The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance

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"Beautifully circumstantial, my dear lady," commented Kirkwood--to his
inner consciousness. Outwardly he maintained consistently a pose of
impassive gullibility.

"This afternoon, for the first time, we received news of the Calendars.
Calendar himself called upon me, to beg a loan. I explained our difficulty
and he promised that Dorothy should send us the information by the
morning's post. When I insisted, he agreed to bring it himself, after
dinner, this evening.... I make it quite clear?" she interrupted, a little
anxious.

"Quite clear, I assure you," he assented encouragingly.

"Strangely enough, he had not been gone ten minutes when my son came
in from a conference with our solicitors, informing me that at last a
memorandum had turned up, indicating that the heirlooms would be found in a
safe secreted behind a dresser in Colonel Burgoyne's bedroom."

"At Number 9, Frognall Street."

"Yes.... I proposed going there at once, but it was late and we were dining
at the Pless with an acquaintance, a Mr. Mulready, whom I now recall as a
former intimate of George Calendar. To our surprise we saw Calendar and his
daughter at a table not far from ours. Mr. Mulready betrayed some agitation
at the sight of Calendar, and told me that Scotland Yard had a man out with
a warrant for Calendar's arrest, on old charges. For old sake's sake, Mr.
Mulready begged me to give Calendar a word of warning. I did so--foolishly,
it seems: Calendar was at that moment planning to rob us, Mulready aiding
and abetting him."

The woman paused before Kirkwood, looking down upon him. "And so," she
concluded, "we have been tricked and swindled. I can scarcely believe it of
Dorothy Calendar."

"I, for one, don't believe it." Kirkwood spoke quietly, rising. "Whatever
the culpability of Calendar and Mulready, Dorothy was only their hoodwinked
tool."

"But, Mr. Kirkwood, she must have known the jewels were not hers."

"Yes," he assented passively, but wholly unconvinced.

"And what," she demanded with a gesture of exasperation, "what would you
advise?"

"Scotland Yard," he told her bluntly.

"But it's a family secret! It must not appear in the papers. Don't you
understand--George Calendar is my husband's cousin!"

"I can think of nothing else, unless you pursue them in person."

"But--whither?"

"That remains to be discovered; I can tell you nothing more than I have....
May I thank you for your hospitality, express my regrets that I should
unwittingly have been made the agent of this disaster, and wish you good
night--or, rather, good morning, Mrs. Hallam?"

For a moment she held him under a calculating glance which he withstood
with graceless fortitude. Then, realizing that he was determined not by any
means to be won to her cause, she gave him her hand, with a commonplace
wish that he might find his affairs in better order than seemed probable;
and rang for Eccles.

The butler showed him out.

He took away with him two strong impressions; the one visual, of a
strikingly handsome woman in a wonderful gown, standing under the red glow
of a reading-lamp, in an attitude of intense mental concentration, her
expression plainly indicative of a train of thought not guiltless of
vindictiveness; the other, more mental but as real, he presently voiced to
the huge bronze lions brooding over desolate Trafalgar Square.

"Well," appreciated Mr. Kirkwood with gusto, "_she's_ got Ananias and
Sapphira talked to a standstill, all right!" He ruminated over this for
a moment. "Calendar can lie some, too; but hardly with her picturesque
touch.... Uncommon ingenious, _I_ call it. All the same, there were only
about a dozen bits of tiling that didn't fit into her mosaic a little
bit.... I think they're all tarred with the same stick--all but the girl.
And there's something afoot a long sight more devilish and crafty than that
shilling-shocker of madam's.... Dorothy Calendar's got about as much active
part in it as I have. I'm only from California, but they've got to show
me, before I'll believe a word against her. Those infernal
scoundrels!...Somebody's got to be on the girl's side and I seem to have
drawn the lucky straw.... Good Heavens! is it possible for a grown man to
fall heels over head in love in two short hours? I don't believe it. It's
just interest--nothing more.... And I'll have to have a change of clothes
before I can do anything further."

