The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance

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Kirkwood wears a boy's honest face; no one has ever called him handsome. A
few prejudiced persons have decided that he has an interesting countenance;
the propounders of this verdict have been, for the most part, feminine.
Kirkwood himself has been heard to declare that his features do not fit;
in its essence the statement is true, but there is a very real, if
undefinable, engaging quality in their very irregularity. His eyes are
brown, pleasant, set wide apart, straightforward of expression.

Now it appeared that, whatever his motive, Mr. Calendar had acted upon
impulse in sending his card up to Kirkwood. Possibly he had anticipated a
very different sort of reception from a very different sort of man. Even in
the light of subsequent events it remains difficult to fathom the mystery
of his choice. Perhaps Fate directed it; stranger things have happened at
the dictates of a man's Destiny.

At all events, this Calendar proved not lacking in penetration; men of his
stamp are commonly endowed with that quality to an eminent degree. Not slow
to reckon the caliber of the man before him, the leaven of intuition began
to work in his adipose intelligence. He owned himself baffled.

"Thanks," he concluded pensively; "I reckon you're right. You won't do,
after all. I've wasted your time. Mine, too."

"Don't mention it."

Calendar got heavily out of his chair, reaching for his hat and umbrella.
"Permit me to apologize for an unwarrantable intrusion, Mr. Kirkwood." He
faltered; a worried and calculating look shadowed his small eyes. "I _was_
looking for some one to serve me in a certain capacity--"

"Certain or questionable?" propounded Kirkwood blandly, opening the door.

Pointedly Mr. Calendar ignored the imputation. "Sorry I disturbed you.
G'dafternoon, Mr. Kirkwood."

"Good-by, Mr. Calendar." A smile twitched the corners of Kirkwood's
too-wide mouth.

Calendar stepped hastily out into the hall. As he strode--or rather,
rolled--away, Kirkwood maliciously feathered a Parthian arrow.

"By the way, Mr. Calendar--?"

The sound of retreating footsteps was stilled and "Yes?" came from the
gloom of the corridor.

"Were you ever in San Francisco? Really and truly? Honest Injun, Mr.
Calendar?"

For a space the quiet was disturbed by harsh breathing; then, in a
strained voice, "Good day, Mr. Kirkwood"; and again the sound of departing
footfalls.

Kirkwood closed the door and the incident simultaneously, with a smart bang
of finality. Laughing quietly he went back to the window with its dreary
outlook, now the drearier for lengthening evening shadows.

"I wonder what his game is, anyway. An adventurer, of course; the woods are
full of 'em. A queer fish, even of his kind! And with a trick up his sleeve
as queer and fishy as himself, no doubt!"

II

"AND SOME THERE BE WHO HAVE ADVENTURES THRUST UPON THEM"

The assumption seems not unwarrantable, that Mr. Calendar figuratively
washed his hands of Mr. Kirkwood. Unquestionably Mr. Kirkwood considered
himself well rid of Mr. Calendar. When the latter had gone his way,
Kirkwood, mindful of the fact that his boat-train would leave St. Paneras
at half-after eleven, set about his packing and dismissed from his thoughts
the incident created by the fat _chevalier d'industrie_; and at six
o'clock, or thereabouts, let himself out of his room, dressed for the
evening, a light rain-coat over one arm, in the other hand a cane,--the
drizzle having ceased.

A stolid British lift lifted him down to the ground floor of the
establishment in something short of five minutes. Pausing in the office
long enough to settle his bill and leave instructions to have his luggage
conveyed to the boat-train, he received with entire equanimity the affable
benediction of the clerk, in whose eyes he still figured as that radiant
creature, an American millionaire; and passed on to the lobby, where he
surrendered hat, coat and stick to the cloak-room attendant, ere entering
the dining-room.

The hour was a trifle early for a London dinner, the handsome room but
moderately filled with patrons. Kirkwood absorbed the fact unconsciously
and without displeasure; the earlier, the better: he was determined to
consume his last civilized meal (as he chose to consider it) at his serene
leisure, to live fully his ebbing moments in the world to which he was
born, to drink to its cloying dregs one ultimate draught of luxury.

A benignant waiter bowed him into a chair by a corner table in
juxtaposition with an open window, through which, swaying imperceptibly the
closed hangings, were wafted gentle gusts of the London evening's sweet,
damp breath.

Kirkwood settled himself with an inaudible sigh of pleasure. He was dining,
for the last time in Heaven knew how long, in a first-class restaurant.

