The Black Bag Part 15

"Why, my dear friend," Calendar was taunting him, "you don't seem overjoyed to see me, for all your wild anxiety! 'Pon my word, you act as if you hadn't expected me--and our engagement so clearly understood, at that! ...

Why, you fool!"--here the mask of irony was cast. "Did you think for a moment I'd let myself be nabbed by that yap from Scotland Yard? Were you banking on that? I give you my faith I ambled out under his very nose! ...

Dorothy, my dear," turning impatiently from Mulready, "where's that bag?"

The girl withdrew a puzzled gaze from Mulready's face, (it was apparent to Kirkwood that this phase of the affair was no more enigmatic to him than to her), and drew aside a corner of her cloak, disclosing the gladstone bag, securely grasped in one gloved hand.

"I have it, thanks to Mr. Kirkwood," she said quietly.

Kirkwood chose that moment to advance from the shadow. Mulready started and fixed him with a troubled and unfriendly stare. The girl greeted him with a note of sincere pleasure in her surprise.

"Why, Mr. Kirkwood! ... But I left you at Mrs. Hallam's!"

Kirkwood bowed, smiling openly at Mulready's discomfiture.

"By your father's grace, I came with him," he said. "You ran away without saying good night, you know, and I'm a jealous creditor."

She laughed excitedly, turning to Calendar. "But _you_ were to meet me at Mrs. Hallam's?"

"Mulready was good enough to try to save me the trouble, my dear. He's an unselfish soul, Mulready. Fortunately it happened that I came along not five minutes after he'd carried you off. How was that, Dorothy?"

Her glance wavered uneasily between the two, Mulready and her father. The former, shrugging to declare his indifference, turned his back squarely upon them. She frowned.

"He came out of Mrs. Hallam's and got into the four-wheeler, saying you had sent him to take your place, and would join us on the _Alethea_."

"So-o! How about it, Mulready?"

The man swung back slowly. "What you choose to think," he said after a deliberate pause.

"Well, never mind! We'll go over the matter at our leisure on the _Alethea_."

There was in the adventurer's tone a menace, bitter and not to be ignored; which Mulready saw fit to challenge.

"I think not," he declared; "I think not. I'm weary of your addle-pated suspicions. It'd be plain to any one but a fool that I acted for the best interests of all concerned in this matter. If you're not content to see it in that light, I'm done."

"Oh, if you want to put it that way, I'm _not_ content, Mr. Mulready,"

retorted Calendar dangerously.

"Please yourself. I bid you good evening and--good-by." The man took a step toward the stairs.

Calendar dropped his right hand into his top-coat pocket. "Just a minute,"

he said sweetly, and Mulready stopped. Abruptly the fat adventurer's smoldering resentment leaped in flame. "That'll be about all, Mr. Mulready!

'Bout face, you hound, and get into that boat! D'you think I'll temporize with you till Doomsday? Then forget it. You're wrong, dead wrong. Your bluff's called, and"--with an evil chuckle--"I hold a full house, Mulready,--every chamber taken." He lifted meaningly the hand in the coat pocket. "Now, in with you."

With a grin and a swagger of pure bravado Mulready turned and obeyed.

Unnoticed of any, save perhaps Calendar himself, the boat had drawn in at the stage a moment earlier. Mulready dropped into it and threw himself sullenly upon the midships thwart.

"Now, Dorothy, in you go, my dear," continued Calendar, with a self-satisfied wag of his head.

Half dazed, to all seeming, she moved toward the boat. With clumsy and a.s.sertive gallantry her father stepped before her, offering his hand,--his hand which she did not touch; for, in the act of descending, she remembered and swung impulsively back to Kirkwood.

"Good night, Mr. Kirkwood; good night,--I shan't forget."

He took her hand and bowed above it; but when his head was lifted, he still retained her fingers in a lingering clasp.

"Good night," he said reluctantly.

The cra.s.s incongruity of her in that setting smote him with renewed force.

Young, beautiful, dainty, brilliant and graceful in her pretty evening gown, she figured strangely against the gloomy background of the river, in those dull and mean surroundings of dank stone and rusted iron. She was like (he thought extravagantly) a whiff of flower-fragrance lost in the miasmatic vapors of a slough.

The innocent appeal and allure of her face, upturned to his beneath the gas-light, wrought compa.s.sionately upon his sensitive and generous heart.

He was aware of a little surge of blind rage against the conditions that had brought her to that spot, and against those whom he held responsible for those conditions.

In a sudden flush of daring he turned and nodded coolly to Calendar. "With your permission," he said negligently; and drew the girl aside to the angle of the stairway.

"Miss Calendar--" he began; but was interrupted.

"Here--I say!"

Calendar had started toward him angrily.

Kirkwood calmly waved him back. "I want a word in private with your daughter, Mr. Calendar," he announced with quiet dignity. "I don't think you'll deny me? I've saved you some slight trouble to-night."

Disgruntled, the adventurer paused. "Oh--_all_ right," he grumbled. "I don't see what ..." He returned to the boat.

"Forgive me, Miss Calendar," continued Kirkwood nervously. "I know I've no right to interfere, but--"

"Yes, Mr. Kirkwood?"

"--but hasn't this gone far enough?" he floundered unhappily. "I can't like the look of things. Are you sure--sure that it's all right--with you, I mean?"

She did not answer at once; but her eyes were kind and sympathetic. He plucked heart of their tolerance.

"It isn't too late, yet," he argued. "Let me take you to your friends,--you must have friends in the city. But this--this midnight flight down the Thames, this atmosphere of stealth and suspicion, this--"

"But my place is with my father, Mr. Kirkwood," she interposed. "I daren't doubt him--dare I?"

"I ... suppose not."

"So I must go with him.... I'm glad--thank you for caring, dear Mr.

Kirkwood. And again, good night."

"Good luck attend you," he muttered, following her to the boat.

Calendar helped her in and turned back to Kirkwood with a look of arch triumph; Kirkwood wondered if he had overheard. Whether or no, he could afford to be magnanimous. Seizing Kirkwood's hand, he pumped it vigorously.

"My dear boy, you've been an angel in disguise! And I guess you think me the devil in masquerade." He chuckled, in high conceit with himself over the turn of affairs. "Good night and--and fare thee well!" He dropped into the boat, seating himself to face the recalcitrant Mulready. "Cast off, there!"

The boat dropped away, the oars lifting and falling. With a weariful sense of loneliness and disappointment, Kirkwood hung over the rail to watch them out of sight.

A dozen feet of water lay between the stage and the boat. The girl's dress remained a spot of cheerful color; her face was a blur. As the watermen swung the bows down-stream, she looked back, lifting an arm spectral in its white sheath. Kirkwood raised his hat.