He bowed gratefully to the lions, in view of their tolerant interest in his
soliloquy, and set off very suddenly round the square and up St. Martin's
Lane, striking across town as directly as might be for St. Pancras Station.
It would undoubtedly be a long walk, but cabs were prohibited by his
straitened means, and the busses were all abed and wouldn't be astir for
hours.

He strode along rapidly, finding his way more through intuition than by
observation or familiarity with London's geography--indeed, was scarce
aware of his surroundings; for his brain was big with fine imagery, rapt in
a glowing dream of knighterrantry and chivalric deeds.

Thus is it ever and alway with those who in the purity of young hearts rush
in where angels fear to tread; if these, Kirkwood and his ilk, be fools,
thank God for them, for with such foolishness is life savored and made
sweet and sound! To Kirkwood the warp of the world and the woof of it was
Romance, and it wrapped him round, a magic mantle to set him apart from
all things mean and sordid and render him impregnable and invisible to the
haunting Shade of Care.

Which, by the same token, presently lost track of him entirely, and
wandered off to find and bedevil some other poor devil. And Kirkwood, his
eyes like his spirit elevated, saw that the clouds of night were breaking,
the skies clearing, that the East pulsed ever more strongly with the
dim golden promise of the day to come. And this he chose to take for an
omen--prematurely, it may be.

IX

AGAIN "BELOW BRIDGE"; AND BEYOND

Kirkwood wasted little time, who had not much to waste, were he to do that
upon whose doing he had set his heart. It irked him sore to have to lose
the invaluable moments demanded by certain imperative arrangements, but his
haste was such that all was consummated within an hour.

Within the period of a single hour, then, he had ransomed his luggage at
St. Pancras, caused it to be loaded upon a four-wheeler and transferred to
a neighboring hotel of evil flavor but moderate tariff, where he engaged
a room for a week, ordered an immediate breakfast, and retired with his
belongings to his room; he had shaved and changed his clothes, selecting
a serviceable suit of heavy tweeds, stout shoes, a fore-and-aft cap and a
negligée shirt of a deep shade calculated at least to seem clean for a long
time; finally, he had devoured his bacon and eggs, gulped down his coffee
and burned his mouth, and, armed with a stout stick, set off hotfoot in the
still dim glimmering of early day.

By this time his cash capital had dwindled to the sum of two pounds, ten
shillings, eight-pence, and would have been much less had he paid for his
lodging in advance. But he considered his trunks ample security for the
bill, and dared not wait the hour when shopkeepers begin to take down
shutters and it becomes possible to realize upon one's jewelry. Besides
which, he had never before been called upon to consider the advisability of
raising money by pledging personal property, and was in considerable doubt
as to the right course of procedure in such emergency.

At King's Cross Station on the Underground an acute disappointment awaited
him; there, likewise, he learned something about London. A sympathetic
bobby informed him that no trains would be running until after five-thirty,
and that, furthermore, no busses would begin to ply until half after seven.

"It's tramp it or cab it, then," mused the young man mournfully, his
longing gaze seeking a nearby cab-rank--just then occupied by a solitary
hansom, driver somnolent on the box. "Officer," he again addressed
the policeman, mindful of the English axiom: "When in doubt, ask a
bobby."--"Officer, when's high-tide this morning?"

The bobby produced a well-worn pocket-almanac, moistened a massive thumb,
and rippled the pages.

"London Bridge, 'igh tide twenty minutes arfter six, sir," he announced
with a glow of satisfaction wholly pardonable in one who combines the
functions of perambulating almanac, guide-book, encyclopedia, and conserver
of the peace.

Kirkwood said something beneath his breath--a word in itself a comfortable
mouthful and wholesome and emphatic. He glanced again at the cab and
groaned: "O Lord, I just dassent!" With which, thanking the bureau of
information, he set off at a quick step down Grey's Inn Road.

