reflection that
the divinity of chance is at least blind; her favors are impartially
distributed; the swing of the wheel of the world is not always to the
advantage of the wrongdoer and the scamp.

He saw nothing of Hobbs as they alighted and hastened from the station, and
hardly had time to waste looking for him, since their train had failed to
make up the precious ten minutes. Consequently he dismissed the fellow from
his thoughts until--with Brussels lingering in their memories a garish
vision of brilliant streets and glowing cafés, glimpsed furtively
from their cab windows during its wild dash over the broad mid-city,
boulevards--at midnight they settled themselves in a carriage of the Bruges
express. They were speeding along through the open country with a noisy
clatter; then a minute's investigation sufficed to discover the mate of the
_Alethea_ serenely ensconced in the coach behind.

The little man seemed rarely complacent, and impudently greeted Kirkwood's
scowling visage, as the latter peered through the window in the coach-door,
with a smirk and a waggish wave of his hand. The American by main strength
of will-power mastered an impulse to enter and wring his neck, and returned
to the girl, more disturbed than he cared to let her know.

There resulted from his review of the case but one plan for outwitting Mr.
Hobbs, and that lay in trusting to his confidence that Kirkwood and Dorothy
Calendar would proceed as far toward Ostend as the train would take
them--namely, to the limit of the run, Bruges.

Thus inspired, Kirkwood took counsel with the girl, and when the train
paused at Ghent, they made an unostentatious exit from their coach, finding
themselves, when the express had rolled on into the west, upon a station
platform in a foreign city at nine minutes past one o'clock in the
morning--but at length without their shadow. Mr. Hobbs had gone on to
Bruges.

Kirkwood sped his journeyings with an unspoken malediction, and collected
himself to cope with a situation which was to prove hardly more happy for
them than the espionage they had just eluded. The primal flush of triumph
which had saturated the American's humor on this signal success, proved but
fictive and transitory when inquiry of the station attendants educed the
information that the two earliest trains to be obtained were the 5:09 for
Dunkerque and the 5:37 for Ostend. A minimum delay of four hours was to be
endured in the face of many contingent features singularly unpleasant to
contemplate. The station waiting-room was on the point of closing for the
night, and Kirkwood, already alarmed by the rapid ebb of the money he had
had of Calendar, dared not subject his finances to the strain of a night's
lodging at one of Ghent's hotels. He found himself forced to be cruel to
be kind to the girl, and Dorothy's cheerful acquiescence to their sole
alternative of tramping the street until daybreak did nothing to alleviate
Kirkwood's exasperation.

It was permitted them to occupy a bench outside the station. There the
girl, her head pillowed on the treasure bag, napped uneasily, while
Kirkwood plodded restlessly to and fro, up and down the platform, communing
with the Shade of Care and addling his poor, weary wits with the problem
of the future,--not so much his own as the future of the unhappy child for
whose welfare he had assumed responsibility. Dark for both of them, in his
understanding To-morrow loomed darkest for her.

Not until the gray, formless light of the dawn-dusk was wavering over the
land, did he cease his perambulations. Then a gradual stir of life in the
city streets, together with the appearance of a station porter or two,
opening the waiting-rooms and preparing them against the traffic of the
day, warned him that he must rouse his charge. He paused and stood over
her, reluctant to disturb her rest, such as it was, his heart torn with
compassion for her, his soul embittered by the cruel irony of their estate.

If what he understood were true, a king's ransom was secreted within the
cheap, imitation-leather satchel which served her for a pillow. But it
availed her nothing for her comfort. If what he believed were true, she was
absolute mistress of that treasure of jewels; yet that night she had been
forced to sleep on a hard, uncushioned bench, in the open air, and this
morning he must waken her to the life of a hunted thing. A week ago she had
had at her command every luxury known to the civilized world; to-day she
was friendless, but for his inefficient, worthless self, and in a strange
land. A week ago,--had he known her then,--he had been free to tell her of
his love, to offer her the protection of his name as well as his devotion;
to-day he was an all but penniless vagabond, and there could be no dishonor
deeper than to let her know the nature of his heart's desire.

