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The Black Bag

by Louis Joseph Vance · English · Gutenberg #9779 · 566,319 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Black Bag

Author: Louis Joseph Vance

Illustrator: Thomas Fogarty


        
Release date: January 1, 2006 [eBook #9779]
                Most recently updated: July 10, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9779

Credits: Suzanne Shell, Leonard Johnson and PG Distributed Proofreading


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK BAG ***
THE BLACK BAG


By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE


[Illustration: cover]


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOMAS FOGARTY


COPYRIGHT 1908




TO MY MOTHER




CONTENTS

 CHAPTER I. DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN
 CHAPTER II. “AND SOME THERE BE WHO HAVE ADVENTURES THRUST UPON THEM”
 CHAPTER III. CALENDAR’S DAUGHTER
 CHAPTER IV. 9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C.
 CHAPTER V. THE MYSTERY OF A FOUR-WHEELER
 CHAPTER VI. “BELOW BRIDGE”
 CHAPTER VII. DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN—RESUMED
 CHAPTER VIII. MADAME L’INTRIGANTE
 CHAPTER IX. AGAIN "BELOW BRIDGE"; AND BEYOND
 CHAPTER X. DESPERATE MEASURES
 CHAPTER XI. OFF THE NORE
 CHAPTER XII. PICARESQUE PASSAGES
 CHAPTER XIII. A PRIMER OF PROGRESSIVE CRIME
 CHAPTER XIV. STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS
 CHAPTER XV. REFUGEES
 CHAPTER XVI. TRAVELS WITH A CHAPERON
 CHAPTER XVII. ROGUES AND VAGABONDS
 CHAPTER XVIII. ADVENTURERS’ LUCK
 CHAPTER XIX. i—THE UXBRIDGE ROAD
 ii—THE CROWN AND MITRE
 iii—THE JOURNEY’S END




ILLUSTRATIONS

 Permit me to introduce an old friend.
 “I’m awaiting your explanation,” she said coldly.
 The boat gathered impetus.
 He helped the boy to his feet, and stood waiting.
 Eccles
 “Hi, matey!” he blustered. “’Ow goes it now?”
 Straddling Mulready’s body, he confronted Calendar and Stryker.
 From the window, Mrs. Hallam turned with a curling lip.
 A costume consisting mainly of a flowered dressing-gown and slippers.
 “Good evening, all!” he saluted them blandly.




THE BLACK BAG




I
DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN


Upon a certain dreary April afternoon in the year of grace, 1906, the
apprehensions of Philip Kirkwood, Esquire, _Artist-peintre_, were
enlivened by the discovery that he was occupying that singularly
distressing social position, which may be summed up succinctly in a
phrase through long usage grown proverbial: “Alone in London.” These
three words have come to connote in our understanding so much of human
misery, that to Mr. Kirkwood they seemed to epitomize absolutely, if
not happily, the various circumstances attendant upon the predicament
wherein he found himself. Inevitably an extremist, because of his
youth, (he had just turned twenty-five), he took no count of mitigating
matters, and would hotly have resented the suggestion that his case was
anything but altogether deplorable and forlorn.

That he was not actually at the end of his resources went for nothing;
he held the distinction a quibble, mockingly immaterial,—like the store
of guineas in his pocket, too insignificant for mention when contrasted
with his needs. And his base of supplies, the American city of his
nativity, whence—and not without a glow of pride in his secret heart—he
was wont to register at foreign hostelries, had been arbitrarily cut
off from him by one of those accidents sardonically classified by
insurance and express corporations as Acts of God.

Now to one who has lived all his days serenely in accord with the
dictates of his own sweet will, taking no thought for the morrow, such
a situation naturally seems both appalling and intolerable, at the
first blush. It must be confessed that, to begin with, Kirkwood drew a
long and disconsolate face over his fix. And in that black hour,
primitive of its kind in his brief span, he became conscious of a
sinister apparition taking shape at his elbow—a shade of darkness
which, clouting him on the back with a skeleton hand, croaked hollow
salutations in his ear.

“Come, Mr. Kirkwood, come!” its mirthless accents rallied him. “Have
you no welcome for me?—you, who have been permitted to live the quarter
of a century without making my acquaintance? Surely, now, it’s high
time we were learning something of one another, you and I!” “But I
don’t understand,” returned Kirkwood blankly. “I don’t know you—”

“True! But you shall: I am the Shade of Care—”

“Dull Care!” murmured Kirkwood, bewildered and dismayed; for the
visitation had come upon him with little presage and no invitation
whatever.

“Dull Care,” the Shade assured him. “Dull Care am I—and Care that’s
anything but dull, into the bargain: Care that’s like a keen pain in
your body, Care that lives a horror in your mind, Care that darkens
your days and flavors with bitter poison all your nights, Care that—”

But Kirkwood would not listen further. Courageously submissive to his
destiny, knowing in his heart that the Shade had come to stay, he yet
found spirit to shake himself with a dogged air, to lift his chin, set
the strong muscles of his jaw, and smile that homely wholesome smile
which was his peculiarly.

“Very well,” he accepted the irremediable with grim humor; “what must
be, must. I don’t pretend to be glad to see you, but—you’re free to
stay as long as you find the climate agreeable. I warn you I shan’t
whine. Lots of men, hundreds and hundreds of ’em, have slept tight o’
nights with you for bedfellow; if they could grin and bear you, I
believe I can.”

Now Care mocked him with a sardonic laugh, and sought to tighten upon
his shoulders its bony grasp; but Kirkwood resolutely shrugged it off
and went in search of man’s most faithful dumb friend, to wit, his
pipe; the which, when found and filled, he lighted with a spill twisted
from the envelope of a cable message which had been vicariously
responsible for his introduction to the Shade of Care.

“It’s about time,” he announced, watching the paper blacken and burn in
the grate fire, “that I was doing something to prove my title to a
living.” And this was all his valedictory to a vanished competence.
“Anyway,” he added hastily, as if fearful lest Care, overhearing, might
have read into his tone a trace of vain repining, “anyway, I’m a sight
better off than those poor devils over there! I really have a great
deal to be thankful for, now that my attention’s drawn to it.”

For the ensuing few minutes he thought it all over, soberly but with a
stout heart; standing at a window of his bedroom in the Hotel Pless,
hands deep in trouser pockets, pipe fuming voluminously, his gaze
wandering out over a blurred infinitude of wet shining roofs and sooty
chimney-pots: all of London that a lowering drizzle would let him see,
and withal by no means a cheering prospect, nor yet one calculated to
offset the disheartening influence of the indomitable Shade of Care.
But the truth is that Kirkwood’s brain comprehended little that his
eyes perceived; his thoughts were with his heart, and that was half a
world away and sick with pity for another and a fairer city, stricken
in the flower of her loveliness, writhing in Promethean agony upon her
storied hills.

There came a rapping at the door.

Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say
“Come in!” pleasantly.

The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, swinging on one heel,
beheld hesitant upon the threshold a diminutive figure in the livery of
the Pless pages.

“Mister Kirkwood?”

Kirkwood nodded.

“Gentleman to see you, sir.”

Kirkwood nodded again, smiling. “Show him up, please,” he said. But
before the words were fairly out of his mouth a footfall sounded in the
corridor, a hand was placed upon the shoulder of the page, gently but
with decision swinging him out of the way, and a man stepped into the
room.

“Mr. Brentwick!” Kirkwood almost shouted, jumping forward to seize his
visitor’s hand.

“My dear boy!” replied the latter. “I’m delighted to see you. ’Got your
note not an hour ago, and came at once—you see!”

“It was mighty good of you. Sit down, please. Here are cigars.... Why,
a moment ago I was the most miserable and lonely mortal on the
footstool!”

“I can fancy.” The elder man looked up, smiling at Kirkwood from the
depths of his arm-chair, as the latter stood above him, resting an
elbow on the mantel. “The management knows me,” he offered explanation
of his unceremonious appearance; “so I took the liberty of following on
the heels of the bellhop, dear boy. And how are you? Why are you in
London, enjoying our abominable spring weather? And why the anxious
undertone I detected in your note?”

He continued to stare curiously into Kirkwood’s face. At a glance, this
Mr. Brentwick was a man of tallish figure and rather slender; with a
countenance thin and flushed a sensitive pink, out of which his eyes
shone, keen, alert, humorous, and a trace wistful behind his glasses.
His years were indeterminate; with the aspect of fifty, the spirit and
the verve of thirty assorted oddly. But his hands were old, delicate,
fine and fragile; and the lips beneath the drooping white mustache at
times trembled, almost imperceptibly, with the generous sentiments that
come with mellow age. He held his back straight and his head with an
air—an air that was not a swagger but the sign-token of seasoned
experience in the world. The most carping could have found no flaw in
the quiet taste of his attire. To sum up, Kirkwood’s very good
friend—and his only one then in London—Mr. Brentwick looked and was an
English gentleman.

“Why?” he persisted, as the younger man hesitated. “I am here to find
out. To-night I leave for the Continent. In the meantime ...”

“And at midnight I sail for the States,” added Kirkwood. “That is
mainly why I wished to see you—to say good-by, for the time.”

“You’re going home—” A shadow clouded Brentwick’s clear eyes.

“To fight it out, shoulder to shoulder with my brethren in adversity.”

The cloud lifted. “That is the spirit!” declared the elder man. “For
the moment I did you the injustice to believe that you were running
away. But now I understand. Forgive me.... Pardon, too, the stupidity
which I must lay at the door of my advancing years; to me the thought
of you as a Parisian fixture has become such a commonplace, Philip,
that the news of the disaster hardly stirred me. Now I remember that
you are a Californian!”

“I was born in San Francisco,” affirmed Kirkwood a bit sadly. “My
father and mother were buried there ...”

“And your fortune—?”

“I inherited my father’s interest in the firm of Kirkwood & Vanderlip;
when I came over to study painting, I left everything in Vanderlip’s
hands. The business afforded me a handsome living.”

“You have heard from Mr. Vanderlip?”

“Fifteen minutes ago.” Kirkwood took a cable-form, still damp, from his
pocket, and handed it to his guest. Unfolding it, the latter read:

“_Kirkwood, Pless, London. Stay where you are no good coming back
everything gone no insurance letter follows vanderlip_.”

“When I got the news in Paris,” Kirkwood volunteered, “I tried the
banks; they refused to honor my drafts. I had a little money in
hand,—enough to see me home,—so closed the studio and came across. I’m
booked on the _Minneapolis_, sailing from Tilbury at daybreak; the
boat-train leaves at eleven-thirty. I had hoped you might be able to
dine with me and see me off.”

In silence Brentwick returned the cable message. Then, with a
thoughtful look, “You are sure this is wise?” he queried.

“It’s the only thing I can see.”

“But your partner says—”

“Naturally he thinks that by this time I should have learned to paint
well enough to support myself for a few months, until he can get things
running again. Perhaps I might.” Brentwick supported the presumption
with a decided gesture. “But have I a right to leave Vanderlip to fight
it out alone? For Vanderlip has a wife and kiddies to support; I—”

“Your genius!”

“My ability, such as it is—and that only. It can wait.... No; this
means simply that I must come down from the clouds, plant my feet on
solid earth, and get to work.”

“The sentiment is sound,” admitted Brentwick, “the practice of it,
folly. Have you stopped to think what part a rising young
portrait-painter can contribute toward the rebuilding of a devastated
city?”

“The painting can wait,” reiterated Kirkwood. “I can work like other
men.”

“You can do yourself and your genius grave injustice. And I fear me you
will, dear boy. It’s in keeping with your heritage of American
obstinacy. Now if it were a question of money—”

“Mr. Brentwick!” Kirkwood protested vehemently. “I’ve ample for my
present needs,” he added.

“Of course,” conceded Brentwick with a sigh. “I didn’t really hope you
would avail yourself of our friendship. Now there’s my home in Aspen
Villas.... You have seen it?”

“In your absence this afternoon your estimable butler, with commendable
discretion, kept me without the doors,” laughed the young man.

“It’s a comfortable home. You would not consent to share it with me
until—?”

“You are more than good; but honestly, I must sail to-night. I wanted
only this chance to see you before I left. You’ll dine with me, won’t
you?”

“If you would stay in London, Philip, we would dine together not once
but many times; as it is, I myself am booked for Munich, to be gone a
week, on business. I have many affairs needing attention between now
and the nine-ten train from Victoria. If you will be my guest at Aspen
Villas—”

“Please!” begged Kirkwood, with a little laugh of pleasure because of
the other’s insistence. “I only wish I could. Another day—”

“Oh, you will make your million in a year, and return scandalously
independent. It’s in your American blood.” Frail white fingers tapped
an arm of the chair as their owner stared gravely into the fire. “I
confess I envy you,” he observed.

“The opportunity to make a million in a year?” chuckled Kirkwood.

“No. I envy you your Romance.”

“The Romance of a Poor Young Man went out of fashion years ago.... No,
my dear friend; my Romance died a natural death half an hour since.”

“There spoke Youth—blind, enviable Youth!... On the contrary, you are
but turning the leaves of the first chapter of your Romance, Philip.”

“Romance is dead,” contended the young man stubbornly.

“Long live the King!” Brentwick laughed quietly, still attentive to the
fire. “Myself when young,” he said softly, “did seek Romance, but never
knew it till its day was done. I’m quite sure that is a poor paraphrase
of something I have read. In age, one’s sight is sharpened—to see
Romance in another’s life, at least. I say I envy you. You have Youth,
unconquerable Youth, and the world before you.... I must go.”

He rose stiffly, as though suddenly made conscious of his age. The old
eyes peered more than a trifle wistfully, now, into Kirkwood’s. “You
will not fail to call on me by cable, dear boy, if you need—anything? I
ask it as a favor.... I’m glad you wished to see me before going out of
my life. One learns to value the friendship of Youth, Philip. Good-by,
and good luck attend you.”

Alone once more, Kirkwood returned to his window. The disappointment he
felt at being robbed of his anticipated pleasure in Brentwick’s company
at dinner, colored his mood unpleasantly. His musings merged into
vacuity, into a dull gray mist of hopelessness comparable only to the
dismal skies then lowering over London-town.

Brentwick was good, but Brentwick was mistaken. There was really
nothing for Kirkwood to do but to go ahead. But one steamer-trunk
remained to be packed; the boat-train would leave before midnight, the
steamer with the morning tide; by the morrow’s noon he would be upon
the high seas, within ten days in New York and among friends; and then
...

The problem of that afterwards perplexed Kirkwood more than he cared to
own. Brentwick had opened his eyes to the fact that he would be
practically useless in San Francisco; he could not harbor the thought
of going back, only to become a charge upon Vanderlip. No; he was
resolved that thenceforward he must rely upon himself, carve out his
own destiny. But—would the art that he had cultivated with such
assiduity, yield him a livelihood if sincerely practised with that end
in view? Would the mental and physical equipment of a painter,
heretofore dilettante, enable him to become self-supporting?

Knotting his brows in concentration of effort to divine the future, he
doubted himself, darkly questioning alike his abilities and his temper
under trial; neither ere now had ever been put to the test. His eyes
became somberly wistful, his heart sore with regret of Yesterday—his
Yesterday of care-free youth and courage, gilded with the ineffable,
evanescent glamour of Romance—of such Romance, thrice refined of dross,
as only he knows who has wooed his Art with passion passing the love of
woman.

Far away, above the acres of huddled roofs and chimney-pots, the
storm-mists thinned, lifting transiently; through them, gray,
fairy-like, the towers of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament
bulked monstrous and unreal, fading when again the fugitive dun vapors
closed down upon the city.

Nearer at hand the Shade of Care nudged Kirkwood’s elbow, whispering
subtly. Romance was indeed dead; the world was cold and cruel.

The gloom deepened.

In the cant of modern metaphysics, the moment was psychological.

There came a rapping at the door.

Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say
“Come in!” pleasantly.

The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, turning on one heel,
beheld hesitant upon the threshold a diminutive figure in the livery of
the Pless pages.

“Mr. Kirkwood?”

Kirkwood nodded.

“Gentleman to see you, sir.”

Kirkwood nodded again, smiling if somewhat perplexed. Encouraged, the
child advanced, proffering a silver card-tray at the end of an
unnaturally rigid forearm. Kirkwood took the card dubiously between
thumb and forefinger and inspected it without prejudice.

“‘George B. Calendar,’” he read. “‘George B. Calendar!’ But I know no
such person. Sure there’s no mistake, young man?”

The close-cropped, bullet-shaped, British head was agitated in vigorous
negation, and “Card for Mister Kirkwood!” was mumbled in dispassionate
accents appropriate to a recitation by rote.

“Very well. But before you show him up, ask this Mr. Calendar if he is
quite sure he wants to see Philip Kirkwood.”

“Yessir.”

The child marched out, punctiliously closing the door. Kirkwood tamped
down the tobacco in his pipe and puffed energetically, dismissing the
interruption to his reverie as a matter of no consequence—an obvious
mistake to be rectified by two words with this Mr. Calendar whom he did
not know. At the knock he had almost hoped it might be Brentwick,
returning with a changed mind about the bid to dinner.

He regretted Brentwick sincerely. Theirs was a curious sort of
friendship—extraordinarily close in view of the meagerness of either’s
information about the other, to say nothing of the disparity between
their ages. Concerning the elder man Kirkwood knew little more than
that they had met on shipboard, “coming over”; that Brentwick had spent
some years in America; that he was an Englishman by birth, a
cosmopolitan by habit, by profession a gentleman (employing that term
in its most uncompromisingly British significance), and by inclination
a collector of “articles of virtue and bigotry,” in pursuit of which he
made frequent excursions to the Continent from his residence in a
quaint quiet street of Old Brompton. It had been during his not
infrequent, but ordinarily abbreviated, sojourns in Paris that their
steamer acquaintance had ripened into an affection almost filial on the
one hand, almost paternal on the other....

There came a rapping at the door.

Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say
“Come in!” pleasantly.

The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, swinging on one heel,
beheld hesitant upon the threshold a rather rotund figure of medium
height, clad in an expressionless gray lounge suit, with a brown
“bowler” hat held tentatively in one hand, an umbrella weeping in the
other. A voice, which was unctuous and insinuative, emanated from the
figure.

“Mr. Kirkwood?”

Kirkwood nodded, with some effort recalling the name, so detached had
been his thoughts since the disappearance of the page.

“Yes, Mr. Calendar—?”

“Are you—ah—busy, Mr. Kirkwood?”

“Are you, Mr. Calendar?” Kirkwood’s smile robbed the retort of any
flavor of incivility.

Encouraged, the man entered, premising that he would detain his host
but a moment, and readily surrendering hat and umbrella. Kirkwood,
putting the latter aside, invited his caller to the easy chair which
Brentwick had occupied by the fireplace.

“It takes the edge off the dampness,” Kirkwood explained in deference
to the other’s look of pleased surprise at the cheerful bed of coals.
“I’m afraid I could never get acclimated to life in a cold, damp
room—or a damp cold room—such as you Britishers prefer.”

“It is grateful,” Mr. Calendar agreed, spreading plump and well
cared-for hands to the warmth. “But you are mistaken; I am as much an
American as yourself.”

“Yes?” Kirkwood looked the man over with more interest, less
matter-of-course courtesy.

He proved not unprepossessing, this unclassifiable Mr. Calendar; he was
dressed with some care, his complexion was good, and the fullness of
his girth, emphasized as it was by a notable lack of inches, bespoke a
nature genial, easy-going and sybaritic. His dark eyes, heavy-lidded,
were active—curiously, at times, with a subdued glitter—in a face
large, round, pink, of which the other most remarkable features were a
mustache, close-trimmed and showing streaks of gray, a chubby nose, and
duplicate chins. Mr. Calendar was furthermore possessed of a polished
bald spot, girdled with a tonsure of silvered hair—circumstances which
lent some factitious distinction to a personality otherwise
commonplace.