The day had closed down in brilliance upon the city--and the voice of the
milkman was to be heard in the land--when he trudged, still briskly if a
trifle wearily, into Holborn, and held on eastward across the Viaduct and
down Newgate Street; the while addling his weary wits with heart-sickening
computations of minutes, all going hopelessly to prove that he would be
late, far too late even presupposing the unlikely. The unlikely, be it
known, was that the _Alethea_ would not attempt to sail before the turn of
the tide.

For this was his mission, to find the _Alethea_ before she sailed.
Incredible as it may appear, at five o'clock, or maybe earlier, on the
morning of the twenty-second of April, 1906, A.D., Philip Kirkwood,
normally a commonplace but likable young American in full possession of
his senses, might have been seen (and by some was seen) plodding manfully
through Cheapside, London, England, engaged upon a quest as mad, forlorn,
and gallant as any whose chronicle ever inspired the pen of a Malory or
a Froissart. In brief he proposed to lend his arm and courage to be the
shield and buckler of one who might or might not be a damsel in distress;
according as to whether Mrs. Hallam had spoken soothly of Dorothy Calendar,
or Kirkwood's own admirable faith in the girl were justified of itself.

Proceeding upon the working hypothesis that Mrs. Hallam was a polished liar
in most respects, but had told the truth, so far as concerned her statement
to the effect that the gladstone bag contained valuable real property
(whose ownership remained a moot question, though Kirkwood was definitely
committed to the belief that it was none of Mrs. Hallam's or her son's):
he reasoned that the two adventurers, with Dorothy and their booty, would
attempt to leave London by a water route, in the ship, _Alethea_, whose
name had fallen from their lips at Bermondsey Old Stairs.

Kirkwood's initial task, then, would be to find the needle in the
haystack--the metaphor is poor: more properly, to sort out from the
hundreds of vessels, of all descriptions, at anchor in midstream, moored to
the wharves of 'long-shore warehouses, or in the gigantic docks that line
the Thames, that one called _Alethea_; of which he was so deeply mired in
ignorance that he could not say whether she were tramp-steamer, coastwise
passenger boat, one of the liners that ply between Tilbury and all the
world, Channel ferry-boat, private yacht (steam or sail), schooner,
four-master, square-rigger, barque or brigantine.

A task to stagger the optimism of any but one equipped with the sublime
impudence of Youth! Even Kirkwood was disturbed by some little awe when
he contemplated the vast proportions of his undertaking. None the less
doggedly he plugged ahead, and tried to keep his mind from vain surmises
as to what would be his portion when eventually he should find himself a
passenger, uninvited and unwelcome, upon the _Alethea_....

London had turned over once or twice, and was pulling the bedclothes over
its head and grumbling about getting up, but the city was still sound
asleep when at length he paused for a minute's rest in front of the Mansion
House, and realized with a pang of despair that he was completely tuckered
out. There was a dull, vague throbbing in his head; weights pressed upon
his eyeballs until they ached; his mouth was hot and tasted of yesterday's
tobacco; his feet were numb and heavy; his joints were stiff; he yawned
frequently.

With a sigh he surrendered to the flesh's frailty. An early cabby, cruising
up from Cannon Street station on the off-chance of finding some one astir
in the city, aside from the doves and sparrows, suffered the surprise of
his life when Kirkwood hailed him. His face was blank with amazement when
he reined in, and his eyes bulged when the prospective fare, on impulse,
explained his urgent needs. Happily he turned out a fair representative of
his class, an intelligent and unfuddled cabby.

"Jump in, sir," he told Kirkwood cheerfully, as soon as he had assimilated
the latter's demands. "I knows precisely wotcher wants. Leave it all to
me."

The admonition was all but superfluous; Kirkwood was unable, for the time
being, to do aught else than resign his fate into another's guidance. Once
in the cab he slipped insensibly into a nap, and slept soundly on, as
reckless of the cab's swift pace and continuous jouncing as of the sunlight
glaring full in his tired young face.

