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

>Conscience-smitten and amazed Kirkwood stared on until, without warning,

the match flickered and went out. Then, straightening up with an

exclamation at once of annoyance and concern, he rattled the box; it made

no sound,—was empty. In disgust he swore it was the devil’s own luck, that

he should run out of vestas at a time so critical. He could not even say

whether the fellow was dead, unconscious, or simply shamming. He had little

idea of his looks; and to be able to identify him might save a deal of

trouble at some future time,—since he, Kirkwood, seemed so little able

to disengage himself from the clutches of this insane adventure! And the

girl—. what had become of her? How could he continue to search for her,

without lights or guide, through all those silent rooms, whose walls might

inclose a hundred hidden dangers in that house of mystery?

 

But he debated only briefly. His blood was young, and it was hot; it was

quite plain to him that he could not withdraw and retain his self-respect.

If the girl was there to be found, most assuredly, he must find her. The

hand-lamp that had dazzled him at the head of the stairs should be his aid,

now that he thought of it,—and providing he was able to find it.

 

In the scramble on the stairs he had lost his hat, but he remembered that

the vesta’s short-lived light had discovered this on the floor beyond

the man’s body. Carefully stepping across the latter he recovered his

head-gear, and then, kneeling, listened with an ear close to the fellow’s

face. A softly regular beat of breathing reassured him. Half rising, he

caught the body beneath the armpits, lifting and dragging it off the

staircase; and knelt again, to feel of each pocket in the man’s clothing,

partly as an obvious precaution, to relieve him of his advertised revolver

against an untimely wakening, partly to see if he had the lamp about him.

 

The search proved fruitless. Kirkwood suspected that the weapon, like his

own, had existed only in his victim’s ready imagination. As for the lamp,

in the act of rising he struck it with his foot, and picked it up.

 

It felt like a metal tube a couple of inches in diameter, a foot or so

in length, passably heavy. He fumbled with it impatiently. “However the

dickens,” he wondered audibly, “does the infernal machine work?” As it

happened, the thing worked with disconcerting abruptness as his untrained

fingers fell hapchance on the spring. A sudden glare again smote him in the

face, and at the same instant, from a point not a yard away, apparently, an

inarticulate cry rang out upon the stillness.

 

Heart in his mouth, he stepped back, lowering the lamp (which impishly went

out) and lifting a protecting forearm.

 

“Who’s that?” he demanded harshly.

 

A strangled sob of terror answered him, blurred by a swift rush of skirts,

and in a breath his shattered nerves quieted and a glimmer of common sense

penetrated the murk anger and fear had bred in his brain. He understood,

and stepped forward, catching blindly at the darkness with eager hands.

 

“Miss Calendar!” he cried guardedly. “Miss Calendar, it is I—Philip

Kirkwood!”

 

There was a second sob, of another caliber than the first; timid fingers

brushed his, and a hand, warm and fragile, closed upon his own in a passion

of relief and gratitude.

 

“Oh, I am so g-glad!” It was Dorothy Calendar’s voice, beyond mistake.

“I—I didn’t know what t-to t-think…. When the light struck your face

I was sure it was you, but when I called, you answered in a voice so

strange,—not like yours at all! … Tell me,” she pleaded, with palpable

effort to steady herself; “what has happened?”

 

“I think, perhaps,” said Kirkwood uneasily, again troubled by his racing

pulses, “perhaps you can do that better than I.”

 

“Oh!” said the voice guiltily; her fingers trembled on his, and were gently

withdrawn. “I was so frightened,” she confessed after a little pause, “so

frightened that I hardly understand … But you? How did you—?”

 

“I worried about you,” he replied, in a tone absurdly apologetic. “Somehow

it didn’t seem right. It was none of my business, of course, but … I

couldn’t help coming back. This fellow, whoever he is—don’t worry;

he’s unconscious—slipped into the house in a manner that seemed to me

suspicious. I hardly know why I followed, except that he left the door an

open invitation to interference …”

 

“I can’t be thankful enough,” she told him warmly, “that you did interfere.

You have indeed saved me from …”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I don’t know what. If I knew the man—”

 

“You don’t know him?”

 

“I can’t even guess. The light—?”

 

She paused inquiringly. Kirkwood fumbled with the lamp, but, whether its

rude handling had impaired some vital part of the mechanism, or whether the

batteries through much use were worn out, he was able to elicit only one

feeble glow, which was instantly smothered by the darkness.

 

“It’s no use,” he confessed. “The thing’s gone wrong.”

 

“Have you a match?”

 

“I used my last before I got hold of this.”

 

“Oh,” she commented, discouraged. “Have you any notion what he looks like?”

 

Kirkwood thought briefly. “Raffles,” he replied with a chuckle. “He looks

like an amateurish and very callow Raffles. He’s in dress clothes, you

know.”

 

“I wonder!” There was a nuance of profound bewilderment in her exclamation.

Then: “He knocked against something in the hall—a chair, I presume; at all

events, I heard that and put out the light. I was … in the room above the

drawing-room, you see. I stole down to this floor—was there, in the corner

by the stairs when he passed within six inches, and never guessed it. Then,

when he got on the next floor, I started on; but you came in. I slipped

into the drawing-room and crouched behind a chair. You went on, but I dared

not move until … And then I heard some one cry out, and you fell down the

stairs together. I hope you were not hurt—?”

