The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance (best manga ereader .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Louis Joseph Vance
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again.”
Kirkwood, turning the key in the lock, withdrew it and dropped it on the
cabin table; at the same time he swept into his pocket the money he had
extorted of Calendar. Then he paused an instant, listening; from the
captain’s room came a sound of murmurs and scuffling. He debated what they
were about in there—but time pressed. Not improbably they, were crowding
for place at the keyhole, he reflected, as he crossed to the port locker
forward.
He had its lid up in a twinkling, and in another had lifted out the
well-remembered black gladstone bag.
This seems to have been his first compound larceny.
As if stimulated by some such reflection he sprang for the companionway,
dropping the lid of the locker with a bang which must have been
excruciatingly edifying to the men in the captain’s room. Whatever their
emotions, the bang was mocked by a mighty kick, shaking the door; which,
Kirkwood reflected, opened outward and was held only by the frailest kind
of a lock: it would not hold long.
Spurred onward by a storm of curses, Stryker’s voice chanting infuriated
cacophony with Calendar’s, Kirkwood leapt up the companionway even as the
second tremendous kick threatened to shatter the panels. Heart in mouth, a
chill shiver of guilt running up and down his spine, he gained the deck,
cast loose the painter, drew in his rowboat, and dropped over the side;
then, the gladstone bag nestling between his feet, sat down and bent to the
oars.
And doubts assailed him, pressing close upon the ebb of his
excitement—doubts and fears innumerable.
There was no longer a distinction to be drawn between himself and Calendar;
no more could he esteem himself a better and more honest man than that
accomplished swindler. He was not advised as to the Belgian code, but
English law, he understood, made no allowance for the good intent of those
caught in possession of stolen property; though he was acting with the most
honorable motives in the world, the law, if he came within its cognizance,
would undoubtedly place him on Calendar’s plane and judge him by the same
standard. To all intents and purposes he was a thief, and thief he would
remain until the gladstone bag with its contents should be restored to its
rightful owner.
Voluntarily, then, he had stepped from the ranks of the hunters to those of
the hunted. He now feared police interference as abjectly as did Calendar
and his set of rogues; and Kirkwood felt wholly warranted in assuming that
the adventurer, with his keen intelligence, would not handicap himself by
ignoring this point. Indeed, if he were to be judged by what Kirkwood had
inferred of his character, Calendar would let nothing whatever hinder him,
neither fear of bodily hurt nor danger of apprehension at the hands of the
police, from making a determined and savage play to regain possession of
his booty.
Well! (Kirkwood set his mouth savagely) Calendar should have a run for his
money!
For the present he could compliment himself with the knowledge that he had
outwitted the rogues, had lifted the jewels and probably two-thirds of
their armament; he had also the start, the knowledge of their criminal
guilt and intent, and his own plans, to comfort him. As for the latter, he
did not believe that Calendar would immediately fathom them; so he took
heart of grace and tugged at the oars with a will, pulling directly for the
city and permitting the current to drift him downstream at its pleasure.
There could be no more inexcusable folly than to return to the Quai Steen
landing and (possibly) the arms of the despoiled boat-owner.
At first he could hear crash after splintering crash sounding dully muffled
from the cabin of the Alethea: a veritable devil’s tattoo beaten out by
the feet of the prisoners. Evidently the fastening was serving him better
than he had dared hope. But as the black rushing waters widened between
boat and brigantine, the clamor aboard the latter subsided, indicating
that Calendar and Stryker had broken out or been released by the crew. In
ignorance as to whether he were seen or being pursued, Kirkwood pulled on,
winning in under the shadow of the quais and permitting the boat to drift
down to a lonely landing on the edge of the dockyard quarter of Antwerp.
Here alighting, he made the boat fast and, soothing his conscience with a
surmise that its owner would find it there in the morning, strode swiftly
over to the train line that runs along the embankment, swung aboard an
adventitious car and broke his first ten-franc piece in order to pay his
fare.
The car made a leisurely progress up past the old Steen castle and the Quai
landing, Kirkwood sitting quietly, the gladstone bag under his hand, a
searching gaze sweeping the waterside. No sign of the adventurers rewarded
him, but it was now all chance, all hazard. He had no more heart for
confidence.
They passed the H�tel du Commerce. Kirkwood stared up at its windows,
wondering….
A little farther on, a disengaged fiacre, its driver alert for possible
fares, turned a corner into the esplanade. At sight of it Kirkwood,
inspired, hopped nimbly off the tram-car and signaled the cabby. The latter
pulled up and Kirkwood started to charge him with instructions; something
which he did haltingly, hampered by a slight haziness of purpose. While
thus engaged, and at rest in the stark glare of the street-lamps, with
no chance of concealing himself, he was aware of a rising tumult in the
direction of the landing, and glancing round, discovered a number of people
running toward him. With no time to wonder whether or no he was really the
object of the hue-and-cry, he tossed the driver three silver francs.
“Gare Centrale!” he cried. “And drive like the devil!”
