The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance

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"I don't. Besides, I'm not wealthy. In point of fact, I ..." He pulled up
short, on the verge of declaring himself a pauper. "I am a painter."

Her eyes lightened with interest. "An artist?"

"I hope so. I don't paint signs--or houses," he remarked.

Amused, she laughed softly. "I suspected it," she declared.

"Not really?"

"It was your way of looking at--things, that made me guess it: the
painter's way. I have often noticed it."

"As if mentally blending colors all the time?"

"Yes; that and--seeing flaws."

"I have discovered none," he told her brazenly.

But again her secret cares were claiming her thoughts, and the gay,
inconsequential banter died upon her scarlet lips as a second time her
glance ranged away, sounding mysterious depths of anxiety.

Provoked, he would have continued the chatter. "I have confessed," he
persisted. "You know everything of material interest about me. And
yourself?"

"I am merely Dorothy Calendar," she answered.

"Nothing more?" He laughed.

"That is all, if you please, for the present."

"I am to content myself with the promise of the future?"

"The future," she told him seriously, "is to-morrow; and to-morrow ..." She
moved restlessly in her chair, eyes and lips pathetic in their distress.
"Please, we will go now, if you are ready."

"I am quite ready, Miss Calendar."

He rose. A waiter brought the girl's cloak and put it in Kirkwood's hands.
He held it until, smoothing the wrists of her long white gloves, she stood
up, then placed the garment upon her white young shoulders, troubled by the
indefinable sense of intimacy imparted by the privilege. She permitted
him this personal service! He felt that she trusted him, that out of her
gratitude had grown a simple and almost childish faith in his generosity
and considerateness.

As she turned to go her eyes thanked him with an unfathomable glance. He
was again conscious of that esoteric disturbance in his temples. Puzzled,
hazily analyzing the sensation, he followed her to the lobby.

A page brought him his top-coat, hat and stick; tipping the child from
sheer force of habit, he desired a gigantic porter, impressively ornate in
hotel livery, to call a hansom. Together they passed out into the night, he
and the girl.

Beneath a permanent awning of steel and glass she waited patiently,
slender, erect, heedless of the attention she attracted from wayfarers.

The night was young, the air mild. Upon the sidewalk, muddied by a million
feet, two streams of wayfarers flowed incessantly, bound west from Green
Park or east toward Piccadilly Circus; a well-dressed throng for the most
part, with here and there a man in evening dress. Between the carriages at
the curb and the hotel doors moved others, escorting fluttering butterfly
women in elaborate toilets, heads bare, skirts daintily gathered above
their perishable slippers. Here and there meaner shapes slipped silently
through the crowd, sinister shadows of the city's proletariat, blotting
ominously the brilliance of the scene.

A cab drew in at the block. The porter clapped an arc of wickerwork over
its wheel to protect the girl's skirts. She ascended to the seat.

Kirkwood, dropping sixpence in the porter's palm, prepared to follow; but a
hand fell upon his arm, peremptory, inexorable. He faced about, frowning,
to confront a slight, hatchet-faced man, somewhat under medium height,
dressed in a sack suit and wearing a derby well forward over eyes that were
hard and bright.

"Mr. Calendar?" said the man tensely. "I presume I needn't name my
business. I'm from the Yard--"

"My name is not Calendar."

The detective smiled wearily. "Don't be a fool, Calendar," he began. But
the porter's hand fell upon his shoulder and the giant bent low to bring
his mouth close to the other's ear. Kirkwood heard indistinctly his own
name followed by Calendar's, and the words: "Never fear. I'll point him
out."

"But the woman?" argued the detective, unconvinced, staring into the cab.

"Am I not at liberty to have a lady dine with me in a public restaurant?"
interposed Kirkwood, without raising his voice.

The hard eyes looked him up and down without favor. Then: "Beg pardon, sir.
I see my mistake," said the detective brusquely.

"I am glad you do," returned Kirkwood grimly. "I fancy it will bear
investigation."

He mounted the step. "Imperial Theater," he told the driver, giving the
first address that occurred to him; it could be changed. For the moment
the main issue was to get the girl out of the range of the detective's
interest.

He slipped into his place as the hansom wheeled into the turgid tide of
west-bound traffic.

So Calendar had escaped, after all! Moreover, he had told the truth to
Kirkwood.

By his side the girl moved uneasily. "Who was that man?" she inquired.

Kirkwood sought her eyes, and found them wholly ingenuous. It seemed
that Calendar had not taken her into his confidence, after all. She was,
therefore, in no way implicated in her father's affairs. Inexplicably the
young man's heart felt lighter. "A mistake; the fellow took me for some one
he knew," he told her carelessly.