With a deferential flourish the waiter brought him the menu-card. He had
served in his time many an "American, millionaire"; he had also served this
Mr. Kirkwood, and respected him as one exalted above the run of his kind,
in that he comprehended the art of dining.

Fifteen minutes later the waiter departed rejoicing, his order complete.

To distract a conscience whispering of extravagance, Kirkwood lighted a
cigarette.

The room was gradually filling with later arrivals; it was the most favored
restaurant in London, and, despite the radiant costumes of the women, its
atmosphere remained sedate and restful.

A cab clattered down the side street on which the window opened.

At a near-by table a woman laughed, quietly happy. Incuriously Kirkwood
glanced her way. She was bending forward, smiling, flattering her escort
with the adoration of her eyes. They were lovers alone in the wilderness of
the crowded restaurant. They seemed very happy.

Kirkwood was conscious of a strange pang of emotion. It took him some time
to comprehend that it was envy.

He was alone and lonely. For the first time he realized that no woman had
ever looked upon him as the woman at the adjoining table looked upon her
lover. He had found time to worship but one mistress--his art.

And he was renouncing her.

He was painfully conscious of what he had missed, had lost--or had not yet
found: the love of woman.

The sensation was curious--new, unique in his experience.

His cigarette burned down to his fingers as he sat pondering. Abstractedly,
he ground its fire out in an ash-tray.

The waiter set before him a silver tureen, covered.

He sat up and began to consume his soup, scarce doing it justice. His dream
troubled him--his dream of the love of woman.

From a little distance his waiter regarded him, with an air of
disappointment. In the course of an hour and a half he awoke, to discover
the attendant in the act of pouring very hot and black coffee from a bright
silver pot into a demi-tasse of fragile porcelain. Kirkwood slipped a
single lump of sugar into the cup, gave over his cigar-case to be filled,
then leaned back, deliberately lighting a long and slender panetela as a
preliminary to a last lingering appreciation of the scene of which he was a
part.

He reviewed it through narrowed eyelids, lazily; yet with some slight
surprise, seeming to see it with new vision, with eyes from which scales of
ignorance had dropped.

This long and brilliant dining-hall, with its quiet perfection of
proportion and appointment, had always gratified his love of the beautiful;
to-night it pleased him to an unusual degree. Yet it was the same as ever;
its walls tinted a deep rose, with their hangings of dull cloth-of-gold,
its lights discriminatingly clustered and discreetly shaded, redoubled in
half a hundred mirrors, its subdued shimmer of plate and glass, its soberly
festive assemblage of circumspect men and women splendidly gowned, its
decorously muted murmur of voices penetrated and interwoven by the strains
of a hidden string orchestra--caressed his senses as always, yet with
a difference. To-night he saw it a room populous with lovers, lovers
insensibly paired, man unto woman attentive, woman of man regardful.

He had never understood this before. This much he had missed in life.

It seemed hard to realize that one must forego it all for ever.

Presently he found himself acutely self-conscious. The sensation puzzled
him; and without appearing to do so, he traced it from effect to cause; and
found the cause in a woman--a girl, rather, seated at a table the third
removed from him, near the farther wall of the room.

Too considerate, and too embarrassed, to return her scrutiny openly, look
for look, he yet felt sure that, however temporarily, he was become the
object of her intent interest.

Idly employed with his cigar, he sipped his coffee. In time aware that she
had turned her attention elsewhere, he looked up.

At first he was conscious of an effect of disappointment. She was nobody
that he knew, even by reputation. She was simply a young girl, barely out
of her teens--if as old as that phrase would signify. He wondered what she
had found in him to make her think him worth so long a study; and looked
again, more keenly curious.

With this second glance, appreciation stirred the artistic side of his
nature, that was already grown impatient of his fretted mood. The slender
and girlish figure, posed with such absolute lack of intrusion against a
screen of rose and gilt, moved him to critical admiration. The tinted glow
of shaded candles caught glistening on the spun gold of her fair hair,
and enhanced the fine pallor of her young shoulders. He saw promise, and
something more than promise, in her face, its oval something dimmed by warm
shadows that unavailingly sought to blend youth and beauty alike into the
dull, rich background.

In the sheer youth of her (he realized) more than in aught else, lay her
chiefest charm. She could be little more than a child, indeed, if he were
to judge her by the purity of her shadowed eyes and the absence of emotion
in the calm and direct look which presently she turned upon him who sat
wondering at the level, penciled darkness of her brows.

At length aware that she had surprised his interest, Kirkwood glanced
aside--coolly deliberate, lest she should detect in his attitude anything
more than impersonal approval.

A slow color burned his cheeks. In his temples there rose a curious
pulsing.

After a while she drew his gaze again, imperiously--herself all unaware of
the havoc she was wreaking on his temperament.

He could have fancied her distraught, cloaking an unhappy heart with placid
brow and gracious demeanor; but such a conception matched strangely her
glowing youth and spirit. What had she to do with Care? What concern had
Black Care, whose gaunt shape in sable shrouds had lurked at his shoulder
all the evening, despite his rigid preoccupation, with a being as
charmingly flushed with budding womanhood as this girl?

"Eighteen?" he hazarded. "Eighteen, or possibly nineteen, dining at the
Pless in a ravishing dinner-gown, and--unhappy? Oh, hardly--not she!"

Yet the impression haunted him, and ere long he was fain to seek
confirmation or denial of it in the manner of her escort.

The latter sat with back to Kirkwood, cutting a figure as negative as his
snug evening clothes. One could surmise little from a fleshy thick neck,
a round, glazed bald spot, a fringe of grizzled hair, and two bright red
ears.

Calendar?

Somehow the fellow did suggest Kirkwood's caller of the afternoon. The
young man could not have said precisely how, for he was unfamiliar with the
aspect of that gentleman's back. None the less the suggestion persisted.

By now, a few of the guests, theater-bound, for the most part, were
leaving. Here and there a table stood vacant, that had been filled, cloth
tarnished, chairs disarranged: in another moment to be transformed into its
pristine brilliance under the deft attentions of the servitors.

Down an aisle, past the table at which the girl was sitting, came two,
making toward the lobby; the man, a slight and meager young personality, in
the lead. Their party had attracted Kirkwood's notice as they entered; why,
he did not remember; but it was in his mind that then they had been three.
Instinctively he looked at the table they had left--one placed at some
distance from the girl, and hidden from her by an angle in the wall. It
appeared that the third member had chosen to dally a few moments over his
tobacco and a liqueur-brandy. Kirkwood could see him plainly, lounging in
his chair and fumbling the stem of a glass: a heavy man, of somber habit,
his black and sullen brows lowering and thoughtful above a face boldly
handsome.

The woman of the trio was worthy of closer attention. Some paces in the
wake of her lack-luster esquire, she was making a leisurely progress,
trailing the skirts of a gown magnificent beyond dispute, half concealed
though it was by the opera cloak whose soft folds draped her shoulders.
Slowly, carrying her head high, she approached, insolent eyes reviewing
the room from beneath their heavy lids; a metallic and mature type of dark
beauty, supremely selfconfident and self-possessed.

Men turned involuntarily to look after her, not altogether in undiluted
admiration.

In the act of passing behind the putative Calendar, she paused momentarily,
bending as if to gather up her train. Presumably the action disturbed her
balance; she swayed a little, and in the effort to recover, rested the tips
of her gloved fingers upon the edge of the table. Simultaneously (Kirkwood
could have sworn) a single word left her lips, a word evidently pitched
for the ear of the hypothetical Calendar alone. Then she swept on,
imperturbable, assured.

To the perplexed observer it was indubitably evident that some
communication had passed from the woman to the man. Kirkwood saw the fat
shoulders of the girl's companion stiffen suddenly as the woman's hand
rested at his elbow; as she moved away, a little rippling shiver was
plainly visible in the muscles of his back, beneath his coat--mute token
of relaxing tension. An instant later one plump and mottled hand was
carelessly placed where the woman's had been; and was at once removed with
fingers closed.

To the girl, watching her face covertly, Kirkwood turned for clue to the
incident. He made no doubt that she had observed the passage; proof of that
one found in her sudden startling pallor (of indignation?) and in her eyes,
briefly alight with some inscrutable emotion, though quickly veiled by
lowered lashes. Slowly enough she regained color and composure, while her
_vis-à-vis_ sat motionless, head inclined as if in thought.

Abruptly the man turned in his chair to summon a waiter, and exposed his
profile. Kirkwood was in no wise amazed to recognize Calendar--a badly
frightened Calendar now, however, and hardly to be identified with the
sleek, glib fellow who had interviewed Kirkwood in the afternoon. His
flabby cheeks were ashen and trembling, and upon the back of his chair
the fat white fingers were drumming incessantly an inaudible tattoo of
shattered nerves.