His manner might be best described as uneasy with assurance; as though
he frequently found it necessary to make up for his unimpressive
stature by assuming an unnatural habit of authority. And there you have
him; beyond these points, Kirkwood was conscious of no impressions; the
man was apparently neutral-tinted of mind as well as of body.

“So you knew I was an American, Mr. Calendar?” suggested Kirkwood.

“’Saw your name on the register; we both hail from the same neck of the
woods, you know.”

“I didn’t know it, and—”

“Yes; I’m from Frisco, too.”

“And I’m sorry.”

Mr. Calendar passed five fat fingers nervously over his mustache,
glanced alertly up at Kirkwood, as if momentarily inclined to question
his tone, then again stared glumly into the fire; for Kirkwood had
maintained an attitude purposefully colorless. Not to put too fine a
point upon it, he believed that his caller was lying; the man’s
appearance, his mannerisms, his voice and enunciation, while they might
have been American, seemed all un-Californian. To one born and bred in
that state, as Kirkwood had been, her sons are unmistakably
hall-marked.

Now no man lies without motive. This one chose to reaffirm, with a show
of deep feeling: “Yes; I’m from Frisco, too. We’re companions in
misfortune.”

“I hope not altogether,” said Kirkwood politely.

Mr. Calendar drew his own inferences from the response and mustered up
a show of cheerfulness. “Then you’re not completely wiped out?”

“To the contrary, I was hoping you were less unhappy.”

“Oh! Then you are—?”

Kirkwood lifted the cable message from the mantel. “I have just heard
from my partner at home,” he said with a faint smile; and quoted:
“‘Everything gone; no insurance.’”

Mr. Calendar pursed his plump lips, whistling inaudibly. “Too bad, too
bad!” he murmured sympathetically. “We’re all hard hit, more or less.”
He lapsed into dejected apathy, from which Kirkwood, growing at length
impatient, found it necessary to rouse him.

“You wished to see me about something else, I’m sure?”

Mr. Calendar started from his reverie. “Eh? ... I was dreaming. I beg
pardon. It seems hard to realize, Mr. Kirkwood, that this awful
catastrophe has overtaken our beloved metropolis—”

The canting phrases wearied Kirkwood; abruptly he cut in. “Would a
sovereign help you out, Mr. Calendar? I don’t mind telling you that’s
about the limit of my present resources.”

“Pardon _me_.” Mr. Calendar’s moon-like countenance darkened; he
assumed a transparent dignity. “You misconstrue my motive, sir.”

“Then I’m sorry.”

“I am not here to borrow. On the other hand, quite by accident I
discovered your name upon the register, down-stairs; a good old Frisco
name, if you will permit me to say so. I thought to myself that here
was a chance to help a fellow-countryman.” Calendar paused,
interrogative; Kirkwood remained interested but silent. “If a passage
across would help you, I—I think it might be arranged,” stammered
Calendar, ill at ease.

“It might,” admitted Kirkwood, speculative.

“I could fix it so that you could go over—first-class, of course—and
pay your way, so to speak, by, rendering us, me and my partner, a
trifling service.”

“Ah?”

“In fact,” continued Calendar, warming up to his theme, “there might be
something more in it for you than the passage, if—if you’re the right
man, the man I’m looking for.”

“That, of course, is the question.”

“Eh?” Calendar pulled up suddenly in a full-winged flight of
enthusiasm.

Kirkwood eyed him steadily. “I said that it is a question, Mr.
Calendar, whether or not I am the man you’re looking for. Between you
and me and the fire-dogs, I don’t believe I am. Now if you wish to name
your _quid pro quo_, this trifling service I’m to render in recognition
of your benevolence, you may.”

“Ye-es,” slowly. But the speaker delayed his reply until he had
surveyed his host from head to foot, with a glance both critical and
appreciative.

He saw a man in height rather less than the stock size six-feet so much
in demand by the manufacturers of modern heroes of fiction; a man a bit
round-shouldered, too, but otherwise sturdily built, self-contained,
well-groomed.

Kirkwood wears a boy’s honest face; no one has ever called him
handsome. A few prejudiced persons have decided that he has an
interesting countenance; the propounders of this verdict have been, for
the most part, feminine. Kirkwood himself has been heard to declare
that his features do not fit; in its essence the statement is true, but
there is a very real, if undefinable, engaging quality in their very
irregularity. His eyes are brown, pleasant, set wide apart,
straightforward of expression.

Now it appeared that, whatever his motive, Mr. Calendar had acted upon
impulse in sending his card up to Kirkwood. Possibly he had anticipated
a very different sort of reception from a very different sort of man.
Even in the light of subsequent events it remains difficult to fathom
the mystery of his choice. Perhaps Fate directed it; stranger things
have happened at the dictates of a man’s Destiny.

At all events, this Calendar proved not lacking in penetration; men of
his stamp are commonly endowed with that quality to an eminent degree.
Not slow to reckon the caliber of the man before him, the leaven of
intuition began to work in his adipose intelligence. He owned himself
baffled.

“Thanks,” he concluded pensively; “I reckon you’re right. You won’t do,
after all. I’ve wasted your time. Mine, too.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Calendar got heavily out of his chair, reaching for his hat and
umbrella. “Permit me to apologize for an unwarrantable intrusion, Mr.
Kirkwood.” He faltered; a worried and calculating look shadowed his
small eyes. “I _was_ looking for some one to serve me in a certain
capacity—”

“Certain or questionable?” propounded Kirkwood blandly, opening the
door.

Pointedly Mr. Calendar ignored the imputation. “Sorry I disturbed you.
G’dafternoon, Mr. Kirkwood.”

“Good-by, Mr. Calendar.” A smile twitched the corners of Kirkwood’s
too-wide mouth.

Calendar stepped hastily out into the hall. As he strode—or rather,
rolled—away, Kirkwood maliciously feathered a Parthian arrow.

“By the way, Mr. Calendar—?”

The sound of retreating footsteps was stilled and “Yes?” came from the
gloom of the corridor.

“Were you ever in San Francisco? Really and truly? Honest Injun, Mr.
Calendar?”

For a space the quiet was disturbed by harsh breathing; then, in a
strained voice, “Good day, Mr. Kirkwood”; and again the sound of
departing footfalls.

Kirkwood closed the door and the incident simultaneously, with a smart
bang of finality. Laughing quietly he went back to the window with its
dreary outlook, now the drearier for lengthening evening shadows.

“I wonder what his game is, anyway. An adventurer, of course; the woods
are full of ’em. A queer fish, even of his kind! And with a trick up
his sleeve as queer and fishy as himself, no doubt!”




II
“AND SOME THERE BE WHO HAVE ADVENTURES THRUST UPON THEM”


The assumption seems not unwarrantable, that Mr. Calendar figuratively
washed his hands of Mr. Kirkwood. Unquestionably Mr. Kirkwood
considered himself well rid of Mr. Calendar. When the latter had gone
his way, Kirkwood, mindful of the fact that his boat-train would leave
St. Pancras at half-after eleven, set about his packing and dismissed
from his thoughts the incident created by the fat _chevalier
d’industrie_; and at six o’clock, or thereabouts, let himself out of
his room, dressed for the evening, a light rain-coat over one arm, in
the other hand a cane,—the drizzle having ceased.

A stolid British lift lifted him down to the ground floor of the
establishment in something short of five minutes. Pausing in the office
long enough to settle his bill and leave instructions to have his
luggage conveyed to the boat-train, he received with entire equanimity
the affable benediction of the clerk, in whose eyes he still figured as
that radiant creature, an American millionaire; and passed on to the
lobby, where he surrendered hat, coat and stick to the cloak-room
attendant, ere entering the dining-room.

The hour was a trifle early for a London dinner, the handsome room but
moderately filled with patrons. Kirkwood absorbed the fact
unconsciously and without displeasure; the earlier, the better: he was
determined to consume his last civilized meal (as he chose to consider
it) at his serene leisure, to live fully his ebbing moments in the
world to which he was born, to drink to its cloying dregs one ultimate
draught of luxury.

A benignant waiter bowed him into a chair by a corner table in
juxtaposition with an open window, through which, swaying imperceptibly
the closed hangings, were wafted gentle gusts of the London evening’s
sweet, damp breath.

Kirkwood settled himself with an inaudible sigh of pleasure. He was
dining, for the last time in Heaven knew how long, in a first-class
restaurant.

With a deferential flourish the waiter brought him the menu-card. He
had served in his time many an “American, millionaire”; he had also
served this Mr. Kirkwood, and respected him as one exalted above the
run of his kind, in that he comprehended the art of dining.

Fifteen minutes later the waiter departed rejoicing, his order
complete.

To distract a conscience whispering of extravagance, Kirkwood lighted a
cigarette.

The room was gradually filling with later arrivals; it was the most
favored restaurant in London, and, despite the radiant costumes of the
women, its atmosphere remained sedate and restful.

A cab clattered down the side street on which the window opened.

At a near-by table a woman laughed, quietly happy. Incuriously Kirkwood
glanced her way. She was bending forward, smiling, flattering her
escort with the adoration of her eyes. They were lovers alone in the
wilderness of the crowded restaurant. They seemed very happy.

Kirkwood was conscious of a strange pang of emotion. It took him some
time to comprehend that it was envy.

He was alone and lonely. For the first time he realized that no woman
had ever looked upon him as the woman at the adjoining table looked
upon her lover. He had found time to worship but one mistress—his art.

And he was renouncing her.

He was painfully conscious of what he had missed, had lost—or had not
yet found: the love of woman.

The sensation was curious—new, unique in his experience.

His cigarette burned down to his fingers as he sat pondering.
Abstractedly, he ground its fire out in an ash-tray.

The waiter set before him a silver tureen, covered.

He sat up and began to consume his soup, scarce doing it justice. His
dream troubled him—his dream of the love of woman.

From a little distance his waiter regarded him, with an air of
disappointment. In the course of an hour and a half he awoke, to
discover the attendant in the act of pouring very hot and black coffee
from a bright silver pot into a demi-tasse of fragile porcelain.
Kirkwood slipped a single lump of sugar into the cup, gave over his
cigar-case to be filled, then leaned back, deliberately lighting a long
and slender panetela as a preliminary to a last lingering appreciation
of the scene of which he was a part.

He reviewed it through narrowed eyelids, lazily; yet with some slight
surprise, seeming to see it with new vision, with eyes from which
scales of ignorance had dropped.

This long and brilliant dining-hall, with its quiet perfection of
proportion and appointment, had always gratified his love of the
beautiful; to-night it pleased him to an unusual degree. Yet it was the
same as ever; its walls tinted a deep rose, with their hangings of dull
cloth-of-gold, its lights discriminatingly clustered and discreetly
shaded, redoubled in half a hundred mirrors, its subdued shimmer of
plate and glass, its soberly festive assemblage of circumspect men and
women splendidly gowned, its decorously muted murmur of voices
penetrated and interwoven by the strains of a hidden string
orchestra—caressed his senses as always, yet with a difference.
To-night he saw it a room populous with lovers, lovers insensibly
paired, man unto woman attentive, woman of man regardful.

He had never understood this before. This much he had missed in life.

It seemed hard to realize that one must forego it all for ever.

Presently he found himself acutely self-conscious. The sensation
puzzled him; and without appearing to do so, he traced it from effect
to cause; and found the cause in a woman—a girl, rather, seated at a
table the third removed from him, near the farther wall of the room.

Too considerate, and too embarrassed, to return her scrutiny openly,
look for look, he yet felt sure that, however temporarily, he was
become the object of her intent interest.

Idly employed with his cigar, he sipped his coffee. In time aware that
she had turned her attention elsewhere, he looked up.

At first he was conscious of an effect of disappointment. She was
nobody that he knew, even by reputation. She was simply a young girl,
barely out of her teens—if as old as that phrase would signify. He
wondered what she had found in him to make her think him worth so long
a study; and looked again, more keenly curious.

With this second glance, appreciation stirred the artistic side of his
nature, that was already grown impatient of his fretted mood. The
slender and girlish figure, posed with such absolute lack of intrusion
against a screen of rose and gilt, moved him to critical admiration.
The tinted glow of shaded candles caught glistening on the spun gold of
her fair hair, and enhanced the fine pallor of her young shoulders. He
saw promise, and something more than promise, in her face, its oval
something dimmed by warm shadows that unavailingly sought to blend
youth and beauty alike into the dull, rich background.

In the sheer youth of her (he realized) more than in aught else, lay
her chiefest charm. She could be little more than a child, indeed, if
he were to judge her by the purity of her shadowed eyes and the absence
of emotion in the calm and direct look which presently she turned upon
him who sat wondering at the level, penciled darkness of her brows.

At length aware that she had surprised his interest, Kirkwood glanced
aside—coolly deliberate, lest she should detect in his attitude
anything more than impersonal approval.

A slow color burned his cheeks. In his temples there rose a curious
pulsing.

After a while she drew his gaze again, imperiously—herself all unaware
of the havoc she was wreaking on his temperament.

He could have fancied her distraught, cloaking an unhappy heart with
placid brow and gracious demeanor; but such a conception matched
strangely her glowing youth and spirit. What had she to do with Care?
What concern had Black Care, whose gaunt shape in sable shrouds had
lurked at his shoulder all the evening, despite his rigid
preoccupation, with a being as charmingly flushed with budding
womanhood as this girl?

“Eighteen?” he hazarded. “Eighteen, or possibly nineteen, dining at the
Pless in a ravishing dinner-gown, and—unhappy? Oh, hardly—not she!”

Yet the impression haunted him, and ere long he was fain to seek
confirmation or denial of it in the manner of her escort.

The latter sat with back to Kirkwood, cutting a figure as negative as
his snug evening clothes. One could surmise little from a fleshy thick
neck, a round, glazed bald spot, a fringe of grizzled hair, and two
bright red ears.

Calendar?

Somehow the fellow did suggest Kirkwood’s caller of the afternoon. The
young man could not have said precisely how, for he was unfamiliar with
the aspect of that gentleman’s back. None the less the suggestion
persisted.

By now, a few of the guests, theater-bound, for the most part, were
leaving. Here and there a table stood vacant, that had been filled,
cloth tarnished, chairs disarranged: in another moment to be
transformed into its pristine brilliance under the deft attentions of
the servitors.

Down an aisle, past the table at which the girl was sitting, came two,
making toward the lobby; the man, a slight and meager young
personality, in the lead. Their party had attracted Kirkwood’s notice
as they entered; why, he did not remember; but it was in his mind that
then they had been three. Instinctively he looked at the table they had
left—one placed at some distance from the girl, and hidden from her by
an angle in the wall. It appeared that the third member had chosen to
dally a few moments over his tobacco and a liqueur-brandy. Kirkwood
could see him plainly, lounging in his chair and fumbling the stem of a
glass: a heavy man, of somber habit, his black and sullen brows
lowering and thoughtful above a face boldly handsome.

The woman of the trio was worthy of closer attention. Some paces in the
wake of her lack-luster esquire, she was making a leisurely progress,
trailing the skirts of a gown magnificent beyond dispute, half
concealed though it was by the opera cloak whose soft folds draped her
shoulders. Slowly, carrying her head high, she approached, insolent
eyes reviewing the room from beneath their heavy lids; a metallic and
mature type of dark beauty, supremely self-confident and
self-possessed.

Men turned involuntarily to look after her, not altogether in undiluted
admiration.

In the act of passing behind the putative Calendar, she paused
momentarily, bending as if to gather up her train. Presumably the
action disturbed her balance; she swayed a little, and in the effort to
recover, rested the tips of her gloved fingers upon the edge of the
table. Simultaneously (Kirkwood could have sworn) a single word left
her lips, a word evidently pitched for the ear of the hypothetical
Calendar alone. Then she swept on, imperturbable, assured.

To the perplexed observer it was indubitably evident that some
communication had passed from the woman to the man. Kirkwood saw the
fat shoulders of the girl’s companion stiffen suddenly as the woman’s
hand rested at his elbow; as she moved away, a little rippling shiver
was plainly visible in the muscles of his back, beneath his coat—mute
token of relaxing tension. An instant later one plump and mottled hand
was carelessly placed where the woman’s had been; and was at once
removed with fingers closed.

To the girl, watching her face covertly, Kirkwood turned for clue to
the incident. He made no doubt that she had observed the passage; proof
of that one found in her sudden startling pallor (of indignation?) and
in her eyes, briefly alight with some inscrutable emotion, though
quickly veiled by lowered lashes. Slowly enough she regained color and
composure, while her _vis-à-vis_ sat motionless, head inclined as if in
thought.

Abruptly the man turned in his chair to summon a waiter, and exposed
his profile. Kirkwood was in no wise amazed to recognize Calendar—a
badly frightened Calendar now, however, and hardly to be identified
with the sleek, glib fellow who had interviewed Kirkwood in the
afternoon. His flabby cheeks were ashen and trembling, and upon the
back of his chair the fat white fingers were drumming incessantly an
inaudible tattoo of shattered nerves.

“Scared silly!” commented Kirkwood. “Why?” Having spoken to his waiter,
Calendar for some seconds raked the room with quick glances, as if
seeking an acquaintance. Presumably disappointed, he swung back to face
the girl, bending forward to reach her ears with accents low-pitched
and confidential. She, on her part, fell at once attentive, grave and
responsive. Perhaps a dozen sentences passed between them. At the
outset her brows contracted and she shook her head in gentle dissent;
whereupon Calendar’s manner became more imperative. Gradually,
unwillingly, she seemed to yield consent. Once she caught her breath
sharply, and, infected by her companion’s agitation, sat back, color
fading again in the round young cheeks.

Kirkwood’s waiter put in an inopportune appearance with the bill. The
young man paid it. When he looked up again Calendar had swung squarely
about in his chair. His eye encountered Kirkwood’s. He nodded
pleasantly. Temporarily confused, Kirkwood returned the nod.

In a twinkling he had repented; Calendar had left his chair and was
wending his way through the tables toward Kirkwood’s. Reaching it, he
paused, offering the hand of genial fellowship. Kirkwood accepted it
half-heartedly (what else was he to do?) remarking at the same time
that Calendar had recovered much of his composure. There was now a
normal coloring in the heavily jowled countenance, with less glint of
fear in the quick, dark eyes; and Calendar’s hand, even if moist and
cold, no longer trembled. Furthermore it was immediately demonstrated
that his impudence had not deserted him.

“Why, Kirkwood, my dear fellow!” he crowed—not so loudly as to attract
attention, but in a tone assumed to divert suspicion, should he be
overheard. “This is great luck, you know—to find you here.”

“Is it?” returned Kirkwood coolly. He disengaged his fingers.

The pink plump face was contorted in a furtive grimace of deprecation.
Without waiting for permission Calendar dropped into the vacant chair.

“My dear sir,” he proceeded, unabashed, “I throw myself upon your
mercy.”

“The devil you do!”

“I must. I’m in the deuce of a hole, and there’s no one I know here
besides yourself. I—I—”

Kirkwood saw fit to lead him on; partly because, out of the corner of
his eye, he was aware of the girl’s unconcealed suspense. “Go on,
please, Mr. Calendar. You throw yourself on a total stranger’s mercy
because you’re in the deuce of a hole; and—?”

“It’s this way; I’m called away on urgent business imperative business.
I must go at once. My daughter is with me. My daughter! Think of my
embarrassment; I can not leave her here, alone, nor can I permit her to
go home unprotected.”

Calendar paused in anxiety.

“That’s easily remedied, then,” suggested Kirkwood.

“How?”

“Put her in a cab at the door.”

“I ... No. The devil! I couldn’t think of it. You won’t understand. I—”

“I do not understand,—” amended the younger man politely.

Calendar compressed his lips nervously. It was plain that the man was
quivering with impatience and half-mad with excitement. He held quiet
only long enough to regain his self-control and take counsel with his
prudence.