The assurance satisfied her. She rested quietly, wrapped up in personal
concerns. Her companion pensively contemplated an infinity of arid and
hansom-less to-morrows. About them the city throbbed in a web of misty
twilight, the humid farewell of a dismal day. In the air a faint haze swam,
rendering the distances opalescent. Athwart the western sky the after-glow
of a drenched sunset lay like a wash of rose-madder. Piccadilly's asphalt
shone like watered silk, black and lustrous, reflecting a myriad lights in
vibrant ribbons of party-colored radiance. On every hand cab-lamps danced
like fire-flies; the rumble of wheels blended with the hollow pounding
of uncounted hoofs, merging insensibly into the deep and solemn roar of
London-town.

Suddenly Kirkwood was recalled to a sense of duty by a glimpse of Hyde Park
Corner. He turned to the girl. "I didn't know where you wished to go--?"

She seemed to realize his meaning with surprise, as one, whose thoughts
have strayed afar, recalled to an imperative world.

"Oh, did I forget? Tell him please to drive to Number Nine, Frognall
Street, Bloomsbury."

Kirkwood poked his cane through the trap, repeating the address. The
cab wheeled smartly across Piccadilly, swung into Half Moon Street, and
thereafter made better time, darting briskly down abrupt vistas of shining
pavement, walled in by blank-visaged houses, or round two sides of one of
London's innumerable private parks, wherein spring foliage glowed a tender
green in artificial light; now and again it crossed brilliant main arteries
of travel, and eventually emerged from a maze of backways into Oxford
Street, to hammer eastwards to Tottenham Court Road.

Constraint hung like a curtain between the two; a silence which the young
man forbore to moderate, finding more delight that he had cared (or dared)
confess to, in contemplation of the pure girlish profile so close to him.

She seemed quite unaware of him, lost in thought, large eyes sober, lips
serious that were fashioned for laughter, round little chin firm with some
occult resolution. It was not hard to fancy her nerves keyed to a high
pitch of courage and determination, nor easy to guess for what reason.
Watching always, keenly sensitive to the beauty of each salient line
betrayed by the flying lights, Kirkwood's own consciousness lost itself in
a profitless, even a perilous labyrinth of conjecture.

The cab stopped. Both occupants came to their senses with a little start.
The girl leaned out over; the apron, recognized the house she sought in one
swift glance, testified to the recognition with a hushed exclamation,
and began to arrange her skirts. Kirkwood, unheeding her faint-hearted
protests, jumped out, interposing his cane between her skirts and the
wheel. Simultaneously he received a vivid mental photograph of the
locality.

Frognall Street proved to be one of those by-ways, a short block in
length, which, hemmed in on all sides by a meaner purlieu, has (even in
Bloomsbury!) escaped the sordid commercial eye of the keeper of furnished
lodgings, retaining jealously something of the old-time dignity and reserve
that were its pride in the days before Society swarmed upon Mayfair and
Belgravia.

Its houses loomed tall, with many windows, mostly lightless--materially
aggravating that air of isolate, cold dignity which distinguishes the
Englishman's castle. Here and there stood one less bedraggled than
its neighbors, though all, without exception, spoke assertively of
respectability down-at-the-heel but fighting tenaciously for existence.
Some, vanguards of that imminent day when the boarding-house should reign
supreme, wore with shamefaced air placards of estate-agents, advertising
their susceptibility to sale or lease. In the company of the latter was
Number 9.

The American noted the circumstance subconsciously, at a moment when Miss
Calendar's hand, small as a child's, warm and compact in its white glove,
lay in his own. And then she was on the sidewalk, her face, upturned to
his, vivacious with excitement.

"You have been so kind," she told him warmly, "that one hardly knows how to
thank you, Mr. Kirkwood."

"I have done nothing--nothing at all," he mumbled, disturbed by a sudden,
unreasoning alarm for her.

She passed quickly to the shelter of the pillared portico. He followed
clumsily. On the door-step she turned, offering her hand. He took and
retained it.

"Good night," she said.

"I'm to understand that I'm dismissed, then?" he stammered ruefully.

She evaded his eyes. "I--thank you--I have no further need--"

"You are quite sure? Won't you believe me at your service?"

She laughed uneasily. "I'm all right now."

"I can do nothing more? Sure?"

"Nothing. But you--you make me almost sorry I can't impose still further
upon your good nature."

"Please don't hesitate ..."

