The Black Bag Part 36

The adventurer plucked up spirit, deluded by Kirkwood's pacific tone. "I wonder at you, Mr. Kirkwood," he retorted. "It was good of you to save my life and--"

"I'm not so sure of that! Perhaps it had been more humane--"

Calendar owned the touch with a wry grimace. "But I'm d.a.m.ned if I understand this high-handed att.i.tude of yours!" he concluded heatedly.

"Don't you?" Kirkwood's humor became less apparent, the smile sobering.

"You will," he told the man, adding abruptly: "Calendar, where's your daughter?"

The restless eyes sought the companionway.

"Dorothy," the man lied spontaneously, without a tremor, "is with friends in England. Why? Did you want to see her?"

"I rather expected to."

"Well, I thought it best to leave her home, after all."

"I'm glad to hear she's in safe hands," commented Kirkwood.

The adventurer's glance a.n.a.lyzed his face. "Ah," he said slowly, "I see.

You followed me on Dorothy's account, Mr. Kirkwood?"

"Partly; partly on my own. Let me put it to you fairly. When you forced yourself upon me, back there in London, you offered me some sort of employment; when I rejected it, you used me to your advantage for the furtherance of your purposes (which I confess I don't understand), and made me miss my steamer. Naturally, when I found myself penniless and friendless in a strange country, I thought again of your offer; and tried to find you, to accept it."

"Despite the fact that you're an honest man, Kirkwood?" The fat lips twitched with premature enjoyment.

"I'm a desperate man to-night, whatever I may have been yesterday." The young man's tone was both earnest and convincing. "I think I've shown that by my pertinacity in hunting you down."

"Well--yes." Calendar's thick fingers caressed his lips, trying to hide the dawning smile.

"Is that offer still open?"

His nonchalance completely restored by the very navete of the proposition, Calendar laughed openly and with a trace of irony. The episode seemed to be turning out better than he had antic.i.p.ated. Gently his mottled fat fingers played about his mouth and chins as he looked Kirkwood up and down.

"I'm sorry," he replied, "that it isn't--now. You're too late, Kirkwood; I've made other arrangements."

"Too bad." Kirkwood's eyes narrowed. "You force me to harsher measures, Calendar."

Genuinely diverted, the adventurer laughed a second time, tipping back in his chair, his huge frame shaking with ponderous enjoyment. "Don't do anything you'd be sorry for," he parroted, sarcastical, the young man's recent admonition to the captain.

"No fear, Calendar. I'm just going to use my advantage, which you won't dispute,"--the pistol described an eloquent circle, gleaming in the lamplight--"to levy on you a little legitimate blackmail. Don't be alarmed; I shan't hit you any harder than I have to."

"What?" stammered Calendar, astonished. "What in h.e.l.l _are_ you driving at?"

"Recompense for my time and trouble. You've cost me a pretty penny, first and last, with your nasty little conspiracy--whatever it's all about. Now, needing the money, I purpose getting some of it back. I shan't precisely rob you, but this is a hold-up, all right.... Stryker," reproachfully, "I don't see my pearl pin."

"I got it 'ere," responded the sailor hastily, fumbling with his tie.

"Give it me, then." Kirkwood held out his hand and received the trinket.

Then, moving over to the table, the young man, while abating nothing of his watchfulness, sorted out his belongings from the ma.s.s of odds and ends Stryker had disgorged. The tale of them was complete; the captain had obeyed him faithfully. Kirkwood looked up, pleased.

"Now see here, Calendar; this collection of truck that I was robbed of by this resurrected Joe Miller here, cost me upwards of a hundred and fifty.

I'm going to sell it to you at a bargain--say fifty dollars, two hundred and fifty francs."

"The juice you are!" Calendar's eyes opened wide, partly in admiration.

"D'you realize that this is next door to highway robbery, my young friend?"

"High-seas piracy, if you prefer," a.s.sented Kirkwood with entire equanimity. "I'm going to have the money, and you're going to give it up.

The transaction by any name would smell no sweeter, Calendar. Come--fork over!"

"And if I refuse?"

"I wouldn't refuse, if I were you."

"Why not?"

