The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance (snow like ashes txt) 📕

and then called to apprise her of the fact? Or that he was some sort

of an adventurer, who had manufactured a plausible yarn to gain him access

to her home? Or—harking back to her original theory—that he was an

emissary from Scotland Yard? … Probably she distrusted him on the latter

hypothesis. The reflection left him more at ease.

 

“I am quite as mystified as you, Mrs. Hallam,” he began. “Miss Calendar was

here, at this door, in a four-wheeler, not ten minutes ago, and—”

 

“Then where is she now?”

 

“Tell me where Calendar is,” he retorted, inspired, “and I’ll try to answer

you!”

 

But her eyes were blank. “You mean—?”

 

“That Calendar was in this house when I came; that he left, found his

daughter in the cab, and drove off with her. It’s clear enough.”

 

“You are quite mistaken,” she said thoughtfully. “George Calendar has not

been here this night.”

 

He wondered that she did not seem to resent his imputation. “I think not—”

 

“Listen!” she cried, raising a warning hand; and relaxing her vigilant

attitude, moved forward once more, to peer down toward the Embankment.

 

A cab had cut in from that direction and was bearing down upon them with

a brisk rumble of hoofs. As it approached, Kirkwood’s heart, that

had lightened, was weighed upon again by disappointment. It was no

four-wheeler, but a hansom, and the open wings of the apron, disclosing a

white triangle of linen surmounted by a glowing spot of fire, betrayed the

sex of the fare too plainly to allow of further hope that it might be the

girl returning.

 

At the door, the cab pulled up sharply and a man tumbled hastily out upon

the sidewalk.

 

“Here!” he cried throatily, tossing the cabby his fare, and turned toward

the pair upon the doorstep, evidently surmising that something was amiss.

For he was Calendar in proper person, and a sight to upset in a twinkling

Kirkwood’s ingeniously builded castle of suspicion.

 

“Mrs. Hallam!” he cried, out of breath. “‘S my daughter here?” And then,

catching sight of Kirkwood’s countenance: “Why, hello, Kirkwood!” he

saluted him with a dubious air.

 

The woman interrupted hastily. “Please come in, Mr. Calendar. This

gentleman has been inquiring for you, with an astonishing tale about your

daughter.”

 

“Dorothy!” Calendar’s moon-like visage was momentarily divested of any

trace of color. “What of her?”

 

“You had better come in,” advised Mrs. Hallam brusquely.

 

The fat adventurer hopped hurriedly across the threshold, Kirkwood

following. The woman shut the door, and turned with back to it, nodding

significantly at Kirkwood as her eyes met Calendar’s.

 

“Well, well?” snapped the latter impatiently, turning to the young man.

 

But Kirkwood was thinking quickly. For the present he contented himself

with a deliberate statement of fact: “Miss Calendar has disappeared.” It

gave him an instant’s time … “There’s something damned fishy!” he told

himself. “These two are playing at cross-purposes. Calendar’s no fool; he’s

evidently a crook, to boot. As for the woman, she’s had her eyes open for

a number of years. The main thing’s Dorothy. She didn’t vanish of her own

initiative. And Mrs. Hallam knows, or suspects, more than she’s going to

tell. I don’t think she wants Dorothy found. Calendar does. So do I. Ergo:

I’m for Calendar.”

 

“Disappeared?” Calendar was barking at him. “How? When? Where?”

 

“Within ten minutes,” said Kirkwood. “Here, let’s get it straight…. With

her permission I brought her here in a four-wheeler.” He was carefully

suppressing all mention of Frognall Street, and in Calendar’s glance read

approval of the elision. “She didn’t want to get out, unless you were here.

I asked for you. The maid showed me up-stairs. I left your daughter in the

cab—and by the way, I hadn’t paid the driver. That’s funny, too! Perhaps

six or seven minutes after I came in Mrs. Hallam found out that Miss

Calendar was with me and wanted to ask her in. When we got to the door—no

cab. There you have it all.”

 

“Thanks—it’s plenty,” said Calendar dryly. He bent his head in thought for

an instant, then looked up and fixed Mrs. Hallam with an unprejudiced

eye, “I say!” he demanded explosively. “There wasn’t any one here that

knew—eh?”

 

Her fine eyes wavered and fell before his; and Kirkwood remarked that her

under lip was curiously drawn in.

 

“I heard a man leave as Mrs. Hallam joined me,” he volunteered helpfully,

and with a suspicion of malice. “And after that—I paid no attention at the

time—it seems to me I did hear a cab in the street—”

 

“Ow?” interjected Calendar, eying the woman steadfastly and employing an

exclamation of combined illumination and inquiry more typically British

than anything Kirkwood had yet heard from the man.

 

For her part, the look she gave Kirkwood was sharp with fury. It was more;

it was a mistake, a flaw in her diplomacy; for Calendar intercepted it.

Unceremoniously he grasped her bare arm with his fat hand.

 

“Tell me who it was,” he demanded in an ugly tone.

 

She freed herself with a twist, and stepped back, a higher color in her

cheeks, a flash of anger in her eyes.

 

“Mr. Mulready,” she retorted defiantly. “What of that?”

 

“I wish I was sure,” declared the fat adventurer, exasperated. “As it is,

I bet a dollar you’ve put your foot in it, my lady. I warned you of that

blackguard…. There! The mischief’s done; we won’t row over it. One

moment.” He begged it with a wave of his hand; stood pondering briefly,

fumbled for his watch, found and consulted it. “It’s the barest chance,” he

muttered. “Perhaps we can make it.”

 

“What are you going to do?” asked the woman.

