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

have moved, save to place her elbows on the marble

slab, and rest her cheeks between hands that remained clenched, as they had

been in the greatest stress of her emotion. The color had returned to

her face, with a slightly enhanced depth of hue to the credit of her

excitement. Her cheeks were hot, her eyes starlike beneath the woven, massy

sunlight of her hair. Temporarily unconscious of her surroundings she

stared steadfastly before her, thoughts astray in the irridescent glamour

of the dreams that were to come….

 

Brentwick had slipped down in his chair, resting his silvered head upon its

back, and was smiling serenely up at the low yellow ceiling. Before him on

the table his long white fingers were drumming an inaudible tune. Presently

rousing, he caught Kirkwood’s eye and smiled sheepishly, like a child

caught in innocent mischief.

 

The younger man grinned broadly. “And you were responsible for all that!”

he commented, infinitely amused.

 

Brentwick nodded, twinkling self-satisfaction. “I contrived it all,” he

said; “neat, I call it, too.” His old eyes brightened with reminiscent

enjoyment. “Inspiration!” he crowed softly. “Inspiration, pure and simple.

I’d been worrying my wits for fully five minutes before Wotton settled the

matter by telling me about the captain’s hiring of the motor-car. Then,

in a flash, I had it…. I talked with Charles by telephone,—his name is

really Charles, by, the bye,—overcame his conscientious scruples about

playing his fish when they were already all but landed, and settled the

artistic details.”

 

He chuckled delightedly. “It’s the instinct,” he declared emphatically,

“the instinct for adventure. I knew it was in me, latent somewhere, but

never till this day did it get the opportunity to assert itself. A born

adventurer—that’s what I am!… You see, it was essential that they should

believe we were frightened and running from them; that way, they would be

sure to run after us. Why, we might have baited a dozen traps and failed

to lure them into my house, after that stout scoundrel knew you’d had the

chance to tell me the whole yarn… Odd!”

 

“Weren’t you taking chances, you and Charles?” asked Kirkwood curiously.

 

“Precious few. There was another motor from Scotland Yard trailing Captain

Stryker’s. If they had run past, or turned aside, they would have been

overhauled in short order.”

 

He relapsed into his whimsical reverie; the wistful look returned to his

eyes, replacing the glow of triumph and pleasure. And he sighed a little

regretfully.

 

“What I don’t understand,” contended Kirkwood, “is how you convinced

Calendar that he couldn’t get revenge by pressing his charge against Miss

Calendar—Dorothy.”

 

“Oh-h?” Mr. Brentwick elevated his fine white eyebrows and sat up briskly.

“My dear boy, that was the most delectable dish on the entire menu. I have

been reserving it, I don’t mind owning, that I might better enjoy the full

relish of it…. I may answer you best, perhaps, by asking you to scan what

I offered to the fat scoundrel’s respectful consideration, my dear sir.”

 

He leveled a forefinger at the card.

 

At first glance it conveyed nothing to the younger man’s benighted

intelligence. He puzzled over it, twisting his brows out of alignment.

An ordinary oblong slip of thin white cardboard, it was engraved in fine

script as follows:

 

MR. GEORGE BURGOYNE CALENDAR

 

81, ASPEN VILLAS, S. W.

 

“Oh!” exclaimed Kirkwood at length, standing up, his face bright with

understanding. “You—!”

 

“I,” laconically assented the elder man.

 

Impulsively Kirkwood leaned across the table. “Dorothy,” he said tenderly;

and when the girl’s happy eyes met his, quietly drew her attention to the

card.

 

Then he rose hastily, and went over to stand by the window, staring mistily

into the blank face of night beyond its unseen panes.

 

Behind him there was a confusion of little noises; the sound of a chair

pushed hurriedly aside, a rustle of skirts, a happy sob or two, low voices

intermingling; sighs…. Out of it finally came the father’s accents.

 

“There, there, my dear! My dearest dear!” protested the old gentleman.

“Positively I don’t deserve a tithe of this. I—” The young old voice

quavered and broke, in a happy laugh…. “You must understand,” he

continued more soberly, “that no consideration of any sort is due me. When

we married, I was too old for your mother, child; we both knew it, both

believed it would never matter. But it did. By her wish, I went back

to America; we were to see what separation would do to heal the wounds

dissension had caused. It was a very foolish experiment. Your mother died

before I could return….”