 

“Nothing worth mention; but he must have got a pretty stiff knock, to lay

him out so completely.” Kirkwood stirred the body with his toe, but the man

made no sign. “Dead to the world … And now, Miss Calendar?”

 

If she answered, he did not hear; for on the heels of his query banged the

knocker down below; and thereafter crash followed crash, brewing a deep and

sullen thundering to rouse the echoes and send them rolling, like voices of

enraged ghosts, through the lonely rooms.

V

THE MYSTERY OF A FOUR-WHEELER

 

“What’s that?” At the first alarm the girl had caught convulsively at

Kirkwood’s arm. Now, when a pause came in the growling of the knocker, she

made him hear her voice; and it was broken and vibrant with a threat of

hysteria. “Oh, what can it mean?”

 

“I don’t know.” He laid a hand reassuringly over that which trembled on his

forearm. “The police, possibly.”

 

“Police!” she iterated, aghast. “What makes you think—?”

 

“A man tried to stop me at the door,” he answered quickly. “I got in before

he could. When he tried the knocker, a bobby came along and stopped him.

The latter may have been watching the house since then,—it’d be only his

duty to keep an eye on it; and Heaven knows we raised a racket, coming

head-first down those stairs! Now we are up against it,” he added brightly.

 

But the girl was tugging at his hand. “Come!” she begged breathlessly.

“Come! There is a way! Before they break in—”

 

“But this man—?” Kirkwood hung back, troubled.

 

“They—the police are sure to find and care for him.”

 

“So they will.” He chuckled, “And serve him right! He’d have choked me to

death, with all the good will in the world!”

 

“Oh, do hurry!”

 

Turning, she sped light-footed down the staircase to the lower hall, he

at her elbow. Here the uproar was loudest—deep enough to drown whatever

sounds might have been made by two pairs of flying feet. For all that

they fled on tiptoe, stealthily, guilty shadows in the night; and at the

newel-post swung back into the unbroken blackness which shrouded the

fastnesses backward of the dwelling. A sudden access of fury on the part of

the alarmist at the knocker, spurred them on with quaking hearts. In half a

dozen strides, Kirkwood, guided only by instinct and the frou-frou of the

girl’s skirts as she ran invisible before him, stumbled on the uppermost

steps of a steep staircase; only a hand-rail saved him, and that at the

last moment. He stopped short, shocked into caution. From below came a

contrite whisper: “I’m so sorry! I should have warned you.”

 

He pulled himself together, glaring wildly at nothing. “It’s all right—”

 

“You’re not hurt, truly? Oh, do come quickly.”

 

She waited for him at the bottom of the flight;—happily for him, for he

was all at sea.

 

“Here—your hand—let me guide you. This darkness is dreadful …”

 

He found her hand, somehow, and tucked his into it, confidingly, and not

without an uncertain thrill of satisfaction.

 

“Come!” she panted. “Come! If they break in—”

 

Stifled by apprehension, her voice failed her.

 

They went forward, now less impetuously, for it was very black; and the

knocker had fallen still.

 

“No fear of that,” he remarked after a time. “They wouldn’t dare break in.”

 

A fluttering whisper answered him: “I don’t know. We dare risk nothing.”

 

They seemed to explore, to penetrate acres of labyrinthine chambers and

passages, delving deep into the bowels of the earth, like rabbits burrowing

in a warren, hounded by beagles.

 

Above stairs the hush continued unbroken; as if the dumb Genius of the

Place had cast a spell of silence on the knocker, or else, outraged, had

smitten the noisy disturber with a palsy.

 

The girl seemed to know her way; whether guided by familiarity or by

intuition, she led on without hesitation, Kirkwood blundering in her wake,

between confusion of impression, and dawning dismay conscious of but one

tangible thing, to which he clung as to his hope of salvation: those firm,

friendly fingers that clasped his own.

 

It was as if they wandered on for an hour; probably from start to finish

their flight took up three minutes, no more. Eventually the girl stopped,

releasing his hand. He could hear her syncopated breathing before him, and

gathered that something was wrong. He took a step forward.

 

“What is it?”

 

Her full voice broke out of the obscurity startlingly close, in his very

ear.

 

“The door—the bolts—I can’t budge them.”

 

“Let me …”

 

He pressed forward, brushing her shoulder. She did not draw away, but

willingly yielded place to his hands at the fastenings; and what had proved

impossible to her, to his strong fingers was a matter of comparative ease.

Yet, not entirely consciously, he was not quick. As he tugged at the bolts

he was poignantly sensitive to the subtle warmth of her at his side; he

could hear her soft dry sobs of excitement and suspense, punctuating the

quiet; and was frightened, absolutely, by an impulse, too strong for

ridicule, to take her in his arms and comfort her with the assurance that,

whatever her trouble, he would stand by her and protect her…. It were

futile to try to laugh it off; he gave over the endeavor. Even at this

critical moment he found himself repeating over and over to his heart the

question: