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

juncture the brakes began to shriek and grind upon the wheels.

The train slowed; it stopped; and the voice of a guard could be heard

admonishing passengers for Queensborough Pier to alight and take the branch

line. In the noise the woman’s response was drowned, and Kirkwood was

hardly enough concerned for poor Freddie to repeat his question.

 

When, after a little, the train pulled out of the junction, neither found

reason to resume the conversation. During the brief balance of the journey

Mrs. Hallam presumably had food for thought; she frowned, pursed her lips,

and with one daintily gloved forefinger followed a seam of her tailored

skirt; while Kirkwood sat watching and wondering how to rid himself of her,

if she proved really as troublesome as she threatened to be.

 

Also, he wondered continually what it was all about. Why did Mrs. Hallam

suspect him of designing to meet Calendar at Queensborough? Had she

any tangible ground for believing that Calendar could be found in

Queensborough? Presumably she had, since she was avowedly in pursuit of

that gentleman, and, Kirkwood inferred, had booked for Queensborough.

Was he, then, running away from Calendar and his daughter to chase a

will-o’-the-wisp of his credulous fancy, off Sheerness shore?

 

Disturbing reflection. He scowled over it, then considered the other side

of the face. Presuming Mrs. Hallam to have had reasonably dependable

assurance that Calendar would stop in Queensborough, would she so readily

have abandoned her design to catch him there, on the mere supposition that

Kirkwood might be looking for him in Sheerness? That did not seem likely

to one who esteemed Mrs. Hallam’s acumen as highly as Kirkwood did. He

brightened up, forgot that his was a fool’s errand, and began again to

project strategic plans into a problematic future.

 

A sudden jolt interrupted this pastime, and the warning screech of the

brakes informed that he had no time to scheme, but had best continue on the

plan of action that had brought him thus far—that is, trust to his star

and accept what should befall without repining.

 

He rose, opened the door, and holding it so, turned.

 

“I regret, Mrs. Hallam,” he announced, smiling his crooked smile, “that

a pressing engagement is about to prohibit my ‘squiring you through the

ticket-gates. You understand, I’m sure.”

 

His irrepressible humor proved infectious; and Mrs. Hallam’s spirit ran as

high as his own. She was smiling cheerfully when she, too, rose.

 

“I also am in some haste,” she averred demurely, gathering up her hand-bag

and umbrella.

 

A raised platform shot in beside the carriage, and the speed was so

sensibly moderated that the train seemed to be creeping rather than

running. Kirkwood flung the door wide open and lowered himself to the

running-board. The end of the track was in sight and—a man who has been

trained to board San Francisco cable-cars fears to alight from no moving

vehicle. He swung off, got his balance, and ran swiftly down the platform.

 

A cry from a bystander caused him to glance over his shoulder; Mrs. Hallam

was then in the act of alighting. As he looked the flurry of skirts

subsided and she fell into stride, pursuing.

 

Sleepy Sheerness must have been scandalized, that day, and its gossips have

acquired ground for many, an uncharitable surmise.

 

Kirkwood, however, was so fortunate as to gain the wicket before the

employee there awoke to the situation. Otherwise, such is the temper of

British petty officialdom, he might have detained the fugitive. As it was,

Kirkwood surrendered his ticket and ran out into the street with his luck

still a dominant factor in the race. For, looking back, he saw that Mrs.

Hallam had been held up at the gate, another victim of British red-tape;

her ticket read for Queensborough, she was attempting to alight one station

farther down the line, and while undoubtedly she was anxious to pay the

excess fare, Heaven alone knew when she would succeed in allaying the

suspicions and resentment of the ticket-taker.

 

“That’s good for ten minutes’ start!” Kirkwood crowed. “And it never

occurred to me—!”

 

Before the station he found two hacks in waiting, with little to choose

between them; neither was of a type that did not seem to advertise its

pre-Victorian fashioning, and to neither was harnessed an animal that

deserved anything but the epithet of screw. Kirkwood took the nearest for

no other reason than because it was the nearest, and all but startled the

driver off his box by offering double-fare for a brisk pace and a simple

service at the end of the ride. Succinctly he set forth his wants, jumped

into the antiquated four-wheeler, and threw himself down upon musty, dusty

cushions to hug himself over the joke and bless whatever English board of

railway, directors it was that first ordained that tickets should be taken

up at the end instead of the outset of a journey.

 

It was promptly made manifest that he had further cause for gratulation.

The cabby, recovering from his amazement, was plying an indefatigable whip

and thereby eliciting a degree of speed from his superannuated nag, that

his fare had by no means hoped for, much less anticipated. The cab rocked

and racketed through Sheerness’ streets at a pace which is believed to be

unprecedented and unrivaled; its passenger, dashed from side to side, had

all he could do to keep from battering the vehicle to pieces with his head;

while it was entirely out of the question to attempt to determine whether

or not he was being pursued. He enjoyed it all hugely.

 

In a period of time surprisingly short, he saw, from fleeting glimpses of

the scenery to be obtained through the reeling windows, that they were

threading the outskirts of the town; synchronously, whether by design or

through actual inability to maintain it, the speed was moderated. And in

the course of a few more minutes the cab stopped definitely.

