The Black Bag Part 24

"There's no hope, I suppose?"

The elder waterman shook his head. "'Carn't sye.... Might be round--nex'

bend--might be--pa.s.sin' Purfleet.... 'Point is--me an' young Wilyum 'ere--carn't do no more--'n we 'as. We be wore out."

"Yes," Kirkwood a.s.sented, disconsolate, "You've certainly earned your pay."

Then hope revived; he was very young in heart, you know. "Can't you suggest something? I've _got_ to catch that ship!"

Old Bob wagged his head in slow negation; young William lifted his.

"There's a rylewye runs by Woolwich," he ventured. "Yer might tyke tryne an' go to Sheerness, sir. Yer'd be positive o' pa.s.sin' 'er if she didn't syle afore 'igh-tide. 'Ire a boat at Sheerness an' put out an' look for 'er."

"How far's Woolwich?" Kirkwood demanded instantly.

"Mile," said the elder man. "Tyke yer for five-bob extry."

"Done!"

Young William dashed the sweat from his eyes, wiped his palms on his hips, and fitted the sweeps again to the wooden tholes. Old Bob was as ready.

With an inarticulate cry they gave way.

X

DESPERATE MEASURES

Old Bob seemed something inclined toward optimism, when the boat lay alongside a landing-stage at Woolwich, and Kirkwood had clambered ash.o.r.e.

"Yer'll mebbe myke it," the waterman told him with a weatherwise survey of the skies. "Wind's freshenin' from the east'rds, an' that'll 'old 'er back a bit, sir."

"Arsk th' wye to th' Dorkyard Styshun," young William volunteered. "'Tis th' shortest walk, sir. I 'opes yer catches 'er.... Thanky, sir."

He caught dextrously the sovereign which Kirkwood, in ungrudging liberality, spared them of his store of two. The American nodded acknowledgments and adieux, with a faded smile deprecating his chances of winning the race, sorely handicapped as he was. He was very, very tired, and in his heart suspected that he would fail. But, if he did, he would at least be able to comfort himself that it was not for lack of trying. He set his teeth on that covenant, in grim determination; either there was a strain of the bulldog latent in the Kirkwood breed or else his infatuation gripped him more strongly than he guessed.

Yet he suspected something of its power; he knew that this was altogether an insane proceeding, and that the lure that led him on was Dorothy Calendar. A strange dull light glowed in his weary eyes, on the thought of her. He'd go through fire and water in her service. She was costing him dear, perhaps was to cost him dearer still; and perhaps there'd be for his guerdon no more than a "Thank you, Mr. Kirkwood!" at the end of the pa.s.sage. But that would be no less than his deserts; he was not to forget that he was interfering unwarrantably; the girl was in her father's hands, surely safe enough there--to the casual mind. If her partnership in her parent's fortunes were distasteful, she endured it pa.s.sively, without complaint.

He decided that it was his duty to remind himself, from time to time, that his main interest must be in the game itself, in the solution of the riddle; whatever should befall, he must look for no reward for his gratuitous and self-appointed part. Indeed he was all but successful in persuading himself that it was the fascination of adventure alone that drew him on.

Whatever the lure, it was inexorable; instead of doing as a sensible person would have done--returning to London for a long rest in his hotel room, ere striving to retrieve his shattered fortunes--Philip Kirkwood turned up the village street, intent only to find the railway station and catch the first available train for Sheerness, were that an early one or a late.

A hapchance native whom he presently encountered, furnished minute directions for reaching the Dockyard Station of the Southeastern and Chatham Rail-way, adding comfortable information to the effect that the next east-bound train would pa.s.s through in ten minutes; if Kirkwood would mend his pace he could make it easily, with time to spare.

Kirkwood mended his pace accordingly, but, contrary to the prediction, had no time to spare at all. Even as he stormed the ticket-grating, the train was thundering in at the platform. Therefore a nervous ticket agent pa.s.sed him out a first-cla.s.s ticket instead of the third-cla.s.s he had asked for; and there was no time wherein to have the mistake rectified. Kirkwood planked down the fare, swore, and sprinted for the carriages.

The first compartment whose door he jerked violently open, proved to be occupied, and was, moreover, not a smoking-car. He received a fleeting impression of a woman's startled eyes, staring into his own through a thin mesh of veiling, fell off the running-board, slammed the door, and hurled himself to-wards the next compartment. Here happier fortune attended upon his desire; the box-like section was untenanted, and a notice blown upon the window-gla.s.s announced that it was "2nd Cla.s.s Smoking." Kirkwood promptly tumbled in; and when he turned to shut the door the coaches were moving.

