The Black Bag, Louis Joseph Vance [some good books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Louis Joseph Vance
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with a modest gratuity, the man had gone his way, and Kirkwood turned again
to the girl, she had withdrawn her attention for the time.
Unconscious of his bold regard, she was dreaming, her thoughts at
loose-ends, her eyes studying the incalculable depths of blue-black night
that swirled and eddied beyond the window-glass. The most shadowy of smiles
touched her lips, the faintest shade of deepened color rested on her
cheeks…. She was thinking of—him? As long as he dared, the young man,
his heart in his own eyes, watched her greedily, taking a miser’s joy of
her youthful beauty, striving with all his soul to analyze the enigma of
that most inscrutable smile.
It baffled him. He could not say of what she thought; and told himself
bitterly that it was not for him, a pauper, to presume a place in her
meditations. He must not forget his circumstances, nor let her tolerance
render him oblivious to his place, which must be a servant’s, not a
lover’s.
The better to convince himself of this, he plunged desperately into
a forlorn attempt to make head or tail of Belgian railway schedule,
complicated as these of necessity are by the alternation from normal
time notation to the abnormal system sanctioned by the government, and
vice-versa, with every train that crosses a boundary line of the state.
So preoccupied did he become in this pursuit that he was subconsciously
impressed that the girl had spoken twice, ere he could detach his interest
from the exasperatingly inconclusive and incoherent cohorts of ranked
figures.
“Can’t you find out anything?” Dorothy was asking.
“Precious little,” he grumbled. “I’d give my head for a Bradshaw! Only it
wouldn’t be a fair exchange…. There seems to be an express for
Bruges leaving the Gare du Nord, Brussels, at fifty-five minutes after
twenty-three o’clock; and if I’m not mistaken, that’s the latest train out
of Brussels and the earliest we can catch,… if we can catch it. I’ve
never been in Brussels, and Heaven only knows how long it would take us to
cab it from the Gare du Midi to the Nord.”
In this statement, however, Mr. Kirkwood was fortunately mistaken; not
only Heaven, it appeared, had cognizance of the distance between the two
stations. While Kirkwood was still debating the question, with pessimistic
tendencies, the friendly guard had occasion to pass through the coach; and,
being tapped, yielded the desired information with entire tractability.
It would be a cab-ride of perhaps ten minutes. Monsieur, however, would
serve himself well if he offered the driver an advance tip as an incentive
to speedy driving. Why? Why because (here the guard consulted his watch;
and Kirkwood very keenly regretted the loss of his own)—because this
train, announced to arrive in Brussels some twenty minutes prior to the
departure of that other, was already late. But yes—a matter of some ten
minutes. Could that not be made up? Ah, Monsieur, but who should say?
The guard departed, doubtless with private views as to the madness of all
English-speaking travelers.
“And there we are!” commented Kirkwood in factitious resignation. “If we’re
obliged to stop overnight in Brussels, our friends will be on our back
before we can get out in the morning, if they have to come by motor-car.”
He reflected bitterly on the fact that with but a little more money at
his disposal, he too could hire a motor-car and cry defiance to their
persecutors. “However,” he amended, with rising spirits, “so much the
better our chance of losing Mr. Hobbs. We must be ready to drop off the
instant the train stops.”
He began to unfold another time-table, threatening again to lose himself
completely; and was thrown into the utmost confusion by the touch of
the girl’s hand, in appeal placed lightly on his own. And had she been
observant, she might have seen a second time his knuckles whiten beneath
the skin as he asserted his self-control—though this time not over his
temper.
His eyes, dumbly eloquent, turned to meet hers. She was smiling.
“Please!” she iterated, with the least imperative pressure on his hand,
pushing the folder aside.
“I beg pardon?” he muttered blankly.
“Is it quite necessary, now, to study those schedules? Haven’t you decided
to try for the Bruges express?”
“Why yes, but—”
“Then please don’t leave me to my thoughts all the time, Mr. Kirkwood.”
There was a tremor of laughter in her voice, but her eyes were grave and
earnest. “I’m very weary of thinking round in a circle—and that,” she
concluded, with a nervous little laugh, “is all I’ve had to do for days!”
“I’m afraid I’m very stupid,” he humored her. “This is the second time, you
know, in the course of a very brief acquaintance, that you have found it
necessary to remind me to talk to you.”
“Oh-h!” She brightened. “That night, at the Pless? But that was ages
ago!”
“It seems so,” he admitted.
“So much has happened!”
“Yes,” he assented vaguely.
She watched him, a little piqued by his absentminded mood, for a moment;
then, and not without a trace of malice: “Must I tell you again what to
talk about?” she asked.
“Forgive me. I was thinking about, if not talking to, you…. I’ve been
wondering just why it was that you left the Alethea at Queensborough, to
go on by steamer.”
And immediately he was sorry that his tactless query had swung the
conversation to bear upon her father, the thought of whom could not but
prove painful to her. But it was too late to mend matters; already her
evanescent flush of amusement had given place to remembrance.