"The consequences would be too painful."

"You mean you'd puncture me with that gun?"

"Not unless you attack or attempt to follow me. I mean to say that the Belgian police are notoriously a most efficient body, and that I'll make it my duty and pleasure to introduce 'em to you, if you refuse. But you won't," Kirkwood added soothingly, "will you, Calendar?"

"No." The adventurer had become suddenly thoughtful. "No, I won't. 'Glad to oblige you."

He tilted his chair still farther back, straightening out his elephantine legs, inserted one fat hand into his trouser pocket and with some difficulty extracted a combined bill-fold and coin-purse, at once heavy with gold and bulky with notes. Moistening thumb and forefinger, "How'll you have it?" he inquired with a lift of his cunning eyes; and when Kirkwood had advised him, slowly counted out four fifty-franc notes, placed them near the edge of the table, and weighted them with five ten-franc pieces. And, "'That all?" he asked, replacing the pocket-book.

"That will be about all. I leave you presently to your unholy devices, you and that gay dog, over there." The captain squirmed, reddening. "Just by way of precaution, however, I'll ask you to wait in here till I'm off."

Kirkwood stepped backwards to the door of the captain's room, opened it and removed the key from the inside. "Please take Mulready in with you," he continued. "By the time you get out, I'll be clear of Antwerp. Please don't think of refusing me,--I really mean it!"

The latter clause came sharply as Calendar seemed to hesitate, his weary, wary eyes glimmering with doubt. Kirkwood, watching him as a cat her prey, intercepted a lightning-swift sidelong glance that shifted from his face to the port lockers, forward. But the fat adventurer was evidently to a considerable degree deluded by the very child-like simplicity of Kirkwood's att.i.tude. If the possibility that his altercation with Mulready had been overheard, crossed his mind, Calendar had little choice other than to accept the chance. Either way he moved, the risk was great; if he refused to be locked in the captain's room, there was the danger of the police, to which Kirkwood had convincingly drawn attention; if he accepted the temporary imprisonment, he took a risk with the gladstone bag. On the other hand, he had estimated Kirkwood's honesty as thorough-going, from their first interview; he had appraised him as a gentleman and a man of honor.

And he did not believe the young man knew, after all ... Perplexed, at length he chose the smoother way, and with an indulgent lifting of eyebrows and fat shoulders, rose and waddled over to Mulready.

"Oh, all right," he conceded with deep toleration in his tone for the idiosyncrasies of youth. "It's all the same to me, beau." He laughed a nervous laugh. "Come along and lend us a hand, Stryker."

The latter glanced timidly at Kirkwood, his eyes pleading for leave to move; which Kirkwood accorded with an imperative nod and a fine flourish of the revolver. Promptly the captain, sprang to Calendar's a.s.sistance; and between the two of them, the one taking Mulready's head, the other his feet, they lugged him quickly into the stuffy little state-room. Kirkwood, watching and following to the threshold, inserted the key.

"One word more," he counseled, a hand on the k.n.o.b. "Don't forget I've warned you what'll happen if you try to break even with me."

"Never fear, little one!" Calendar's laugh was nervously cheerful. "The Lord knows you're welcome."

"Thank you 'most to death," responded Kirkwood politely. "Good-by--and good-by to you, Stryker. 'Glad to have humored your desire to meet me soon again."

Kirkwood, turning the key in the lock, withdrew it and dropped it on the cabin table; at the same time he swept into his pocket the money he had extorted of Calendar. Then he paused an instant, listening; from the captain's room came a sound of murmurs and scuffling. He debated what they were about in there--but time pressed. Not improbably they, were crowding for place at the keyhole, he reflected, as he crossed to the port locker forward.

He had its lid up in a twinkling, and in another had lifted out the well-remembered black gladstone bag.

This seems to have been his first compound larceny.

As if stimulated by some such reflection he sprang for the companionway, dropping the lid of the locker with a bang which must have been excruciatingly edifying to the men in the captain's room. Whatever their emotions, the bang was mocked by a mighty kick, shaking the door; which, Kirkwood reflected, opened outward and was held only by the frailest kind of a lock: it would not hold long.