"Scared silly!" commented Kirkwood. "Why?" Having spoken to his waiter,
Calendar for some seconds raked the room with quick glances, as if seeking
an acquaintance. Presumably disappointed, he swung back to face the
girl, bending forward to reach her ears with accents low-pitched and
confidential. She, on her part, fell at once attentive, grave and
responsive. Perhaps a dozen sentences passed between them. At the outset
her brows contracted and she shook her head in gentle dissent; whereupon
Calendar's manner became more imperative. Gradually, unwillingly, she
seemed to yield consent. Once she caught her breath sharply, and, infected
by her companion's agitation, sat back, color fading again in the round
young cheeks.

Kirkwood's waiter put in an inopportune appearance with the bill. The young
man paid it. When he looked up again Calendar had swung squarely about
in his chair. His eye encountered Kirkwood's. He nodded pleasantly.
Temporarily confused, Kirkwood returned the nod.

In a twinkling he had repented; Calendar had left his chair and was wending
his way through the tables toward Kirkwood's. Reaching it, he paused,
offering the hand of genial fellowship. Kirkwood accepted it half-heartedly
(what else was he to do?) remarking at the same time that Calendar had
recovered much of his composure. There was now a normal coloring in the
heavily jowled countenance, with less glint of fear in the quick, dark
eyes; and Calendar's hand, even if moist and cold, no longer trembled.
Furthermore it was immediately demonstrated that his impudence had not
deserted him.

"Why, Kirkwood, my dear fellow!" he crowed--not so loudly as to attract
attention, but in a tone assumed to divert suspicion, should he be
overheard. "This is great luck, you know--to find you here."

"Is it?" returned Kirkwood coolly. He disengaged his fingers.

The pink plump face was contorted in a furtive grimace of deprecation.
Without waiting for permission Calendar dropped into the vacant chair.

"My dear sir," he proceeded, unabashed, "I throw myself upon your mercy."

"The devil you do!"

"I must. I'm in the deuce of a hole, and there's no one I know here besides
yourself. I--I--"

Kirkwood saw fit to lead him on; partly because, out of the corner of his
eye, he was aware of the girl's unconcealed suspense. "Go on, please, Mr.
Calendar. You throw yourself on a total stranger's mercy because you're in
the deuce of a hole; and--?"

"It's this way; I'm called away on urgent business imperative business.
I must go at once. My daughter is with me. My daughter! Think of my
embarrassment; I can not leave her here, alone, nor can I permit her to go
home unprotected."

Calendar paused in anxiety.

"That's easily remedied, then," suggested Kirkwood.

"How?"

"Put her in a cab at the door."

"I ... No. The devil! I couldn't think of it. You won't understand. I--"

"I do not understand,--" amended the younger man politely.

Calendar compressed his lips nervously. It was plain that the man was
quivering with impatience and half-mad with excitement. He held quiet only
long enough to regain his self-control and take counsel with his prudence.

"It is impossible, Mr. Kirkwood. I must ask you to be generous and believe
me."

"Very well; for the sake of the argument, I do believe you, Mr. Calendar."

"Hell!" exploded the elder man in an undertone. Then swiftly, stammering
in his haste: "I can't let Dorothy accompany me to the door," he declared.
"She--I--I throw myself upon your mercy!"

"What--again?"

"The truth--the truth is, if you will have it, that I am in danger of
arrest the moment I leave here. If my daughter is with me, she will have to
endure the shame and humiliation--"

"Then why place her in such a position?" Kirkwood demanded sharply.

Calendar's eyes burned, incandescent with resentment. Offended, he offered
to rise and go, but changed his mind and sat tight in hope.

"I beg of you, sir--"

"One moment, Mr. Calendar."

Abruptly Kirkwood's weathercock humor shifted--amusement yielding to
intrigued interest. After all, why not oblige the fellow? What did anything
matter, now? What harm could visit him if he yielded to this corpulent
adventurer's insistence? Both from experience and observation he knew this
for a world plentifully peopled by soldiers of fortune, contrivers of
snares and pitfalls for the feet of the unwary. On the other hand, it is
axiomatic that a penniless man is perfectly safe anywhere. Besides, there
was the girl to be considered.

Kirkwood considered her, forthwith. In the process thereof, his eyes sought
her, perturbed. Their glances clashed. She looked away hastily, crimson to
her temples.

Instantly the conflict between curiosity and caution, inclination and
distrust, was at an end. With sudden compliance, the young man rose.

"I shall be most happy to be of service to your daughter, Mr. Calendar,"
he said, placing the emphasis with becoming gravity. And then, the fat
adventurer leading the way, Kirkwood strode across the room--wondering
somewhat at himself, if the whole truth is to be disclosed.