“It is impossible, Mr. Kirkwood. I must ask you to be generous and
believe me.”

“Very well; for the sake of the argument, I do believe you, Mr.
Calendar.”

“Hell!” exploded the elder man in an undertone. Then swiftly,
stammering in his haste: “I can’t let Dorothy accompany me to the
door,” he declared. “She—I—I throw myself upon your mercy!”

“What—again?”

“The truth—the truth is, if you will have it, that I am in danger of
arrest the moment I leave here. If my daughter is with me, she will
have to endure the shame and humiliation—”

“Then why place her in such a position?” Kirkwood demanded sharply.

Calendar’s eyes burned, incandescent with resentment. Offended, he
offered to rise and go, but changed his mind and sat tight in hope.

“I beg of you, sir—”

“One moment, Mr. Calendar.”

Abruptly Kirkwood’s weathercock humor shifted—amusement yielding to
intrigued interest. After all, why not oblige the fellow? What did
anything matter, now? What harm could visit him if he yielded to this
corpulent adventurer’s insistence? Both from experience and observation
he knew this for a world plentifully peopled by soldiers of fortune,
contrivers of snares and pitfalls for the feet of the unwary. On the
other hand, it is axiomatic that a penniless man is perfectly safe
anywhere. Besides, there was the girl to be considered.

Kirkwood considered her, forthwith. In the process thereof, his eyes
sought her, perturbed. Their glances clashed. She looked away hastily,
crimson to her temples.

Instantly the conflict between curiosity and caution, inclination and
distrust, 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.”


[Illustration: Permit me to introduce an old friend.]


“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 protégée, 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
naïve 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 top-coat, 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 his cane through the trap, repeating the address. The
cab wheeled smartly across Piccadilly, swung into Half Moon Street, and
thereafter made better time, darting briskly down abrupt vistas of
shining pavement, walled in by blank-visaged houses, or round two sides
of one of London’s innumerable private parks, wherein spring foliage
glowed a tender green in artificial light; now and again it crossed
brilliant main arteries of travel, and eventually emerged from a maze
of backways into Oxford Street, to hammer eastwards to Tottenham Court
Road.

Constraint hung like a curtain between the two; a silence which the
young man forbore to moderate, finding more delight that he had cared
(or dared) confess to, in contemplation of the pure girlish profile so
close to him.

She seemed quite unaware of him, lost in thought, large eyes sober,
lips serious that were fashioned for laughter, round little chin firm
with some occult resolution. It was not hard to fancy her nerves keyed
to a high pitch of courage and determination, nor easy to guess for
what reason. Watching always, keenly sensitive to the beauty of each
salient line betrayed by the flying lights, Kirkwood’s own
consciousness lost itself in a profitless, even a perilous labyrinth of
conjecture.

The cab stopped. Both occupants came to their senses with a little
start. The girl leaned out over; the apron, recognized the house she
sought in one swift glance, testified to the recognition with a hushed
exclamation, and began to arrange her skirts. Kirkwood, unheeding her
faint-hearted protests, jumped out, interposing his cane between her
skirts and the wheel. Simultaneously he received a vivid mental
photograph of the locality.

Frognall Street proved to be one of those by-ways, a short block in
length, which, hemmed in on all sides by a meaner purlieu, has (even in
Bloomsbury!) escaped the sordid commercial eye of the keeper of
furnished lodgings, retaining jealously something of the old-time
dignity and reserve that were its pride in the days before Society
swarmed upon Mayfair and Belgravia.

Its houses loomed tall, with many windows, mostly lightless—materially
aggravating that air of isolate, cold dignity which distinguishes the
Englishman’s castle. Here and there stood one less bedraggled than its
neighbors, though all, without exception, spoke assertively of
respectability down-at-the-heel but fighting tenaciously for existence.
Some, vanguards of that imminent day when the boarding-house should
reign supreme, wore with shamefaced air placards of estate-agents,
advertising their susceptibility to sale or lease. In the company of
the latter was Number 9.

The American noted the circumstance subconsciously, at a moment when
Miss Calendar’s hand, small as a child’s, warm and compact in its white
glove, lay in his own. And then she was on the sidewalk, her face,
upturned to his, vivacious with excitement.

“You have been so kind,” she told him warmly, “that one hardly knows
how to thank you, Mr. Kirkwood.”

“I have done nothing—nothing at all,” he mumbled, disturbed by a
sudden, unreasoning alarm for her.

She passed quickly to the shelter of the pillared portico. He followed
clumsily. On the door-step she turned, offering her hand. He took and
retained it.

“Good night,” she said.

“I’m to understand that I’m dismissed, then?” he stammered ruefully.

She evaded his eyes. “I—thank you—I have no further need—”

“You are quite sure? Won’t you believe me at your service?”

She laughed uneasily. “I’m all right now.”

“I can do nothing more? Sure?”

“Nothing. But you—you make me almost sorry I can’t impose still further
upon your good nature.”

“Please don’t hesitate ...”

“Aren’t you very persistent, Mr. Kirkwood?” Her fingers moved in his;
burning with the reproof, he released them, and turned to her so
woebegone a countenance that she repented of her severity. “Don’t worry
about me, please. I am truly safe now. Some day I hope to be able to
thank you adequately. Good night!”

Her pass-key grated in the lock. Opening, the door disclosed a dark and
uninviting entry-hall, through which there breathed an air heavy with
the dank and dusty odor of untenanted rooms. Hesitating on the
threshold, over her shoulder the girl smiled kindly upon her
commandeered esquire; and stepped within.

He lifted his hat automatically. The door closed with an echoing slam.
He turned to the waiting cab, fumbling for change.

“I’ll walk,” he told the cabby, paying him off.

The hansom swept away to a tune of hammering hoofs; and quiet rested
upon the street as Kirkwood turned the nearest corner, in an unpleasant
temper, puzzled and discontented. It seemed hardly fair that he should
have been dragged into so promising an adventure, by his ears (so to
put it), only to be thus summarily called upon to write “Finis” beneath
the incident.

He rounded the corner and walked half-way to the next street, coming to
an abrupt and rebellious pause by the entrance to a covered alleyway,
of two minds as to his proper course of action.

In the background of his thoughts Number 9, Frognall Street, reared its
five-story façade, sinister and forbidding. He reminded himself of its
unlighted windows; of its sign, “To be let”; of the effluvia of
desolation that had saluted him when the door swung wide. A deserted
house; and the girl alone in it!—was it right for him to leave her so?




IV
9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C.


The covered alleyway gave upon Quadrant Mews; or so declared a notice
painted on the dead wall of the passage.

Overhead, complaining as it swayed in the wind, hung the smirched and
weather-worn sign-board of the Hog-in-the-Pound public house; wherefrom
escaped sounds of such revelry by night as is indulged in by the
British working-man in hours of ease. At the curb in front of the house
of entertainment, dejected animals drooping between their shafts, two
hansoms stood in waiting, until such time as the lords of their
destinies should see fit to sally forth and inflict themselves upon a
cab-hungry populace. As Kirkwood turned, a third vehicle rumbled up out
of the mews.

Kirkwood can close his eyes, even at this late day, and both see and
hear it all again—even as he can see the unbroken row of dingy
dwellings that lined his way back from Quadrant Mews to Frognall Street
corner: all drab and unkempt, all sporting in their fan-lights the
legend and lure, “Furnished Apartments.”

For, between his curiosity about and his concern for the girl, he was
being led back to Number 9, by the nose, as it were,—hardly willingly,
at best. Profoundly stupefied by the contemplation of his own temerity,
he yet returned unfaltering. He who had for so long plumed himself upon
his strict supervision of his personal affairs and equally steadfast
unconsciousness of his neighbor’s businesses, now found himself in the
very act of pushing in where he was not wanted: as he had been advised
in well-nigh as many words. He experienced an effect of standing to one
side, a witness of his own folly, with rising wonder, unable to credit
the strength of the infatuation which was placing him so conspicuously
in the way of a snubbing.

If perchance he were to meet the girl again as she was leaving Number
9,—what then? The contingency dismayed him incredibly, in view of the
fact that it did not avail to make him pause. To the contrary he
disregarded it resolutely; mad, impertinent, justified of his unnamed
apprehensions, or simply addled,—he held on his way.

He turned up Frognall Street with the manner of one out for a leisurely
evening stroll. Simultaneously, from the farther corner, another
pedestrian debouched, into the thoroughfare—a mere moving shadow at
that distance, brother to blacker shadows that skulked in the fenced
areas and unlively entries of that poorly lighted block. The hush was
something beyond belief, when one remembered the nearness of blatant
Tottenham Court Road.

Kirkwood conceived a wholly senseless curiosity about the other
wayfarer. The man was walking rapidly, heels ringing with uncouth
loudness, cane tapping the flagging at brief intervals. Both sounds
ceased abruptly as their cause turned in beneath one of the porticos.
In the emphatic and unnatural quiet that followed, Kirkwood, stepping
more lightly, fancied that another shadow followed the first,
noiselessly and with furtive stealth.

Could it be Number 9 into which they had passed? The American’s heart
beat a livelier tempo at the suggestion. If it had not been Number 9—he
was still too far away to tell—it was certainly one of the dwellings
adjacent thereunto. The improbable possibility (But why improbable?)
that the girl was being joined by her father, or by friends, annoyed
him with illogical intensity. He mended his own pace, designing to pass
whichever house it might be before the door should be closed; thought
better of this, and slowed up again, anathematizing himself with much
excuse for being the inquisitive dolt that he was.

Approaching Number 9 with laggard feet, he manufactured a desire to
light a cigarette, as a cover for his design, were he spied upon by
unsuspected eyes. Cane under arm, hands cupped to shield a vesta’s
flame, he stopped directly before the portico, turning his eyes askance
to the shadowed doorway; and made a discovery sufficiently startling to
hold him spellbound and, incidentally, to scorch his gloves before he
thought to drop the match.

The door of Number 9 stood ajar, a black interval an inch or so in
width showing between its edge and the jamb.

Suspicion and alarm set his wits a-tingle. More distinctly he recalled
the jarring bang, accompanied by the metallic click of the latch, when
the girl had shut herself in—and him out. Now, some person or persons
had followed her, neglecting the most obvious precaution of a
householder. And why? Why but because the intruders did not wish the
sound of closing to be audible to her—or those—within?

He reminded himself that it was all none of his affair, decided to pass
on and go his ways in peace, and impulsively, swinging about, marched
straight away for the unclosed door.

“’Old’ard, guvner!”

Kirkwood halted on the cry, faltering in indecision. Should he take the
plunge, or withdraw? Synchronously he was conscious that a man’s figure
had detached itself from the shadows beneath the nearest portico and
was drawing nearer, with every indication of haste, to intercept him.

“’Ere now, guvner, yer mykin’ a mistyke. You don’t live ’ere.”

“How do you know?” demanded Kirkwood crisply, tightening his grip on
his stick.

Was this the second shadow he had seemed to see—the confederate of him
who had entered Number 9; a sentry to forestall interruption? If so,
the fellow lacked discretion, though his determination that the
American should not interfere was undeniable. It was with an ugly and
truculent manner, if more warily, that the man closed in.

“_I_ knows. You clear hout, or—”

He flung out a hand with the plausible design of grasping Kirkwood by
the collar. The latter lifted his stick, deflecting the arm, and
incontinently landed his other fist forcibly on the fellow’s chest. The
man reeled back, cursing. Before he could recover Kirkwood calmly
crossed the threshold, closed the door and put his shoulder to it. In
another instant, fumbling in the darkness, he found the bolts and drove
them home.

And it was done, the transformation accomplished; his inability to
refrain from interfering had encompassed his downfall, had changed a
peaceable and law-abiding alien within British shores into a busybody,
a trespasser, a misdemeanant, a—yes, for all he knew to the contrary,
in the estimation of the Law, a burglar, prime candidate for a
convict’s stripes!

Breathing hard with excitement he turned and laid his back against the
panels, trembling in every muscle, terrified by the result of his
impulsive audacity, thunder-struck by a lightning-like foreglimpse of
its possible consequences. Of what colossal imprudence had he not been
guilty?

“The devil!” he whispered. “What an ass, what an utter ass I am!”

Behind him the knob was rattled urgently, to an accompaniment of feet
shuffling on the stone; and immediately—if he were to make a logical
deduction from the rasping and scraping sound within the
door-casing—the bell-pull was violently agitated, without, however,
educing any response from the bell itself, wherever that might be
situate. After which, as if in despair, the outsider again rattled and
jerked the knob.

Be his status what it might, whether servant of the household, its
caretaker, or a night watchman, the man was palpably determined both to
get himself in and Kirkwood out, and yet (curious to consider)
determined to gain his end without attracting undue attention. Kirkwood
had expected to hear the knocker’s thunder, as soon as the bell failed
to give tongue; but it did not sound although there _was_ a
knocker,—Kirkwood himself had remarked that antiquated and rusty bit of
ironmongery affixed to the middle panel of the door. And it made him
feel sure that something surreptitious and lawless was in process
within those walls, that the confederate without, having failed to
prevent a stranger from entering, left unemployed a means so
certain-sure to rouse the occupants.

But his inferential analysis of this phase of the proceedings was
summarily abrupted by that identical alarm. In a trice the house was
filled with flying echoes, wakened to sonorous riot by the crash and
clamor of the knocker; and Kirkwood stood fully two yards away, his
heart hammering wildly, his nerves a-jingle, much as if the resounding
blows had landed upon his own person rather than on stout oaken
planking.

Ere he had time to wonder, the racket ceased, and from the street
filtered voices in altercation. Listening, Kirkwood’s pulses quickened,
and he laughed uncertainly for pure relief, retreating to the door and
putting an ear to a crack.

The accents of one speaker were new in his hearing, stern, crisp, quick
with the spirit of authority which animates that most austere and
dignified limb of the law to be encountered the world over, a London
bobby.

“Now then, my man, what do you want there? Come now, speak up, and step
out into the light, where I can see you.”

The response came in the sniffling snarl of the London ne’er-do-well,
the unemployable rogue whose chiefest occupation seems to be to march
in the ranks of The Unemployed on the occasion of its annual
demonstrations.

“Le’ me alone, carntcher? Ah’m doin’ no ’arm, officer,—”

“Didn’t you hear me? Step out here. Ah, that’s better.... No harm, eh?
Perhaps you’ll explain how there’s no harm breakin’ into unoccupied
’ouses?”

“Gorblimy, ’ow was I to know? ’Ere’s a toff ’ands me sixpence fer
hopenin’ ’is cab door to-dye, an’, sezee, ‘My man,’ ’e sez, ‘yer’ve got
a ’onest fyce. W’y don’cher work?’ sezee. ‘’Ow can I?’ sez I. ‘’Ere’m I
hout of a job these six months, lookin’ fer work every dye an’ carn’t
find it.’ Sezee, ‘Come an’ see me this hevenin’ at me home, Noine,
Frognall Stryte,’ ’e sez, an’—”

“That’ll do for now. You borrow a pencil and paper and write it down
and I’ll read it when I’ve got more time; I never heard the like of it.
This ’ouse hasn’t been lived in these two years. Move on, and don’t let
me find you round ’ere again. March, I say!”

There was more of it—more whining explanations artfully tinctured with
abuse, more terse commands to depart, the whole concluding with
scraping footsteps, diminuendo, and another perfunctory, rattle of the
knob as the bobby, having shoo’d the putative evil-doer off, assured
himself that no damage had actually been done. Then he, too, departed,
satisfied and self-righteous, leaving a badly frightened but very
grateful amateur criminal to pursue his self-appointed career of crime.

He had no choice other than to continue; in point of fact, it had been
insanity just then to back out, and run the risk of apprehension at the
hands of that ubiquitous bobby, who (for all he knew) might be lurking
not a dozen yards distant, watchful for just such a sequel. Still,
Kirkwood hesitated with the best of excuses. Reassuring as he had found
the sentinel’s extemporized yarn,—proof positive that the fellow had
had no more right to prohibit a trespass than Kirkwood to commit
one,—at the same time he found himself pardonably a prey to emotions of
the utmost consternation and alarm. If he feared to leave the house he
had no warrant whatever to assume that he would be permitted to remain
many minutes unharmed within its walls of mystery.

The silence of it discomfited him beyond measure; it was, in a word,
uncanny.

Before him, as he lingered at the door, vaguely disclosed by a wan
illumination penetrating a dusty and begrimed fan-light, a broad hall
stretched indefinitely towards the rear of the building, losing itself
in blackness beyond the foot of a flight of stairs. Save for a few
articles of furniture,—a hall table, an umbrella-stand, a tall dumb
clock flanked by high-backed chairs,—it was empty. Other than
Kirkwood’s own restrained respiration not a sound throughout the house
advertised its inhabitation; not a board creaked beneath the pressure
of a foot, not a mouse rustled in the wainscoting or beneath the
floors, not a breath of air stirred sighing in the stillness.

And yet, a tremendous racket had been raised at the front door, within
the sixty seconds past! And yet, within twenty minutes two persons, at
least, had preceded Kirkwood into the building! Had they not heard? The
speculation seemed ridiculous. Or had they heard and, alarmed, been too
effectually hobbled by the coils of their nefarious designs to dare
reveal themselves, to investigate the cause of that thunderous summons?
Or were they, perhaps, aware of Kirkwood’s entrance, and lying
_perdui_, in some dark corner, to ambush him as he passed?

True, that were hardly like the girl. True, on the other hand, it were
possible that she had stolen away while Kirkwood was hanging in
irresolution by the passage to Quadrant Mews. Again, the space of time
between Kirkwood’s dismissal and his return had been exceedingly brief;
whatever her errand, she could hardly have fulfilled it and escaped. At
that moment she might be in the power and at the mercy of him who had
followed her; providing he were not friendly. And in that case, what
torment and what peril might not be hers?

Spurred by solicitude, the young man put personal apprehensions in his
pocket and forgot them, cautiously picking his way through the gloom to
the foot of the stairs. There, by the newel-post, he paused. Darkness
walled him about. Overhead the steps vanished in a well of blackness;
he could not even see the ceiling; his eyes ached with futile effort to
fathom the unknown; his ears rang with unrewarded strain of listening.
The silence hung inviolate, profound.

Slowly he began to ascend, a hand following the balusters, the other
with his cane exploring the obscurity before him. On the steps, a
carpet, thick and heavy, muffled his footfalls. He moved noiselessly.
Towards the top the staircase curved, and presently a foot that groped
for a higher level failed to find it. Again he halted, acutely
distrustful.

Nothing happened.

He went on, guided by the balustrade, passing three doors, all open,
through which the undefined proportions of a drawing-room and boudoir
were barely suggested in a ghostly dusk. By each he paused, listening,
hearing nothing.

His foot struck with a deadened thud against the bottom step of the
second flight, and his pulses fluttered wildly for a moment. Two
minutes—three—he waited in suspense. From above came no sound. He went
on, as before, save that twice a step yielded, complaining, to his
weight. Toward the top the close air, like the darkness, seemed to
weigh more heavily upon his consciousness; little drops of perspiration
started out on his forehead, his scalp tingled, his mouth was hot and
dry, he felt as if stifled.

Again the raised foot found no level higher than its fellows. He
stopped and held his breath, oppressed by a conviction that some one
was near him. Confirmation of this came startlingly—an eerie whisper in
the night, so close to him that he fancied he could feel the disturbed
air fanning his face.

“_Is it you, Eccles_?” He had no answer ready. The voice was masculine,
if he analyzed it correctly. Dumb and stupid he stood poised upon the
point of panic.

“_Eccles, is it you_?”

The whisper was both shrill and shaky. As it ceased Kirkwood was half
blinded by a flash of light, striking him squarely in the eyes.
Involuntarily he shrank back a pace, to the first step from the top.
Instantaneously the light was eclipsed.

“_Halt or—or I fire_!”