He may have slept twenty minutes; he awoke faint with drowsiness, tingling
from head to toe from fatigue, and in distress of a queer qualm in the pit
of his stomach, to find the hansom at rest and the driver on the step,
shaking his fare with kindly determination. "Oh, a' right," he assented
surlily, and by sheer force of will made himself climb out to the
sidewalk; where, having rubbed his eyes, stretched enormously and yawned
discourteously in the face of the East End, he was once more himself and
a hundred times refreshed into the bargain. Contentedly he counted three
shillings into the cabby's palm--the fare named being one-and-six.

"The shilling over and above the tip's for finding me the waterman and
boat," he stipulated.

"Right-o. You'll mind the 'orse a minute, sir?"

Kirkwood nodded. The man touched his hat and disappeared inexplicably.
Kirkwood, needlessly attaching himself to the reins near the animal's head,
pried his sense of observation open and became alive to the fact that he
stood in a quarter of London as strange to him as had been Bermondsey Wall.

To this day he can not put a name to it; he surmises that it was Wapping.

Ramshackle tenements with sharp gable roofs lined either side of the way.
Frowsy women draped themselves over the window-sills. Pallid and wasted
parodies on childhood contested the middle of the street with great, slow
drays, drawn by enormous horses. On the sidewalks twin streams of masculine
humanity flowed without rest, both bound in the same direction: dock
laborers going to their day's work. Men of every nationality known to the
world (he thought) passed him in his short five-minute wait by the horse's
head; Britons, brown East Indians, blacks from Jamaica, swart Italians,
Polaks, Russian Jews, wire-drawn Yankees, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks,
even a Nubian or two: uniform in these things only, that their backs were
bent with toil, bowed beyond mending, and their faces stamped with the
blurred type-stamp of the dumb laboring brute. A strangely hideous
procession, they shambled on, for the most part silent, all uncouth and
unreal in the clear morning glow.

The outlander was sensible of some relief when his cabby popped hurriedly
out of the entrance to a tenement, a dull-visaged, broad-shouldered
waterman ambling more slowly after.

"Nevvy of mine, sir," announced the cabby; "and a fust-ryte waterman; knows
the river like a book, he do."

The nephew touched his forelock sheepishly.

"Thank you," said Kirkwood; and, turning to the man, "Your boat?" he asked
with the brevity of weariness.

"This wye, sir."

At his guide's heels Kirkwood threaded the crowd and, entering the
tenement, stumbled through a gloomy and unsavory passage, to come out at
last upon a scanty, unrailed veranda overlooking the river. Ten feet below,
perhaps, foul waters purred and eddied round the piles supporting the
rear of the building. On one hand a ladder-like flight of rickety steps
descended to a floating stage to which a heavy rowboat lay moored. In the
latter a second waterman was seated bailing out bilge with a rusty can.

"'Ere we are, sir," said the cabman's nephew, pausing at the head of the
steps. "Now, where's it to be?"

The American explained tersely that he had a message to deliver a friend,
who had shipped aboard a vessel known as the _Alethea_, scheduled to sail
at floodtide; further than which deponent averred naught.

The waterman scratched his head. "A 'ard job, sir; not knowin' wot kind of
a boat she are mykes it 'arder." He waited hopefully.

"Ten shillings," volunteered Kirkwood promptly; "ten shillings if you get
me aboard her before she weighs anchor; fifteen if I keep you out more than
an hour, and still you put me aboard. After that we'll make other terms."

The man promptly turned his back to hail his mate. "'Arf a quid, Bob, if we
puts this gent aboard a wessel name o' _Allytheer_ afore she syles at turn
o' tide."

In the boat the man with the bailing can turned up an impassive
countenance. "Coom down," he clenched the bargain; and set about shipping
the sweeps.

Kirkwood crept down the shaky ladder and deposited himself in the stern of
the boat; the younger boatman settled himself on the midship thwart.