Was ever lover hedged from a declaration to his mistress by circumstances
so hateful, so untoward! He could have raged and railed against his fate
like any madman. For he desired her greatly, and she was very lovely in his
sight. If her night's rest had been broken and but a mockery, she showed
few signs of it; the faint, wan complexion of fatigue seemed only to
enhance the beauty of her maidenhood; her lips were as fresh and desirous
as the dewy petals of a crimson rose; beneath her eyes soft shadows lurked
where her lashes lay tremulous upon her cheeks of satin.... She was to him
of all created things the most wonderful, the most desirable.

The temptation of his longing seemed more than he could long withstand. But
resist he must, or part for ever with any title to her consideration--or
his own. He shut his teeth and knotted his brows in a transport of desire
to touch, if only with his finger-tips, the woven wonder of her hair.

And thus she saw him, when, without warning, she awoke.

Bewilderment at first informed the wide brown eyes; then, as their
drowsiness vanished, a little laughter, a little tender mirth.

"Good morning, Sir Knight of the Somber Countenance!" she cried, standing
up. "Am I so utterly disreputable that you find it necessary to frown on me
so darkly?"

He shook his head, smiling.

"I know I'm a fright," she asserted vigorously, shaking out the folds of
her pleated skirt. "And as for my hat, it will never be on straight--but
then _you_ wouldn't know."

"It seems all right," he replied vacantly.

"Then please to try to look a little happier, since you find me quite
presentable."

"I do..."

Without lifting her bended head, she looked up, laughing, not ill-pleased.
"_You'd_ say so... really?"

Commonplace enough, this banter, this pitiful endeavor to be oblivious of
their common misery; but like the look she gave him, her words rang in his
head like potent fumes of wine. He turned away, utterly disconcerted for
the time, knowing only that he must overcome his weakness.

Far down the railway tracks there rose a murmuring, that waxed to a
rumbling roar. A passing porter answered Kirkwood's inquiry: it was the
night boat-train from Ostend. He picked up their bags and drew the girl
into the waiting-room, troubled by a sickening foreboding.

Through the window they watched the train roll in and stop.

Among others, alighted, smirking, the unspeakable Hobbs.

He lifted his hat and bowed jauntily to the waiting-room window, making it
plain that his keen eyes had discovered them instantly.

Kirkwood's heart sank with the hopelessness of it all. If the railway
directorates of Europe conspired against them, what chance had they? If the
night boat-train from Ostend had only had the decency to be twenty-five
minutes late, instead of arriving promptly on the minute of 4:45 they two
might have escaped by the 5:09 for Dunkerque and Calais.

There remained but a single untried ruse in his bag of tricks; mercifully
it might suffice.

"Miss Calendar," said Kirkwood from his heart, "just as soon as I get you
home, safe and sound, I am going to take a day off, hunt up that little
villain, and flay him alive. In the meantime, I forgot to dine last night,
and am reminded that we had better forage for breakfast."

Hobbs dogged them at a safe distance while they sallied forth and in a
neighboring street discovered an early-bird bakery. Here they were able to
purchase rolls steaming from the oven, fresh pats of golden butter wrapped
in clean lettuce leaves, and milk in twin bottles; all of which they
prosaically carried with them back to the station, lacking leisure as they
did to partake of the food before train-time.

Without attempting concealment (Hobbs, he knew, was eavesdropping round the
corner of the door) Kirkwood purchased at the ticket-window passages on
the Dunkerque train. Mr. Hobbs promptly flattered him by imitation; and
so jealous of his luck was Kirkwood by this time grown, through continual
disappointment, that he did not even let the girl into his plans until they
were aboard the 5:09, in a compartment all to themselves. Then, having with
his own eyes seen Mr. Hobbs dodge into the third compartment in the rear of
the same carriage, Kirkwood astonished the girl by requesting her to follow
him; and together they left by the door opposite that by which they had
entered.

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