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

>between his ease from care and his growing astonishment, as Brentwick

continued to reveal unexpected phases of his personality; Brentwick himself

outwardly imperturbable and complacent, for all that his hand shook as he

lifted his wine glass.

 

“You may go, Wotton—or, wait. Don’t you feel the need of a breath of fresh

air, Wotton?”

 

“Yessir, thank you, sir.”

 

“Then change your coat, Wotton, light your pipe, and stroll out for half an

hour. You need not leave the street, but if either the tall thin blackguard

with the seafaring habit, or the short stout rascal with the air of mystery

should accost you, treat them with all courtesy, Wotton. You will be

careful not to tell either of them anything in particular, although I don’t

mind your telling them that Mr. Brentwick lives here, if they ask. I am

mostly concerned to discover if they purpose becoming fixtures on the

street-corners, Wotton.”

 

“Quite so, sir.”

 

“Now you may go…. Wotton,” continued his employer as the butler took

himself off as softly as a cat, “grows daily a more valuable mechanism. He

is by no means human in any respect, but I find him extremely handy to

have round the house…. And now, my dear,” turning to Dorothy, “with your

permission I desire to drink to the memory of your beautiful mother and to

the happiness of her beautiful daughter.”

 

“But you will tell me—”

 

“A number of interesting things, Miss Calendar, if you’ll be good enough to

let me choose the time. I beg you to be patient with the idiosyncrasies

of an old man, who means no harm, who has a reputation as an eccentric to

sustain before his servants…. And now,” said Brentwick, setting aside his

glass, “now, my dear boy, for the adventure.”

 

Kirkwood chuckled, infected by his host’s genial humor. “How do you know—”

 

“How can it be otherwise?” countered Brentwick with a trace of asperity.

“Am I to be denied my adventure? Sir, I refuse without equivocation. Your

very bearing breathes of Romance. There must be an adventure forthcoming,

Philip; otherwise my disappointment will be so acute that I shall be

regretfully obliged seriously to consider my right, as a householder, to

show you the door.”

 

“But Mr. Brentwick—!”

 

“Sit down, sir!” commanded Brentwick with such a peremptory note that the

young man, who had risen, obeyed out of sheer surprise. Upon which his host

advanced, indicting him with a long white forefinger. “Would you, sir,”

he demanded, “again expose this little lady to the machinations of that

corpulent scoundrel, whom I have just had the pleasure of shooing off my

premises, because you choose to resent an old man’s raillery?”

 

“I apologize,” Kirkwood humored him.

 

“I accept the apology in the spirit in which it is offered…. I repeat,

now for the adventure, Philip. If the story’s long, epitomize. We can

consider details more at our leisure.”

 

Kirkwood’s eyes consulted the girl’s face; almost imperceptibly she nodded

him permission to proceed.

 

“Briefly, then,” he began haltingly, “the man who followed us to the door

here, is Miss Calendar’s father.”

 

“Oh? His name, please?”

 

“George Burgoyne Calendar.”

 

“Ah! An American; I remember, now. Continue, please.”

 

“He is hounding us, sir, with the intention of stealing some property,

which he caused to be stolen, which we—to put it bluntly—stole from him,

to which he has no shadow of a title, and which, finally, we’re endeavoring

to return to its owners.”

 

“My dear!” interpolated Brentwick gently, looking down at the girl’s

flushed face and drooping head.

 

“He ran us to the last ditch,” Kirkwood continued; “I’ve spent my last

farthing trying to lose him.”

 

“But why have you not caused his arrest?” Brentwick inquired.

 

Kirkwood nodded meaningly toward the girl. Brentwick made a sound

indicating comprehension, a click of the tongue behind closed teeth.

 

“We came to your door by the merest accident—it might as well have been

another. I understood you were in Munich, and it never entered my head that

we’d find you home.”

 

“A communication from my solicitors detained me,” explained Brentwick. “And

now, what do you intend to do?”

 

“Trespass as far on your kindness as you’ll permit. In the first place,

I—I want the use of a few pounds with which to cable some friends in New

York, for money; on receipt of which I can repay you.”

 

“Philip,” observed Brentwood, “you are a most irritating child. But I

forgive you the faults of youth. You may proceed, bearing in mind, if you

please, that I am your friend equally with any you may own in America.”

 

“You’re one of the best men in the world,” said Kirkwood.

 

“Tut, tut! Will you get on?”

 

“Secondly, I want you to help us to escape Calendar to-night. It is

necessary that Miss Calendar should go to Chiltern this evening, where she

has friends who will receive and protect her.”

 

“Mm-mm,” grumbled their host, meditative. “My faith!” he commented, with

brightening eyes. “It sounds almost too good to be true! And I’ve been

growing afraid that the world was getting to be a most humdrum and

uninteresting planet!… Miss Calendar, I am a widower of so many years

standing that I had almost forgotten I had ever been anything but a

bachelor. I fear my house contains little that will be of service to a

young lady. Yet a room is at your disposal; the parlor-maid shall show you

the way. And Philip, between you and me, I venture to remark that hot water

and cold steel would add to the attractiveness of your personal appearance;

my valet will attend you in my room. Dinner,” concluded Brentwick with

anticipative relish, “will be served in precisely thirty minutes. I shall

expect you to entertain me with a full and itemized account of every phase

of your astonishing adventure. Later, we will find a way to Chiltern.”