"Aren't you very persistent, Mr. Kirkwood?" Her fingers moved in his;
burning with the reproof, he released them, and turned to her so woebegone
a countenance that she repented of her severity. "Don't worry about me,
please. I am truly safe now. Some day I hope to be able to thank you
adequately. Good night!"

Her pass-key grated in the lock. Opening, the door disclosed a dark and
uninviting entry-hall, through which there breathed an air heavy with the
dank and dusty odor of untenanted rooms. Hesitating on the threshold, over
her shoulder the girl smiled kindly upon her commandeered esquire; and
stepped within.

He lifted his hat automatically. The door closed with an echoing slam. He
turned to the waiting cab, fumbling for change.

"I'll walk," he told the cabby, paying him off.

The hansom swept away to a tune of hammering hoofs; and quiet rested upon
the street as Kirkwood turned the nearest corner, in an unpleasant temper,
puzzled and discontented. It seemed hardly fair that he should have been
dragged into so promising an adventure, by his ears (so to put it), only to
be thus summarily called upon to write "Finis" beneath the incident.

He rounded the corner and walked half-way to the next street, coming to an
abrupt and rebellious pause by the entrance to a covered alleyway, of two
minds as to his proper course of action.

In the background of his thoughts Number 9, Frognall Street, reared its
five-story façade, sinister and forbidding. He reminded himself of its
unlighted windows; of its sign, "To be let"; of the effluvia of desolation
that had saluted him when the door swung wide. A deserted house; and the
girl alone in it!--was it right for him to leave her so?

IV

9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C.

The covered alleyway gave upon Quadrant Mews; or so declared a notice
painted on the dead wall of the passage.

Overhead, complaining as it swayed in the wind, hung the smirched and
weather-worn sign-board of the Hog-in-the-Pound public house; wherefrom
escaped sounds of such revelry by night as is indulged in by the British
working-man in hours of ease. At the curb in front of the house of
entertainment, dejected animals drooping between their shafts, two hansoms
stood in waiting, until such time as the lords of their destinies should
see fit to sally forth and inflict themselves upon a cab-hungry populace.
As Kirkwood turned, a third vehicle rumbled up out of the mews.

Kirkwood can close his eyes, even at this late day, and both see and hear
it all again--even as he can see the unbroken row of dingy dwellings that
lined his way back from Quadrant Mews to Frognall Street corner: all
drab and unkempt, all sporting in their fan-lights the legend and lure,
"Furnished Apartments."

For, between his curiosity about and his concern for the girl, he was being
led back to Number 9, by the nose, as it were,--hardly willingly, at best.
Profoundly stupefied by the contemplation of his own temerity, he yet
returned unfaltering. He who had for so long plumed himself upon his strict
supervision of his personal affairs and equally steadfast unconsciousness
of his neighbor's businesses, now found himself in the very act of pushing
in where he was not wanted: as he had been advised in well-nigh as many
words. He experienced an effect of standing to one side, a witness of
his own folly, with rising wonder, unable to credit the strength of
the infatuation which was placing him so conspicuously in the way of a
snubbing.

If perchance he were to meet the girl again as she was leaving Number
9,--what then? The contingency dismayed him incredibly, in view of the fact
that it did not avail to make him pause. To the contrary he disregarded it
resolutely; mad, impertinent, justified of his unnamed apprehensions, or
simply addled,--he held on his way.

He turned up Frognall Street with the manner of one out for a leisurely
evening stroll. Simultaneously, from the farther corner, another pedestrian
debouched, into the thoroughfare--a mere moving shadow at that distance,
brother to blacker shadows that skulked in the fenced areas and unlively
entries of that poorly lighted block. The hush was something beyond belief,
when one remembered the nearness of blatant Tottenham Court Road.

Kirkwood conceived a wholly senseless curiosity about the other wayfarer.
The man was walking rapidly, heels ringing with uncouth loudness, cane
tapping the flagging at brief intervals. Both sounds ceased abruptly as
their cause turned in beneath one of the porticos. In the emphatic and
unnatural quiet that followed, Kirkwood, stepping more lightly, fancied
that another shadow followed the first, noiselessly and with furtive
stealth.

Could it be Number 9 into which they had passed? The American's heart beat
a livelier tempo at the suggestion. If it had not been Number 9--he was
still too far away to tell--it was certainly one of the dwellings adjacent
thereunto. The improbable possibility (But why improbable?) that the girl
was being joined by her father, or by friends, annoyed him with illogical
intensity. He mended his own pace, designing to pass whichever house it
might be before the door should be closed; thought better of this, and
slowed up again, anathematizing himself with much excuse for being the
inquisitive dolt that he was.