III

CALENDAR'S DAUGHTER

All but purring with satisfaction and relief, Calendar halted.

"Dorothy, my dear, permit me to introduce an old friend--Mr. Kirkwood.
Kirkwood, this is my daughter."

"Miss Calendar," acknowledged Kirkwood.

The girl bowed, her eyes steady upon his own. "Mr. Kirkwood is very kind,"
she said gravely.

"That's right!" Calendar exclaimed blandly. "He's promised to see you home.
Now both of you will pardon my running away, I know."

"Yes," assented Kirkwood agreeably.

The elder man turned and hurried toward the main entrance.

Kirkwood took the chair he had vacated. To his disgust he found himself
temporarily dumb. No flicker of thought illuminated the darkness of his
confusion. How was he to open a diverting conversation with a young woman
whom he had met under auspices so extraordinary? Any attempt to gloze the
situation, he felt, would be futile. And, somehow, he did not care to
render himself ridiculous in her eyes, little as he knew her.

Inanely dumb, he sat watching her, smiling fatuously until it was borne
in on him that he was staring like a boor and grinning like an idiot.
Convinced, he blushed for himself; something which served to make him more
tongue-tied than ever.

As for his involuntary protégée, she exhibited such sweet composure that he
caught himself wondering if she really appreciated the seriousness of her
parent's predicament; if, for that matter, its true nature were known to
her at all. Calendar, he believed, was capable of prevarication, polite and
impolite. Had he lied to his daughter? or to Kirkwood? To both, possibly;
to the former alone, not improbably. That the adventurer had told him the
desperate truth, Kirkwood was quite convinced; but he now began to believe
that the girl had been put off with some fictitious explanation. Her
tranquillity and self-control were remarkable, otherwise; she seemed very
young to possess those qualities in such eminent degree.

She was looking wearily past him, her gaze probing some unguessed abyss of
thought. Kirkwood felt himself privileged to stare in wonder. Her naïve
aloofness of poise gripped his imagination powerfully,--the more
so, perhaps, since it seemed eloquent of her intention to remain
enigmatic,--but by no means more powerfully than the unaided appeal of her
loveliness.

Presently the girl herself relieved the tension of the situation, fairly
startling the young man by going straight to the heart of things. Without
preface or warning, lifting her gaze to his, "My name is really Dorothy
Calendar," she observed. And then, noting his astonishment, "You would be
privileged to doubt, under the circumstances," she added. "Please let us be
frank."

"Well," he stammered, "if I didn't doubt, let's say I was unprejudiced."

His awkward, well-meant pleasantry, perhaps not conceived in the best of
taste, sounded in his own ears wretchedly flat and vapid. He regretted it
spontaneously; the girl ignored it.

"You are very kind," she iterated the first words he had heard from her
lips. "I wish you to understand that I, for one, appreciate it."

"Not kind; I have done nothing. I am glad.... One is apt to become
interested when Romance is injected into a prosaic existence." Kirkwood
allowed himself a keen but cheerful glance.

She nodded, with a shadowy smile. He continued, purposefully, to distract
her, holding her with his honest, friendly eyes.

"Since it is to be confidences" (this she questioned with an all but
imperceptible lifting of the eyebrows), "I don't mind telling you my own
name is really Philip Kirkwood."

"And you are an old friend of my father's?"

He opened his lips, but only to close them without speaking. The girl moved
her shoulders with a shiver of disdain.

"I knew it wasn't so."

"You know it would be hard for a young man like myself to be a very old
friend," he countered lamely.

"How long, then, have you known each other?"

"Must I answer?"

"Please."

"Between three and four hours."

"I thought as much." She stared past him, troubled. Abruptly she said:
"Please smoke."

"Shall I? If you wish it, of course...."

She repeated: "Please."

"We were to wait ten minutes or so," she continued.

He produced his cigarette-case.

"If you care to smoke it will seem an excuse." He lighted his cigarette.
"And then, you may talk to me," she concluded calmly.

"I would, gladly, if I could guess what would interest you."

"Yourself. Tell me about yourself," she commanded.

"It would bore you," he responded tritely, confused.

"No; you interest me very much." She made the statement quietly,
contemptuous of coquetry.

"Very well, then; I am Philip Kirkwood, an American."

"Nothing more?"

"Little worth retailing."

"I'm sorry."

"Why?" he demanded, piqued.

"Because you have merely indicated that you are a wealthy American."

"Why wealthy?"

"If not, you would have some aim in life--a calling or profession."

"And you think I have none?"

"Unless you consider it your vocation to be a wealthy American."

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