By now he realized that he had been scrutinized by the aid of an
electric hand-lamp. The tremulous whisper told him something else—that
the speaker suffered from nerves as high-strung as his own. The
knowledge gave him inspiration. He cried at a venture, in a guarded
voice, “_Hands up_!”—and struck out smartly with his stick. Its ferrule
impinged upon something soft but heavy. Simultaneously he heard a low,
frightened cry, the cane was swept aside, a blow landed glancingly on
his shoulder, and he was carried fairly off his feet by the weight of a
man hurled bodily upon him with staggering force and passion. Reeling,
he was borne back and down a step or two, and then,—choking on an
oath,—dropped his cane and with one hand caught the balusters, while
the other tore ineffectually at wrists of hands that clutched his
throat. So, for a space, the two hung, panting and struggling.

Then endeavoring to swing his shoulders over against the wall, Kirkwood
released his grip on the hand-rail and stumbled on the stairs, throwing
his antagonist out of balance. The latter plunged downward, dragging
Kirkwood with him. Clawing, kicking, grappling, they went to the
bottom, jolted violently by each step; but long before the last was
reached, Kirkwood’s throat was free.

Throwing himself off, he got to his feet and grasped the railing for
support; then waited, panting, trying to get his bearings. Himself
painfully shaken and bruised, he shrewdly surmised that his assailant
had fared as ill, if not worse. And, in point of fact, the man lay with
neither move nor moan, still as death at the American’s feet.

And once more silence had folded its wings over Number 9, Frognall
Street.

More conscious of that terrifying, motionless presence beneath him,
than able to distinguish it by power of vision, he endured interminable
minutes of trembling horror, in a witless daze, before he thought of
his match-box. Immediately he found it and struck a light. As the wood
caught and the bright small flame leaped in the pent air, he leaned
forward, over the body, breathlessly dreading what he must discover.

The man lay quiet, head upon the floor, legs and hips on the stairs.
One arm had fallen over his face, hiding the upper half. The hand
gleamed white and delicate as a woman’s. His chin was smooth and round,
his lips thin and petulant. Beneath his top-coat, evening dress clothed
a short and slender figure. Nothing whatever of his appearance
suggested the burly ruffian, the midnight marauder; he seemed little
more than a boy old enough to dress for dinner. In his attitude there
was something pitifully suggestive of a beaten child, thrown into a
corner.

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: “Can this be love?
Can this be love? ...”

Could it be love at an hour’s acquaintance? Absurd! But he could not
laugh—nor render himself insensible to the suggestion.

He found that he had drawn the bolts. The girl tugged and rattled at
the knob. Reluctantly the door opened inwards. Beyond its threshold
stretched ten feet or more of covered passageway, whose entrance framed
an oblong glimmering with light. A draught of fresh air smote their
faces. Behind them a door banged.

“Where does this open?”

“On the mews,” she informed him.

“The mews!” He stared in consternation at the pallid oval that stood
for her face. “The mews! But you, in your evening gown, and I—”

“There’s no other way. We must chance it. Are you afraid?”

Afraid? ... He stepped aside. She slipped by him and on. He closed the
door, carefully removing the key and locking it on the outside; then
joined the girl at the entrance to the mews, where they paused
perforce, she as much disconcerted as he, his primary objection
momentarily waxing in force as they surveyed the conditions
circumscribing their escape.

Quadrant Mews was busily engaged in enjoying itself. Night had fallen
sultry and humid, and the walls and doorsteps were well fringed and
clustered with representatives of that class of London’s population
which infests mews through habit, taste, or force of circumstance.

On the stoops men sprawled at easy length, discussing short, foul
cutties loaded with that rank and odoriferous compound which, under the
name and in the fame of tobacco, is widely retailed at tuppence the
ounce. Their women-folk more commonly squatted on the thresholds,
cheerfully squabbling; from opposing second-story windows, two leaned
perilously forth, slanging one another across the square briskly in the
purest billingsgate; and were impartially applauded from below by an
audience whose appreciation seemed faintly tinged with envy. Squawking
and yelling children swarmed over the flags and rude cobblestones that
paved the ways. Like incense, heavy and pungent, the rich effluvia of
stable-yards swirled in air made visible by its faint burden of mist.

Over against the entrance wherein Kirkwood and the girl lurked,
confounded by the problem of escaping undetected through this vivacious
scene, a stable-door stood wide, exposing a dimly illumined interior.
Before it waited a four-wheeler, horse already hitched in between the
shafts, while its driver, a man of leisurely turn of mind, made
lingering inspection of straps and buckles, and, while Kirkwood watched
him, turned attention to the carriage lamps.

The match which he raked spiritedly down his thigh, flared ruddily; the
succeeding paler glow of the lamp threw into relief a heavy beefy mask,
with shining bosses for cheeks and nose and chin; through narrow slits
two cunning eyes glittered like dull gems. Kirkwood appraised him with
attention, as one in whose gross carcass was embodied their only hope
of unannoyed return to the streets and normal surroundings of their
world. The difficulty lay in attracting the man’s attention and
engaging him without arousing his suspicions or bringing the population
about their ears. Though he hesitated long, no favorable opportunity
presented itself; and in time the Jehu approached the box with the
ostensible purpose of mounting and driving off. In this critical
situation the American, forced to recognize that boldness must mark his
course, took the girl’s fate and his own in his hands, and with a quick
word to his companion, stepped out of hiding.

The cabby had a foot upon the step when Kirkwood tapped his shoulder.

“My man—”

“Lor, lumme!” cried the fellow in amaze, pivoting on his heel. Cupidity
and quick understanding enlivened the eyes which in two glances looked
Kirkwood up and down, comprehending at once both his badly rumpled hat
and patent-leather shoes. “S’help me,”—thickly,—“where’d you drop from,
guvner?”

“That’s my affair,” said Kirkwood briskly. “Are you engaged?”

“If you mykes yerself my fare,” returned the cabby shrewdly, “I _ham_.”

“Ten shillings, then, if you get us out of here in one minute and
to—say—Hyde Park Corner in fifteen.”

“Us?” demanded the fellow aggressively.

Kirkwood motioned toward the passageway. “There’s a lady with me—there.
Quick now!”

Still the man did not move. “Ten bob,” he bargained; “an’ you runnin’
awye with th’ stuffy ol’ gent’s fair darter? Come now, guvner, is it
gen’rous? Myke it a quid an’—”

“A pound then. _Will_ you hurry?”

By way of answer the fellow scrambled hastily up to the box and
snatched at the reins. “_Ck_! Gee-e hup!” he cried sonorously.

By now the mews had wakened to the fact of the presence of a “toff” in
its midst. His light topcoat and silk hat-rendered him as conspicuous
as a red Indian in war-paint would have been on Rotten Row. A cry of
surprise was raised, and drowned in a volley of ribald inquiry and
chaff.

Fortunately, the cabby was instant to rein in skilfully before the
passageway, and Kirkwood had the door open before the four-wheeler
stopped. The girl, hugging her cloak about her, broke cover (whereat
the hue and cry redoubled), and sprang into the body of the vehicle.
Kirkwood followed, shutting the door. As the cab lurched forward he
leaned over and drew down the window-shade, shielding the girl from
half a hundred prying eyes. At the same time they gathered momentum,
banging swiftly, if loudly out of the mews.

An urchin, leaping on the step to spy in Kirkwood’s window, fell off,
yelping, as the driver’s whiplash curled about his shanks.

The gloom of the tunnel inclosed them briefly ere the lights of the
Hog-in-the-Pound flashed by and the wheels began to roll more easily.
Kirkwood drew back with a sigh of relief.

“Thank God!” he said softly.

The girl had no words.

Worried by her silence, solicitous lest, the strain ended, she might be
on the point of fainting, he let up the shade and lowered the window at
her side.

She seemed to have collapsed in her corner. Against the dark upholstery
her hair shone like pale gold in the half-light; her eyes were closed
and she held a handkerchief to her lips; the other hand lay limp.

“Miss Calendar?”

She started, and something bulky fell from the seat and thumped heavily
on the floor. Kirkwood bent to pick it up, and so for the first time
was made aware that she had brought with her a small black gladstone
bag of considerable weight. As he placed it on the forward seat their
eyes met.

“I didn’t know—” he began.

“It was to get that,” she hastened to explain, “that my father sent me
...”

“Yes,” he assented in a tone indicating his complete comprehension. “I
trust ...” he added vaguely, and neglected to complete the observation,
losing himself in a maze of conjecture not wholly agreeable. This was a
new phase of the adventure. He eyed the bag uneasily. What did it
contain? How did he know ...?

Hastily he abandoned that line of thought. He had no right to infer
anything whatever, who had thrust himself uninvited into her
concerns—uninvited, that was to say, in the second instance, having
been once definitely given his congé. Inevitably, however, a thousand
unanswerable questions pestered him; just as, at each fresh facet of
mystery disclosed by the sequence of the adventure, his bewilderment
deepened.

The girl stirred restlessly. “I have been thinking,” she volunteered in
a troubled tone, “that there is absolutely no way I know of, to thank
you properly.”

“It is enough if I’ve been useful,” he rose in gallantry to the
emergency.

“That,” she commented, “was very prettily said. But then I have never
known any one more kind and courteous and—and considerate, than you.”
There was no savor of flattery in the simple and direct statement;
indeed, she was looking away from him, out of the window, and her face
was serious with thought; she seemed to be speaking of, rather than to,
Kirkwood. “And I have been wondering,” she continued with unaffected
candor, “what you must be thinking of me.”

“I? ... What should I think of you, Miss Calendar?”

With the air of a weary child she laid her head against the cushions
again, face to him, and watched him through lowered lashes, unsmiling.

“You might be thinking that an explanation is due you. Even the way we
were brought together was extraordinary, Mr. Kirkwood. You must be very
generous, as generous as you have shown yourself brave, not to require
some sort of an explanation of me.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“I do ... You have made me like you very much, Mr. Kirkwood.”

He shot her a covert glance—causelessly, for her _naiveté_ was
flawless. With a feeling of some slight awe he understood this—a
sensation of sincere reverence for the unspoiled, candid, child’s heart
and mind that were hers. “I’m glad,” he said simply; “very glad, if
that’s the case, and presupposing I deserve it. Personally,” he
laughed, “I seem to myself to have been rather forward.”

“No; only kind and a gentleman.”

“But—please!” he protested.

“Oh, but I mean it, every word! Why shouldn’t I? In a little while, ten
minutes, half an hour, we shall have seen the last of each other. Why
should I not tell you how I appreciate all that you have unselfishly
done for me?”

“If you put it that way,—I’m sure I don’t know; beyond that it
embarrasses me horribly to have you overestimate me so. If any courage
has been shown this night, it is yours ... But I’m forgetting again.”
He thought to divert her. “Where shall I tell the cabby to go this
time, Miss Calendar?”

“Craven Street, please,” said the girl, and added a house number. “I am
to meet my father there, with this,”—indicating the gladstone bag.

Kirkwood thrust head and shoulders out the window and instructed the
cabby accordingly; but his ruse had been ineffectual, as he found when
he sat back again. Quite composedly the girl took up the thread of
conversation where it had been broken off.

“It’s rather hard to keep silence, when you’ve been so good. I don’t
want you to think me less generous than yourself, but, truly, I can
tell you nothing.” She sighed a trace resentfully; or so he thought.
“There is little enough in this—this wretched affair, that I understand
myself; and that little, I may not tell ... I want you to know that.”

“I understand, Miss Calendar.”

“There’s one thing I may say, however. I have done nothing wrong
to-night, I believe,” she added quickly.

“I’ve never for an instant questioned that,” he returned with a qualm
of shame; for what he said was not true.

“Thank you ...”

The four-wheeler swung out of Oxford Street into Charing Cross Road.
Kirkwood noted the fact with a feeling of some relief that their ride
was to be so short; like many of his fellow-sufferers from “the
artistic temperament,” he was acutely disconcerted by spoken words of
praise and gratitude; Miss Calendar, unintentionally enough, had
succeeded only in rendering him self-conscious and ill at ease.

Nor had she fully relieved her mind, nor voiced all that perturbed her.
“There’s one thing more,” she said presently: “my father. I—I hope you
will think charitably of him.”

“Indeed, I’ve no reason or right to think otherwise.”

“I was afraid—afraid his actions might have seemed peculiar, to-night
...”

“There are lots of things I don’t understand, Miss Calendar. Some day,
perhaps, it will all clear up,—this trouble of yours. At least, one
supposes it is trouble, of some sort. And then you will tell me the
whole story.... Won’t you?” Kirkwood insisted.

“I’m afraid not,” she said, with a smile of shadowed sadness. “We are
to say good night in a moment or two, and—it will be good-by as well.
It’s unlikely that we shall ever meet again.”

“I refuse positively to take such a gloomy view of the case!”

She shook her head, laughing with him, but with shy regret. “It’s so,
none the less. We are leaving London this very night, my father and
I—leaving England, for that matter.”

“Leaving England?” he echoed. “You’re not by any chance bound for
America, are you?”

“I ... can’t tell you.”

“But you can tell me this: are you booked on the _Minneapolis_?”

“No—o; it is a—quite another boat.”

“Of course!” he commented savagely. “It wouldn’t be me to have _any_
sort of luck!”

She made no reply beyond a low laugh. He stared gloomily out of his
window, noting indifferently that they were passing the National
Gallery. On their left Trafalgar Square stretched, broad and bare, a
wilderness of sooty stone with an air of mutely tolerating its
incongruous fountains. Through Charing Cross roared a tide-rip of
motor-busses and hackney carriages.

Glumly the young man foresaw the passing of his abbreviated romance;
their destination was near at hand. Brentwick had been right, to some
extent, at least; it was quite true that the curtain had been rung up
that very night, upon Kirkwood’s Romance; unhappily, as Brentwick had
not foreseen, it was immediately to be rung down.

The cab rolled soberly into the Strand.

“Since we are to say good-by so very soon,” suggested Kirkwood, “may I
ask a parting favor, Miss Calendar?”

She regarded him with friendly eyes. “You have every right,” she
affirmed gently.

“Then please to tell me frankly: are you going into any further
danger?”

“And is that the only boon you crave at my hands, Mr. Kirkwood?”

“Without impertinence ...”

For a little time, waiting for him to conclude his vague phrase, she
watched him in an expectant silence. But the man was diffident to a
degree—At length, somewhat unconsciously, “I think not,” she answered.
“No; there will be no danger awaiting me at Mrs. Hallam’s. You need not
fear for me any more—Thank you.”

He lifted his brows at the unfamiliar name. “Mrs. Hallam—?”

“I am going to her house in Craven Street.”

“Your father is to meet you there?”—persistently.

“He promised to.”

“But if he shouldn’t?”

“Why—” Her eyes clouded; she pursed her lips over the conjectural
annoyance. “Why, in that event, I suppose—It would be very
embarrassing. You see, I don’t know Mrs. Hallam; I don’t know that she
expects me, unless my father is already there. They are old friends—I
could drive round for a while and come back, I suppose.”

But she made it plain that the prospect did not please her.

“Won’t you let me ask if Mr. Calender is there, before you get out,
then? I don’t like to be dismissed,” he laughed; “and, you know, you
shouldn’t go wandering round all alone.”

The cab drew up. Kirkwood put a hand on the door and awaited her will.

“It—it would be very kind ... I hate to impose upon you.”

He turned the knob and got out. “If you’ll wait one moment,” he said
superfluously, as he closed the door.

Pausing only to verify the number, he sprang up the steps and found the
bell-button.

It was a modest little residence, in nothing more remarkable than its
neighbors, unless it was for a certain air of extra grooming: the area
railing was sleek with fresh black paint; the doorstep looked the
better for vigorous stoning; the door itself was immaculate, its
brasses shining lustrous against red-lacquered woodwork. A soft glow
filled the fanlight. Overhead the drawing-room windows shone with a
cozy, warm radiance.

The door opened, framing the figure of a maid sketched broadly in
masses of somber black and dead white.

“Can you tell me, is Mr. Calendar here?”

The servant’s eyes left his face, looked past him at the waiting cab,
and returned.

“I’m not sure, sir. If you will please step in.”

Kirkwood hesitated briefly, then acceded. The maid closed the door.

“What name shall I say, sir?”

“Mr. Kirkwood.”

“If you will please to wait one moment, sir—”

He was left in the entry hall, the servant hurrying to the staircase
and up. Three minutes elapsed; he was on the point of returning to the
girl, when the maid reappeared.

“Mrs. Hallam says, will you kindly step up-stairs, sir.”

Disgruntled, he followed her; at the head of the stairs she bowed him
into the drawing-room and again left him to his own resources.

Nervous, annoyed, he paced the floor from wall to wall, his footfalls
silenced by heavy rugs. As the delay was prolonged he began to fume
with impatience, wondering, half regretting that he had left the girl
outside, definitely sorry that he had failed to name his errand more
explicitly to the maid. At another time, in another mood, he might have
accorded more appreciation to the charm of the apartment, which,
betraying the feminine touch in every detail of arrangement and
furnishing, was very handsome in an unconventional way. But he was
quite heedless of externals.

Wearied, he deposited himself sulkily in an armchair by the hearth.

From a boudoir on the same floor there came murmurs of two voices, a
man’s and a woman’s. The latter laughed prettily.

“Oh, any time!” snorted the American. “Any time you’re through with
your confounded flirtation, Mr. George B. Calendar!”

The voices rose, approaching. “Good night,” said the woman gaily;
“farewell and—good luck go with you!”

“Thank you. Good night,” replied the man more conservatively.

Kirkwood rose, expectant.

There was a swish of draperies, and a moment later he was acknowledging
the totally unlooked-for entrance of the mistress of the house. He had
thought to see Calendar, presuming him to be the man closeted with Mrs.
Hallam; but, whoever that had been, he did not accompany the woman.
Indeed, as she advanced from the doorway, Kirkwood could hear the man’s
footsteps on the stairs.

“This is Mr. Kirkwood?” The note of inquiry in the well-trained voice—a
very alluring voice and one pleasant to listen to, he thought—made it
seem as though she had asked, point-blank, “Who is Mr. Kirkwood?”

He bowed, discovering himself in the presence of an extraordinarily
handsome and interesting woman; a woman of years which as yet had not
told upon her, of experience that had not availed to harden her, at
least in so far as her exterior charm of personality was involved; a
woman, in brief, who bore close inspection well, despite an elusive
effect of maturity, not without its attraction for men. Kirkwood was
impressed that it would be very easy to learn to like Mrs. Hallam more
than well—with her approval.

Although he had not anticipated it, he was not at all surprised to
recognize in her the woman who, if he were not mistaken, had slipped to
Calendar that warning in the dining-room of the Pless. Kirkwood’s state
of mind had come to be such, through his experiences of the past few
hours, that he would have accepted anything, however preposterous, as a
commonplace happening. But for that matter there was nothing
particularly astonishing in this _rencontre_.

“I am Mrs. Hallam. You were asking for Mr. Calendar?”

“He was to have been here at this hour, I believe,” said Kirkwood.

“Yes?” There was just the right inflection of surprise in her carefully
controlled tone.

He became aware of an undercurrent of feeling; that the woman was
estimating him shrewdly with her fine direct eyes. He returned her
regard with admiring interest; they were gray-green eyes, deep-set but
large, a little shallow, a little changeable, calling to mind the sea
on a windy, cloudy day.

Below stairs a door slammed.

“I am not a detective, Mrs. Hallam,” announced the young man suddenly.
“Mr. Calendar required a service of me this evening; I am here in
natural consequence. If it was Mr. Calendar who left this house just
now, I am wasting time.”

“It was not Mr. Calendar.” The fine-lined brows arched in surprise,
real or pretended, at his first blurted words, and relaxed; amused, the
woman laughed deliciously. “But I am expecting him any moment; he was
to have been here half an hour since.... Won’t you wait?”