Diving into the fiacre he shut the door and stuck his head out of the
window, taking observations. A ragged fringe of silly rabble was bearing
down upon them, with one or two gendarmes in the forefront, and a giant,
who might or might not be Stryker, a close second. Furthermore, another
cab seemed to have been requisitioned for the chase. His heart misgave him
momentarily; but his driver had taken him at his word and generosity,
and in a breath the fiacre had turned the corner on two wheels, and the
glittering reaches of the embankment, drive and promenade, were blotted
out, as if smudged with lamp-black, by the obscurity of a narrow and
tortuous side street.
He drew in his head the better to preserve his brains against further
emergencies.
After a block or two Kirkwood picked up the gladstone bag, gently opened
the door, and put a foot on the step, pausing to look back. The other cab
was pelting after him with all the enthusiasm of a hound on a fresh
trail. He reflected that this mad progress through the thoroughfares of a
civilized city would not long endure without police intervention. So he
waited, watching his opportunity. The fiacre hurtled onward, the driver
leaning forward from his box to urge the horse with lash of whip and
tongue, entirely unconscious of his fare’s intentions.
Between two streets the mouth of a narrow and darksome byway flashed into
view. Kirkwood threw wide the door, and leaped, trusting to the night to
hide his stratagem, to luck to save his limbs. Neither failed him; in a
twinkling he was on all fours in the mouth of the alley, and as he picked
himself up, the second fiacre passed, Calendar himself poking a round bald
poll out of the window to incite his driver’s cupidity with promises of
redoubled fare.
Kirkwood mopped his dripping forehead and whistled low with dismay; it
seemed that from that instant on it was to be a vendetta with a vengeance.
Calendar, as he had foreseen, was stopping at nothing.
At a dog trot he sped down the alley to the next street, on which he turned
back—more sedately—toward the river, debouching on the esplanade just one
block from the H�tel du Commerce. As he swung past the serried tables of a
cafďż˝, whatever fears he had harbored were banished by the discovery that
the excitement occasioned by the chase had already subsided. Beneath the
garish awnings the crowd was laughing and chattering, eating and sipping
its bock with complete unconcern, heedless altogether of the haggard and
shabby young man carrying a black hand-bag, with the black Shade of Care
for company and a blacker threat of disaster dogging his footsteps. Without
attracting any attention whatever, indeed, he mingled with the strolling
crowds, making his way toward the H�tel du Commerce. Yet he was not at all
at ease; his uneasy conscience invested the gladstone bag with a magnetic
attraction for the public eye. To carry it unconcealed in his hand
furnished him with a sensation as disturbing as though its worn black sides
had been stenciled STOLEN! in letters of flame. He felt it rendered him a
cynosure of public interest, an object of suspicion to the wide cold world,
that the gaze which lit upon the bag traveled to his face only to espy
thereon the brand of guilt.
For ease of mind, presently, he turned into a convenient shop and spent ten
invaluable francs for a hand satchel big enough to hold the gladstone bag.
With more courage, now that he had the hateful thing under cover, he found
and entered the H�tel du Commerce.
In the little closet which served for an office, over a desk visibly
groaning with the weight of an enormous and grimy registry book, a sleepy,
fat, bland and good-natured woman of the Belgian bourgeoisie presided,
a benign and drowsy divinity of even-tempered courtesy. To his misleading
inquiry for Monsieur Calendar she returned a cheerful permission to seek
that gentleman for himself.
“Three flights, M’sieu’, in the front; suite seventeen it is. M’sieu’ does
not mind walking up?” she inquired.
M’sieu’ did not in the least, though by no strain of the imagination could
it, be truthfully said that he walked up those steep and redolent stairways
of the H�tel du Commerce d’Anvers. More literally, he flew with winged
feet, spurning each third padded step with a force that raised a tiny cloud
of fine white dust from the carpeting.
Breathless, at last he paused at the top of the third flight. His heart
was hammering, his pulses drumming like wild things; there was a queer
constriction in his throat, a fire of hope in his heart alternating with
the ice of doubt. Suppose she were not there! What if he were mistaken,
what if he had misunderstood, what if Mulready and Calendar had referred to
another lodging-house?
Pausing, he gripped the balustrade fiercely, forcing his self-control,
forcing himself to reflect that the girl (presuming, for the sake of
argument, he were presently to find her) could not be expected to
understand how ardently he had discounted this moment of meeting, or how
strangely it affected him. Indeed, he himself was more than a little
disturbed by the latter phenomenon, though he was no longer blind to its
cause. But he was not to let her see the evidences of his agitation, lest
she be frightened.
Slowly schooling himself to assume a masque of illuding self-possession and
composure, he passed down the corridor to the door whose panels wore the
painted legend, 17; and there knocked.
Believing that he overheard from within a sudden startled exclamation, he
smiled patiently, tolerant of her surprise.
Burning with impatience as with a fever, he endured a long minute’s wait.
Misgivings were prompting him to knock again
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