 

“Give Mister Mulready a run for his money. Come along, Kirkwood; we

haven’t a minute. Mrs. Hallam, permit us….” She stepped aside and he

brushed past her to the door. “Come, Kirkwood!”

 

He seemed to take Kirkwood’s company for granted; and the young man was not

inclined to argue the point. Meekly enough he fell in with Calendar on the

sidewalk. Mrs. Hallam followed them out. “You won’t forget?” she called

tentatively.

 

“I’ll ‘phone you if we find out anything.” Calendar jerked the words

unceremoniously over his shoulder as, linking arms with Kirkwood, he drew

him swiftly along. They heard her shut the door; instantly Calendar

stopped. “Look here, did Dorothy have a—a small parcel with her?”

 

“She had a gladstone bag.”

 

“Oh, the devil, the devil!” Calendar started on again, muttering

distractedly. As they reached the corner he disengaged his arm. “We’ve a

minute and a half to reach Charing Cross Pier; and I think it’s the last

boat. You set the pace, will you? But remember I’m an oldish man and—and

fat.”

 

They began to run, the one easily, the other lumbering after like an

old-fashioned square-rigged ship paced by a liner.

 

Beneath the railway bridge, in front of the Underground station, the

cab-rank cried them on with sardonic view-halloos; and a bobby remarked

them with suspicion, turning to watch as they plunged round the corner and

across the wide Embankment.

 

The Thames appeared before them, a river of ink on whose burnished surface

lights swam in long winding streaks and oily blobs. By the floating pier a

County Council steamboat strained its hawsers, snoring huskily. Bells were

jingling in her engine-room as the two gained the head of the sloping

gangway.

 

Kirkwood slapped a shilling down on the ticket-window ledge. “Where to?” he

cried back to Calendar.

 

“Cherry Gardens Pier,” rasped the winded man. He stumbled after Kirkwood,

groaning with exhaustion. Only the tolerance of the pier employees gained

them their end; the steamer was held some seconds for them; as Calendar

staggered to its deck, the gangway was jerked in, the last hawser cast off.

The boat sheered wide out on the river, then shot in, arrow-like, to the

pier beneath Waterloo Bridge.

 

The deck was crowded and additional passengers embarked at every stop. In

the circumstances conversation, save on the most impersonal topics, was

impossible; and even had it been necessary or advisable to discuss the

affair which occupied their minds, where so many ears could hear, Calendar

had breath enough neither to answer nor to catechize Kirkwood. They found

seats on the forward deck and rested there in grim silence, both fretting

under the enforced restraint, while the boat darted, like some illuminated

and exceptionally active water insect, from pier to pier.

 

As it snorted beneath London Bridge, Calendar’s impatience drove him from

his seat back to the gangway. “Next stop,” he told Kirkwood curtly; and

rested his heavy bulk against the paddle-box, brooding morosely, until,

after an uninterrupted run of more than a mile, the steamer swept in,

sidewheels backing water furiously against the ebbing tide, to Cherry

Gardens landing.

 

Sweet name for a locality unsavory beyond credence! … As they emerged on

the street level and turned west on Bermondsey Wall, Kirkwood was fain to

tug his topcoat over his chest and button it tight, to hide his linen. In

a guarded tone he counseled his companion to do likewise; and Calendar,

after a moment’s blank, uncomprehending stare, acknowledged the wisdom of

the advice with a grunt.

 

The very air they breathed was rank with fetid odors bred of the gaunt dark

warehouses that lined their way; the lights were few; beneath the looming

buildings the shadows were many and dense. Here and there dreary and

cheerless public houses appeared, with lighted windows conspicuous in a

lightless waste. From time to time, as they hurried on, they encountered,

and made wide detours to escape contact with knots of wayfarers—men

debased and begrimed, with dreary and slatternly women, arm in arm,

zigzaging widely across the sidewalks, chorusing with sodden voices the

burden of some popularized ballad. The cheapened, sentimental refrains

echoed sadly between benighted walls….

 

Kirkwood shuddered, sticking close to Calendar’s side. Life’s naked

brutalities had theretofore been largely out of his ken. He had heard of

slums, had even ventured to mouth politely moral platitudes on the subject

of overcrowding in great centers of population, but in the darkest flights

of imagination had never pictured to himself anything so unspeakably

foul and hopeless as this…. And they were come hither seeking—Dorothy

Calendar! He was unable to conceive what manner of villainy could be

directed against her, that she must be looked for in such surroundings.

 

After some ten minutes’ steady walking, Calendar turned aside with a

muttered word, and dived down a covered, dark and evil-smelling passageway

that seemed to lead toward the river.

 

Mastering his involuntary qualms, Kirkwood followed.

 

Some ten or twelve paces from its entrance the passageway swerved at a

right angle, continuing three yards or so to end in a blank wall, wherefrom

a flickering, inadequate gas-lamp jutted. At this point a stone platform,

perhaps four feet square, was discovered, from the edge of which a flight

of worn and slimy stone steps led down to a permanent boat-landing, where

another gas-light flared gustily despite the protection of its frame of

begrimed glass.

 

“Good Lord!” exclaimed the young man. “What, in Heaven’s name, Calendar—?”

 

“Bermondsey Old Stairs. Come on.”

 

They descended to the landing-stage. Beneath them the Pool slept, a sheet

of polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small stealthy

gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall

warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged

profile relieved here and there by tapering mastheads. A few, scattering,

feeble lights were visible. Nothing moved save the river and the wind.

 

The landing itself they found quite deserted; something which the

adventurer comprehended with a nod which,