“It was on my father’s account,” she told him in a steady voice, but with
averted eyes; “he is a very poor sailor, and the promise of a rough passage
terrified him. I believe there was a difference of opinion about it, he
disputing with Mr. Mulready and Captain Stryker. That was just after we had
left the anchorage. They both insisted that it was safer to continue by
the Alethea, but he wouldn’t listen to them, and in the end had his way.
Captain Stryker ran the brigantine into the mouth of the Medway and put us
ashore just in time to catch the steamer.”
“Were you sorry for the change?”
“I?” She shuddered slightly. “Hardly! I think I hated the ship from the
moment I set foot on board her. It was a dreadful place; it was all
night-marish, that night, but it seemed most terrible on the Alethea with
Captain Stryker and that abominable Mr. Hobbs. I think that my unhappiness
had as much to do with my father’s insistence on the change, as anything.
He … he was very thoughtful, most of the time.”
Kirkwood shut his teeth on what he knew of the blackguard.
“I don’t know why,” she continued, wholly without affectation, “but I was
wretched from the moment you left me in the cab, to wait while you went in
to see Mrs. Hallam. And when we left you, at Bermondsey Old Stairs, after
what you had said to me, I felt—I hardly know what to say—abandoned, in a
way.”
“But you were with your father, in his care—”
“I know, but I was getting confused. Until then the excitement had kept me
from thinking. But you made me think. I began to wonder, to question …
But what could I do?” She signified her helplessness with a quick and
dainty movement of her hands. “He is my father; and I’m not yet of age, you
know.”
“I thought so,” he confessed, troubled. “It’s very inconsiderate of you,
you must admit.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Because of the legal complication. I’ve no doubt your father can ‘have
the law on me’”—Kirkwood laughed uneasily—“for taking you from his
protection.”
“Protection!” she echoed warmly. “If you call it that!”
“Kidnapping,” he said thoughtfully: “I presume that’d be the charge.”
“Oh!” She laughed the notion to scorn. “Besides, they must catch us first,
mustn’t they?”
“Of course; and”—with a simulation of confidence sadly deceitful—“they
shan’t, Mr. Hobbs to the contrary notwithstanding.”
“You make me share your confidence, against my better judgment.”
“I wish your better judgment would counsel you to share your confidence
with me,” he caught her up. “If you would only tell me what it’s all about,
as far as you know, I’d be better able to figure out what we ought to do.”
Briefly the girl sat silent, staring before her with sweet somber eyes.
Then, “In the very beginning,” she told him with a conscious laugh,—“this
sounds very story-bookish, I know—in the very beginning, George Burgoyne
Calendar, an American, married his cousin a dozen times removed, and an
Englishwoman, Alice Burgoyne Hallam.”
“Hallam!”
“Wait, please.” She sat up, bending forward and frowning down upon her
interlacing, gloved fingers; she was finding it difficult to say what she
must. Kirkwood, watching hungrily the fair drooping head, the flawless
profile clear and radiant against the night-blackened window, saw hot
signals of shame burning on her cheek and throat and forehead.
“But never mind,” he began awkwardly.
“No,” she told him with decision. “Please let me go on….” She continued,
stumbling, trusting to his sympathy to bridge the gaps in her narrative.
“My father … There was trouble of some sort…. At all events, he
disappeared when I was a baby. My mother … died. I was brought up in
the home of my great-uncle, Colonel George Burgoyne, of the Indian
Army—retired. My mother had been his favorite niece, they say; I presume
that was why he cared for me. I grew up in his home in Cornwall; it was my
home, just as he was my father in everything but fact.
“A year ago he died, leaving me everything,—the town house in Frognall
Street, his estate in Cornwall: everything was willed to me on condition
that I must never live with my father, nor in any way contribute to his
support. If I disobeyed, the entire estate without reserve was to go to his
nearest of kin…. Colonel Burgoyne was unmarried and had no children.”
The girl paused, lifting to Kirkwood’s face her eyes, clear, fearless,
truthful. “I never was given to understand that there was anybody who might
have inherited, other than myself,” she declared.
“I see…”
“Last week I received a letter, signed with my father’s name, begging me to
appoint an interview with him in London. I did so,—guess how gladly! I was
alone in the world, and he, my father, whom I had never thought to see….
We met at his hotel, the Pless. He wanted me to come and live with
him,—said that he was growing old and lonely and needed a daughter’s love
and care. He told me that he had made a fortune in America and was amply
able to provide for us both. As for my inheritance, he persuaded me that it
was by rights the property of Frederick Hallam, Mrs. Hallam’s son.”
“I have met the young gentleman,” interpolated Kirkwood.
“His name was new to me, but my father assured me that he was the next of
kin mentioned in Colonel Burgoyne’s will, and convinced me that I had no
real right to the property…. After all, he was my father; I agreed; I
could not bear the thought of wronging anybody. I was to give up everything
but my mother’s jewels. It seems,—my father said,—I don’t—I can’t
believe it now—”
She choked on a little, dry sob. It was some time
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