The Black Bag Part 22

"Strangely enough, he had not been gone ten minutes when my son came in from a conference with our solicitors, informing me that at last a memorandum had turned up, indicating that the heirlooms would be found in a safe secreted behind a dresser in Colonel Burgoyne's bedroom."

"At Number 9, Frognall Street."

"Yes.... I proposed going there at once, but it was late and we were dining at the Pless with an acquaintance, a Mr. Mulready, whom I now recall as a former intimate of George Calendar. To our surprise we saw Calendar and his daughter at a table not far from ours. Mr. Mulready betrayed some agitation at the sight of Calendar, and told me that Scotland Yard had a man out with a warrant for Calendar's arrest, on old charges. For old sake's sake, Mr.

Mulready begged me to give Calendar a word of warning. I did so--foolishly, it seems: Calendar was at that moment planning to rob us, Mulready aiding and abetting him."

The woman paused before Kirkwood, looking down upon him. "And so," she concluded, "we have been tricked and swindled. I can scarcely believe it of Dorothy Calendar."

"I, for one, don't believe it." Kirkwood spoke quietly, rising. "Whatever the culpability of Calendar and Mulready, Dorothy was only their hoodwinked tool."

"But, Mr. Kirkwood, she must have known the jewels were not hers."

"Yes," he a.s.sented pa.s.sively, but wholly unconvinced.

"And what," she demanded with a gesture of exasperation, "what would you advise?"

"Scotland Yard," he told her bluntly.

"But it's a family secret! It must not appear in the papers. Don't you understand--George Calendar is my husband's cousin!"

"I can think of nothing else, unless you pursue them in person."

"But--whither?"

"That remains to be discovered; I can tell you nothing more than I have....

May I thank you for your hospitality, express my regrets that I should unwittingly have been made the agent of this disaster, and wish you good night--or, rather, good morning, Mrs. Hallam?"

For a moment she held him under a calculating glance which he withstood with graceless fort.i.tude. Then, realizing that he was determined not by any means to be won to her cause, she gave him her hand, with a commonplace wish that he might find his affairs in better order than seemed probable; and rang for Eccles.

The butler showed him out.

He took away with him two strong impressions; the one visual, of a strikingly handsome woman in a wonderful gown, standing under the red glow of a reading-lamp, in an att.i.tude of intense mental concentration, her expression plainly indicative of a train of thought not guiltless of vindictiveness; the other, more mental but as real, he presently voiced to the huge bronze lions brooding over desolate Trafalgar Square.

"Well," appreciated Mr. Kirkwood with gusto, "_she's_ got Ananias and Sapphira talked to a standstill, all right!" He ruminated over this for a moment. "Calendar can lie some, too; but hardly with her picturesque touch.... Uncommon ingenious, _I_ call it. All the same, there were only about a dozen bits of tiling that didn't fit into her mosaic a little bit.... I think they're all tarred with the same stick--all but the girl.

And there's something afoot a long sight more devilish and crafty than that shilling-shocker of madam's.... Dorothy Calendar's got about as much active part in it as I have. I'm only from California, but they've got to show me, before I'll believe a word against her. Those infernal scoundrels!...Somebody's got to be on the girl's side and I seem to have drawn the lucky straw.... Good Heavens! is it possible for a grown man to fall heels over head in love in two short hours? I don't believe it. It's just interest--nothing more.... And I'll have to have a change of clothes before I can do anything further."

He bowed gratefully to the lions, in view of their tolerant interest in his soliloquy, and set off very suddenly round the square and up St. Martin's Lane, striking across town as directly as might be for St. Pancras Station.

It would undoubtedly be a long walk, but cabs were prohibited by his straitened means, and the busses were all abed and wouldn't be astir for hours.

He strode along rapidly, finding his way more through intuition than by observation or familiarity with London's geography--indeed, was scarce aware of his surroundings; for his brain was big with fine imagery, rapt in a glowing dream of knighterrantry and chivalric deeds.

