The Black Bag Part 25

"Queensborough?" he echoed blankly; and, in fact, he was at a loss to follow her drift. "No, Mrs. Hallam; I'm not bound there."

Her surprise was apparent; she made no effort to conceal it. "But," she faltered, "if not there--"

"'Give you my word, Mrs. Hallam, I have no intention whatever of going to Queensborough," Kirkwood protested.

"I don't understand." The nervous drumming of a patent-leather covered toe, visible beneath the hem of her dress, alone betrayed a rising tide of impatience. "Then my intuition _was_ at fault!"

"In this instance, if it was at all concerned with my insignificant affairs, yes--most decidedly at fault."

She shook her head, regarding him with grave suspicion. "I hardly know: whether to believe you. I think...."

Kirkwood's countenance displayed an added shade of red. After a moment, "I mean no discourtesy," he began stiffly, "but--"

"But you don't care a farthing whether I believe you or not?"

He caught her laughing eye, and smiled, the flush subsiding.

"Very well, then! Now let us see: Where _are_ you bound?"

Kirkwood looked out of the window.

"I'm convinced it's a rendezvous...?"

Kirkwood smiled patiently at the landscape.

"Is Dorothy Calendar so very, very beautiful, Mr. Kirkwood?"--with a trace of malice.

Ostentatiously Kirkwood read the South Eastern and Chatham's framed card of warning, posted just above Mrs. Hallam's head, to all such incurable lunatics as are possessed of a desire to travel on the running-boards of railway carriages.

"You are going to meet her, aren't you?"

He gracefully concealed a yawn.

The woman's plan of attack took another form. "Last night, when you told me your story, I believed you."

He devoted himself to suppressing the temptingly obvious retort, and succeeded; but though he left it unspoken, the humor of it twitched the corners of his mouth; and Mrs. Hallam was observant. So that her next attempt to draw him out was edged with temper.

"I believed you an American but a gentleman; it appears that, if you ever were the latter, you've fallen so low that you willingly cast your lot with thieves."

Having exhausted his repertoire of rudenesses, Kirkwood took to twiddling his thumbs.

"I want to ask you if you think it fair to me or my son, to leave us in ignorance of the place where you are to meet the thieves who stole our--my son's jewels?"

"Mrs. Hallam," he said soberly, "if I am going to meet Mr. Calendar or Mr.

Mulready, I have no a.s.surance of that fact."

There was only the briefest of pauses, during which she a.n.a.lyzed this; then, quickly, "But you hope to?" she snapped.

He felt that the only adequate retort to this would be a shrug of his shoulders; doubted his ability to carry one off; and again took refuge in silence.

The woman abandoned a second plan of siege, with a readiness that did credit to her knowledge of mankind. She thought out the next very carefully, before opening with a masked battery.

"Mr. Kirkwood, can't we be friends--this aside?"

"Nothing could please me more, Mrs. Hallam!"

"I'm sorry if I've annoyed you--"

"And I, too, have been rude."

"Last night, when you cut away so suddenly, you prevented my making you a proposal, a sort of a business proposition...."

"Yes--?"

"To come over to our side--"

"I thought so. That was why I went."

"Yes; I understood. But this morning, when you've had time to think it over--?"

"I have no choice in the matter, Mrs. Hallam." The green eyes darkened ominously. "You mean--I am to understand, then, that you're against us, that you prefer to side with swindlers and scoundrels, all because of a--"

She discovered him eying her with a smile of such inscrutable and sardonic intelligence, that the words died on her lips, and she crimsoned, treasonably to herself. For he saw it; and the belief he had conceived while attending to her tissue of fabrication, earlier that morning, was strengthened to the point of conviction that, if anything had been stolen by anybody, Mrs. Hallam and her son owned it as little as Calendar.

As for the woman, she felt she had steadily lost, rather than gained, ground; and the flash of anger that had colored her cheeks, lit twin beacons in her eyes, which she resolutely fought down until they faded to mere gleams of resentment and determination. But she forgot to control her lips; and they are the truest indices to a woman's character and temperament; and Kirkwood did not overlook the circ.u.mstance that their specious sweetness had vanished, leaving them straight, set and hard, quite the reverse of attractive.

"So," she said slowly, after a silent time, "you are not for Queensborough!

The corollary of that _admission_, Mr. Kirkwood, is that you are for Sheerness."

"I believe," he replied wearily, "that there are no other stations on this line, after Newington."

"It follows, then, that--that I follow." And in answer to his perturbed glance, she added: "Oh, I'll grant that intuition is sometimes a poor guide. But if you meet George Calendar, so shall I. Nothing can prevent that. You can't hinder me."

Considerably amused, he chuckled. "Let us talk of other things, Mrs.

Hallam," he suggested pleasantly. "How is your son?"

At this juncture the brakes began to shriek and grind upon the wheels.

The train slowed; it stopped; and the voice of a guard could be heard admonishing pa.s.sengers for Queensborough Pier to alight and take the branch line. In the noise the woman's response was drowned, and Kirkwood was hardly enough concerned for poor Freddie to repeat his question.

When, after a little, the train pulled out of the junction, neither found reason to resume the conversation. During the brief balance of the journey Mrs. Hallam presumably had food for thought; she frowned, pursed her lips, and with one daintily gloved forefinger followed a seam of her tailored skirt; while Kirkwood sat watching and wondering how to rid himself of her, if she proved really as troublesome as she threatened to be.

Also, he wondered continually what it was all about. Why did Mrs. Hallam suspect him of designing to meet Calendar at Queensborough? Had she any tangible ground for believing that Calendar could be found in Queensborough? Presumably she had, since she was avowedly in pursuit of that gentleman, and, Kirkwood inferred, had booked for Queensborough.

Was he, then, running away from Calendar and his daughter to chase a will-o'-the-wisp of his credulous fancy, off Sheerness sh.o.r.e?

Disturbing reflection. He scowled over it, then considered the other side of the face. Presuming Mrs. Hallam to have had reasonably dependable a.s.surance that Calendar would stop in Queensborough, would she so readily have abandoned her design to catch him there, on the mere supposition that Kirkwood might be looking for him in Sheerness? That did not seem likely to one who esteemed Mrs. Hallam's ac.u.men as highly as Kirkwood did. He brightened up, forgot that his was a fool's errand, and began again to project strategic plans into a problematic future.

A sudden jolt interrupted this pastime, and the warning screech of the brakes informed that he had no time to scheme, but had best continue on the plan of action that had brought him thus far--that is, trust to his star and accept what should befall without repining.

He rose, opened the door, and holding it so, turned.