The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance (best manga ereader .TXT) 📖
- Author: Louis Joseph Vance
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all else aside, his only chance of rehabilitation lay in meeting Calendar.
But in none of the coaches or carriages did he discover any one even
remotely resembling the fat adventurer, his daughter, or Mulready.
Satisfied that they had not yet boarded the train, he stood aside, tortured
with forebodings, while anxiously scrutinizing each individual of the
throng of intending travelers…. Perhaps they had been delayed—by the
Alethea’s lateness in making port very likely; perhaps they purposed
taking not this but a later train; perhaps they had already left the city
by an earlier, or had returned to England.
On time, the bell clanged its warning; the guards bawled theirs; doors were
hastily opened and slammed; the trucks began to groan, couplings jolting
as the engine chafed in constraint. The train and Kirkwood moved
simultaneously out of opposite ends of the station, the one to rattle and
hammer round the eastern boundaries of the city and straighten out at top
speed on the northern route for the Belgian line, the other to stroll
moodily away, idle hands in empty pockets, bound aimlessly anywhere—it
didn’t matter!
Nothing whatever mattered in the smallest degree. Ere now the outlook had
been dark; but this he felt to be the absolute nadir of his misfortunes.
Presently—after a while—as soon as he could bring himself to it—he would
ask the way and go to the American Consulate. But just now, low as the tide
of chance had ebbed, leaving him stranded on the flats of vagabondage,
low as showed the measure of his self-esteem, he could not tolerate the
prospect of begging for assistance—help which would in all likelihood be
refused, since his story was quite too preposterous to gain credence in
official ears that daily are filled with the lamentations of those whose
motives do not bear investigation. And if he chose to eliminate the strange
chain of events which had landed him in Antwerp, to base his plea solely on
the fact that he was a victim of the San Francisco disaster … he himself
was able to smile, if sourly, anticipating the incredulous consular smile
with which he would be shown the door.
No; that he would reserve as a last resort. True, he had already come to
the Jumping-off Place; to the Court of the Last Resort alone could he now
appeal. But … not yet; after a while he could make his petition, after he
had made a familiar of the thought that he must armor himself with callous
indifference to rebuff, to say naught of the waves of burning shame that
would overwhelm him when he came to the point of asking charity.
He found himself, neither knowing nor caring how he had won thither, in the
Place Verte, the vast venerable pile of the Cathedral rising on his right,
hotels and quaint Old-World dwellings with peaked roofs and gables and
dormer windows, inclosing the other sides of the square. The chimes (he
could hear none but those of the Cathedral) were heralding the hour of
seven. Listless and preoccupied in contemplation of his wretched case he
wandered purposelessly half round the square, then dropped into a bench on
its outskirts.
It was some time later that he noticed, with a casual, indifferent eye, a
porter running out of the H�tel de Flandre, directly opposite, and calling
a fiacre in to the carriage block.
As languidly he watched a woman, very becomingly dressed, follow the porter
down to the curb.
The fiacre swung in, and the woman dismissed the porter before entering the
vehicle; a proceeding so unusual that it fixed the onlooker’s interest.
He sat rigid with attention; the woman seemed to be giving explicit
and lengthy directions to the driver, who nodded and gesticulated his
comprehension.
The woman was Mrs. Hallam.
The first blush of recognition passed, leaving Kirkwood without any
amazement. It was an easy matter to account for her being where she was.
Thrown off the scent by Kirkwood at Sheerness, the previous morning, she
had missed the day boat, the same which had ferried over those whom she
pursued. Returning from Sheerness to Queensborough, however, she had taken
the night boat for Flushing and Antwerp,—and not without her plan, who was
not a woman to waste her strength aimlessly; Kirkwood believed that she
had had from the first a very definite campaign in view. In that campaign
Queensborough Pier had been the first strategic move; the journey to
Antwerp, apparently, the second; and the American was impressed that he was
witnessing the inception of the third decided step…. The conclusion of
this process of reasoning was inevitable: Madam would bear watching.
Thus was a magical transformation brought about. Instantaneously lassitude
and vain repinings were replaced by hopefulness and energy. In a twinkling
the young man was on his feet, every nerve a-thrill with excitement.
Mrs. Hallam, blissfully ignorant of this surveillance over her movements,
took her place in the fiacre. The driver clucked to his horse, cracked
his whip, and started off at a slow trot: a pace which Kirkwood imitated,
keeping himself at a discreet distance to the rear of the cab, but prepared
to break into a run whenever it should prove necessary.
Such exertion, however, was not required of him. Evidently Mrs. Hallam
was in no great haste to reach her destination; the speed of the fiacre
remained extremely moderate; Kirkwood found a long, brisk stride fast
enough to keep it well in sight.
Round the green square, under the beautiful walls of Notre Dame d’Anvers,
through Grande Place and past the H�tel de Ville, the cab proceeded, dogged
by what might plausibly be asserted the most persistent and infatuated soul
that ever crossed the water; and so on into the Quai Van Dyck, turning to
the left at the old Steen dungeon and, slowing to a walk, moving soberly up
the drive.
