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

was at an end. With sudden compliance, the young man rose.

 

“I shall be most happy to be of service to your daughter, Mr. Calendar,”

he said, placing the emphasis with becoming gravity. And then, the fat

adventurer leading the way, Kirkwood strode across the room—wondering

somewhat at himself, if the whole truth is to be disclosed.

III

CALENDAR’S DAUGHTER

 

All but purring with satisfaction and relief, Calendar halted.

 

“Dorothy, my dear, permit me to introduce an old friend—Mr. Kirkwood.

Kirkwood, this is my daughter.”

 

“Miss Calendar,” acknowledged Kirkwood.

 

The girl bowed, her eyes steady upon his own. “Mr. Kirkwood is very kind,”

she said gravely.

 

“That’s right!” Calendar exclaimed blandly. “He’s promised to see you home.

Now both of you will pardon my running away, I know.”

 

“Yes,” assented Kirkwood agreeably.

 

The elder man turned and hurried toward the main entrance.

 

Kirkwood took the chair he had vacated. To his disgust he found himself

temporarily dumb. No flicker of thought illuminated the darkness of his

confusion. How was he to open a diverting conversation with a young woman

whom he had met under auspices so extraordinary? Any attempt to gloze the

situation, he felt, would be futile. And, somehow, he did not care to

render himself ridiculous in her eyes, little as he knew her.

 

Inanely dumb, he sat watching her, smiling fatuously until it was borne

in on him that he was staring like a boor and grinning like an idiot.

Convinced, he blushed for himself; something which served to make him more

tongue-tied than ever.

 

As for his involuntary prot�g�e, she exhibited such sweet composure that he

caught himself wondering if she really appreciated the seriousness of her

parent’s predicament; if, for that matter, its true nature were known to

her at all. Calendar, he believed, was capable of prevarication, polite and

impolite. Had he lied to his daughter? or to Kirkwood? To both, possibly;

to the former alone, not improbably. That the adventurer had told him the

desperate truth, Kirkwood was quite convinced; but he now began to believe

that the girl had been put off with some fictitious explanation. Her

tranquillity and self-control were remarkable, otherwise; she seemed very

young to possess those qualities in such eminent degree.

 

She was looking wearily past him, her gaze probing some unguessed abyss of

thought. Kirkwood felt himself privileged to stare in wonder. Her na�ve

aloofness of poise gripped his imagination powerfully,—the more

so, perhaps, since it seemed eloquent of her intention to remain

enigmatic,—but by no means more powerfully than the unaided appeal of her

loveliness.

 

Presently the girl herself relieved the tension of the situation, fairly

startling the young man by going straight to the heart of things. Without

preface or warning, lifting her gaze to his, “My name is really Dorothy

Calendar,” she observed. And then, noting his astonishment, “You would be

privileged to doubt, under the circumstances,” she added. “Please let us be

frank.”

 

“Well,” he stammered, “if I didn’t doubt, let’s say I was unprejudiced.”

 

His awkward, well-meant pleasantry, perhaps not conceived in the best of

taste, sounded in his own ears wretchedly flat and vapid. He regretted it

spontaneously; the girl ignored it.

 

“You are very kind,” she iterated the first words he had heard from her

lips. “I wish you to understand that I, for one, appreciate it.”

 

“Not kind; I have done nothing. I am glad…. One is apt to become

interested when Romance is injected into a prosaic existence.” Kirkwood

allowed himself a keen but cheerful glance.

 

She nodded, with a shadowy smile. He continued, purposefully, to distract

her, holding her with his honest, friendly eyes.

 

“Since it is to be confidences” (this she questioned with an all but

imperceptible lifting of the eyebrows), “I don’t mind telling you my own

name is really Philip Kirkwood.”

 

“And you are an old friend of my father’s?”

 

He opened his lips, but only to close them without speaking. The girl moved

her shoulders with a shiver of disdain.

 

“I knew it wasn’t so.”

 

“You know it would be hard for a young man like myself to be a very old

friend,” he countered lamely.

 

“How long, then, have you known each other?”

 

“Must I answer?”

 

“Please.”

 

“Between three and four hours.”

 

“I thought as much.” She stared past him, troubled. Abruptly she said:

“Please smoke.”

 

“Shall I? If you wish it, of course….”

 

She repeated: “Please.”

 

“We were to wait ten minutes or so,” she continued.

 

He produced his cigarette-case.

 

“If you care to smoke it will seem an excuse.” He lighted his cigarette.

“And then, you may talk to me,” she concluded calmly.

 

“I would, gladly, if I could guess what would interest you.”

 

“Yourself. Tell me about yourself,” she commanded.

 

“It would bore you,” he responded tritely, confused.

 

“No; you interest me very much.” She made the statement quietly,

contemptuous of coquetry.

 

“Very well, then; I am Philip Kirkwood, an American.”

 

“Nothing more?”

 

“Little worth retailing.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Why?” he demanded, piqued.

 

“Because you have merely indicated that you are a wealthy American.”

 

“Why wealthy?”

 

“If not, you would have some aim in life—a calling or profession.”

 

“And you think I have none?”

 

“Unless you consider it your vocation to be a wealthy American.”

 

“I don’t. Besides, I’m not wealthy. In point of fact, I …” He pulled up

short, on the verge of declaring himself a pauper. “I am a painter.”

 

Her eyes lightened with interest. “An artist?”

 

“I hope so. I don’t paint signs—or houses,” he remarked.

 

Amused, she laughed softly. “I suspected it,” she declared.

 

“Not really?”

 

“It was your way of looking at—things, that made me guess it: the

painter’s way. I have often noticed it.”