 

There fell a silence, again broken by the father. “After that I was in

no haste to return. But some years ago, I came to London to live. I

communicated with the old colonel, asking permission to see you. It was

refused in a manner which precluded the subject being reopened by me: I

was informed that if I persisted in attempting to see you, you would be

disinherited…. He was very angry with me—justly, I admit…. One must

grow old before one can see how unforgivably one was wrong in youth…. So

I settled down to a quiet old age, determined not to disturb you in your

happiness…. Ah—Kirkwood!”

 

The old gentleman was standing, his arm around his daughter’s shoulders,

when Kirkwood turned.

 

“Come here, Philip; I’m explaining to Dorothy, but you should hear…. The

evening I called on you, dear boy, at the Pless, returning home I received

a message from my solicitors, whom I had instructed to keep an eye on

Dorothy’s welfare. They informed me that she had disappeared. Naturally I

canceled my plans to go to Munich, and stayed, employing detectives. One

of the first things they discovered was that Dorothy had run off with an

elderly person calling himself George Burgoyne Calendar—the name I had

discarded when I found that to acknowledge me would imperil my daughter’s

fortune…. The investigations went deeper; Charles—let us continue to

call him—had been to see me only this afternoon, to inform me of the plot

they had discovered. This Hallam woman and her son—it seems that they were

legitimately in the line of inheritance, Dorothy out of the way. But the

woman was—ah—a bad lot. Somehow she got into communication with this fat

rogue and together they plotted it out. Charles doesn’t believe that the

Hallam woman expected to enjoy the Burgoyne estates for very many days. Her

plan was to step in when Dorothy stepped out, gather up what she could,

realize on it, and decamp. That is why there was so much excitement about

the jewels: naturally the most valuable item on her list, the most easy to

convert into cash…. The man Mulready we do not place; he seems to have

been a shady character the fat rogue picked up somewhere. The latter’s

ordinary line of business was diamond smuggling, though he would condescend

to almost anything in order to turn a dishonest penny….

 

“That seems to exhaust the subject. But one word more…. Dorothy, I am

old enough and have suffered enough to know the wisdom of seizing one’s

happiness when one may. My dear, a little while ago, you did a very brave

deed. Under fire you said a most courageous, womanly, creditable thing. And

Philip’s rejoinder was only second in nobility to yours…. I do hope to

goodness that you two blessed youngsters won’t let any addlepated scruples

stand between yourselves and—the prize of Romance, your inalienable

inheritance!”

 

Abruptly Brentwick, who was no longer Brentwick, but the actual Calendar,

released the girl from his embrace and hopped nimbly toward the door.

“Really, I must see about that petrol!” he cried. “While it’s perfectly

true that Charles lied about it’s running out, we must be getting on. I’ll

call you when we’re ready to start.”

 

And the door crashed to behind him….

 

Between them was the table. Beyond it the girl stood with head erect, dim

tears glimmering on the lashes of those eyes with which she met Philip’s

steady gaze so fearlessly.

 

Singing about them, the silence deepened. Fascinated, though his heart was

faint with longing, Kirkwood faltered on the threshold of his kingdom.

 

“Dorothy!… You did mean it, dear?”

 

She laughed, a little, low, sobbing laugh that had its source deep in the

hidden sanctuary of her heart of a child.

 

“I meant it, my dearest…. If you’ll have a girl so bold and forward, who

can’t wait till she’s asked but throws herself into the arms of the man she

loves—Philip, I meant it, every word!…”

 

And as he went to her swiftly, round the table, she turned to meet him,

arms uplifted, her scarlet lips a-tremble, the brown and bewitching lashes

drooping over her wondrously lighted eyes….

 

After a time Philip Kirkwood laughed aloud.

 

And there was that quality in the ring of his laughter that caused the

Shade of Care, which had for the past ten minutes been uneasily luffing and

filling in the offing and, on the whole, steadily diminishing and becoming

more pale and wan and emaciated and indistinct—there was that in the

laughter of Philip Kirkwood, I say, which caused the Shade of Care to utter

a hollow croak of despair as, incontinently, it vanished out of his life.

 

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