 

Kirkwood clambered painfully out, shook himself together and the bruises

out of his bones, and looked fearfully back.

 

Aside from a slowly settling cloud of dust, the road ran clear as far as he

could see—to the point, in fact, where the town closed in about it.

 

He had won; at all events in so much as to win meant eluding the

persevering Mrs. Hallam. But to what end?

 

Abstractedly he tendered his lonely sovereign to the driver, and without

even looking at it, crammed the heavy weight of change into his pocket; an

oversight which not only won him the awe-struck admiration of the cabby,

but entailed consequences (it may be) he little apprehended. It was with an

absentminded nod that he acquiesced in the man’s announcement that he might

arrange about the boat for him. Accordingly the cabby disappeared; and

Kirkwood continued to stare about him, eagerly, hopefully.

 

He stood on the brink of the Thames estuary, there a possible five miles

from shore to shore; from his feet, almost, a broad shingle beach sloped

gently to the water.

 

On one hand a dilapidated picket-fence enclosed the dooryard of a

fisherman’s cottage, or, better, hovel,—if it need be accurately

described—at the door of which the cabby was knocking.

 

The morning was now well-advanced. The sun rode high, a sphere of tarnished

flame in a void of silver-gray, its thin cold radiance striking pallid

sparks from the leaping crests of wind-whipped waves. In the east a wall

of vapor, dull and lusterless, had taken body since the dawn, masking the

skies and shutting down upon the sea like some vast curtain; and out of the

heart of this a bitter and vicious wind played like a sword.

 

To the north, Shoeburyness loomed vaguely, like a low-drifted bank of

cloud. Off to the right the Nore Lightship danced, a tiny fleck of warm

crimson in a wilderness of slatey-blue waters, plumed with a myriad of

vanishing white-caps.

 

Up the shelving shore, small, puny wavelets dashed in impotent fury, and

the shingle sang unceasingly its dreary, syncopated monotone. High and dry,

a few dingy boats lay canted wearily upon their broad, swelling sides,—a

couple of dories, apparently in daily use; a small sloop yacht, dismantled

and plainly beyond repair; and an oyster-smack also out of commission.

About them the beach was strewn with a litter of miscellany,—nets, oars,

cork buoys, bits of wreckage and driftwood, a few fish too long forgotten

and (one assumed) responsible in part for the foreign wealth of the

atmosphere.

 

Some little distance offshore a fishing-boat, catrigged and not more than

twenty-feet over all, swung bobbing at her mooring, keen nose searching

into the wind; at sight of which Kirkwood gave thanks, for his adventitious

guide had served him well, if that boat were to be hired by any manner of

persuasion.

 

But it was to the farther reaches of the estuary that he gave more

prolonged and most anxious heed, scanning narrowly what shipping was there

to be seen. Far beyond the lightship a liner was riding the waves with

serene contempt, making for the river’s mouth and Tilbury Dock. Nearer

in, a cargo boat was standing out upon the long trail, the white of riven

waters showing clearly against her unclean freeboard. Out to east a little

covey of fishing-smacks, red sails well reefed, were scudding before

the wind like strange affrighted water-fowl, and bearing down past a

heavy-laden river barge. The latter, with tarpaulin battened snugly down

over the cockpit and the seas dashing over her wash-board until she seemed

under water half the time, was forging stodgily Londonwards, her bargee at

the tiller smoking a placid pipe.

 

But a single sailing vessel of any notable tonnage was in sight; and when

he saw her Kirkwood’s heart became buoyant with hope, and he began to

tremble with nervous eagerness. For he believed her to be the Alethea.

 

There’s no mistaking a ship brigantine-rigged for any other style of craft

that sails the seas.

 

From her position when first he saw her, Kirkwood could have fancied she

was tacking out of the mouth of the Medway; but he judged that, leaving the

Thames’ mouth, she had tacked to starboard until well-nigh within hail of

Sheerness. Now, having presumably, gone about, she was standing out toward

the Nore, boring doggedly into the wind. He would have given a deal for

glasses wherewith to read the name upon her bows, but was sensible of no

hampering doubts; nor, had he harbored any, would they have deterred him.

He had set his heart upon the winning of his venture, had come too far,

risked far too much, to suffer anything now to stay his hand and stand

between him and Dorothy Calendar. Whatever the further risks and hazards,

though he should take his life in his hands to win to her side, he would

struggle on. He recked nothing of personal danger; a less selfish passion

ran molten in his veins, moving him to madness.

 

Fascinated, he fixed his gaze upon the reeling brigantine, and for a space

it was as if by longing he had projected his spirit to her slanting deck,

and were there, pleading his case with the mistress of his heart….

 

Voices approaching brought him back to shore. He turned, resuming his mask

of sanity, the better to confer with the owner of the cottage and boats—a

heavy, keen-eyed fellow, ungracious and truculent of habit, and chary of

his words; as he promptly demonstrated.

 

“I’ll hire your boat,” Kirkwood told him, “to put me aboard that

brigantine, off to leeward. We ought to start at once.”

 

The fisherman shifted his quid of tobacco from cheek to cheek, grunted

inarticulately, and swung deliberately on his heel, displaying a bull neck

above a pair of heavy shoulders.