She indicated, with a gracious gesture, a chair, and took for herself
one end of a davenport. “I’m sure he won’t be long, now.”

“Thank you, I will return, if I may.” Kirkwood moved toward the door.

“But there’s no necessity—” She seemed insistent on detaining him,
possibly because she questioned his motive, possibly for her own
divertisement.

Kirkwood deprecated his refusal with a smile. “The truth is, Miss
Calendar is waiting in a cab, outside. I—”

“Dorothy Calendar!” Mrs. Hallam rose alertly. “But why should she wait
there? To be sure, we’ve never met; but I have known her father for
many years.” Her eyes held steadfast to his face; shallow, flawed by
her every thought, like the sea by a cat’s-paw he found them altogether
inscrutable; yet received an impression that their owner was now unable
to account for him.

She swung about quickly, preceding him to the door and down the stairs.
“I am sure Dorothy will come in to wait, if I ask her,” she told
Kirkwood in a high sweet voice. “I’m so anxious to know her. It’s quite
absurd, really, of her—to stand on ceremony with me, when her father
made an appointment here. I’ll run out and ask—”

Mrs. Hallam’s slim white fingers turned latch and knob, opening the
street door, and her voice died away as she stepped out into the night.
For a moment, to Kirkwood, tagging after her with an uncomfortable
sense of having somehow done the wrong thing, her figure—full fair
shoulders and arms rising out of the glittering dinner gown—cut a
gorgeous silhouette against the darkness. Then, with a sudden,
imperative gesture, she half turned towards him.

“But,” she exclaimed, perplexed, gazing to right and left, “but the
cab, Mr. Kirkwood?”

He was on the stoop a second later. Standing beside her, he stared
blankly.

To the left the Strand roared, the stream of its night-life in high
spate; on the right lay the Embankment, comparatively silent and
deserted, if brilliant with its high-swung lights. Between the two,
quiet Craven Street ran, short and narrow, and wholly innocent of any
form of equipage.




VI
“BELOW BRIDGE”


In silence Mrs. Hallam turned to Kirkwood, her pose in itself a
question and a peremptory one. Her eyes had narrowed; between their
lashes the green showed, a thin edge like jade, cold and calculating.
The firm lines of her mouth and chin had hardened.

Temporarily dumb with consternation, he returned her stare as silently.

“_Well_, Mr.—Kirkwood?”

“Mrs. Hallam,” he stammered, “I—”

She lifted her shoulders impatiently and with a quick movement stepped
back across the threshold, where she paused, a rounded arm barring the
entrance, one hand grasping the door-knob, as if to shut him out at any
moment.

“I’m awaiting your explanation,” she said coldly.


[Illustration: “I’m awaiting your explanation,” she said coldly.]


He grinned with nervousness, striving to penetrate the mental processes
of this handsome Mrs. Hallam. She seemed to regard him with a suspicion
which he thought inexcusable. Did she suppose he had spirited Dorothy
Calendar away and then called to apprise her of the fact? Or that he
was some sort of an adventurer, who had manufactured a plausible yarn
to gain him access to her home? Or—harking back to her original
theory—that he was an emissary from Scotland Yard? ... Probably she
distrusted him on the latter hypothesis. The reflection left him more
at ease.

“I am quite as mystified as you, Mrs. Hallam,” he began. “Miss Calendar
was here, at this door, in a four-wheeler, not ten minutes ago, and—”

“Then where is she now?”

“Tell me where Calendar is,” he retorted, inspired, “and I’ll try to
answer you!”

But her eyes were blank. “You mean—?”

“That Calendar was in this house when I came; that he left, found his
daughter in the cab, and drove off with her. It’s clear enough.”

“You are quite mistaken,” she said thoughtfully. “George Calendar has
not been here this night.”

He wondered that she did not seem to resent his imputation. “I think
not—”

“Listen!” she cried, raising a warning hand; and relaxing her vigilant
attitude, moved forward once more, to peer down toward the Embankment.

A cab had cut in from that direction and was bearing down upon them
with a brisk rumble of hoofs. As it approached, Kirkwood’s heart, that
had lightened, was weighed upon again by disappointment. It was no
four-wheeler, but a hansom, and the open wings of the apron, disclosing
a white triangle of linen surmounted by a glowing spot of fire,
betrayed the sex of the fare too plainly to allow of further hope that
it might be the girl returning.

At the door, the cab pulled up sharply and a man tumbled hastily out
upon the sidewalk.

“Here!” he cried throatily, tossing the cabby his fare, and turned
toward the pair upon the doorstep, evidently surmising that something
was amiss. For he was Calendar in proper person, and a sight to upset
in a twinkling Kirkwood’s ingeniously builded castle of suspicion.

“Mrs. Hallam!” he cried, out of breath. “’S my daughter here?” And
then, catching sight of Kirkwood’s countenance: “Why, hello, Kirkwood!”
he saluted him with a dubious air.

The woman interrupted hastily. “Please come in, Mr. Calendar. This
gentleman has been inquiring for you, with an astonishing tale about
your daughter.”

“Dorothy!” Calendar’s moon-like visage was momentarily divested of any
trace of color. “What of her?”

“You had better come in,” advised Mrs. Hallam brusquely.

The fat adventurer hopped hurriedly across the threshold, Kirkwood
following. The woman shut the door, and turned with back to it, nodding
significantly at Kirkwood as her eyes met Calendar’s.

“Well, well?” snapped the latter impatiently, turning to the young man.

But Kirkwood was thinking quickly. For the present he contented himself
with a deliberate statement of fact: “Miss Calendar has disappeared.”
It gave him an instant’s time ... “There’s something damned fishy!” he
told himself. “These two are playing at cross-purposes. Calendar’s no
fool; he’s evidently a crook, to boot. As for the woman, she’s had her
eyes open for a number of years. The main thing’s Dorothy. She didn’t
vanish of her own initiative. And Mrs. Hallam knows, or suspects, more
than she’s going to tell. I don’t think she wants Dorothy found.
Calendar does. So do I. Ergo: I’m for Calendar.”

“Disappeared?” Calendar was barking at him. “How? When? Where?”

“Within ten minutes,” said Kirkwood. “Here, let’s get it straight....
With her permission I brought her here in a four-wheeler.” He was
carefully suppressing all mention of Frognall Street, and in Calendar’s
glance read approval of the elision. “She didn’t want to get out,
unless you were here. I asked for you. The maid showed me up-stairs. I
left your daughter in the cab—and by the way, I hadn’t paid the driver.
That’s funny, too! Perhaps six or seven minutes after I came in Mrs.
Hallam found out that Miss Calendar was with me and wanted to ask her
in. When we got to the door—no cab. There you have it all.”

“Thanks—it’s plenty,” said Calendar dryly. He bent his head in thought
for an instant, then looked up and fixed Mrs. Hallam with an
unprejudiced eye, “I say!” he demanded explosively. “There wasn’t any
one here that knew—eh?”

Her fine eyes wavered and fell before his; and Kirkwood remarked that
her under lip was curiously drawn in.

“I heard a man leave as Mrs. Hallam joined me,” he volunteered
helpfully, and with a suspicion of malice. “And after that—I paid no
attention at the time—it seems to me I did hear a cab in the street—”

“Ow?” interjected Calendar, eying the woman steadfastly and employing
an exclamation of combined illumination and inquiry more typically
British than anything Kirkwood had yet heard from the man.

For her part, the look she gave Kirkwood was sharp with fury. It was
more; it was a mistake, a flaw in her diplomacy; for Calendar
intercepted it. Unceremoniously he grasped her bare arm with his fat
hand.

“Tell me who it was,” he demanded in an ugly tone.

She freed herself with a twist, and stepped back, a higher color in her
cheeks, a flash of anger in her eyes.

“Mr. Mulready,” she retorted defiantly. “What of that?”

“I wish I was sure,” declared the fat adventurer, exasperated. “As it
is, I bet a dollar you’ve put your foot in it, my lady. I warned you of
that blackguard.... There! The mischief’s done; we won’t row over it.
One moment.” He begged it with a wave of his hand; stood pondering
briefly, fumbled for his watch, found and consulted it. “It’s the
barest chance,” he muttered. “Perhaps we can make it.”

“What are you going to do?” asked the woman.

“Give _Mister_ Mulready a run for his money. Come along, Kirkwood; we
haven’t a minute. Mrs. Hallam, permit us....” She stepped aside and he
brushed past her to the door. “Come, Kirkwood!”

He seemed to take Kirkwood’s company for granted; and the young man was
not inclined to argue the point. Meekly enough he fell in with Calendar
on the sidewalk. Mrs. Hallam followed them out. “You won’t forget?” she
called tentatively.

“I’ll ’phone you if we find out anything.” Calendar jerked the words
unceremoniously over his shoulder as, linking arms with Kirkwood, he
drew him swiftly along. They heard her shut the door; instantly
Calendar stopped. “Look here, did Dorothy have a—a small parcel with
her?”

“She had a gladstone bag.”

“Oh, the devil, the devil!” Calendar started on again, muttering
distractedly. As they reached the corner he disengaged his arm. “We’ve
a minute and a half to reach Charing Cross Pier; and I think it’s the
last boat. You set the pace, will you? But remember I’m an oldish man
and—and fat.”

They began to run, the one easily, the other lumbering after like an
old-fashioned square-rigged ship paced by a liner.

Beneath the railway bridge, in front of the Underground station, the
cab-rank cried them on with sardonic view-halloos; and a bobby remarked
them with suspicion, turning to watch as they plunged round the corner
and across the wide Embankment.

The Thames appeared before them, a river of ink on whose burnished
surface lights swam in long winding streaks and oily blobs. By the
floating pier a County Council steamboat strained its hawsers, snoring
huskily. Bells were jingling in her engine-room as the two gained the
head of the sloping gangway.

Kirkwood slapped a shilling down on the ticket-window ledge. “Where
to?” he cried back to Calendar.

“Cherry Gardens Pier,” rasped the winded man. He stumbled after
Kirkwood, groaning with exhaustion. Only the tolerance of the pier
employees gained them their end; the steamer was held some seconds for
them; as Calendar staggered to its deck, the gangway was jerked in, the
last hawser cast off. The boat sheered wide out on the river, then shot
in, arrow-like, to the pier beneath Waterloo Bridge.

The deck was crowded and additional passengers embarked at every stop.
In the circumstances conversation, save on the most impersonal topics,
was impossible; and even had it been necessary or advisable to discuss
the affair which occupied their minds, where so many ears could hear,
Calendar had breath enough neither to answer nor to catechize Kirkwood.
They found seats on the forward deck and rested there in grim silence,
both fretting under the enforced restraint, while the boat darted, like
some illuminated and exceptionally active water insect, from pier to
pier.

As it snorted beneath London Bridge, Calendar’s impatience drove him
from his seat back to the gangway. “Next stop,” he told Kirkwood
curtly; and rested his heavy bulk against the paddle-box, brooding
morosely, until, after an uninterrupted run of more than a mile, the
steamer swept in, side-wheels backing water furiously against the
ebbing tide, to Cherry Gardens landing.

Sweet name for a locality unsavory beyond credence! ... As they emerged
on the street level and turned west on Bermondsey Wall, Kirkwood was
fain to tug his top-coat over his chest and button it tight, to hide
his linen. In a guarded tone he counseled his companion to do likewise;
and Calendar, after a moment’s blank, uncomprehending stare,
acknowledged the wisdom of the advice with a grunt.

The very air they breathed was rank with fetid odors bred of the gaunt
dark warehouses that lined their way; the lights were few; beneath the
looming buildings the shadows were many and dense. Here and there
dreary and cheerless public houses appeared, with lighted windows
conspicuous in a lightless waste. From time to time, as they hurried
on, they encountered, and made wide detours to escape contact with
knots of wayfarers—men debased and begrimed, with dreary and slatternly
women, arm in arm, zigzaging widely across the sidewalks, chorusing
with sodden voices the burden of some popularized ballad. The
cheapened, sentimental refrains echoed sadly between benighted
walls....

Kirkwood shuddered, sticking close to Calendar’s side. Life’s naked
brutalities had theretofore been largely out of his ken. He had heard
of slums, had even ventured to mouth politely moral platitudes on the
subject of overcrowding in great centers of population, but in the
darkest flights of imagination had never pictured to himself anything
so unspeakably foul and hopeless as this.... And they were come hither
seeking—Dorothy Calendar! He was unable to conceive what manner of
villainy could be directed against her, that she must be looked for in
such surroundings.

After some ten minutes’ steady walking, Calendar turned aside with a
muttered word, and dived down a covered, dark and evil-smelling
passageway that seemed to lead toward the river.

Mastering his involuntary qualms, Kirkwood followed.

Some ten or twelve paces from its entrance the passageway swerved at a
right angle, continuing three yards or so to end in a blank wall,
wherefrom a flickering, inadequate gas-lamp jutted. At this point a
stone platform, perhaps four feet square, was discovered, from the edge
of which a flight of worn and slimy stone steps led down to a permanent
boat-landing, where another gas-light flared gustily despite the
protection of its frame of begrimed glass.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed the young man. “What, in Heaven’s name,
Calendar—?”

“Bermondsey Old Stairs. Come on.”

They descended to the landing-stage. Beneath them the Pool slept, a
sheet of polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small
stealthy gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther
bank tall warehouses reared square old-time heads, their
uncompromising, rugged profile relieved here and there by tapering
mastheads. A few, scattering, feeble lights were visible. Nothing moved
save the river and the wind.

The landing itself they found quite deserted; something which the
adventurer comprehended with a nod which, like its accompanying,
inarticulate ejaculation, might have been taken to indicate either
satisfaction or disgust. He ignored Kirkwood altogether, for the time
being, and presently produced a small, bright object, which, applied to
his lips, proved to be a boatswain’s whistle. He sounded two blasts,
one long, one brief.

There fell a lull, Kirkwood watching the other and wondering what next
would happen. Calendar paced restlessly to and fro upon the narrow
landing, now stopping to incline an ear to catch some anticipated
sound, now searching with sweeping glances the black reaches of the
Pool.

Finally, consulting his watch, “Almost ten,” he announced.

“We’re in time?”

“Can’t say.... Damn! ... If that infernal boat would only show up—”

He was lifting the whistle to sound a second summons when a rowboat
rounded a projecting angle formed by the next warehouse down stream,
and with clanking oar-locks swung in toward the landing. On her thwarts
two figures, dipping and rising, labored with the sweeps. As they drew
in, the man forward shipped his blades, and rising, scrambled to the
bows in order to grasp an iron mooring-ring set in the wall. The other
awkwardly took in his oars and, as the current swung the stern
downstream, placed a hand palm downward upon the bottom step to hold
the boat steady.

Calendar waddled to the brink of the stage, grunting with relief.

“The other man?” he asked brusquely. “Has he gone aboard? Or is this
the first trip to-night?”

One of the watermen nodded assent to the latter question, adding
gruffly: “Seen nawthin’ of ’im, sir.”

“Very good,” said Calendar, as if he doubted whether it were very good
or bad. “We’ll wait a bit.”

“Right-o!” agreed the waterman civilly.

Calendar turned back, his small eyes glimmering with satisfaction.
Fumbling in one coat pocket he brought to light a cigar-case. “Have a
smoke?” he suggested with a show of friendliness. “By Heaven, I was
beginnin’ to get worried!”

“As to what?” inquired Kirkwood pointedly, selecting a cigar.

He got no immediate reply, but felt Calendar’s sharp eyes upon him
while he manoeuvered with matches for a light.

“That’s so,” it came at length. “You don’t know. I kind of forgot for a
minute; somehow you seemed on the inside.”

Kirkwood laughed lightly. “I’ve experienced something of the same
sensation in the past few hours.”

“Don’t doubt it.” Calendar was watching him narrowly. “I suppose,” he
put it to him abruptly, “you haven’t changed your mind?”

“Changed my mind?”

“About coming in with me.”

“My dear sir, I can have no mind to change until a plain proposition is
laid before me.”

“Hmm!” Calendar puffed vigorously until it occurred to him to change
the subject. “You won’t mind telling me what happened to you and
Dorothy?”

“Certainly not.”

Calendar drew nearer and Kirkwood, lowering his voice, narrated briefly
the events since he had left the Pless in Dorothy’s company.

Her father followed him intently, interrupting now and again with
exclamation or pertinent question; as, Had Kirkwood been able to see
the face of the man in No. 9, Frognall Street? The negative answer
seemed to disconcert him.

“Youngster, you say? Blam’ if I can lay my mind to _him_! Now if that
Mulready—”

“It would have been impossible for Mulready—whoever he is—to recover
and get to Craven Street before we did,” Kirkwood pointed out.

“Well—go on.” But when the tale was told, “It’s that scoundrel,
Mulready!” the man affirmed with heat. “It’s his hand—I know him. I
might have had sense enough to see he’d take the first chance to hand
me the double-cross. Well, this does for _him_, all right!” Calendar
lowered viciously at the river. “You’ve been blame’ useful,” he told
Kirkwood assertively. “If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know where
_I’d_ be now,—nor Dorothy, either,”—an obvious afterthought. “There’s
no particular way I can show my appreciation, I suppose? Money—?”

“I’ve got enough to last me till I reach New York, thank you.”

“Well, if the time ever comes, just shout for George B. I won’t be
wanting.... I only wish you were with us; but that’s out of the
question.”

“Doubtless ...”

“No two ways about it. I bet anything you’ve got a conscience concealed
about your person. What? You’re an honest man, eh?”

“I don’t want to sound immodest,” returned Kirkwood, amused.

“You don’t need to worry about that.... But an honest man’s got no
business in _my_ line.” He glanced again at his watch. “Damn that
Mulready! I wonder if he was ’cute enough to take another way? Or did
he think ... The fool!”

He cut off abruptly, seeming depressed by the thought that he might
have been outwitted; and, clasping hands behind his back, chewed
savagely on his cigar, watching the river. Kirkwood found himself
somewhat wearied; the uselessness of his presence there struck him with
added force. He bethought him of his boat-train, scheduled to leave a
station miles distant, in an hour and a half. If he missed it, he would
be stranded in a foreign land, penniless and practically without
friends—Brentwick being away and all the rest of his circle of
acquaintances on the other side of the Channel. Yet he lingered, in
poor company, daring fate that he might see the end of the affair. Why?

There was only one honest answer to that question. He stayed on because
of his interest in a girl whom he had known for a matter of three
hours, at most. It was insensate folly on his part, ridiculous from any
point of view. But he made no move to go.

The slow minutes lengthened monotonously.

There came a sound from the street level. Calendar held up a hand of
warning. “Here they come! Steady!” he said tensely. Kirkwood, listening
intently, interpreted the noise as a clash of hoofs upon cobbles.

Calendar turned to the boat.

“Sheer off,” he ordered. “Drop out of sight. I’ll whistle when I want
you.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The boat slipped noiselessly away with the current and in an instant
was lost to sight. Calendar plucked at Kirkwood’s sleeve, drawing him
into the shadow of the steps. “E-easy,” he whispered; “and, I say, lend
me a hand, will you, if Mulready turns ugly?”

“Oh, yes,” assented Kirkwood, with a nonchalance not entirely
unassumed.

The racket drew nearer and ceased; the hush that fell thereafter seemed
only accentuated by the purling of the river. It was ended by footsteps
echoing in the covered passageway. Calendar craned his thick neck round
the shoulder of stone, reconnoitering the landing and stairway.

“Thank God!” he said under his breath. “I was right, after all!”

A man’s deep tones broke out above. “This way. Mind the steps; they’re
a bit slippery, Miss Dorothy.”

“But my father—?” came the girl’s voice, attuned to doubt.

“Oh, he’ll be along—if he isn’t waiting now, in the boat.”

They descended, the man leading. At the foot, without a glance to right
or left, he advanced to the edge of the stage, leaning out over the
rail as if endeavoring to locate the rowboat. At once the girl
appeared, moving to his side.

