The Black Bag Part 7

"Aren't you very persistent, Mr. Kirkwood?" Her fingers moved in his; burning with the reproof, he released them, and turned to her so woebegone a countenance that she repented of her severity. "Don't worry about me, please. I am truly safe now. Some day I hope to be able to thank you adequately. Good night!"

Her pa.s.s-key grated in the lock. Opening, the door disclosed a dark and uninviting entry-hall, through which there breathed an air heavy with the dank and dusty odor of untenanted rooms. Hesitating on the threshold, over her shoulder the girl smiled kindly upon her commandeered esquire; and stepped within.

He lifted his hat automatically. The door closed with an echoing slam. He turned to the waiting cab, fumbling for change.

"I'll walk," he told the cabby, paying him off.

The hansom swept away to a tune of hammering hoofs; and quiet rested upon the street as Kirkwood turned the nearest corner, in an unpleasant temper, puzzled and discontented. It seemed hardly fair that he should have been dragged into so promising an adventure, by his ears (so to put it), only to be thus summarily called upon to write "Finis" beneath the incident.

He rounded the corner and walked half-way to the next street, coming to an abrupt and rebellious pause by the entrance to a covered alleyway, of two minds as to his proper course of action.

In the background of his thoughts Number 9, Frognall Street, reared its five-story facade, sinister and forbidding. He reminded himself of its unlighted windows; of its sign, "To be let"; of the effluvia of desolation that had saluted him when the door swung wide. A deserted house; and the girl alone in it!--was it right for him to leave her so?

IV

9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C.

The covered alleyway gave upon Quadrant Mews; or so declared a notice painted on the dead wall of the pa.s.sage.

Overhead, complaining as it swayed in the wind, hung the smirched and weather-worn sign-board of the Hog-in-the-Pound public house; wherefrom escaped sounds of such revelry by night as is indulged in by the British working-man in hours of ease. At the curb in front of the house of entertainment, dejected animals drooping between their shafts, two hansoms stood in waiting, until such time as the lords of their destinies should see fit to sally forth and inflict themselves upon a cab-hungry populace.

As Kirkwood turned, a third vehicle rumbled up out of the mews.

Kirkwood can close his eyes, even at this late day, and both see and hear it all again--even as he can see the unbroken row of dingy dwellings that lined his way back from Quadrant Mews to Frognall Street corner: all drab and unkempt, all sporting in their fan-lights the legend and lure, "Furnished Apartments."

For, between his curiosity about and his concern for the girl, he was being led back to Number 9, by the nose, as it were,--hardly willingly, at best.

Profoundly stupefied by the contemplation of his own temerity, he yet returned unfaltering. He who had for so long plumed himself upon his strict supervision of his personal affairs and equally steadfast unconsciousness of his neighbor's businesses, now found himself in the very act of pushing in where he was not wanted: as he had been advised in well-nigh as many words. He experienced an effect of standing to one side, a witness of his own folly, with rising wonder, unable to credit the strength of the infatuation which was placing him so conspicuously in the way of a snubbing.

If perchance he were to meet the girl again as she was leaving Number 9,--what then? The contingency dismayed him incredibly, in view of the fact that it did not avail to make him pause. To the contrary he disregarded it resolutely; mad, impertinent, justified of his unnamed apprehensions, or simply addled,--he held on his way.

He turned up Frognall Street with the manner of one out for a leisurely evening stroll. Simultaneously, from the farther corner, another pedestrian debouched, into the thoroughfare--a mere moving shadow at that distance, brother to blacker shadows that skulked in the fenced areas and unlively entries of that poorly lighted block. The hush was something beyond belief, when one remembered the nearness of blatant Tottenham Court Road.

Kirkwood conceived a wholly senseless curiosity about the other wayfarer.

The man was walking rapidly, heels ringing with uncouth loudness, cane tapping the flagging at brief intervals. Both sounds ceased abruptly as their cause turned in beneath one of the porticos. In the emphatic and unnatural quiet that followed, Kirkwood, stepping more lightly, fancied that another shadow followed the first, noiselessly and with furtive stealth.

Could it be Number 9 into which they had pa.s.sed? The American's heart beat a livelier tempo at the suggestion. If it had not been Number 9--he was still too far away to tell--it was certainly one of the dwellings adjacent thereunto. The improbable possibility (But why improbable?) that the girl was being joined by her father, or by friends, annoyed him with illogical intensity. He mended his own pace, designing to pa.s.s whichever house it might be before the door should be closed; thought better of this, and slowed up again, anathematizing himself with much excuse for being the inquisitive dolt that he was.

Approaching Number 9 with laggard feet, he manufactured a desire to light a cigarette, as a cover for his design, were he spied upon by unsuspected eyes. Cane under arm, hands cupped to shield a vesta's flame, he stopped directly before the portico, turning his eyes askance to the shadowed doorway; and made a discovery sufficiently startling to hold him spellbound and, incidentally, to scorch his gloves before he thought to drop the match.

The door of Number 9 stood ajar, a black interval an inch or so in width showing between its edge and the jamb.

Suspicion and alarm set his wits a-tingle. More distinctly he recalled the jarring bang, accompanied by the metallic click of the latch, when the girl had shut herself in--and him out. Now, some person or persons had followed her, neglecting the most obvious precaution of a householder. And why? Why but because the intruders did not wish the sound of closing to be audible to her--or those--within?

He reminded himself that it was all none of his affair, decided to pa.s.s on and go his ways in peace, and impulsively, swinging about, marched straight away for the unclosed door.

"'Old'ard, guvner!"

Kirkwood halted on the cry, faltering in indecision. Should he take the plunge, or withdraw? Synchronously he was conscious that a man's figure had detached itself from the shadows beneath the nearest portico and was drawing nearer, with every indication of haste, to intercept him.

