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

sheer

desperation flung himself, key in hand, against the door at the end. Mark

how his luck served him who had forsworn her! He found a keyhole and

inserted the key. It turned. So did the knob. The door gave inward. He fell

in with it, slammed it, shot the bolts, and, panting, leaned against its

panels, in a pit of everlasting night but—saved!—for the time being, at

all events.

 

Outside somebody brushed against one wall, cannoned to the other, brought

up with a crash against the door, and, perforce at a standstill, swore from

his heart.

 

“Gorblimy!” he declared feelingly. “I’d ‘a’ took my oath I sore’m run in

‘ere!” And then, in answer to an inaudible question: “No, ‘e ain’t. Gorn

an’ let the fool go to ‘ell. ‘Oo wants ‘im to share goo’ liker? Not I!…”

 

Joining his companion he departed, leaving behind him a trail of

sulphur-tainted air. The mews quieted gradually.

 

Indoors Kirkwood faced unhappily the enigma of fortuity, wondering: Was

this by any possibility Number 9?

 

The key had fitted; the bolts had been drawn on the inside; and while

the key had been one of ordinary pattern and would no doubt have proven

effectual with any one of a hundred common locks, the finger of probability

seemed to indicate that his luck had brought him back to Number 9.

 

In spite of all this, he was sensible of little confidence; though this

were truly Number 9, his freedom still lay on the knees of the gods, his

very life, belike, was poised, tottering, on a pinnacle of chance.

 

In the end, taking heart of desperation, he stooped and removed his shoes;

a precaution which later appealed to his sense of the ridiculous, in view

of the racket he had raised in entering, but which at the moment seemed

most natural and in accordance with common sense. Then rising, he held his

breath, staring and listening. About him the pitch darkness was punctuated

with fading points of fire, and in his ears was a noise of strange

whisperings, very creepy—until, gritting his teeth, he controlled his

nerves and gradually realized that he was alone, the silence undisturbed.

 

He went forward gingerly, feeling his way like a blind man on strange

ground. Ere long he stumbled over a door-sill and found that the walls

of the passage had fallen away; he had entered a room, a black cavern of

indeterminate dimensions. Across this he struck at random, walked himself

flat against a wall, felt his way along to an open door, and passed through

to another apartment as dark as the first.

 

Here, endeavoring to make a circuit of the walls, he succeeded in throwing

himself bodily across a bed, which creaked horribly; and for a full minute

lay as he had fallen, scarce daring to think. But nothing followed, and he

got up and found a shut door which let him into yet a third room, wherein

he barked both shins on a chair; and escaped to a fourth whose atmosphere

was highly flavored with reluctant odors of bygone cookery, stale water and

damp plumbing—probably the kitchen. Thence progressing over complaining

floors through what may have been the servants’ hall, a large room with

a table in the middle and a number of promiscuous chairs (witness his

tortured shins!), he finally blundered into the basement hallway.

 

By now a little calmer, he felt assured that this was really Number 9,

Frognall Street, and a little happier about it all, though not even

momentarily forgetful of the potential police and night-watchman.

 

However, he mounted the steps to the ground floor without adventure and

found himself at last in the same dim and ghostly hall which he had entered

some six hours before; the mockery of dusk admitted by the fanlight was

just strong enough to enable him to identify the general lay of the land

and arrangement of furniture.

 

More confidently with each uncontested step, he continued his quest.

Elation was stirring his spirit when he gained the first floor and moved

toward the foot of the second flight, approaching the spot whereat he was

to begin the search for the missing purse. The knowledge that he lacked

means of obtaining illumination deterred him nothing; he had some hope

of finding matches in one of the adjacent rooms, but, failing that, was

prepared to ascend the stairs on all fours, feeling every inch of their

surface, if it took hours. Ever an optimistic soul, instinctively inclined

to father faith with a hope, he felt supremely confident that his search

would not prove fruitless, that he would win early release from his

temporary straits.

 

And thus it fell out that, at the instant he was thinking it time to begin

to crawl and hunt, his stockinged feet came into contact with something

heavy, yielding, warm—something that moved, moaned, and caused his hair to

bristle and his flesh to creep.

 

We will make allowances for him; all along he had gone on the assumption

that his antagonist of the dark stairway would have recovered and made off

with all expedition, in the course of ten or twenty minutes, at most, from

the time of his accident. To find him still there was something entirely

outside of Kirkwood’s reckoning: he would as soon have thought to encounter

say, Calendar,—would have preferred the latter, indeed. But this fellow

whose disability was due to his own interference, who was reasonably to be

counted upon to raise the very deuce and all of a row!

 

The initial shock, however shattering to his equanimity, soon, lost effect.

The man evidently remained unconscious, in fact had barely moved; while the

moan that Kirkwood heard, had been distressingly faint.

 

“Poor devil!” murmured the young man. “He must be in a pretty bad way, for

sure!” He knelt, compassion gentling his heart, and put one hand to the

insentient face. A warm sweat moistened his fingers; his palm was fanned by

steady respiration.

