The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance (best manga ereader .TXT) 📖
- Author: Louis Joseph Vance
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cover up his own dark doubts. “My dear,” to the girl, “if I have brought
trouble upon you in this wise, I shall never earn my own forgiveness.”
Kirkwood stood up again, watchful, attentive to the sounds of night; but
the voice of the pursuing motor-car was not of their company. “I hear
nothing,” he announced.
“You will forgive me,—won’t you, my dear?—for causing you these few
moments of needless anxiety?” pleaded the old gentleman, his tone
tremulous.
“As if you could be blamed!” protested the girl. “You mustn’t think of it
that way. Fancy, what should we have done without you!”
“I’m afraid I have been very clumsy,” sighed Brentwick, “clumsy and
impulsive … Kirkwood, do you hear anything?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Brentwick a little later, “perhaps we had better
alight and go up to the inn. It would be more cosy there, especially if the
petrol proves hard to obtain, and we have long to wait.”
“I should like that,” assented the girl decidedly.
Kirkwood nodded his approval, opened the door and jumped out to assist her;
then picked up the bag and followed the pair,—Brentwick leading the way
with Dorothy on his arm.
At the doorway of the Crown and Mitre, Charles met them evidently seriously
disturbed. “No petrol to be had here, sir,” he announced reluctantly; “but
the landlord will send to the next inn, a mile up the road, for some. You
will have to be patient, I’m afraid, sir.”
“Very well. Get some one to help you push the car in from the road,”
ordered Brentwick; “we will be waiting in one of the private parlors.”
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir.” The mechanician touched the visor of his cap
and hurried off.
“Come, Kirkwood.” Gently Brentwick drew the girl in with him.
Kirkwood lingered momentarily on the doorstep, to listen acutely. But the
wind was blowing into that quarter whence they had come, and he could hear
naught save the soughing in the trees, together with an occasional burst
of rude rustic laughter from the tap-room. Lifting his shoulders in dumb
dismay, and endeavoring to compose his features, he entered the tavern.
II–-THE CROWN AND MITRE
A rosy-cheeked and beaming landlady met him in the corridor and, all bows
and smiles, ushered him into a private parlor reserved for the party,
immediately bustling off in a desperate flurry, to secure refreshments
desired by Brentwick.
The girl had seated herself on one end of an extremely comfortless lounge
and was making a palpable effort to seem at ease. Brentwick stood at one of
the windows, shoulders rounded and head bent, hands clasped behind his back
as he peered out into the night. Kirkwood dropped the traveling bag beneath
a chair the farthest removed from the doorway, and took to pacing the
floor.
In a corner of the room a tall grandfather’s clock ticked off ten
interminable minutes. For some reason unconscionably delaying, the landlady
did not reappear. Brentwick, abruptly turning from the window, remarked
the fact querulously, then drew a chair up to a marble-topped table in the
middle of the floor.
“My dear,” he requested the girl, “will you oblige me by sitting over here?
And Philip, bring up a chair, if you will. We must not permit ourselves to
worry, and I have something here which may, perhaps, engage your interest
for a while.”
To humor him and alleviate his evident distress of mind, they acceded.
Kirkwood found himself seated opposite Dorothy, Brentwick between them.
After some hesitation, made the more notable by an air of uneasiness
which sat oddly on his shoulders, whose composure and confident mien had
theretofore been so complete and so reassuring, the elder gentleman fumbled
in an inner coat-pocket and brought to light a small black leather wallet.
He seemed to be on the point of opening it when hurried footfalls sounded
in the hallway. Brentwick placed the wallet, still with its secret intact,
on the table before him, as Charles burst unceremoniously in, leaving the
door wide open.
“Mr. Brentwick, sir!” he cried gustily. “That other car—”
With a smothered ejaculation Kirkwood leaped to his feet, tugging at the
weapon in his pocket. In another instant he had the revolver exposed.
The girl’s cry of alarm, interrupting the machinist, fixed Brentwick’s
attention on the young man. He, too, stood up, reaching over very quickly,
to clamp strong supple fingers round Kirkwood’s wrist, while with the other
hand he laid hold of the revolver and by a single twist wrenched it away.
Kirkwood turned upon him in fury. “So!” he cried, shaking with passion.
“This is what your hospitality meant! You’re going to—”
“My dear young friend,” interrupted Brentwick with a flash of impatience,
“remember that if I had designed to betray you, I could have asked no
better opportunity than when you were my guest under my own roof.”
“But—hang it all, Brentwick!” expostulated Kirkwood, ashamed and contrite,
but worked upon by desperate apprehension; “I didn’t mean that, but—”
“Would you have bullets flying when she is near?” demanded Brentwick
scathingly. Hastily he slipped the revolver upon a little shelf beneath the
table-top. “Sir!” he informed Kirkwood with some heat, “I love you as my
own son, but you’re a young fool!… as I have been, in my time … and as
I would to Heaven I might be again! Be advised, Philip,—be calm. Can’t you
see it’s the only way to save your treasure?”
“Hang the jewels!” retorted Kirkwood warmly. “What—”
“Sir, who said anything about the jewels?”
As Brentwick spoke, Calendar’s corpulent figure filled the doorway;
Stryker’s weather-worn features loomed over his shoulder, distorted in a
cheerful leer.
“As to the jewels,” announced the fat adventurer, “I’ve got a word to say,
if you put it to me that way.”