"Ready?"

"Ready," assented old Bob from the bows. He cast off the painter, placed
one sweep against the edge of the stage, and with a vigorous thrust pushed
off; then took his seat.

Bows swinging down-stream, the boat shot out from the shore.

"How's the tide?" demanded Kirkwood, his impatience growing.

"On th' turn, sir," he was told.

For a long moment broadside to the current, the boat responded to the
sturdy pulling of the port sweeps. Another moment, and it was in full
swing, the watermen bending lustily to their task. Under their unceasing
urge, the broad-beamed, heavy craft, aided by the ebbing tide, surged more
and more rapidly through the water; the banks, grim and unsightly with
their towering, impassive warehouses broken by toppling wooden tenements,
slipped swiftly up-stream. Ship after ship was passed, sailing vessels
in the majority, swinging sluggishly at anchor, drifting slowly with the
river, or made fast to the goods-stages of the shore; and in keen anxiety
lest he should overlook the right one, Kirkwood searched their bows and
sterns for names, which in more than one case proved hardly legible.

The _Alethea_ was not of their number.

In the course of some ten minutes, the watermen drove the boat sharply
inshore, bringing her up alongside another floating stage, in the shadow
of another tenement.--both so like those from which they had embarked that
Kirkwood would have been unable to distinguish one from another.

In the bows old Bob lifted up a stentorian voice, summoning one William.

Recognizing that there was some design in this, the passenger subdued his
disapproval of the delay, and sat quiet.

In answer to the third ear-racking hail, a man, clothed simply in dirty
shirt and disreputable trousers, showed himself in the doorway above,
rubbing the sleep out of a red, bloated countenance with a mighty and grimy
fist.

"'Ello," he said surlily. "Wot's th' row?"

"'Oo," interrogated old Bob, holding the boat steady by grasping the stage,
"was th' party wot engyged yer larst night, Bill?"

"Party name o' _Allytheer_," growled the drowsy one. "W'y?"

"Party 'ere's lookin' for 'im. Where'll I find this _Allytheer?_"

"Best look sharp 'r yer won't find 'im," retorted the one above. "'E _was_
at anchor off Bow Creek larst night."

Kirkwood's heart leaped in hope. "What sort of a vessel was she?" he asked,
half rising in his eagerness.

"Brigantine, sir."

"_Thank--you!_" replied Kirkwood explosively, resuming his seat with
uncalculated haste as old Bob, deaf to the amenities of social intercourse
in an emergency involving as much as ten-bob, shoved off again.

And again the boat was flying down in midstream, the leaden waters, shot
with gold of the morning sun, parting sullenly beneath its bows.

The air was still, heavy and tepid; the least exertion brought out beaded
moisture on face and hands. In the east hung a turgid sky, dull with haze,
through which the mounting sun swam like a plaque of brass; overhead it
was clear and cloudless, but besmirched as if the polished mirror of the
heavens had been fouled by the breath of departing night.

On the right, ahead, Greenwich Naval College loomed up, the great
gray-stone buildings beyond the embankment impressively dominating the
scene, in happy relief against the wearisome monotony of the river-banks;
it came abreast; and ebbed into the backwards of the scene.

The watermen straining at the sweeps, the boat sped into Blackwall Reach,
Bugsby Marshes a splash of lurid green to port, dreary Cubitt Town and the
West India Docks to starboard. Here the river ran thick with shipping.

"Are we near?" Kirkwood would know; and by way of reply had a grunt of the
younger waterman.

Again, "Will we make it?" he asked.

The identical grunt answered him; he was free to interpret it as he would;
young William--as old Bob named him--had no breath for idle words. Kirkwood
subsided, controlling his impatience to the best of his ability; the men,
he told himself again and again, were earning their pay, whether or not
they gained the goal of his desire.... Their labors were titanic; on
their temples and foreheads the knotted veins stood out like discolored
whip-cord; their faces were the shade of raw beef, steaming with sweat;
their eyes protruded with the strain that set their jaws like vises; their
chests heaved and shrank like bellows; their backs curved, straightened,
and bent again in rhythmic unison as tiring to the eye as the swinging of a
pendulum.