Thus is it ever and alway with those who in the purity of young hearts rush in where angels fear to tread; if these, Kirkwood and his ilk, be fools, thank G.o.d for them, for with such foolishness is life savored and made sweet and sound! To Kirkwood the warp of the world and the woof of it was Romance, and it wrapped him round, a magic mantle to set him apart from all things mean and sordid and render him impregnable and invisible to the haunting Shade of Care.

Which, by the same token, presently lost track of him entirely, and wandered off to find and bedevil some other poor devil. And Kirkwood, his eyes like his spirit elevated, saw that the clouds of night were breaking, the skies clearing, that the East pulsed ever more strongly with the dim golden promise of the day to come. And this he chose to take for an omen--prematurely, it may be.

IX

AGAIN "BELOW BRIDGE"; AND BEYOND

Kirkwood wasted little time, who had not much to waste, were he to do that upon whose doing he had set his heart. It irked him sore to have to lose the invaluable moments demanded by certain imperative arrangements, but his haste was such that all was consummated within an hour.

Within the period of a single hour, then, he had ransomed his luggage at St. Pancras, caused it to be loaded upon a four-wheeler and transferred to a neighboring hotel of evil flavor but moderate tariff, where he engaged a room for a week, ordered an immediate breakfast, and retired with his belongings to his room; he had shaved and changed his clothes, selecting a serviceable suit of heavy tweeds, stout shoes, a fore-and-aft cap and a negligee shirt of a deep shade calculated at least to seem clean for a long time; finally, he had devoured his bacon and eggs, gulped down his coffee and burned his mouth, and, armed with a stout stick, set off hotfoot in the still dim glimmering of early day.

By this time his cash capital had dwindled to the sum of two pounds, ten shillings, eight-pence, and would have been much less had he paid for his lodging in advance. But he considered his trunks ample security for the bill, and dared not wait the hour when shopkeepers begin to take down shutters and it becomes possible to realize upon one's jewelry. Besides which, he had never before been called upon to consider the advisability of raising money by pledging personal property, and was in considerable doubt as to the right course of procedure in such emergency.

At King's Cross Station on the Underground an acute disappointment awaited him; there, likewise, he learned something about London. A sympathetic bobby informed him that no trains would be running until after five-thirty, and that, furthermore, no busses would begin to ply until half after seven.

"It's tramp it or cab it, then," mused the young man mournfully, his longing gaze seeking a nearby cab-rank--just then occupied by a solitary hansom, driver somnolent on the box. "Officer," he again addressed the policeman, mindful of the English axiom: "When in doubt, ask a bobby."--"Officer, when's high-tide this morning?"

The bobby produced a well-worn pocket-almanac, moistened a ma.s.sive thumb, and rippled the pages.

"London Bridge, 'igh tide twenty minutes arfter six, sir," he announced with a glow of satisfaction wholly pardonable in one who combines the functions of perambulating almanac, guide-book, encyclopedia, and conserver of the peace.

Kirkwood said something beneath his breath--a word in itself a comfortable mouthful and wholesome and emphatic. He glanced again at the cab and groaned: "O Lord, I just da.s.sent!" With which, thanking the bureau of information, he set off at a quick step down Grey's Inn Road.

The day had closed down in brilliance upon the city--and the voice of the milkman was to be heard in the land--when he trudged, still briskly if a trifle wearily, into Holborn, and held on eastward across the Viaduct and down Newgate Street; the while addling his weary wits with heart-sickening computations of minutes, all going hopelessly to prove that he would be late, far too late even presupposing the unlikely. The unlikely, be it known, was that the _Alethea_ would not attempt to sail before the turn of the tide.

For this was his mission, to find the _Alethea_ before she sailed.

Incredible as it may appear, at five o'clock, or maybe earlier, on the morning of the twenty-second of April, 1906, A.D., Philip Kirkwood, normally a commonplace but likable young American in full possession of his senses, might have been seen (and by some was seen) plodding manfully through Cheapside, London, England, engaged upon a quest as mad, forlorn, and gallant as any whose chronicle ever inspired the pen of a Malory or a Froissart. In brief he proposed to lend his arm and courage to be the shield and buckler of one who might or might not be a damsel in distress; according as to whether Mrs. Hallam had spoken soothly of Dorothy Calendar, or Kirkwood's own admirable faith in the girl were justified of itself.