“But, Mr. Mulready—”

The girl’s words were drowned by a prolonged blast on the boatswain’s
whistle at her companion’s lips; the shorter one followed in due
course. Calendar edged forward from Kirkwood’s side.

“But what shall we do if my father isn’t here? Wait?”

“No; best not to; best to get on the _Alethea_ as soon as possible,
Miss Calendar. We can send the boat back.”

“‘Once aboard the lugger the girl is mine’—eh, Mulready?—to say nothing
of the loot!”

If Calendar’s words were jocular, his tone conveyed a different
impression entirely. Both man and girl wheeled right about to face him,
the one with a strangled oath, the other with a low cry.

“The devil!” exclaimed this Mr. Mulready.

“Oh! My father!” the girl voiced her recognition of him.

“Not precisely one and the same person,” commented Calendar suavely.
“But—er—thanks, just as much.... You see, Mulready, when I make an
appointment, I keep it.”

“We’d begun to get a bit anxious about you—” Mulready began
defensively.

“So I surmised, from what Mrs. Hallam and Mr. Kirkwood told me....
Well?”

The man found no ready answer. He fell back a pace to the railing, his
features working with his deep chagrin. The murky flare of the gas-lamp
overhead fell across a face handsome beyond the ordinary but marred by
a sullen humor and seamed with indulgence: a face that seemed
hauntingly familiar until Kirkwood in a flash of visual memory
reconstructed the portrait of a man who lingered over a dining-table,
with two empty chairs for company. This, then, was he whom Mrs. Hallam
had left at the Pless; a tall, strong man, very heavy about the chest
and shoulders....

“Why, my dear friend,” Calendar was taunting him, “you don’t seem
overjoyed to see me, for all your wild anxiety! ’Pon my word, you act
as if you hadn’t expected me—and our engagement so clearly understood,
at that! ... Why, you fool!”—here the mask of irony was cast. “Did you
think for a moment I’d let myself be nabbed by that yap from Scotland
Yard? Were you banking on that? I give you my faith I ambled out under
his very nose! ... Dorothy, my dear,” turning impatiently from
Mulready, “where’s that bag?”

The girl withdrew a puzzled gaze from Mulready’s face, (it was apparent
to Kirkwood that this phase of the affair was no more enigmatic to him
than to her), and drew aside a corner of her cloak, disclosing the
gladstone bag, securely grasped in one gloved hand.

“I have it, thanks to Mr. Kirkwood,” she said quietly.

Kirkwood chose that moment to advance from the shadow. Mulready started
and fixed him with a troubled and unfriendly stare. The girl greeted
him with a note of sincere pleasure in her surprise.

“Why, Mr. Kirkwood! ... But I left you at Mrs. Hallam’s!”

Kirkwood bowed, smiling openly at Mulready’s discomfiture.

“By your father’s grace, I came with him,” he said. “You ran away
without saying good night, you know, and I’m a jealous creditor.”

She laughed excitedly, turning to Calendar. “But _you_ were to meet me
at Mrs. Hallam’s?”

“Mulready was good enough to try to save me the trouble, my dear. He’s
an unselfish soul, Mulready. Fortunately it happened that I came along
not five minutes after he’d carried you off. How was that, Dorothy?”

Her glance wavered uneasily between the two, Mulready and her father.
The former, shrugging to declare his indifference, turned his back
squarely upon them. She frowned.

“He came out of Mrs. Hallam’s and got into the four-wheeler, saying you
had sent him to take your place, and would join us on the _Alethea_.”

“So-o! How about it, Mulready?”

The man swung back slowly. “What you choose to think,” he said after a
deliberate pause.

“Well, never mind! We’ll go over the matter at our leisure on the
_Alethea_.”

There was in the adventurer’s tone a menace, bitter and not to be
ignored; which Mulready saw fit to challenge.

“I think not,” he declared; “I think not. I’m weary of your addle-pated
suspicions. It’d be plain to any one but a fool that I acted for the
best interests of all concerned in this matter. If you’re not content
to see it in that light, I’m done.”

“Oh, if you want to put it that way, I’m _not_ content, Mr. Mulready,”
retorted Calendar dangerously.

“Please yourself. I bid you good evening and—good-by.” The man took a
step toward the stairs.

Calendar dropped his right hand into his top-coat pocket. “Just a
minute,” he said sweetly, and Mulready stopped. Abruptly the fat
adventurer’s smoldering resentment leaped in flame. “That’ll be about
all, Mr. Mulready! ’Bout face, you hound, and get into that boat! D’you
think I’ll temporize with you till Doomsday? Then forget it. You’re
wrong, dead wrong. Your bluff’s called, and”—with an evil chuckle—“I
hold a full house, Mulready,—every chamber taken.” He lifted meaningly
the hand in the coat pocket. “Now, in with you.”

With a grin and a swagger of pure bravado Mulready turned and obeyed.
Unnoticed of any, save perhaps Calendar himself, the boat had drawn in
at the stage a moment earlier. Mulready dropped into it and threw
himself sullenly upon the midships thwart.

“Now, Dorothy, in you go, my dear,” continued Calendar, with a
self-satisfied wag of his head.

Half dazed, to all seeming, she moved toward the boat. With clumsy and
assertive gallantry her father stepped before her, offering his
hand,—his hand which she did not touch; for, in the act of descending,
she remembered and swung impulsively back to Kirkwood.

“Good night, Mr. Kirkwood; good night,—I shan’t forget.”

He took her hand and bowed above it; but when his head was lifted, he
still retained her fingers in a lingering clasp.

“Good night,” he said reluctantly.

The crass incongruity of her in that setting smote him with renewed
force. Young, beautiful, dainty, brilliant and graceful in her pretty
evening gown, she figured strangely against the gloomy background of
the river, in those dull and mean surroundings of dank stone and rusted
iron. She was like (he thought extravagantly) a whiff of
flower-fragrance lost in the miasmatic vapors of a slough.

The innocent appeal and allure of her face, upturned to his beneath the
gas-light, wrought compassionately upon his sensitive and generous
heart. He was aware of a little surge of blind rage against the
conditions that had brought her to that spot, and against those whom he
held responsible for those conditions.

In a sudden flush of daring he turned and nodded coolly to Calendar.
“With your permission,” he said negligently; and drew the girl aside to
the angle of the stairway.

“Miss Calendar—” he began; but was interrupted.

“Here—I say!”

Calendar had started toward him angrily.

Kirkwood calmly waved him back. “I want a word in private with your
daughter, Mr. Calendar,” he announced with quiet dignity. “I don’t
think you’ll deny me? I’ve saved you some slight trouble to-night.”

Disgruntled, the adventurer paused. “Oh—_all_ right,” he grumbled. “I
don’t see what ...” He returned to the boat.

“Forgive me, Miss Calendar,” continued Kirkwood nervously. “I know I’ve
no right to interfere, but—”

“Yes, Mr. Kirkwood?”

“—but hasn’t this gone far enough?” he floundered unhappily. “I can’t
like the look of things. Are you sure—sure that it’s all right—with
you, I mean?”

She did not answer at once; but her eyes were kind and sympathetic. He
plucked heart of their tolerance.

“It isn’t too late, yet,” he argued. “Let me take you to your
friends,—you must have friends in the city. But this—this midnight
flight down the Thames, this atmosphere of stealth and suspicion,
this—”

“But my place is with my father, Mr. Kirkwood,” she interposed. “I
daren’t doubt him—dare I?”

“I ... suppose not.”

“So I must go with him.... I’m glad—thank you for caring, dear Mr.
Kirkwood. And again, good night.”

“Good luck attend you,” he muttered, following her to the boat.

Calendar helped her in and turned back to Kirkwood with a look of arch
triumph; Kirkwood wondered if he had overheard. Whether or no, he could
afford to be magnanimous. Seizing Kirkwood’s hand, he pumped it
vigorously.

“My dear boy, you’ve been an angel in disguise! And I guess you think
me the devil in masquerade.” He chuckled, in high conceit with himself
over the turn of affairs. “Good night and—and fare thee well!” He
dropped into the boat, seating himself to face the recalcitrant
Mulready. “Cast off, there!”

The boat dropped away, the oars lifting and falling. With a weariful
sense of loneliness and disappointment, Kirkwood hung over the rail to
watch them out of sight.

A dozen feet of water lay between the stage and the boat. The girl’s
dress remained a spot of cheerful color; her face was a blur. As the
watermen swung the bows down-stream, she looked back, lifting an arm
spectral in its white sheath. Kirkwood raised his hat.

The boat gathered impetus, momentarily diminishing in the night’s
illusory perspective; presently it was little more than a fugitive
blot, gliding swiftly in midstream. And then, it was gone entirely,
engulfed by the obliterating darkness.


[Illustration: The boat gathered impetus.]


Somewhat wearily the young man released the railing and ascended the
stairs. “And that is the end!” he told himself, struggling with an
acute sense of personal injury. He had been hardly used. For a few
hours his life had been lightened by the ineffable glamor of Romance;
mystery and adventure had engaged him, exorcising for the time the
Shade of Care; he had served a fair woman and been associated with men
whose ways, however questionable, were the ways of courage, hedged
thickly about with perils.

All that was at an end. Prosaic and workaday to-morrows confronted him
in endless and dreary perspective; and he felt again upon his shoulder
the bony hand of his familiar, Care....

He sighed: “Ah, well!”

Disconsolate and aggrieved, he gained the street. He was miles from St.
Pancras, foot-weary, to all intents and purposes lost.

In this extremity, Chance smiled upon him. The cabby who, at his
initial instance, had traveled this weary way from Quadrant Mews, after
the manner of his kind, ere turning back, had sought surcease of
fatigue at the nearest public; from afar Kirkwood saw the four-wheeler
at the curb, and made all haste toward it.

Entering the gin-mill he found the cabby, soothed him with bitter, and,
instructing him for St. Pancras with all speed, dropped, limp and
listless with fatigue, into the conveyance.

As it moved, he closed his eyes; the face of Dorothy Calendar shone out
from the blank wall of his consciousness, like an illuminated picture
cast upon a screen. She smiled upon him, her head high, her eyes tender
and trustful. And he thought that her scarlet lips were sweet with
promise and her glance a-brim with such a light as he had never dreamed
to know.

And now that he knew it and desired it, it was too late; an hour gone
he might, by a nod of his head, have cast his fortunes with hers for
weal or woe. But now ... Alas and alackaday, that Romance was no more!




VII
DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN,—RESUMED


From the commanding elevation of the box, “Three ’n’ six,” enunciated
the cabby, his tone that of a man prepared for trouble, acquainted with
trouble, inclined to give trouble a welcome. His bloodshot eyes blinked
truculently at his alighted fare. “Three ’n’ six,” he iterated
aggressively.

An adjacent but theretofore abstracted policeman pricked up his ears
and assumed an intelligent expression.

“Bermondsey Ol’ Stairs to Sain’ Pancras,” argued the cabby assertively;
“seven mile by th’ radius; three ’n’ six!”

Kirkwood stood on the outer station platform, near the entrance to
third-class waiting-rooms. Continuing to fumble through his pockets for
an elusive sovereign purse, he looked up mildly at the man.

“All right, cabby,” he said, with pacific purpose; “you’ll get your
fare in half a shake.”

“Three ’n’ six!” croaked the cabby, like a blowsy and vindictive
parrot.

The bobby strolled nearer.

“Yes?” said Kirkwood, mildly diverted. “Why not sing it, cabby?”

“Lor’ lumme!” The cabby exploded with indignation, continuing to give a
lifelike imitation of a rumpled parrot. “I ’ad trouble enough wif you
at Bermondsey Ol’ Stairs, hover that quid you promised, didn’t I? Sing
it! My heye!”

“Quid, cabby?” And then, remembering that he had promised the fellow a
sovereign for fast driving from Quadrant Mews, Kirkwood grinned
broadly, eyes twinkling; for Mulready must have fallen heir to that
covenant. “But you got the sovereign? You got it, didn’t you, cabby?”

The driver affirmed the fact with unnecessary heat and profanity and an
amendment to the effect that he would have spoiled his fare’s
sanguinary conk had the outcome been less satisfactory.

The information proved so amusing that Kirkwood, chuckling, forbore to
resent the manner of its delivery, and, abandoning until a more
favorable time the chase of the coy sovereign purse, extracted from one
trouser pocket half a handful of large English small change.

“Three shillings, six-pence,” he counted the coins into the cabby’s
grimy and bloated paw; and added quietly: “The exact distance is rather
less than, four miles, my man; your fare, precisely two shillings. You
may keep the extra eighteen pence, for being such a conscientious
blackguard,—or talk it over with the officer here. Please yourself.”

He nodded to the bobby, who, favorably impressed by the silk hat which
Kirkwood, by diligent application of his sleeve during the cross-town
ride, had managed to restore to a state somewhat approximating its
erstwhile luster, smiled at the cabby a cold, hard smile. Whereupon the
latter, smirking in unabashed triumph, spat on the pavement at
Kirkwood’s feet, gathered up the reins, and wheeled out.

“A ’ard lot, sir,” commented the policeman, jerking his helmeted head
towards the vanishing four-wheeler.

“Right you are,” agreed Kirkwood amiably, still tickled by the
knowledge that Mulready had been obliged to pay three times over for
the ride that ended in his utter discomfiture. Somehow, Kirkwood had
conceived no liking whatever for the man; Calendar he could, at a
pinch, tolerate for his sense of humor, but Mulready—! “A surly dog,”
he thought him.

Acknowledging the policeman’s salute and restoring two shillings and a
few fat copper pennies to his pocket, he entered the vast and echoing
train-shed. In the act, his attention was attracted and immediately
riveted by the spectacle of a burly luggage navvy in a blue jumper in
the act of making off with a large, folding sign-board, of which the
surface was lettered expansively with the advice, in red against a
white background:

BOAT-TRAIN LEAVES ON TRACK 3


Incredulous yet aghast the young man gave instant chase to the navvy,
overhauling him with no great difficulty. For your horny-handed British
working-man is apparently born with two golden aphorisms in his mouth:
“Look before you leap,” and “Haste makes waste.” He looks continually,
seldom, if ever, leaps, and never is prodigal of his leisure.

Excitedly Kirkwood touched the man’s arm with a detaining hand.
“Boat-train?” he gasped, pointing at the board.

“Left ten minutes ago, thank you, sir.”

“Wel-l, but...! Of course I can get another train at Tilbury?”

“For yer boat? No, sir, thank you, sir. Won’t be another tryne till
mornin’, sir.”

“Oh-h!...”

Aimlessly Kirkwood drifted away, his mind a blank.

Sometime later he found himself on the steps outside the station,
trying to stare out of countenance a glaring electric mineral-water
advertisement on the farther side of the Euston Road.

He was stranded....

Beyond the spiked iron fence that enhedges the incurving drive, the
roar of traffic, human, wheel and hoof, rose high for all the lateness
of the hour: sidewalks groaning with the restless contact of hundreds
of ill-shod feet; the roadway thundering—hansoms, four-wheelers,
motor-cars, dwarfed coster-mongers’ donkey-carts and ponderous,
rumbling, C.-P. motor-vans, struggling for place and progress. For St.
Pancras never sleeps.

The misty air swam luminous with the light of electric signs as with
the radiance of some lurid and sinister moon. The voice of London
sounded in Kirkwood’s ears, like the ominous purring of a somnolent
brute beast, resting, gorged and satiated, ere rising again to devour.
To devour—

Stranded!...

Distracted, he searched pocket after pocket, locating his watch, cigar-
and cigarette-cases, match-box, penknife—all the minutiæ of
pocket-hardware affected by civilized man; with old letters, a
card-case, a square envelope containing his steamer ticket; but no
sovereign purse. His small-change pocket held less than three
shillings—two and eight, to be exact—and a brass key, which he failed
to recognize as one of his belongings.

And that was all. At sometime during the night he had lost (or been
cunningly bereft of?) that little purse of chamois-skin containing the
three golden sovereigns which he had been husbanding to pay his steamer
expenses, and which, if only he had them now, would stand between him
and starvation and a night in the streets.

And, searching his heart, he found it brimming with gratitude to
Mulready, for having relieved him of the necessity of settling with the
cabby.

“Vagabond?” said Kirkwood musingly. “Vagabond?” He repeated the word
softly a number of times, to get the exact flavor of it, and found it
little to his taste. And yet...

He thrust both hands deep in his trouser pockets and stared
purposelessly into space, twisting his eyebrows out of alignment and
crookedly protruding his lower lip.

If Brentwick were only in town—But he wasn’t, and wouldn’t be, within
the week.

“No good waiting here,” he concluded. Composing his face, he reëntered
the station. There were his trunks, of course. He couldn’t leave them
standing on the station platform for ever.

He found the luggage-room and interviewed a mechanically courteous
attendant, who, as the result of profound deliberation, advised him to
try his luck at the lost-luggage room, across the station. He accepted
the advice; it was a foregone conclusion that his effects had not been
conveyed to the Tilbury dock; they could not have been loaded into the
luggage van without his personal supervision. Still, anything was
liable to happen when his unlucky star was in the ascendant.

He found them in the lost-luggage room.

A clerk helped him identify the articles and ultimately clucked with a
perfunctory note: “Sixpence each, please.”

“I—ah—pardon?”

“Sixpence each, the fixed charge, sir. For every twenty-four hours or
fraction thereof, sixpence per parcel.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” said Kirkwood sweetly. “I will call
to-morrow.”

“Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Five times sixpence is two-and-six,” Kirkwood computed, making his way
hastily out of the station, lest a worse thing befall him. “No, bless
your heart!—not while two and eight represents the sum total of my
fortune.”

He wandered out into the night; he could not linger round the station
till dawn; and what profit to him if he did? Even were he to ransom his
trunks, one can scarcely change one’s clothing in a public
waiting-room.

Somewhere in the distance a great clock chimed a single stroke,
freighted sore with melancholy. It knelled the passing of the half-hour
after midnight; a witching hour, when every public shuts up tight, and
gentlemen in top-hats and evening dress are doomed to pace the pave
till day (barring they have homes or visible means of support)—till
day, when pawnshops open and such personal effects as watches and
hammered silver cigar-cases may be hypothecated.

Sable garments fluttering, Care fell into step with Philip Kirkwood;
Care the inexorable slipped a skeleton arm through his and would not be
denied; Care the jade clung affectionately to his side, refusing to be
jilted.

“Ah, you thought you would forget me?” chuckled the fleshless lips by
his ear. “But no, my boy; I’m with you now, for ever and a day. ‘Misery
loves company,’ and it wouldn’t be pretty of me to desert you in this
extremity, would it? Come, let us beguile the hours till dawn with
conversation. Here’s a sprightly subject: What are you going to do, Mr.
Kirkwood? _What are you going to do?_”

But Kirkwood merely shook a stubborn head and gazed straight before
him, walking fast through ways he did not recognize, and pretending not
to hear. None the less the sense of Care’s solicitous query struck like
a pain into his consciousness. What was he to do?

An hour passed.

Denied the opportunity to satisfy its beast hunger and thirst, humanity
goes off to its beds. In that hour London quieted wonderfully; the
streets achieved an effect of deeper darkness, the skies, lowering,
looked down with a blush less livid for the shamelessness of man; cab
ranks lengthened; solitary footsteps added unto themselves loud,
alarming, offensive echoes; policemen, strolling with lamps blazing on
their breasts, became as lightships in a trackless sea; each new-found
street unfolded its perspective like a canyon of mystery, and yet
teeming with a hundred masked hazards; the air acquired a smell more
clear and clean, an effect more volatile; and the night-mist thickened
until it studded one’s attire with myriads of tiny buttons, bright as
diamond dust.

Through this long hour Kirkwood walked without a pause.

Another clock, somewhere, clanged resonantly twice.

The world was very still....