Approaching Number 9 with laggard feet, he manufactured a desire to light
a cigarette, as a cover for his design, were he spied upon by unsuspected
eyes. Cane under arm, hands cupped to shield a vesta's flame, he stopped
directly before the portico, turning his eyes askance to the shadowed
doorway; and made a discovery sufficiently startling to hold him spellbound
and, incidentally, to scorch his gloves before he thought to drop the
match.

The door of Number 9 stood ajar, a black interval an inch or so in width
showing between its edge and the jamb.

Suspicion and alarm set his wits a-tingle. More distinctly he recalled the
jarring bang, accompanied by the metallic click of the latch, when the girl
had shut herself in--and him out. Now, some person or persons had followed
her, neglecting the most obvious precaution of a householder. And why? Why
but because the intruders did not wish the sound of closing to be audible
to her--or those--within?

He reminded himself that it was all none of his affair, decided to pass on
and go his ways in peace, and impulsively, swinging about, marched straight
away for the unclosed door.

"'Old'ard, guvner!"

Kirkwood halted on the cry, faltering in indecision. Should he take the
plunge, or withdraw? Synchronously he was conscious that a man's figure
had detached itself from the shadows beneath the nearest portico and was
drawing nearer, with every indication of haste, to intercept him.

"'Ere now, guvner, yer mykin' a mistyke. You don't live 'ere."

"How do you know?" demanded Kirkwood crisply, tightening his grip on his
stick.

Was this the second shadow he had seemed to see--the confederate of him who
had entered Number 9; a sentry to forestall interruption? If so, the fellow
lacked discretion, though his determination that the American should not
interfere was undeniable. It was with an ugly and truculent manner, if more
warily, that the man closed in.

"I knows. You clear hout, or--"

He flung out a hand with the plausible design of grasping Kirkwood by the
collar. The latter lifted his stick, deflecting the arm, and incontinently
landed his other fist forcibly on the fellow's chest. The man reeled back,
cursing. Before he could recover Kirkwood calmly crossed the threshold,
closed the door and put his shoulder to it. In another instant, fumbling in
the darkness, he found the bolts and drove them home.

And it was done, the transformation accomplished; his inability to refrain
from interfering had encompassed his downfall, had changed a peaceable and
law-abiding alien within British shores into a busybody, a trespasser, a
misdemeanant, a--yes, for all he knew to the contrary, in the estimation of
the Law, a burglar, prime candidate for a convict's stripes!

Breathing hard with excitement he turned and laid his back against the
panels, trembling in every muscle, terrified by the result of his impulsive
audacity, thunder-struck by a lightning-like foreglimpse of its possible
consequences. Of what colossal imprudence had he not been guilty?

"The devil!" he whispered. "What an ass, what an utter ass I am!"

Behind him the knob was rattled urgently, to an accompaniment of feet
shuffling on the stone; and immediately--if he were to make a logical
deduction from the rasping and scraping sound within the door-casing--the
bell-pull was violently agitated, without, however, educing any response
from the bell itself, wherever that might be situate. After which, as if in
despair, the outsider again rattled and jerked the knob.

Be his status what it might, whether servant of the household, its
caretaker, or a night watchman, the man was palpably determined both to get
himself in and Kirkwood out, and yet (curious to consider) determined to
gain his end without attracting undue attention. Kirkwood had expected to
hear the knocker's thunder, as soon as the bell failed to give tongue; but
it did not sound although there _was_ a knocker,--Kirkwood himself had
remarked that antiquated and rusty bit of ironmongery affixed to the middle
panel of the door. And it made him feel sure that something surreptitious
and lawless was in process within those walls, that the confederate
without, having failed to prevent a stranger from entering, left unemployed
a means so certain-sure to rouse the occupants.

But his inferential analysis of this phase of the proceedings was summarily
abrupted by that identical alarm. In a trice the house was filled with
flying echoes, wakened to sonorous riot by the crash and clamor of the
knocker; and Kirkwood stood fully two yards away, his heart hammering
wildly, his nerves a-jingle, much as if the resounding blows had landed
upon his own person rather than on stout oaken planking.

Ere he had time to wonder, the racket ceased, and from the street filtered
voices in altercation. Listening, Kirkwood's pulses quickened, and he
laughed uncertainly for pure relief, retreating to the door and putting an
ear to a crack.