 

Again he put a hand upon the bell-pull. Simultaneously Dorothy and Kirkwood

rose.

 

“Mr. Brentwick,” said the girl, her eyes starred with tears of gratitude,

“I don’t, I really don’t know how—”

 

“My dear,” said the old gentleman, “you will thank me most appropriately

by continuing, to the best of your ability, to resemble your mother more

remarkably every minute.”

 

“But I,” began Kirkwood–-.

 

“You, my dear Philip, can thank me best by permitting me to enjoy myself;

which I am doing thoroughly at the present moment. My pleasure in being

invited to interfere in your young affairs is more keen than you can well

surmise. Moreover,” said Mr. Brentwick, “so long have I been an amateur

adventurer that I esteem it the rarest privilege to find myself thus on the

point of graduating into professional ranks.” He rubbed his hands, beaming

upon them. “And,” he added, as a maid appeared at the door, “I have already

schemed me a scheme for the discomfiture of our friends the enemy: a scheme

which we will discuss with our dinner, while the heathen rage and imagine a

vain thing, in the outer darkness.”

 

Kirkwood would have lingered, but of such inflexible temper was his host

that he bowed him into the hands of a man servant without permitting him

another word.

 

“Not a syllable,” he insisted. “I protest I am devoured with curiosity, my

dear boy, but I have also bowels of compassion. When we are well on with

our meal, when you are strengthened with food and drink, then you may

begin. But now—Dickie,” to the valet, “do your duty!”

 

Kirkwood, laughing with exasperation, retired at discretion, leaving

Brentwick the master of the situation: a charming gentleman with a will of

his own and a way that went with it.

 

He heard the young man’s footsteps diminish on the stairway; and again

he smiled the indulgent, melancholy smile of mellow years. “Youth!” he

whispered softly. “Romance!… And now,” with a brisk change of tone as

he closed the study door, “now we are ready for this interesting Mr.

Calendar.”

 

Sitting down at his desk, he found and consulted a telephone directory;

but its leaves, at first rustling briskly at the touch of the slender and

delicate fingers, were presently permitted to lie unturned,—the book

resting open on his knees the while he stared wistfully into the fire.

 

A suspicion of moisture glimmered in his eyes. “Dorothy!” he whispered

huskily. And a little later, rising, he proceeded to the telephone….

 

An hour and a half later Kirkwood, his self-respect something restored by

a bath, a shave, and a resumption of clothes which had been hastily but

thoroughly cleansed and pressed by Brentwick’s valet; his confidence and

courage mounting high under the combined influence of generous wine,

substantial food, the presence of his heart’s mistress and the

admiration—which was unconcealed—of his friend, concluded at the

dinner-table, his narration.

 

“And that,” he said, looking up from his savory, “is about all.”

 

“Bravo!” applauded Brentwick; eyes shining with delight.

 

“All,” interposed Dorothy in warm reproach, “but what he hasn’t told—”

 

“Which, my dear, is to be accounted for wholly by a very creditable

modesty, rarely encountered in the young men of the present day. It was, of

course, altogether different with those of my younger years. Yes, Wotton?”

 

Brentwick sat back in his chair, inclining an attentive ear to a

communication murmured by the butler.

 

Kirkwood’s gaze met Dorothy’s across the expanse of shining cloth; he

deprecated her interruption with a whimsical twist of his eyebrows.

“Really, you shouldn’t,” he assured her in an undertone. “I’ve done nothing

to deserve…” But under the spell of her serious sweet eyes, he fell

silent, and presently looked down, strangely abashed; and contemplated the

vast enormity of his unworthiness.

 

Coffee was set before them by Wotton, the impassive, Brentwick refusing

it with a little sigh. “It is one of the things, as Philip knows,” he

explained to the girl, “denied me by the physician who makes his life happy

by making mine a waste. I am allowed but three luxuries; cigars, travel

in moderation, and the privilege of imposing on my friends. The first I

propose presently, to enjoy, by your indulgence; and the second I shall

this evening undertake by virtue of the third, of which I have just availed

myself.”

 

Smiling at the involution, he rested his head against the back of the

chair, eyes roving from the girl’s face to Kirkwood’s. “Inspiration to

do which,” he proceeded gravely, “came to me from the seafaring picaroon

(Stryker did you name him?) via the excellent Wotton. While you were

preparing for dinner, Wotton returned from his constitutional with the news

that, leaving the corpulent person on watch at the corner, Captain Stryker

had temporarily, made himself scarce. However, we need feel no anxiety

concerning his whereabouts, for he reappeared in good time and a

motor-car. From which it becomes evident that you have not overrated their

pertinacity; the fiasco of the cab-chase is not to be re�nacted.”

 

Resolutely the girl repressed a gasp of dismay. Kirkwood stared moodily

into his cup.

 

“These men bore me fearfully,” he commented at last.

 

“And so,” continued Brentwick, “I bethought me of a counter-stroke. It is

my good fortune to have a friend whose whim it is to support a touring-car,

chiefly in innocuous idleness. Accordingly I have telephoned him and

commandeered the use of this machine—mechanician, too…. Though not a

betting man, I am willing to risk recklessly a few pence in support of my

contention, that of the two, Captain Stryker’s car and ours, the latter

will prove considerably the most speedy….

 

“In short, I suggest,” he concluded, thoughtfully lacing his long white

fingers, “that, avoiding the hazards of cab and railway carriage, we