And so, wandering foot-loose in a wilderness of ways, turning
aimlessly, now right, now left, he found himself in a street he knew,
yet seemed not to know: a silent, black street one brief block in
length, walled with dead and lightless dwellings, haunted by his errant
memory; a street whose atmosphere was heavy with impalpable essence of
desuetude; in two words, Frognall Street.

Kirkwood identified it with a start and a guilty tremor. He stopped
stock-still, in an unreasoning state of semi-panic, arrested by a silly
impulse to turn and fly; as if the bobby, whom he descried approaching
him with measured stride, pausing now and again to try a door or flash
his bull’s-eye down an area, were to be expected to identify the man
responsible for that damnable racket raised ere midnight in vacant
Number 9!

Oddly enough, the shock of recognition brought him to his
senses,—temporarily. He was even able to indulge himself in a quiet,
sobering grin at his own folly. He passed the policeman with a nod and
a cool word in response to the man’s good-natured, “Good-night, sir.”
Number 9 was on the other side of the street; and he favored its blank
and dreary elevation with a prolonged and frank stare—that profited him
nothing, by the way. For a crazy notion popped incontinently into his
head, and would not be cast forth.

At the corner he swerved and crossed, still possessed of his devil of
inspiration. It would be unfair to him to say that he did not struggle
to resist it, for he did, because it was fairly and egregiously
asinine; yet struggling, his feet trod the path to which it tempted
him.

“Why,” he expostulated feebly, “I might’s well turn back and beat that
bobby over the head with my cane!...”

But at the moment his hand was in his change pocket, feeling over that
same brass door-key which earlier he had been unable to account for,
and he was informing himself how very easy it would have been for the
sovereign purse to have dropped from his waistcoat pocket while he was
sliding on his ear down the dark staircase. To recover it meant, at the
least, shelter for the night, followed by a decent, comfortable and
sustaining morning meal. Fortified by both he could redeem his luggage,
change to clothing more suitable for daylight traveling, pawn his
valuables, and enter into negotiations with the steamship company for
permission to exchange his passage, with a sum to boot, for
transportation on another liner. A most feasible project! A temptation
all but irresistible!

But then—the risk.... Supposing (for the sake of argument) the
customary night-watchman to have taken up a transient residence in
Number 9; supposing the police to have entered with him and found the
stunned man on the second floor: would the watchman not be vigilant for
another nocturnal marauder? would not the police now, more than ever,
be keeping a wary eye on that house of suspicious happenings?

Decidedly, to reënter it would be to incur a deadly risk. And yet,
undoubtedly, beyond question! his sovereign purse was waiting for him
somewhere on the second flight of stairs; while as his means of
clandestine entry lay warm in his fingers—the key to the dark entry,
which he had by force of habit pocketed after locking the door.

He came to the Hog-in-the-Pound. Its windows were dim with low-turned
gas-lights. Down the covered alleyway, Quadrant Mews slept in a dusk
but fitfully relieved by a lamp or two round which the friendly mist
clung close and thick.

There would be none to see....

Skulking, throat swollen with fear, heart beating like a snare-drum,
Kirkwood took his chance. Buttoning his overcoat collar up to his chin
and cursing the fact that his hat must stand out like a chimney-pot on
a detached house, he sped on tiptoe down the cobbled way and close
beneath the house-walls of Quadrant Mews. But, half-way in, he stopped,
confounded by an unforeseen difficulty. How was he to identify the
narrow entry of Number 9, whose counterparts doubtless communicated
with the mews from every residence on four sides of the city block?

The low inner tenements were yet high enough to hide the rear
elevations of Frognall Street houses, and the mist was heavy besides;
otherwise he had made shift to locate Number 9 by ticking off the
dwellings from the corner. If he went on, hit or miss, the odds were
anything-you-please to one that he would blunder into the servant’s
quarters of some inhabited house, and—be promptly and righteously sat
upon by the service-staff, while the bobby was summoned.

Be that as it might—he almost lost his head when he realized
this—escape was already cut off by the way he had come. Some one, or,
rather, some two men were entering the alley. He could hear the
tramping and shuffle of clumsy feet, and voices that muttered
indistinctly. One seemed to trip over something, and cursed. The other
laughed; the voices grew more loud. They were coming his way. He dared
no longer vacillate.

But—which passage should he choose?

He moved on with more haste than discretion. One heel slipped on a
cobble time-worn to glassy smoothness; he lurched, caught himself up in
time to save a fall, lost his hat, recovered it, and was discovered. A
voice, maudlin with drink, hailed and called upon him to stand and give
an account of himself, “like a goo’ feller.” Another tempted him with
offers of drink and sociable confabulation. He yielded not; adamantine
to the seductive lure, he picked up his heels and ran. Those behind
him, remarking with resentment the amazing fact that an intimate of the
mews should run away from liquor, cursed and made after him, veering,
staggering, howling like ravening animals.

For all their burden of intoxication, they knew the ground by instinct
and from long association. They gained on him. Across the way a
window-sash went up with a bang, and a woman screamed. Through the only
other entrance to the mews a belated cab was homing; its driver,
getting wind of the unusual, pulled up, blocking the way, and added his
advice to the uproar.

Caught thus between two fires, and with his persecutors hard upon him,
Kirkwood dived into the nearest black hole of a passageway and in sheer
desperation flung himself, key in hand, against the door at the end.
Mark how his luck served him who had forsworn her! He found a keyhole
and inserted the key. It turned. So did the knob. The door gave inward.
He fell in with it, slammed it, shot the bolts, and, panting, leaned
against its panels, in a pit of everlasting night but—saved!—for the
time being, at all events.

Outside somebody brushed against one wall, cannoned to the other,
brought up with a crash against the door, and, perforce at a
standstill, swore from his heart.

“Gorblimy!” he declared feelingly. “I’d ’a’ took my oath I sore’m run
in ’ere!” And then, in answer to an inaudible question: “No, ’e ain’t.
Gorn an’ let the fool go to ’ell. ’Oo wants ’im to share goo’ liker?
Not I!...”

Joining his companion he departed, leaving behind him a trail of
sulphur-tainted air. The mews quieted gradually. Indoors Kirkwood faced
unhappily the enigma of fortuity, wondering: Was this by any
possibility Number 9? The key had fitted; the bolts had been drawn on
the inside; and while the key had been one of ordinary pattern and
would no doubt have proven effectual with any one of a hundred common
locks, the finger of probability seemed to indicate that his luck had
brought him back to Number 9. In spite of all this, he was sensible of
little confidence; though this were truly Number 9, his freedom still
lay on the knees of the gods, his very life, belike, was poised,
tottering, on a pinnacle of chance. In the end, taking heart of
desperation, he stooped and removed his shoes; a precaution which later
appealed to his sense of the ridiculous, in view of the racket he had
raised in entering, but which at the moment seemed most natural and in
accordance with common sense. Then rising, he held his breath, staring
and listening. About him the pitch darkness was punctuated with fading
points of fire, and in his ears was a noise of strange whisperings,
very creepy—until, gritting his teeth, he controlled his nerves and
gradually realized that he was alone, the silence undisturbed. He went
forward gingerly, feeling his way like a blind man on strange ground.
Ere long he stumbled over a door-sill and found that the walls of the
passage had fallen away; he had entered a room, a black cavern of
indeterminate dimensions. Across this he struck at random, walked
himself flat against a wall, felt his way along to an open door, and
passed through to another apartment as dark as the first.

Here, endeavoring to make a circuit of the walls, he succeeded in
throwing himself bodily across a bed, which creaked horribly; and for a
full minute lay as he had fallen, scarce daring to think. But nothing
followed, and he got up and found a shut door which let him into yet a
third room, wherein he barked both shins on a chair; and escaped to a
fourth whose atmosphere was highly flavored with reluctant odors of
bygone cookery, stale water and damp plumbing—probably the kitchen.
Thence progressing over complaining floors through what may have been
the servants’ hall, a large room with a table in the middle and a
number of promiscuous chairs (witness his tortured shins!), he finally
blundered into the basement hallway.

By now a little calmer, he felt assured that this was really Number 9,
Frognall Street, and a little happier about it all, though not even
momentarily forgetful of the potential police and night-watchman.

However, he mounted the steps to the ground floor without adventure and
found himself at last in the same dim and ghostly hall which he had
entered some six hours before; the mockery of dusk admitted by the
fan-light was just strong enough to enable him to identify the general
lay of the land and arrangement of furniture.

More confidently with each uncontested step, he continued his quest.
Elation was stirring his spirit when he gained the first floor and
moved toward the foot of the second flight, approaching the spot
whereat he was to begin the search for the missing purse. The knowledge
that he lacked means of obtaining illumination deterred him nothing; he
had some hope of finding matches in one of the adjacent rooms, but,
failing that, was prepared to ascend the stairs on all fours, feeling
every inch of their surface, if it took hours. Ever an optimistic soul,
instinctively inclined to father faith with a hope, he felt supremely
confident that his search would not prove fruitless, that he would win
early release from his temporary straits.

And thus it fell out that, at the instant he was thinking it time to
begin to crawl and hunt, his stockinged feet came into contact with
something heavy, yielding, warm—something that moved, moaned, and
caused his hair to bristle and his flesh to creep.

We will make allowances for him; all along he had gone on the
assumption that his antagonist of the dark stairway would have
recovered and made off with all expedition, in the course of ten or
twenty minutes, at most, from the time of his accident. To find him
still there was something entirely outside of Kirkwood’s reckoning: he
would as soon have thought to encounter say, Calendar,—would have
preferred the latter, indeed. But this fellow whose disability was due
to his own interference, who was reasonably to be counted upon to raise
the very deuce and all of a row!

The initial shock, however shattering to his equanimity, soon, lost
effect. The man evidently remained unconscious, in fact had barely
moved; while the moan that Kirkwood heard, had been distressingly
faint.

“Poor devil!” murmured the young man. “He must be in a pretty bad way,
for sure!” He knelt, compassion gentling his heart, and put one hand to
the insentient face. A warm sweat moistened his fingers; his palm was
fanned by steady respiration.

Immeasurably perplexed, the American rose, slipped on his shoes and
buttoned them, thinking hard the while. What ought he to do? Obviously
flight suggested itself,—incontinent flight, anticipating the man’s
recovery. On the other hand, indubitably the latter had sustained such
injury that consciousness, when it came to him, would hardly be
reinforced by much aggressive power. Moreover, it was to be remembered
that the one was in that house with quite as much warrant as the other,
unless Kirkwood had drawn a rash inference from the incident of the
ragged sentry. The two of them were mutual, if antagonistic,
trespassers; neither would dare bring about the arrest of the other.
And then—and this was not the least consideration to influence
Kirkwood—perhaps the fellow would die if he got no attention.

Kirkwood shut his teeth grimly. “I’m no assassin,” he informed himself,
“to strike and run. If I’ve maimed this poor devil and there are
consequences, I’ll stand ’em. The Lord knows it doesn’t matter a damn
to anybody, not even to me, what happens to me; while _he_ may be
valuable.”

Light upon the subject, actual as well as figurative, seemed to be the
first essential; his mind composed, Kirkwood set himself in search of
it. The floor he was on, however, afforded him no assistance; the
mantels were guiltless of candles and he discovered no matches, either
in the wide and silent drawing-room, with its ghastly furniture, like
mummies in their linen swathings, or in the small boudoir at the back.
He was to look either above or below, it seemed.

After some momentary hesitation, he went up-stairs, his ascent marked
by a single and grateful accident; half-way to the top he trod on an
object that clinked underfoot, and, stooping, retrieved the lost purse.
Thus was he justified of his temerity; the day was saved—that is,
to-morrow was.

The rooms of the second-floor were bedchambers, broad, deep, stately,
inhabited by seven devils of loneliness. In one, on a dresser, Kirkwood
found a stump of candle in a china candlestick; the two charred ends of
matches at its base were only an irritating discovery, however—evidence
that real matches had been the mode in Number 9, at some remote date.
Disgusted and oppressed by cumulative inquisitiveness, he took the
candle-end back to the hall; he would have given much for the time and
means to make a more detailed investigation into the secret of the
house.

Perhaps it was mostly his hope of chancing on some clue to the mystery
of Dorothy Calender—bewitching riddle that she was!—that fascinated his
imagination so completely. Aside from her altogether, the great house
that stood untenanted, yet in such complete order, so self-contained in
its darkened quiet, intrigued him equally with the train of
inexplicable events that had brought him within its walls. Now—since
his latest entrance—his vision had adjusted itself to cope with the
obscurity to some extent; and the street lights, meagerly reflected
through the windows from the bosom of a sullen pall of cloud, low-swung
above the city, had helped him to piece together many a detail of
decoration and furnishing, alike somber and richly dignified. Kirkwood
told himself that the owner, whoever he might be, was a man of wealth
and taste inherited from another age; he had found little of
meretricious to-day in the dwelling, much that was solid and sedate and
homely, and—Victorian.... He could have wished for more; a box of early
Victorian vestas had been highly acceptable.

Making his way down-stairs to the stricken man—who was quite as he had
been—Kirkwood bent over and thrust rifling fingers into his pockets,
regardless of the wretched sense of guilt and sneakishness imparted by
the action, stubbornly heedless of the possibility of the man’s
awakening to find himself being searched and robbed.

In the last place he sought, which should (he realized) have been the
first, to wit, the fob pocket of the white waistcoat, he found a small
gold matchbox, packed tight with wax vestas; and, berating himself for
crass stupidity—he had saved a deal of time and trouble by thinking of
this before—lighted the candle.

As its golden flame shot up with scarce a tremor, preyed upon by a
perfectly excusable concern, he bent to examine the man’s
countenance.... The arm which had partly hidden it had fallen back into
a natural position. It was a young face that gleamed pallid in the
candlelight—a face unlined, a little vapid and insignificant, with
features regular and neat, betraying few characteristics other than the
purely negative attributes of a character as yet unformed, possibly
unformable; much the sort of a face that he might have expected to see,
remembering those thin and pouting lips that before had impressed him.
Its owner was probably little more than twenty. In his attire there was
a suspicion of a fop’s preciseness, aside from its accidental disarray;
the cut of his waistcoat was the extreme of the then fashion, the white
tie (twisted beneath one ear) an exaggerated “butterfly,” his collar
nearly an inch too tall; and he was shod with pumps suitable only for
the dancing-floor,—a whim of the young-bloods of London of that year.

“I can’t make him out at all!” declared Kirkwood. “The son of a
gentleman too weak to believe that cubs need licking into shape? Reared
to man’s estate, so sheltered from the wicked world that he never grew
a bark?... The sort that never had a quarrel in his life, ’cept with
his tailor?... Now what the devil is _this_ thing doing in this
midnight mischief?... Damn!”

It was most exasperating, the incongruity of the boy’s appearance
assorted with his double rôle of persecutor of distressed damsels and
nocturnal house-breaker!

Kirkwood bent closer above the motionless head, with puzzled eyes
striving to pin down some elusive resemblance that he thought to trace
in those vacuous features—a resemblance to some one he had seen, or
known, at some past time, somewhere, somehow.

“I give it up. Guess I’m mistaken. Anyhow, five young Englishmen out of
every ten of his class are just as blond and foolish. Now let’s see how
bad he’s hurt.”

With hands strong and gentle, he turned the round, light head. Then,
“Ah!” he commented in the accent of comprehension. For there was an
angry looking bump at the base of the skull; and, the skin having been
broken, possibly in collision with the sharp-edged newel-post, a little
blood had stained and matted the straw-colored hair.

Kirkwood let the head down and took thought. Recalling a bath-room on
the floor above, thither he went, unselfishly forgetful of his
predicament if discovered, and, turning on the water, sopped his
handkerchief until it dripped. Then, returning, he took the boy’s head
on his knees, washed the wound, purloined another handkerchief (of
silk, with a giddy border) from the other’s pocket, and of this
manufactured a rude but serviceable bandage.

Toward the conclusion of his attentions, the sufferer began to show
signs of returning animation. He stirred restlessly, whimpered a
little, and sighed. And Kirkwood, in consternation, got up.

“So!” he commented ruefully. “I guess I am an ass, all right—taking all
that trouble for you, my friend. If I’ve got a grain of sense left,
this is my cue to leave you alone in your glory.”

He was lingering only to restore to the boy’s pockets such articles as
he had removed in the search for matches,—the match-box, a few silver
coins, a bulky sovereign purse, a handsome, plain gold watch, and so
forth. But ere he concluded he was aware that the boy was conscious,
that his eyes, open and blinking in the candlelight, were upon him.

They were blue eyes, blue and shallow as a doll’s, and edged with long,
fine lashes. Intelligence, of a certain degree, was rapidly informing
them. Kirkwood returned their questioning glance, transfixed in
indecision, his primal impulse to cut-and-run for it was gone; he had
nothing to fear from this child who could not prevent his going
whenever he chose to go; while by remaining he might perchance worm
from him something about the girl.

“You’re feeling better?” He was almost surprised to hear his own voice
put the query.

“I—I think so. Ow, my head!... I say, you chap, whoever you are, what’s
happened?... I want to get up.” The boy added peevishly: “Help a
fellow, can’t you?”

“You’ve had a nasty fall,” Kirkwood observed evenly, passing an arm
beneath the boy’s shoulder and helping him to a sitting position. “Do
you remember?”

The other snuffled childishly and scrubbed across the floor to rest his
back against the wall.

“Why-y ... I remember fallin’; and then ... I woke up and it was all
dark and my head achin’ fit to split. I presume I went to sleep again
... I say, what’re you, doing here?”

Instead of replying, Kirkwood lifted a warning finger.

“Hush!” he said tensely, alarmed by noises in the street. “You don’t
suppose—?”

He had been conscious of a carriage rolling up from the corner, as well
as that it had drawn up (presumably) before a near-by dwelling. Now the
rattle of a key in the hall-door was startlingly audible. Before he
could move, the door itself opened with a slam.

Kirkwood moved toward the stair-head, and drew back with a cry of
disgust. “Too late!” he told himself bitterly; his escape was cut off.
He could run up-stairs and hide, of course, but the boy would inform
against him and....

He buttoned up his coat, settled his hat on his head, and moved near
the candle, where it rested on the floor. One glimpse would suffice to
show him the force of the intruders, and one move of his foot put out
the light; then—_perhaps_—he might be able to rush them.

Below, a brief pause had followed the noise of the door, as if those
entering were standing, irresolute, undecided which way to turn; but
abruptly enough the glimmer of candlelight must have been noticed.
Kirkwood heard a hushed exclamation, a quick clatter of high heels on
the parquetry, pattering feet on the stairs, all but drowned by swish
and ripple of silken skirts; and a woman stood at the head of the
flight—to the American an apparition profoundly amazing as she paused,
the light from the floor casting odd, theatric shadows beneath her eyes
and over her brows, edging her eyes themselves with brilliant light
beneath their dark lashes, showing her lips straight and drawn, and
shimmering upon the spangles of an evening gown, visible beneath the
dark cloak which had fallen back from her white, beautiful shoulders.




VIII
MADAME L’INTRIGANTE


“Mrs. Hallam!” cried Kirkwood, beneath his breath.

The woman ignored his existence. Moving swiftly forward, she dropped on
both knees by the side of the boy, and caught up one of his hands,
clasping it passionately in her own.

“Fred!” she cried, a curious break in her tone. “My little Freddie! Oh,
what has happened, dearie?”

“Oh, hello, Mamma,” grunted that young man, submitting listlessly to
her caresses and betraying no overwhelming surprise at her appearance
there. Indeed he seemed more concerned as to what Kirkwood, an older
man, would be thinking, to see him so endeared and fondled, than moved
by any other emotion. Kirkwood could see his shamefaced, sidelong
glances; and despised him properly for them.