 

Immeasurably perplexed, the American rose, slipped on his shoes and

buttoned them, thinking hard the while. What ought he to do? Obviously

flight suggested itself,—incontinent flight, anticipating the man’s

recovery. On the other hand, indubitably the latter had sustained such

injury that consciousness, when it came to him, would hardly be reinforced

by much aggressive power. Moreover, it was to be remembered that the one

was in that house with quite as much warrant as the other, unless Kirkwood

had drawn a rash inference from the incident of the ragged sentry. The two

of them were mutual, if antagonistic, trespassers; neither would dare

bring about the arrest of the other. And then—and this was not the least

consideration to influence Kirkwood—perhaps the fellow would die if he got

no attention.

 

Kirkwood shut his teeth grimly. “I’m no assassin,” he informed himself, “to

strike and run. If I’ve maimed this poor devil and there are consequences,

I’ll stand ‘em. The Lord knows it doesn’t matter a damn to anybody, not

even to me, what happens to me; while he may be valuable.”

 

Light upon the subject, actual as well as figurative, seemed to be the

first essential; his mind composed, Kirkwood set himself in search of it.

The floor he was on, however, afforded him no assistance; the mantels were

guiltless of candles and he discovered no matches, either in the wide and

silent drawing-room, with its ghastly furniture, like mummies in their

linen swathings, or in the small boudoir at the back. He was to look either

above or below, it seemed.

 

After some momentary hesitation, he went up-stairs, his ascent marked by a

single and grateful accident; half-way to the top he trod on an object that

clinked underfoot, and, stooping, retrieved the lost purse. Thus was he

justified of his temerity; the day was saved—that is, to-morrow was.

 

The rooms of the second-floor were bedchambers, broad, deep, stately,

inhabited by seven devils of loneliness. In one, on a dresser, Kirkwood

found a stump of candle in a china candlestick; the two charred ends of

matches at its base were only an irritating discovery, however—evidence

that real matches had been the mode in Number 9, at some remote date.

Disgusted and oppressed by cumulative inquisitiveness, he took the

candle-end back to the hall; he would have given much for the time and

means to make a more detailed investigation into the secret of the house.

 

Perhaps it was mostly his hope of chancing on some clue to the mystery of

Dorothy Calender—bewitching riddle that she was!—that fascinated his

imagination so completely. Aside from her altogether, the great house that

stood untenanted, yet in such complete order, so self-contained in its

darkened quiet, intrigued him equally with the train of inexplicable events

that had brought him within its walls. Now—since his latest entrance—his

vision had adjusted itself to cope with the obscurity to some extent; and

the street lights, meagerly reflected through the windows from the bosom of

a sullen pall of cloud, low-swung above the city, had helped him to piece

together many a detail of decoration and furnishing, alike somber and

richly dignified. Kirkwood told himself that the owner, whoever he might

be, was a man of wealth and taste inherited from another age; he had found

little of meretricious to-day in the dwelling, much that was solid and

sedate and homely, and—Victorian…. He could have wished for more; a box

of early Victorian vestas had been highly acceptable.

 

Making his way down-stairs to the stricken man—who was quite as he had

been—Kirkwood bent over and thrust rifling fingers into his pockets,

regardless of the wretched sense of guilt and sneakishness imparted by the

action, stubbornly heedless of the possibility of the man’s awakening to

find himself being searched and robbed.

 

In the last place he sought, which should (he realized) have been the

first, to wit, the fob pocket of the white waistcoat, he found a small gold

matchbox, packed tight with wax vestas; and, berating himself for crass

stupidity—he had saved a deal of time and trouble by thinking of this

before—lighted the candle.

 

As its golden flame shot up with scarce a tremor, preyed upon by a

perfectly excusable concern, he bent to examine the man’s countenance….

The arm which had partly hidden it had fallen back into a natural position.

It was a young face that gleamed pallid in the candlelight—a face unlined,

a little vapid and insignificant, with features regular and neat, betraying

few characteristics other than the purely negative attributes of a

character as yet unformed, possibly unformable; much the sort of a face

that he might have expected to see, remembering those thin and pouting lips

that before had impressed him. Its owner was probably little more than

twenty. In his attire there was a suspicion of a fop’s preciseness, aside

from its accidental disarray; the cut of his waistcoat was the extreme of

the then fashion, the white tie (twisted beneath one ear) an exaggerated

“butterfly,” his collar nearly an inch too tall; and he was shod with pumps

suitable only for the dancing-floor,—a whim of the young-bloods of London

of that year.

 

“I can’t make him out at all!” declared Kirkwood. “The son of a gentleman

too weak to believe that cubs need licking into shape? Reared to man’s

estate, so sheltered from the wicked world that he never grew a bark?…

The sort that never had a quarrel in his life, ‘cept with his tailor?…

Now what the devil is this thing doing in this midnight mischief?…

Damn!”

 

It was most exasperating, the incongruity of the boy’s appearance assorted

with his double r�le of persecutor of distressed damsels and nocturnal

house-breaker!

 

Kirkwood bent closer above the motionless head, with puzzled eyes striving

to pin down some elusive resemblance that he