The accents of one speaker were new in his hearing, stern, crisp, quick
with the spirit of authority which animates that most austere and dignified
limb of the law to be encountered the world over, a London bobby.

"Now then, my man, what do you want there? Come now, speak up, and step out
into the light, where I can see you."

The response came in the sniffling snarl of the London ne'er-do-well, the
unemployable rogue whose chiefest occupation seems to be to march in the
ranks of The Unemployed on the occasion of its annual demonstrations.

"Le' me alone, carntcher? Ah'm doin' no 'arm, officer,--"

"Didn't you hear me? Step out here. Ah, that's better.... No harm, eh?
Perhaps you'll explain how there's no harm breakin' into unoccupied
'ouses?"

"Gorblimy, 'ow was I to know? 'Ere's a toff 'ands me sixpence fer hopenin'
'is cab door to-dye, an', sezee, 'My man,' 'e sez, 'yer've got a 'onest
fyce. W'y don'cher work?' sezee. ''Ow can I?' sez I. ''Ere'm I hout of
a job these six months, lookin' fer work every dye an' carn't find it.'
Sezee, 'Come an' see me this hevenin' at me home, Noine, Frognall Stryte,'
'e sez, an'--"

"That'll do for now. You borrow a pencil and paper and write it down and
I'll read it when I've got more time; I never heard the like of it. This
'ouse hasn't been lived in these two years. Move on, and don't let me find
you round 'ere again. March, I say!"

There was more of it--more whining explanations artfully tinctured with
abuse, more terse commands to depart, the whole concluding with scraping
footsteps, diminuendo, and another perfunctory, rattle of the knob as the
bobby, having shoo'd the putative evil-doer off, assured himself that
no damage had actually been done. Then he, too, departed, satisfied and
self-righteous, leaving a badly frightened but very grateful amateur
criminal to pursue his self-appointed career of crime.

He had no choice other than to continue; in point of fact, it had been
insanity just then to back out, and run the risk of apprehension at the
hands of that ubiquitous bobby, who (for all he knew) might be lurking not
a dozen yards distant, watchful for just such a sequel. Still, Kirkwood
hesitated with the best of excuses. Reassuring as he had found the
sentinel's extemporized yarn,--proof positive that the fellow had had no
more right to prohibit a trespass than Kirkwood to commit one,--at the
same time he found himself pardonably a prey to emotions of the utmost
consternation and alarm. If he feared to leave the house he had no warrant
whatever to assume that he would be permitted to remain many minutes
unharmed within its walls of mystery.

The silence of it discomfited him beyond measure; it was, in a word,
uncanny.

Before him, as he lingered at the door, vaguely disclosed by a wan
illumination penetrating a dusty and begrimed fan-light, a broad hall
stretched indefinitely towards the rear of the building, losing itself in
blackness beyond the foot of a flight of stairs. Save for a few articles of
furniture,--a hall table, an umbrella-stand, a tall dumb clock flanked by
high-backed chairs,--it was empty. Other than Kirkwood's own restrained
respiration not a sound throughout the house advertised its inhabitation;
not a board creaked beneath the pressure of a foot, not a mouse rustled in
the wainscoting or beneath the floors, not a breath of air stirred sighing
in the stillness.

And yet, a tremendous racket had been raised at the front door, within the
sixty seconds past! And yet, within twenty minutes two persons, at
least, had preceded Kirkwood into the building! Had they not heard? The
speculation seemed ridiculous. Or had they heard and, alarmed, been too
effectually hobbled by the coils of their nefarious designs to dare reveal
themselves, to investigate the cause of that thunderous summons? Or were
they, perhaps, aware of Kirkwood's entrance, and lying _perdui_, in some
dark corner, to ambush him as he passed?

True, that were hardly like the girl. True, on the other hand, it
were possible that she had stolen away while Kirkwood was hanging in
irresolution by the passage to Quadrant Mews. Again, the space of time
between Kirkwood's dismissal and his return had been exceedingly brief;
whatever her errand, she could hardly have fulfilled it and escaped. At
that moment she might be in the power and at the mercy of him who had
followed her; providing he were not friendly. And in that case, what
torment and what peril might not be hers?

Spurred by solicitude, the young man put personal apprehensions in his
pocket and forgot them, cautiously picking his way through the gloom to the
foot of the stairs. There, by the newel-post, he paused. Darkness walled
him about. Overhead the steps vanished in a well of blackness; he could
not even see the ceiling; his eyes ached with futile effort to fathom the
unknown; his ears rang with unrewarded strain of listening. The silence
hung inviolate, profound.

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