Beyond the lip of the embankment, the Scheldt flowed, its broad shining
surface oily, smooth and dark, a mirror for the incandescent glory of the
skies. Over on the western bank old T�te de Flandre lifted up its grim
curtains and bastions, sable against the crimson, rampart and parapet edged
with fire. Busy little sidewheeled ferry steamers spanked the waters
noisily and smudged the sunset with dark drifting trails of smoke; and ever
and anon a rowboat would slip out of shadow to glide languidly with the
current. Otherwise the life of the river was gone; and at their moorings
the ships swung in great quietness, riding lights glimmering like low wan
stars.
In the company of the latter the young man marked down the Alethea; a
sight which made him unconsciously clench both fists and teeth, reminding
him of that rare wag, Stryker….
To his way of thinking the behavior of the fiacre was quite unaccountable.
Hardly had the horse paced off the length of two blocks on the Quai ere
it was guided to the edge of the promenade and brought to a stop. And the
driver twisted the reins round his whip, thrust the latter in its socket,
turned sidewise on the box, and began to smoke and swing his heels,
surveying the panorama of river and sunset with complacency—a cabby, one
would venture, without a care in the world and serene in the assurance of
a generous pour-boire when he lost his fare. But as for the latter, she
made no move; the door of the cab remained closed,—like its occupant’s
mind, a mystery to the watcher.
Twilight shadows lengthened, darkling, over the land; street-lights flashed
up in long, radiant ranks. Across the promenade hotels and shops were
lighted up; people began to gather round the tables beneath the awnings of
an open-air caf�. In the distance, somewhere, a band swung into the dreamy
rhythm of a haunting waltz. Scattered couples moved slowly, arm in arm,
along the riverside walk, drinking in the fragrance of the night. Overhead
stars popped out in brilliance and dropped their reflections to swim lazily
on spellbound waters…. And still the fiacre lingered in inaction, still
the driver lorded it aloft, in care-free abandon.
In the course of time this inertia, where he had looked for action, this
dull suspense when he had forecast interesting developments, wore upon the
watcher’s nerves and made him at once impatient and suspicious. Now that he
had begun to doubt, he conceived it as quite possible that Mrs. Hallam (who
was capable of anything) should have stolen out of the cab by the other
and, to him, invisible door. To resolve the matter, finally, he took
advantage of the darkness, turned up his coat collar, hunched up his
shoulders, hid his hands in pockets, pulled the visor of his cap well
forward over his eyes, and slouched past the fiacre.
Mrs. Hallam sat within. He could see her profile clearly silhouetted
against the light; she was bending forward and staring fixedly out of the
window, across the driveway. Mentally he calculated the direction of her
gaze, then, moved away and followed it with his own eyes; and found himself
staring at the fa�ade of a third-rate hotel. Above its roof the gilded
letters of a sign, catching the illumination from below, spelled out the
title of “H�tel du Commerce.”
Mrs. Hallam was interested in the H�tel du Commerce?
Thoughtfully Kirkwood fell back to his former point of observation, now
the richer by another object of suspicion, the hostelry. Mrs. Hallam was
waiting and watching for some one to enter or to leave that establishment.
It seemed a reasonable inference to draw. Well, then, so was Kirkwood, no
less than the lady; he deemed it quite conceivable that their objects were
identical.
He started to beguile the time by wondering what she would do, if…
Of a sudden he abandoned this line of speculation, and catching his breath,
held it, almost afraid to credit the truth that for once his anticipations
were being realized under his very eyes.
Against the lighted doorway of the H�tel du Commerce, the figures of two
men were momentarily sketched, as they came hurriedly forth; and of the
two, one was short and stout, and even at a distance seemed to bear himself
with an accent of assertiveness, while the other was tall and heavy of
shoulder.
Side by side they marched in step across the embankment to the head of the
Quai gangway, descending without pause to the landing-stage. Kirkwood,
hanging breathlessly over the guard-rail, could hear their footfalls
ringing in hollow rhythm on the planks of the inclined way,—could even
discern Calendar’s unlovely profile in dim relief beneath one of the
waterside lights; and he recognized unmistakably Mulready’s deep voice,
grumbling inarticulately.
At the outset he had set after them, with intent to accost Calendar; but
their pace had been swift and his irresolute. He hung fire on the issue,
dreading to reveal himself, unable to decide which were the better course,
to pursue the men, or to wait and discover what Mrs. Hallam was about. In
the end he waited; and had his disappointment for recompense.
For Mrs. Hallam did nothing intelligible. Had she driven over to the hotel,
hard upon the departure of the men, he would have believed that she was
seeking Dorothy, and would, furthermore, have elected to crowd their
interview, if she succeeded in obtaining one with the girl. But she did
nothing of the sort. For a time the fiacre remained as it had been ever
since stopping; then, evidently admonished by his fare, the driver
straightened up, knocked out his pipe, disentangled reins and whip, and
wheeled the equipage back on the way it had come, disappearing in a dark
side street leading eastward from the embankment.
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