Hugging the marshy shore, they rounded the Blackwall Point. Young William
looked to Kirkwood, caught his eye, and nodded.

"Here?"

Kirkwood rose, balancing himself against the leap and sway of the boat.

"Sumwhere's ... 'long ... o' 'ere."

From right to left his eager glance swept the river's widening reach.
Vessels were there in abundance, odd, unwieldy, blunt-bowed craft with
huge, rakish, tawny sails; long strings of flat barges, pyramidal mounds of
coal on each, lashed to another and convoyed by panting tugs; steam cargo
boats, battered, worn, rusted sore through their age-old paint; a steel
leviathan of the deep seas, half cargo, half passenger boat, warping
reluctantly into the mouth of the Victoria Dock tidal basin,--but no
brigantine, no sailing vessel of any type.

The young man's lips checked a cry that was half a sob of bitter
disappointment. He had entered into the spirit of the chase heart and soul,
with an enthusiasm that was strange to him, when he came to look back
upon the time; and to fail, even though failure had been discounted a
hundredfold since the inception of his mad adventure, seemed hard, very
hard.

He sat down suddenly. "She's gone!" he cried in a hollow gasp.

The boatmen eased upon their oars, and old Bob stood up in the bows,
scanning the river-scape with keen eyes shielded by a level palm.
Young William drooped forward suddenly, head upon knees, and breathed
convulsively. The boat drifted listlessly with the current.

Old Bob panted: "'Dawn't--see--nawthin'--o' 'er." He resumed his seat.

"There's no hope, I suppose?"

The elder waterman shook his head. "'Carn't sye.... Might be round--nex'
bend--might be--passin' Purfleet.... 'Point is--me an' young Wilyum
'ere--carn't do no more--'n we 'as. We be wore out."

"Yes," Kirkwood assented, disconsolate, "You've certainly earned your pay."
Then hope revived; he was very young in heart, you know. "Can't you suggest
something? I've _got_ to catch that ship!"

Old Bob wagged his head in slow negation; young William lifted his.

"There's a rylewye runs by Woolwich," he ventured. "Yer might tyke tryne
an' go to Sheerness, sir. Yer'd be positive o' passin' 'er if she didn't
syle afore 'igh-tide. 'Ire a boat at Sheerness an' put out an' look for
'er."

"How far's Woolwich?" Kirkwood demanded instantly.

"Mile," said the elder man. "Tyke yer for five-bob extry."

"Done!"

Young William dashed the sweat from his eyes, wiped his palms on his hips,
and fitted the sweeps again to the wooden tholes. Old Bob was as ready.
With an inarticulate cry they gave way.

X

DESPERATE MEASURES

Old Bob seemed something inclined toward optimism, when the boat lay
alongside a landing-stage at Woolwich, and Kirkwood had clambered ashore.

"Yer'll mebbe myke it," the waterman told him with a weatherwise survey of
the skies. "Wind's freshenin' from the east'rds, an' that'll 'old 'er back
a bit, sir."

"Arsk th' wye to th' Dorkyard Styshun," young William volunteered. "'Tis
th' shortest walk, sir. I 'opes yer catches 'er.... Thanky, sir."

He caught dextrously the sovereign which Kirkwood, in ungrudging
liberality, spared them of his store of two. The American nodded
acknowledgments and adieux, with a faded smile deprecating his chances of
winning the race, sorely handicapped as he was. He was very, very tired,
and in his heart suspected that he would fail. But, if he did, he would at
least be able to comfort himself that it was not for lack of trying. He
set his teeth on that covenant, in grim determination; either there was a
strain of the bulldog latent in the Kirkwood breed or else his infatuation
gripped him more strongly than he guessed.

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