Proceeding upon the working hypothesis that Mrs. Hallam was a polished liar in most respects, but had told the truth, so far as concerned her statement to the effect that the gladstone bag contained valuable real property (whose ownership remained a moot question, though Kirkwood was definitely committed to the belief that it was none of Mrs. Hallam's or her son's): he reasoned that the two adventurers, with Dorothy and their booty, would attempt to leave London by a water route, in the ship, _Alethea_, whose name had fallen from their lips at Bermondsey Old Stairs.

Kirkwood's initial task, then, would be to find the needle in the haystack--the metaphor is poor: more properly, to sort out from the hundreds of vessels, of all descriptions, at anchor in midstream, moored to the wharves of 'long-sh.o.r.e warehouses, or in the gigantic docks that line the Thames, that one called _Alethea_; of which he was so deeply mired in ignorance that he could not say whether she were tramp-steamer, coastwise pa.s.senger boat, one of the liners that ply between Tilbury and all the world, Channel ferry-boat, private yacht (steam or sail), schooner, four-master, square-rigger, barque or brigantine.

A task to stagger the optimism of any but one equipped with the sublime impudence of Youth! Even Kirkwood was disturbed by some little awe when he contemplated the vast proportions of his undertaking. None the less doggedly he plugged ahead, and tried to keep his mind from vain surmises as to what would be his portion when eventually he should find himself a pa.s.senger, uninvited and unwelcome, upon the _Alethea_....

London had turned over once or twice, and was pulling the bedclothes over its head and grumbling about getting up, but the city was still sound asleep when at length he paused for a minute's rest in front of the Mansion House, and realized with a pang of despair that he was completely tuckered out. There was a dull, vague throbbing in his head; weights pressed upon his eyeb.a.l.l.s until they ached; his mouth was hot and tasted of yesterday's tobacco; his feet were numb and heavy; his joints were stiff; he yawned frequently.

With a sigh he surrendered to the flesh's frailty. An early cabby, cruising up from Cannon Street station on the off-chance of finding some one astir in the city, aside from the doves and sparrows, suffered the surprise of his life when Kirkwood hailed him. His face was blank with amazement when he reined in, and his eyes bulged when the prospective fare, on impulse, explained his urgent needs. Happily he turned out a fair representative of his cla.s.s, an intelligent and unfuddled cabby.

"Jump in, sir," he told Kirkwood cheerfully, as soon as he had a.s.similated the latter's demands. "I knows precisely wotcher wants. Leave it all to me."

The admonition was all but superfluous; Kirkwood was unable, for the time being, to do aught else than resign his fate into another's guidance. Once in the cab he slipped insensibly into a nap, and slept soundly on, as reckless of the cab's swift pace and continuous jouncing as of the sunlight glaring full in his tired young face.

He may have slept twenty minutes; he awoke faint with drowsiness, tingling from head to toe from fatigue, and in distress of a queer qualm in the pit of his stomach, to find the hansom at rest and the driver on the step, shaking his fare with kindly determination. "Oh, a' right," he a.s.sented surlily, and by sheer force of will made himself climb out to the sidewalk; where, having rubbed his eyes, stretched enormously and yawned discourteously in the face of the East End, he was once more himself and a hundred times refreshed into the bargain. Contentedly he counted three shillings into the cabby's palm--the fare named being one-and-six.

"The shilling over and above the tip's for finding me the waterman and boat," he stipulated.

"Right-o. You'll mind the 'orse a minute, sir?"

Kirkwood nodded. The man touched his hat and disappeared inexplicably.

Kirkwood, needlessly attaching himself to the reins near the animal's head, pried his sense of observation open and became alive to the fact that he stood in a quarter of London as strange to him as had been Bermondsey Wall.

To this day he can not put a name to it; he surmises that it was Wapping.