He paused on the threshold, partly for dramatic effect, partly for his own
satisfaction, his quick eyes darting from face to face of the four people
whom he had caught so unexpectedly. A shade of complacency colored his
expression, and he smiled evilly beneath the coarse short thatch of his
gray mustache. In his hand a revolver appeared, poised for immediate use if
there were need.
There was none. Brentwick, at his primal appearance, had dropped a
peremptory hand on Kirkwood’s shoulder, forcing the young man back to his
seat; at the same time he resumed his own. The girl had not stirred from
hers since the first alarm; she sat as if transfixed with terror, leaning
forward with her elbows on the table, her hands tightly clasped, her face,
a little blanched, turned to the door. But her scarlet lips were set and
firm with inflexible purpose, and her brown eyes met Calendar’s with a look
level and unflinching. Beyond this she gave no sign of recognition.
Nearest of the four to the adventurers was Charles, the mechanician, paused
in affrighted astonishment at sight of the revolver. Calendar, choosing to
advance suddenly, poked the muzzle of the weapon jocularly in the man’s
ribs. “Beat it, Four-eyes!” he snapped. “This is your cue to duck! Get out
of my way.”
The mechanician jumped as if shot, then hastily, retreated to the table,
his sallow features working beneath the goggle-mask which had excited the
fat adventurer’s scorn.
“Come right in, Cap’n,” Calendar threw over one shoulder; “come in, shut
the door and lock it. Let’s all be sociable, and have a nice quiet time.”
Stryker obeyed, with a derisive grimace for Kirkwood.
Calendar, advancing jauntily to a point within a yard of the table,
stopped, smiling affably down upon his prospective victims, and airily
twirling his revolver.
“Good evening, all!” he saluted them blandly. “Dorothy, my child,” with
assumed concern, “you’re looking a trifle upset; I’m afraid you’ve been
keeping late hours. Little girls must be careful, you know, or they lose
the bloom of roses in their cheeks…. Mr. Kirkwood, it’s a pleasure to
meet you again! Permit me to paraphrase your most sound advice, and remind
you that pistol-shots are apt to attract undesirable attention. It wouldn’t
be wise for you to bring the police about our ears. I believe that
in substance such was your sapient counsel to me in the cabin of the
Alethea; was it not?… And you, sir!”—fixing Brentwick with a cold
unfriendly eye. “You animated fossil, what d’you mean by telling me to go
to the devil?… But let that pass; I hold no grudge. What might your name
be?”
[Illustration: “Good evening, all!” he saluted them blandly.]
“It might be Brentwick,” said that gentleman placidly.
“Brentwick, eh? Well, I like a man of spirit. But permit me to advise
you—”
“Gladly,” nodded Brentwick.
“Eh?… Don’t come a second time between father and daughter; another man
might not be as patient as I, Mister Brentwick. There’s a law in the land,
if you don’t happen to know it.”
“I congratulate you on your success in evading it,” observed Brentwick,
undisturbed. “And it was considerate of you not to employ it in this
instance.” Then, with a sharp change of tone, “Come, sir!” he demanded.
“You have unwarrantably intruded in this room, which I have engaged for my
private use. Get through with your business and be off with you.”
“All in my good time, my antediluvian friend. When I’ve wound up my
business here I’ll go—not before. But, just to oblige you, we’ll get down
to it…. Kirkwood, you have a revolver of mine. Be good enough to return
it.”
“I have it here,—under the table,” interrupted Brentwick suavely. “Shall I
hand it to you?”
“By the muzzle, if you please. Be very careful; this one’s loaded, too—apt
to explode any minute.”
To Kirkwood’s intense disgust Brentwick quietly slipped one hand beneath
the table and, placing the revolver on its top, delicately with his
finger-tips shoved it toward the farther edge. With a grunt of approval,
Calendar swept the weapon up and into his pocket.
“Any more ordnance?” he inquired briskly, eyes moving alertly from face to
face. “No matter; you wouldn’t dare use ‘em anyway. And I’m about done.
Dorothy, my dear, it’s high time you returned to your father’s protection.
Where’s that gladstone bag?”
“In my traveling bag,” the girl told him in a toneless voice.
“Then you may bring it along. You may also say good night to the kind
gentlemen.”
Dorothy did not move; her pallor grew more intense and Kirkwood saw her
knuckles tighten beneath the gloves. Otherwise her mouth seemed to grow
more straight and hard.
“Dorothy!” cried the adventurer with a touch of displeasure. “You heard
me?”
“I heard you,” she replied a little wearily, more than a little
contemptuously. “Don’t mind him, please, Mr. Kirkwood!”—with an appealing
gesture, as Kirkwood, unable to contain himself, moved restlessly in his
chair, threatening to rise. “Don’t say anything. I have no intention
whatever of going with this man.”
Calendar’s features twitched nervously; he chewed a corner of his mustache,
fixing the girl with a black stare. “I presume,” he remarked after a
moment, with slow deliberation, “you’re aware that, as your father, I am in
a position to compel you to accompany me.”
“I shall not go with you,” iterated Dorothy in a level tone. “You may
threaten me, but—I shall not go. Mr. Brentwick and Mr. Kirkwood are taking
me to—friends, who will give me a home until I can find a way to take care
of myself. That is all I have to say to you.”
“Bravo, my dear!” cried Brentwick encouragingly.
“Mind your business, sir!” thundered Calendar, his face
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