"'Ere now, guvner, yer mykin' a mistyke. You don't live 'ere."

"How do you know?" demanded Kirkwood crisply, tightening his grip on his stick.

Was this the second shadow he had seemed to see--the confederate of him who had entered Number 9; a sentry to forestall interruption? If so, the fellow lacked discretion, though his determination that the American should not interfere was undeniable. It was with an ugly and truculent manner, if more warily, that the man closed in.

"I knows. You clear hout, or--"

He flung out a hand with the plausible design of grasping Kirkwood by the collar. The latter lifted his stick, deflecting the arm, and incontinently landed his other fist forcibly on the fellow's chest. The man reeled back, cursing. Before he could recover Kirkwood calmly crossed the threshold, closed the door and put his shoulder to it. In another instant, fumbling in the darkness, he found the bolts and drove them home.

And it was done, the transformation accomplished; his inability to refrain from interfering had encompa.s.sed his downfall, had changed a peaceable and law-abiding alien within British sh.o.r.es into a busybody, a trespa.s.ser, a misdemeanant, a--yes, for all he knew to the contrary, in the estimation of the Law, a burglar, prime candidate for a convict's stripes!

Breathing hard with excitement he turned and laid his back against the panels, trembling in every muscle, terrified by the result of his impulsive audacity, thunder-struck by a lightning-like foreglimpse of its possible consequences. Of what colossal imprudence had he not been guilty?

"The devil!" he whispered. "What an a.s.s, what an utter a.s.s I am!"

Behind him the k.n.o.b was rattled urgently, to an accompaniment of feet shuffling on the stone; and immediately--if he were to make a logical deduction from the rasping and sc.r.a.ping sound within the door-casing--the bell-pull was violently agitated, without, however, educing any response from the bell itself, wherever that might be situate. After which, as if in despair, the outsider again rattled and jerked the k.n.o.b.

Be his status what it might, whether servant of the household, its caretaker, or a night watchman, the man was palpably determined both to get himself in and Kirkwood out, and yet (curious to consider) determined to gain his end without attracting undue attention. Kirkwood had expected to hear the knocker's thunder, as soon as the bell failed to give tongue; but it did not sound although there _was_ a knocker,--Kirkwood himself had remarked that antiquated and rusty bit of ironmongery affixed to the middle panel of the door. And it made him feel sure that something surrept.i.tious and lawless was in process within those walls, that the confederate without, having failed to prevent a stranger from entering, left unemployed a means so certain-sure to rouse the occupants.

But his inferential a.n.a.lysis of this phase of the proceedings was summarily abrupted by that identical alarm. In a trice the house was filled with flying echoes, wakened to sonorous riot by the crash and clamor of the knocker; and Kirkwood stood fully two yards away, his heart hammering wildly, his nerves a-jingle, much as if the resounding blows had landed upon his own person rather than on stout oaken planking.

Ere he had time to wonder, the racket ceased, and from the street filtered voices in altercation. Listening, Kirkwood's pulses quickened, and he laughed uncertainly for pure relief, retreating to the door and putting an ear to a crack.

The accents of one speaker were new in his hearing, stern, crisp, quick with the spirit of authority which animates that most austere and dignified limb of the law to be encountered the world over, a London bobby.

"Now then, my man, what do you want there? Come now, speak up, and step out into the light, where I can see you."

The response came in the sniffling snarl of the London ne'er-do-well, the unemployable rogue whose chiefest occupation seems to be to march in the ranks of The Unemployed on the occasion of its annual demonstrations.

"Le' me alone, carntcher? Ah'm doin' no 'arm, officer,--"

"Didn't you hear me? Step out here. Ah, that's better.... No harm, eh?

Perhaps you'll explain how there's no harm breakin' into unoccupied 'ouses?"

"Gorblimy, 'ow was I to know? 'Ere's a toff 'ands me sixpence fer hopenin'

'is cab door to-dye, an', sezee, 'My man,' 'e sez, 'yer've got a 'onest fyce. W'y don'cher work?' sezee. "Ow can I?' sez I. "Ere'm I hout of a job these six months, lookin' fer work every dye an' carn't find it.'

Sezee, 'Come an' see me this hevenin' at me home, Noine, Frognall Stryte,'

'e sez, an'--"

"That'll do for now. You borrow a pencil and paper and write it down and I'll read it when I've got more time; I never heard the like of it. This 'ouse hasn't been lived in these two years. Move on, and don't let me find you round 'ere again. March, I say!"

There was more of it--more whining explanations artfully tinctured with abuse, more terse commands to depart, the whole concluding with sc.r.a.ping footsteps, diminuendo, and another perfunctory, rattle of the k.n.o.b as the bobby, having shoo'd the putative evil-doer off, a.s.sured himself that no damage had actually been done. Then he, too, departed, satisfied and self-righteous, leaving a badly frightened but very grateful amateur criminal to pursue his self-appointed career of crime.

He had no choice other than to continue; in point of fact, it had been insanity just then to back out, and run the risk of apprehension at the hands of that ubiquitous bobby, who (for all he knew) might be lurking not a dozen yards distant, watchful for just such a sequel. Still, Kirkwood hesitated with the best of excuses. Rea.s.suring as he had found the sentinel's extemporized yarn,--proof positive that the fellow had had no more right to prohibit a trespa.s.s than Kirkwood to commit one,--at the same time he found himself pardonably a prey to emotions of the utmost consternation and alarm. If he feared to leave the house he had no warrant whatever to a.s.sume that he would be permitted to remain many minutes unharmed within its walls of mystery.

The silence of it discomfited him beyond measure; it was, in a word, uncanny.