 

“As if mentally blending colors all the time?”

 

“Yes; that and—seeing flaws.”

 

“I have discovered none,” he told her brazenly.

 

But again her secret cares were claiming her thoughts, and the gay,

inconsequential banter died upon her scarlet lips as a second time her

glance ranged away, sounding mysterious depths of anxiety.

 

Provoked, he would have continued the chatter. “I have confessed,” he

persisted. “You know everything of material interest about me. And

yourself?”

 

“I am merely Dorothy Calendar,” she answered.

 

“Nothing more?” He laughed.

 

“That is all, if you please, for the present.”

 

“I am to content myself with the promise of the future?”

 

“The future,” she told him seriously, “is to-morrow; and to-morrow …” She

moved restlessly in her chair, eyes and lips pathetic in their distress.

“Please, we will go now, if you are ready.”

 

“I am quite ready, Miss Calendar.”

 

He rose. A waiter brought the girl’s cloak and put it in Kirkwood’s hands.

He held it until, smoothing the wrists of her long white gloves, she stood

up, then placed the garment upon her white young shoulders, troubled by the

indefinable sense of intimacy imparted by the privilege. She permitted

him this personal service! He felt that she trusted him, that out of her

gratitude had grown a simple and almost childish faith in his generosity

and considerateness.

 

As she turned to go her eyes thanked him with an unfathomable glance. He

was again conscious of that esoteric disturbance in his temples. Puzzled,

hazily analyzing the sensation, he followed her to the lobby.

 

A page brought him his topcoat, hat and stick; tipping the child from

sheer force of habit, he desired a gigantic porter, impressively ornate in

hotel livery, to call a hansom. Together they passed out into the night, he

and the girl.

 

Beneath a permanent awning of steel and glass she waited patiently,

slender, erect, heedless of the attention she attracted from wayfarers.

 

The night was young, the air mild. Upon the sidewalk, muddied by a million

feet, two streams of wayfarers flowed incessantly, bound west from Green

Park or east toward Piccadilly Circus; a well-dressed throng for the most

part, with here and there a man in evening dress. Between the carriages at

the curb and the hotel doors moved others, escorting fluttering butterfly

women in elaborate toilets, heads bare, skirts daintily gathered above

their perishable slippers. Here and there meaner shapes slipped silently

through the crowd, sinister shadows of the city’s proletariat, blotting

ominously the brilliance of the scene.

 

A cab drew in at the block. The porter clapped an arc of wickerwork over

its wheel to protect the girl’s skirts. She ascended to the seat.

 

Kirkwood, dropping sixpence in the porter’s palm, prepared to follow; but a

hand fell upon his arm, peremptory, inexorable. He faced about, frowning,

to confront a slight, hatchet-faced man, somewhat under medium height,

dressed in a sack suit and wearing a derby well forward over eyes that were

hard and bright.

 

“Mr. Calendar?” said the man tensely. “I presume I needn’t name my

business. I’m from the Yard—”

 

“My name is not Calendar.”

 

The detective smiled wearily. “Don’t be a fool, Calendar,” he began. But

the porter’s hand fell upon his shoulder and the giant bent low to bring

his mouth close to the other’s ear. Kirkwood heard indistinctly his own

name followed by Calendar’s, and the words: “Never fear. I’ll point him

out.”

 

“But the woman?” argued the detective, unconvinced, staring into the cab.

 

“Am I not at liberty to have a lady dine with me in a public restaurant?”

interposed Kirkwood, without raising his voice.

 

The hard eyes looked him up and down without favor. Then: “Beg pardon, sir.

I see my mistake,” said the detective brusquely.

 

“I am glad you do,” returned Kirkwood grimly. “I fancy it will bear

investigation.”

 

He mounted the step. “Imperial Theater,” he told the driver, giving the

first address that occurred to him; it could be changed. For the moment

the main issue was to get the girl out of the range of the detective’s

interest.

 

He slipped into his place as the hansom wheeled into the turgid tide of

west-bound traffic.

 

So Calendar had escaped, after all! Moreover, he had told the truth to

Kirkwood.

 

By his side the girl moved uneasily. “Who was that man?” she inquired.

 

Kirkwood sought her eyes, and found them wholly ingenuous. It seemed

that Calendar had not taken her into his confidence, after all. She was,

therefore, in no way implicated in her father’s affairs. Inexplicably the

young man’s heart felt lighter. “A mistake; the fellow took me for some one

he knew,” he told her carelessly.

 

The assurance satisfied her. She rested quietly, wrapped up in personal

concerns. Her companion pensively contemplated an infinity of arid and

hansom-less to-morrows. About them the city throbbed in a web of misty

twilight, the humid farewell of a dismal day. In the air a faint haze swam,

rendering the distances opalescent. Athwart the western sky the after-glow

of a drenched sunset lay like a wash of rose-madder. Piccadilly’s asphalt

shone like watered silk, black and lustrous, reflecting a myriad lights in

vibrant ribbons of party-colored radiance. On every hand cab-lamps danced

like fire-flies; the rumble of wheels blended with the hollow pounding

of uncounted hoofs, merging insensibly into the deep and solemn roar of

London-town.

 

Suddenly Kirkwood was recalled to a sense of duty by a glimpse of Hyde Park

Corner. He turned to the girl. “I didn’t know where you wished to go—?”

 

She seemed to realize his meaning with surprise, as one, whose thoughts

have strayed afar, recalled to an imperative world.

 

“Oh, did I forget? Tell him please to drive to Number Nine, Frognall

Street, Bloomsbury.”

 

Kirkwood poked