A pipe helped him to bear up while the train was making its two other stops in the Borough of Woolwich: a circ.u.mstance so maddening to a man in a hurry, that it set Kirkwood's teeth on edge with sheer impatience, and made him long fervently for the land of his birth, where they do things differently--where the Board of Directors of a railway company doesn't erect three substantial pa.s.senger depots in the course of a mile and a half of overgrown village. It consoled him little that none disputed with him his lonely possession of the compartment, that he _had_ caught the Sheerness train, or that he was really losing no time; a sense of deep dejection had settled down upon his consciousness, with a realization of how completely a fool's errand was this of his. He felt foredoomed to failure; he was never to see Dorothy Calendar again; and his brain seemed numb with disappointment.

Rattling and swaying, the train left the town behind.

Presently he put aside his pipe and stared blankly out at a reeling landscape, the pleasant, homely, smiling countryside of Kent. A deeper melancholy tinted his mind: Dorothy Calendar was for ever lost to him.

The trucks drummed it out persistently--he thought, vindictively: "_Lost!... Lost!... For ever lost!..._"

And he had made--was then making--a d.a.m.ned fool of himself. The trucks had no need to din _that_ into his thick skull by their ceaseless iteration; he knew it, would not deny it....

And it was all his own fault. He'd had his chance, Calendar had offered him it. If only he had closed with the fat adventurer!...

Before his eyes field and coppice, hedge and homestead, stream and flowing highway, all blurred and ran streakily into one another, like a highly impressionistic water-color. He could make neither head nor tail of the flying views, and so far as coherent thought was concerned, he could not put two ideas together. Without understanding distinctly, he presently did a more wise and wholesome thing: which was to topple limply over on the cushions and fall fast asleep.

After a long time he seemed to realize rather hazily that the carriage-door had been opened to admit somebody. Its smart closing _bang_ shocked him awake. He sat up, blinking in confusion, hardly conscious of more, to begin with, than that the train had paused and was again in full flight. Then, his senses clearing, he became aware that his solitary companion, just entered, was a woman. She was seated over across from him, her back to the engine, in an att.i.tude which somehow suggested a highly nonchalant frame of mind. She laughed, and immediately her speaking voice was high and sweet in his hearing.

"Really, you know, Mr. Kirkwood, I simply couldn't contain my impatience another instant."

Kirkwood gasped and tried to re-collect his wits.

"Beg pardon--I've been asleep," he said stupidly.

"Yes. I'm sorry to have disturbed you, but, you know, you must make allowances for a woman's nerves."

Beneath his breath the bewildered man said: "The deuce!" and above it, in a stupefied tone: "Mrs. Hallam!"

She nodded in a not unfriendly fashion, smiling brightly. "Myself, Mr.

Kirkwood! Really, our predestined paths are badly tangled, just now; aren't they? Were you surprised to find me in here, with you? Come now, confess you were!"

He remarked the smooth, girlish freshness of her cheeks, the sense and humor of her mouth, the veiled gleam of excitement in her eyes of the changing sea; and saw, as well, that she was dressed for traveling, sensibly but with an air, and had brought a small hand-bag with her.

"Surprised and delighted," he replied, recovering, with mendacity so intentional and obvious that the woman laughed aloud.

"I knew you'd be!... You see, I had the carriage ahead, the one you didn't take. I was so disappointed when you flung up to the door and away again!

You didn't see me hanging half out the window, to watch where you went, did you? That's how I discovered that your discourtesy was unintentional, that you hadn't recognized me,--by the fact that you took this compartment, right behind my own."

She paused invitingly, but Kirkwood, grown wary, contented himself with picking up his pipe and carefully knocking out the dottle on the window-ledge.

"I was glad to see _you_," she affirmed; "but only partly because you were you, Mr. Kirkwood. The other and major part was because sight of you confirmed my own secret intuition. You see, I'm quite old enough and wise enough to question even my own intuitions."

"A woman wise enough for that is an adult prodigy," he ventured cautiously.

"It's experience and age. I insist upon the age; I the mother of a grown-up boy! So I deliberately ran after you, changing when we stopped at Newington. You might've escaped me if I had waited until We got to Queensborough."

Again she paused in open expectancy. Kirkwood, perplexed, put the pipe in his pocket, and a.s.sumed a fact.i.tious look of resignation, regarding her askance with that whimsical twist of his eyebrows.

"For you are going to Queensborough, aren't you, Mr. Kirkwood?"