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

in involving her name

and fortune in an affair so strangely flavored?… This opened up a desert

waste of barren speculation. “What’s anybody’s motive, who figures in this

thundering dime-novel?” demanded the American, almost contemptuously.

And—for the hundredth time—gave it up; the day should declare it, if so

hap he lived to see that day: a distant one, he made no doubt. The only

clear fact in his befogged and bemused mentality was that he was at once

“broke” and in this business up to his ears. Well, he’d see it through;

he’d nothing better to do, and—there was the girl:

 

Dorothy, whose eyes and lips he had but to close his own eyes to see

again as vividly as though she stood before him; Dorothy, whose unspoiled

sweetness stood out in vivid relief against this moil and toil of

conspiracy, like a star of evening shining clear in a stormy sky.

 

“Poetic simile: I’m going fast,” conceded Kirkwood; but he did not smile.

It was becoming quite too serious a matter for laughter. For her sake,

he was in the game “for keeps”; especially in view of the fact that

everything—his own heart’s inclination included—seemed to conspire to

keep him in it. Of course he hoped for nothing in return; a pauper who

turns squire-of-dames with matrimonial intent is open to the designation,

“penniless adventurer.” No; whatever service he might be to the girl would

be ample recompense to him for his labors. And afterwards, he’d go his

way in peace; she’d soon forget him—if she hadn’t already. Women (he

propounded gravely) are queer: there’s no telling anything about them!

 

One of the most unreadable specimens of the sex on which he pronounced this

highly original dictum, entered the room just then; and he found himself at

once out of his chair and his dream, bowing.

 

“Mrs. Hallam.”

 

The woman nodded and smiled graciously. “Eccles has attended to your needs,

I hope? Please don’t stop smoking.” She sank into an armchair on the

other side of the hearth and, probably by accident, out of the radius of

illumination from the lamp; sitting sidewise, one knee above the other, her

white arms immaculate against the somber background of shadowed crimson.

 

She was very handsome indeed, just then; though a keener light might have

proved less flattering.

 

“Now, Mr. Kirkwood?” she opened briskly, with a second intimate and

friendly nod; and paused, her pose receptive.

 

Kirkwood sat down again, smiling good-natured appreciation of her

unprejudiced attitude.

 

“Your son, Mrs. Hallam—?”

 

“Oh, Freddie’s doing well enough…. Freddie,” she explained, “has a

delicate constitution and has seen little of the world. Such melodrama

as to-night’s is apt to shock him severely. We must make allowances, Mr.

Kirkwood.”

 

Kirkwood grinned again, a trace unsympathetically; he was unable to

simulate any enthusiasm on the subject of poor Freddie, whom he had sized

up with passable acumen as a spoiled and coddled child completely under the

thumb of an extremely clever mother.

 

“Yes,” he responded vaguely; “he’ll be quite fit after a night’s sleep, I

dare say.”

 

The woman was watching him keenly, beneath her lowered lashes. “I think,”

she said deliberately, “that it is time we came to an understanding.”

 

Kirkwood agreed—“Yes?” affably.

 

“I purpose being perfectly straightforward. To begin with, I don’t place

you, Mr. Kirkwood. You are an unknown quantity, a new factor. Won’t you

please tell me what you are and…. Are you a friend of Mr. Calendar’s?”

 

“I think I may lay claim to that honor, though”—to Kirkwood’s way of

seeing things some little frankness on his own part would be essential if

they were to get on—“I hardly know him, Mrs. Hallam. I had the pleasure of

meeting him only this afternoon.”

 

She knitted her brows over this statement.

 

“That, I assure you, is the truth,” he laughed.

 

“But … I really don’t understand.”

 

“Nor I, Mrs. Hallam. Calendar aside, I am Philip Kirkwood, American,

resident abroad for some years, a native of San Francisco, of a certain

age, unmarried, by profession a poor painter.”

 

“And—?”

 

“Beyond that? I presume I must tell you, though I confess I’m in doubt….”

He hesitated, weighing candor in the balance with discretion.

 

“But who are you for? Are you in George Calendar’s pay?”

 

“Heaven forfend!”—piously. “My sole interest at the present moment is to

unravel a most entrancing mystery—”

 

“Entitled ‘Dorothy Calendar’! Of course. You’ve known her long?”

 

“Eight hours, I believe,” he admitted gravely; “less than that, in fact.”

 

“Miss Calendar’s interests will not suffer through anything you may tell

me.”

 

“Whether they will or no, I see I must swing a looser tongue, or you’ll be

showing me the door.”

 

The woman shook her head, amused, “Not until,” she told him significantly.

 

“Very well, then.” And he launched into an abridged narrative of the

night’s events, as he understood them, touching lightly on his own

circumstances, the real poverty which had brought him back to Craven Street

by way of Frognall. “And there you have it all, Mrs. Hallam.”

 

She sat in silent musing. Now and again he caught the glint of her eyes

and knew that he was being appraised with such trained acumen as only

long knowledge of men can give to women. He wondered if he were found

wanting…. Her dark head bended, elbow on knee, chin resting lightly in

the cradle of her slender, parted fingers, the woman thought profoundly,

her reverie ending with a brief, curt laugh, musical and mirthless as the

sound of breaking glass.

 

“It is so like Calendar!” she exclaimed: “so like him that one sees how

foolish it was to trust—no, not to trust, but to believe that he could

ever be thrown off the scent, once he got nose to ground. So, if we suffer,

my son and I, I shall have only myself to thank!”

 

Kirkwood waited in patient attention till she chose to continue. When she

did “Now for my side of the case!” cried Mrs. Hallam; and rising, began to

pace the room, her slender and rounded figure swaying gracefully, the while

she talked.

 

“George Calendar is a scoundrel,” she said: “a swindler, gambler,—what I

believe you Americans call a confidence-man. He is also my late husband’s

first cousin. Some years since he found it convenient to leave England,

likewise his wife and daughter. Mrs. Calendar, a country-woman of yours, by

the bye, died shortly afterwards. Dorothy, by the merest accident, obtained

a situation as private secretary in the household of the late Colonel

Burgoyne, of The Cliffs, Cornwall. You follow me?”

 

“Yes, perfectly.”

 

“Colonel Burgoyne died, leaving his estates to my son, some time ago.

Shortly afterwards Dorothy Calendar disappeared. We know now that her

father took her away, but then the disappearance seemed inexplicable,

especially since with her vanished a great deal of valuable information.

She alone knew of the location of certain of the old colonel’s personal

effects.”

 

“He was an eccentric. One of his peculiarities involved the secreting of

valuables in odd places; he had no faith in banks. Among these valuables

were the Burgoyne family jewels—quite a treasure, believe me, Mr.

Kirkwood. We found no note of them among the colonel’s papers, and without

Dorothy were powerless to pursue a search for them. We advertised and

employed detectives, with no result. It seems that father and daughter were

at Monte Carlo at the time.”

 

“Beautifully circumstantial, my dear lady,” commented Kirkwood—to his

inner consciousness. Outwardly he maintained consistently a pose of

impassive gullibility.

 

“This afternoon, for the first time, we received news of the Calendars.

Calendar himself called upon me, to beg a loan. I explained our difficulty

and he promised that Dorothy should send us the information by the

morning’s post. When I insisted, he agreed to bring it himself, after

dinner, this evening…. I make it quite clear?” she interrupted, a little

anxious.

 

“Quite clear, I assure you,” he assented encouragingly.

 

“Strangely enough, he had not been gone ten minutes when my son came

in from a conference with our solicitors, informing me that at last a

memorandum had turned up, indicating that the heirlooms would be found in a

safe secreted behind a dresser in Colonel Burgoyne’s bedroom.”

 

“At Number 9, Frognall Street.”

 

“Yes…. I proposed going there at once, but it was late and we were dining

at the Pless with an acquaintance, a Mr. Mulready, whom I now recall as a

former intimate of George Calendar. To our surprise we saw Calendar and his

daughter at a table not far from ours. Mr. Mulready betrayed some agitation

at the sight of Calendar, and told me that Scotland Yard had a man out with

a warrant for Calendar’s arrest, on old charges. For old sake’s sake, Mr.

Mulready begged me to give Calendar a word of warning. I did so—foolishly,

it seems: Calendar was at that moment planning to rob us, Mulready aiding

and abetting him.”

 

The woman paused before Kirkwood, looking down upon him. “And so,” she

concluded, “we have been tricked and swindled. I can scarcely believe it of

Dorothy Calendar.”

 

“I, for one, don’t believe it.” Kirkwood spoke quietly, rising. “Whatever

the culpability of Calendar and Mulready, Dorothy was only their hoodwinked

tool.”

 

“But, Mr. Kirkwood, she must have known the jewels were not hers.”

 

“Yes,” he assented passively, but wholly unconvinced.

 

“And what,” she demanded with a gesture of exasperation, “what would you

advise?”

 

“Scotland Yard,” he told her bluntly.

 

“But it’s a family secret! It must not appear in the papers. Don’t you

understand—George Calendar is my husband’s cousin!”

 

“I can think of nothing else, unless you pursue them in person.”

 

“But—whither?”

 

“That remains to be discovered; I can tell you nothing more than I have….

May I thank you for your hospitality, express my regrets that I should

unwittingly have been made the agent of this disaster, and wish you good

night—or, rather, good morning, Mrs. Hallam?”

 

For a moment she held him under a calculating glance which he withstood

with graceless fortitude. Then, realizing that he was determined not by any

means to be won to her cause, she gave him her hand, with a commonplace

wish that he might find his affairs in better order than seemed probable;

and rang for Eccles.

 

The butler showed him out.

 

He took away with him two strong impressions; the one visual, of a

strikingly handsome woman in a wonderful gown, standing under the red glow

of a reading-lamp, in an attitude of intense mental concentration, her

expression plainly indicative of a train of thought not guiltless of

vindictiveness; the other, more mental but as real, he presently voiced to

the huge bronze lions brooding over desolate Trafalgar Square.

 

“Well,” appreciated Mr. Kirkwood with gusto, “she’s got Ananias and

Sapphira talked to a standstill, all right!” He ruminated over this for

a moment. “Calendar can lie some, too; but hardly with her picturesque

touch…. Uncommon ingenious, I call it. All the same, there were only

about a dozen bits of tiling that didn’t fit into her mosaic a little

bit…. I think they’re all tarred with the same stick—all but the girl.

And there’s something afoot a long sight more devilish and crafty than that

shilling-shocker of madam’s…. Dorothy Calendar’s got about as much active

part in it as I have. I’m only from California, but they’ve got to show

me, before I’ll believe a word against her. Those infernal

scoundrels!…Somebody’s got to be on the girl’s side and I seem to have

drawn the lucky straw…. Good Heavens! is it possible for a grown man to

fall heels over head in love in two short