But without attending to his response, Mrs. Hallam rattled on in the
uneven accents of excitement. “I waited until I couldn’t wait any
longer, Freddie dear. I had to know—had to come. Eccles came home about
nine and said that you had told him to wait outside, that some one had
followed you in here, and that a bobby had told him to move on. I
didn’t know what—”

“What’s o’clock now?” her son interrupted.

“It’s about three, I think ... Have you hurt yourself, dear? Oh, why
_didn’t_ you come home? You must’ve known I was dying of anxiety!”

“Oh, I say! Can’t you see I’m hurt? ’Had a nasty fall and must’ve been
asleep ever since.”

“My precious one! How—?”

“Can’t say, hardly ... I say, don’t paw a chap so, Mamma ... I brought
Eccles along and told him to wait because—well, because I didn’t feel
so much like shuttin’ myself up in this beastly old tomb. So I left the
door ajar, and told him not to let anybody come in. Then I came
up-stairs. There must’ve been somebody already in the house; I know I
_thought_ there was. It made me feel creepy, rather. At any rate, I
heard voices down below, and the door banged, and somebody began
hammerin’ like fun on the knocker.”

The boy paused, rolling an embarrassed eye up at the stranger.

“Yes, yes, dear!” Mrs. Hallam urged him on.

“Why, I—I made up my mind to cut my stick—let whoever it was pass me on
the stairs, you know. But he followed me and struck me, and then I
jumped at him, and we both fell down the whole flight. And that’s all.
Besides, my head’s achin’ like everything.”

“But this man—?”

Mrs. Hallam looked up at Kirkwood, who bowed silently, struggling to
hide both his amusement and perplexity. More than ever, now, the case
presented a front inscrutable to his wits; try as he might, he failed
to fit an explanation to any incident in which he had figured, while
this last development—that his antagonist of the dark stairway had been
Mrs. Hallam’s son!—seemed the most astounding of all, baffling
elucidation completely.

He had abandoned all thought of flight and escape. It was too late; in
the brisk idiom of his mother-tongue, he was “caught with the goods
on.” “May as well face the music,” he counseled himself, in
resignation. From what he had seen and surmised of Mrs. Hallam, he
shrewdly suspected that the tune would prove an exceedingly lively one;
she seemed a woman of imagination, originality, and an able-bodied
temper.

“_You_, Mr. Kirkwood!”

Again he bowed, grinning awry.

She rose suddenly. “You will be good enough to explain your presence
here,” she informed him with dangerous serenity.

“To be frank with you—”

“I advise that course, Mr. Kirkwood.”

“Thanks, awf’ly.... I came here, half an hour ago, looking for a lost
purse full—well, not _quite_ full of sovereigns. It was my purse, by
the way.”

Suspicion glinted like foxfire in the cold green eyes beneath her
puckered brows. “I do not understand,” she said slowly and in level
tones.

“I didn’t expect you to,” returned Kirkwood; “no more do I.... But,
anyway, it must be clear to you that I’ve done my best for this
gentleman here.” He paused with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows.

“‘This gentleman’ is my son, Frederick Hallam.... But you will
explain—”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Hallam; I shall explain nothing, at present. Permit me
to point out that your position here—like mine—is, to say the least,
anomalous.” The random stroke told, as he could tell by the instant
contraction of her eyes of a cat. “It would be best to defer
explanations till a more convenient time—don’t you think? Then, if you
like, we can chant confidences in an antiphonal chorus. Just now
your—er—son is not enjoying himself apparently, and ... the attention
of the police had best not be called to this house too often in one
night.”

His levity seemed to displease and perturb the woman; she turned from
him with an impatient movement of her shoulders.

“Freddie, dear, do you feel able to walk?”

“Eh? Oh, I dare say—I don’t know. Wonder would your friend—ah—Mr.
Kirkwood, lend me an arm?”

“Charmed,” Kirkwood declared suavely. “If you’ll take the candle, Mrs.
Hallam—”

He helped the boy to his feet and, while the latter hung upon him and
complained querulously, stood waiting for the woman to lead the way
with the light; something which, however, she seemed in no haste to do.
The pause at length puzzled Kirkwood, and he turned, to find Mrs.
Hallam holding the candlestick and regarding him steadily, with much
the same expression of furtive mistrust as that with which she had
favored him on her own door-stoop.


[Illustration: He helped the boy to his feet, and stood waiting.]


“One moment,” she interposed in confusion; “I won’t keep you
waiting...;” and, passing with an averted face, ran quickly up-stairs
to the second floor, taking the light with her. Its glow faded from the
walls above and Kirkwood surmised that she had entered the front
bedchamber. For some moments he could hear her moving about; once,
something scraped and bumped on the floor, as if a heavy bit of
furniture had been moved; again there was a resounding thud that defied
speculation; and this was presently followed by a dull clang of metal.

His fugitive speculations afforded him little enlightenment; and,
meantime, young Hallam, leaning partly against the wall and quite
heavily on Kirkwood’s arm, filled his ears with puerile oaths and
lamentations; so that, but for the excuse of his really severe
shaking-up, Kirkwood had been strongly tempted to take the youngster by
the shoulders and kick him heartily, for the health of his soul.

But eventually—it was not really long—there came the quick rush of Mrs.
Hallam’s feet along the upper hall, and the woman reappeared, one hand
holding her skirts clear of her pretty feet as she descended in a rush
that caused the candle’s flame to flicker perilously.

Half-way down, “Mr. Kirkwood!” she called tempestuously.

“Didn’t you find it?” he countered blandly.

She stopped jerkily at the bottom, and, after a moment of confusion.
“Find what, sir?” she asked.

“What you sought, Mrs. Hallam.”

Smiling, he bore unflinching the prolonged inspection of her eyes, at
once somber with doubt of him and flashing with indignation because of
his impudence.

“You knew I wouldn’t find it, then!... Didn’t you?”

“I may have suspected you wouldn’t.”

Now he was sure that she had been searching for the gladstone bag.
That, evidently, was the bone of contention. Calendar had sent his
daughter for it, Mrs. Hallam her son; Dorothy had been successful ...
But, on the other hand, Calendar and Mrs. Hallam were unquestionably
allies. Why, then—?

“Where is it, Mr. Kirkwood?”

“Madam, have you the right to know?”

Through another lengthening pause, while they faced each other, he
marked again the curious contraction of her under lip.

“I have the right,” she declared steadily. “Where is it?”

“How can I be sure?”

“Then you don’t know—!”

“Indeed,” he interrupted, “I would be glad to feel that I ought to tell
you what I know.”

“What you know!”

The exclamation, low-spoken, more an echo of her thoughts than intended
for Kirkwood, was accompanied by a little shake of the woman’s head,
mute evidence to the fact that she was bewildered by his finesse. And
this delighted the young man beyond measure, making him feel himself
master of a difficult situation. Mysteries had been woven before his
eyes so persistently, of late, that it was a real pleasure to be able
to do a little mystifying on his own account. By adopting this reticent
and non-committal attitude, he was forcing the hand of a woman old
enough to be his mother and most evidently a past-mistress in the art
of misleading. All of which seemed very fascinating to the amateur in
adventure.

The woman would have led again, but young Hallam cut in, none too
courteously.

“I say, Mamma, it’s no good standing here, palaverin’ like a lot of
flats. Besides, I’m awf’ly knocked up. Let’s get home and have it out
there.”

Instantly his mother softened. “My poor boy!... Of course we’ll go.”

Without further demur she swept past and down the stairway before
them—slowly, for their progress was of necessity slow, and the light
most needed. Once they were in the main hall, however, she extinguished
the candle, placed it on a side table, and passed out through the door.

It had been left open, as before; and Kirkwood was not at all surprised
to see a man waiting on the threshold,—the versatile Eccles, if he
erred not. He had little chance to identify him, as it happened, for at
a word from Mrs. Hallam the man bowed and, following her across the
sidewalk, opened the door of a four-wheeler which, with lamps alight
and liveried driver on the box, had been waiting at the carriage-block.

As they passed out, Kirkwood shut the door; and at the same moment the
little party was brought up standing by a gruff and authoritative
summons.

“Just a minute, please, you there!”

“Aha!” said Kirkwood to himself. “I thought so.” And he halted, in
unfeigned respect for the burly and impressive figure, garbed in blue
and brass, helmeted and truncheoned, bull’s-eye shining on breast like
the Law’s unblinking and sleepless eye, barring the way to the
carriage.

Mrs. Hallam showed less deference for the obstructionist. The assumed
hauteur and impatience of her pose was artfully reflected in her voice
as she rounded upon the bobby, with an indignant demand: “What is the
meaning of this, officer?”

“Precisely what I wants to know, ma’am,” returned the man, unyielding
beneath his respectful attitude. “I’m obliged to ask you to tell me
what you were doing in that ’ouse.... And what’s the matter with this
’ere gentleman?” he added, with a dubious stare at young Hallam’s
bandaged head and rumpled clothing.

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” admitted Mrs. Hallam sweetly. “Of
course—I see—it’s perfectly natural. The house has been shut up for
some time and—”

“Thank you, ma’am; that’s just it. There was something wrong going on
early in the evening, and I was told to keep an eye on the premises.
It’s duty, ma’am; I’ve got my report to make.”

“The house,” said Mrs. Hallam, with the long-suffering patience of one
elucidating a perfectly plain proposition to a being of a lower order
of intelligence, “is the property of my son, Arthur Frederick Burgoyne
Hallam, of Cornwall. This is—”

“Beg pardon, ma’am, but I was told Colonel George Burgoyne, of
Cornwall—”

“Colonel Burgoyne died some time ago. My son is his heir. This is my
son. He came to the house this evening to get some property he desired,
and—it seems—tripped on the stairs and fell unconscious. I became
worried about him and drove over, accompanied by my friend, Mr.
Kirkwood.”

The policeman looked his troubled state of mind, and wagged a doubtful
head over the case. There was his duty, and there was, opposed to it,
the fact that all three were garbed in the livery of the well-to-do.

At length, turning to the driver, he demanded, received, and noted in
his memorandum-book, the license number of the equipage.

“It’s a very unusual case, ma’am,” he apologized; “I hopes you won’t
’old it against me. I’m only trying to do my duty—”

“And safeguard our property. You are perfectly justified, officer.”

“Thank you, ma’am. And would you mind giving me your cards, please, all
of you?”

“Certainly not.” Without hesitation the woman took a little hand-bag
from the seat of the carriage and produced a card; her son likewise
found his case and handed the officer an oblong slip.

“I’ve no cards with me,” the American told the policeman; “my name,
however, is Philip Kirkwood, and I’m staying at the Pless.”

“Very good, sir; thank you.” The man penciled the information in his
little book. “Thank you, ma’am, and Mr. Hallam, sir. Sorry to have
detained you. Good morning.”

Kirkwood helped young Hallam into the carriage, gave Mrs. Hallam his
hand, and followed her. The man Eccles shut the door, mounting the box
beside the driver. Immediately they were in motion.

The American got a final glimpse of the bobby, standing in front of
Number 9, Frognall Street, and watching them with an air of profound
uncertainty. He had Kirkwood’s sympathy, therein; but he had little
time to feel with him, for Mrs. Hallam turned upon him very suddenly.

“Mr. Kirkwood, will you be good enough to tell me who and what you
are?”

The young man smiled his homely, candid smile. “I’ll be only too glad,
Mrs. Hallam, when I feel sure you’ll do as much for yourself.”

She gave him no answer; it, was as if she were choosing words. Kirkwood
braced himself to meet the storm; but none ensued. There was rather a
lull, which strung itself out indefinitely, to the monotonous music of
hoofs and rubber tires.

Young Hallam was resting his empty blond head against the cushions, and
had closed his eyes. He seemed to doze; but, as the carriage rolled
past the frequent street-lights, Kirkwood could see that the eyes of
Mrs. Hallam were steadily directed to his face.

His outward composure was tempered by some amusement, by more
admiration; the woman’s eyes were very handsome, even when hardest and
most cold. It was not easy to conceive of her as being the mother of a
son so immaturely mature. Why, she must have been at least thirty-eight
or -nine! One wondered; she did not look it....

The carriage stopped before a house with lighted windows. Eccles jumped
down from the box and scurried to open the front door. The radiance of
a hall-lamp was streaming out into the misty night when he returned to
release his employers.

They were returned to Craven Street! “One more lap round the track!”
mused Kirkwood. “Wonder will the next take me back to Bermondsey Old
Stairs.”

At Mrs. Hallam’s direction, Eccles ushered him into the smoking-room,
on the ground floor in the rear of the dwelling, there to wait while
she helped her son up-stairs and to bed. He sighed with pleasure at
first glimpse of its luxurious but informal comforts, and threw himself
carelessly into a heavily padded lounging-chair, dropping one knee over
the other and lighting the last of his expensive cigars, with a
sensation of undiluted gratitude; as one coming to rest in the shadow
of a great rock in a weary land.

Over his shoulder a home-like illumination was cast by an electric
reading-lamp shaded with red silk. At his feet brass fire-dogs winked
sleepily in the fluttering blaze of a well-tended stove. The walls were
hung with deep red, the doors and divans upholstered in the same
restful shade. In one corner an old clock ticked soberly. The
atmosphere would have proved a potent invitation to reverie, if not to
sleep—he was very sleepy—but for the confusion in the house.

In its chambers, through the halls, on the stairs, there were hurryings
and scurryings of feet and skirts, confused with murmuring voices.
Presently, in an adjoining room, Philip Kirkwood heard a maid-servant
wrestling hopefully with that most exasperating of modern time-saving
devices, the telephone as countenanced by our English cousins. Her
patience and determination won his approval, but availed nothing for
her purpose; in the outcome the telephone triumphed and the maid gave
up the unequal contest.

Later, a butler entered the room; a short and sturdy fellow, extremely
ill at ease. Drawing a small taboret to the side of Kirkwood’s chair,
he placed thereon a tray, deferentially imparting the information that
“Missis ’Allam ’ad thought ’ow as Mister Kirkwood might care for a bit
of supper.”

“Please thank Mrs. Hallam for me.” Kirkwood’s gratified eyes ranged the
laden tray. There were sandwiches, biscuit, cheese, and a pot of black
coffee, with sugar and cream. “It was very kindly thought of,” he
added.

“Very good, sir, thank you, sir.”

The man turned to go, shuffling soundlessly. Kirkwood was suddenly
impressed with his evasiveness; ever since he had entered the room, his
countenance had seemed turned from the guest.

“Eccles!” he called sharply, at a venture.

The butler halted, thunderstruck. “Ye-es, s-sir?”


[Illustration: Eccles]


“Turn round, Eccles; I want a look at you.”

Eccles faced him unwillingly, with a stolid front but shifty eyes.
Kirkwood glanced him up and down, grinning.

“Thank you, Eccles; I’ll remember you now. You’ll remember me, too,
won’t you? You’re a bad actor, aren’t you, Eccles?”

“Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” mumbled the man unhappily; and took instant
advantage of the implied permission to go.

Intensely diverted by the recollection of Eccles’ abortive attempt to
stop him at the door of Number 9, and wondering—now that he came to
think of it—why, precisely, young Hallam had deemed it necessary to
travel with a body-guard and adopt such furtive methods to enter into
as well as to obtain what was asserted to be his own property, Kirkwood
turned active attention to the lunch.

Thoughtfully he poured himself a cup of coffee, swallowing it hot and
black as it came from the silver pot; then munched the sandwiches.

It _was_ kindly thought of, this early morning repast; Mrs. Hallam
seemed more and more a remarkable woman with each phase of her
character that she chose to disclose. At odds with him, she yet took
time to think of his creature needs!

What could be her motive,—not in feeding him, but in involving her name
and fortune in an affair so strangely flavored?... This opened up a
desert waste of barren speculation. “What’s anybody’s motive, who
figures in this thundering dime-novel?” demanded the American, almost
contemptuously. And—for the hundredth time—gave it up; the day should
declare it, if so hap he lived to see that day: a distant one, he made
no doubt. The only clear fact in his befogged and bemused mentality was
that he was at once “broke” and in this business up to his ears. Well,
he’d see it through; he’d nothing better to do, and—there was the girl:

Dorothy, whose eyes and lips he had but to close his own eyes to see
again as vividly as though she stood before him; Dorothy, whose
unspoiled sweetness stood out in vivid relief against this moil and
toil of conspiracy, like a star of evening shining clear in a stormy
sky.

“Poetic simile: I’m going fast,” conceded Kirkwood; but he did not
smile. It was becoming quite too serious a matter for laughter. For her
sake, he was in the game “for keeps”; especially in view of the fact
that everything—his own heart’s inclination included—seemed to conspire
to keep him in it. Of course he hoped for nothing in return; a pauper
who turns squire-of-dames with matrimonial intent is open to the
designation, “penniless adventurer.” No; whatever service he might be
to the girl would be ample recompense to him for his labors. And
afterwards, he’d go his way in peace; she’d soon forget him—if she
hadn’t already. Women (he propounded gravely) are queer: there’s no
telling anything about them!

One of the most unreadable specimens of the sex on which he pronounced
this highly original dictum, entered the room just then; and he found
himself at once out of his chair and his dream, bowing.

“Mrs. Hallam.”

The woman nodded and smiled graciously. “Eccles has attended to your
needs, I hope? Please don’t stop smoking.” She sank into an arm-chair
on the other side of the hearth and, probably by accident, out of the
radius of illumination from the lamp; sitting sidewise, one knee above
the other, her white arms immaculate against the somber background of
shadowed crimson.

She was very handsome indeed, just then; though a keener light might
have proved less flattering.

“Now, Mr. Kirkwood?” she opened briskly, with a second intimate and
friendly nod; and paused, her pose receptive.

Kirkwood sat down again, smiling good-natured appreciation of her
unprejudiced attitude.

“Your son, Mrs. Hallam—?”

“Oh, Freddie’s doing well enough.... Freddie,” she explained, “has a
delicate constitution and has seen little of the world. Such melodrama
as to-night’s is apt to shock him severely. We must make allowances,
Mr. Kirkwood.”

Kirkwood grinned again, a trace unsympathetically; he was unable to
simulate any enthusiasm on the subject of poor Freddie, whom he had
sized up with passable acumen as a spoiled and coddled child completely
under the thumb of an extremely clever mother.

“Yes,” he responded vaguely; “he’ll be quite fit after a night’s sleep,
I dare say.”

The woman was watching him keenly, beneath her lowered lashes. “I
think,” she said deliberately, “that it is time we came to an
understanding.”

Kirkwood agreed—“Yes?” affably.

“I purpose being perfectly straightforward. To begin with, I don’t
place you, Mr. Kirkwood. You are an unknown quantity, a new factor.
Won’t you please tell me what you are and.... Are you a friend of Mr.
Calendar’s?”

“I think I may lay claim to that honor, though”—to Kirkwood’s way of
seeing things some little frankness on his own part would be essential
if they were to get on—“I hardly know him, Mrs. Hallam. I had the
pleasure of meeting him only this afternoon.”

She knitted her brows over this statement.

“That, I assure you, is the truth,” he laughed.

“But ... I really don’t understand.”

“Nor I, Mrs. Hallam. Calendar aside, I am Philip Kirkwood, American,
resident abroad for some years, a native of San Francisco, of a certain
age, unmarried, by profession a poor painter.”

“And—?”

“Beyond that? I presume I must tell you, though I confess I’m in
doubt....” He hesitated, weighing candor in the balance with
discretion.

“But who are you for? Are you in George Calendar’s pay?”

“Heaven forfend!”—piously. “My sole interest at the present moment is
to unravel a most entrancing mystery—”

“Entitled ‘Dorothy Calendar’! Of course. You’ve known her long?”

“Eight hours, I believe,” he admitted gravely; “less than that, in
fact.”

“Miss Calendar’s interests will not suffer through anything you may
tell me.”

“Whether they will or no, I see I must swing a looser tongue, or you’ll
be showing me the door.”

The woman shook her head, amused, “Not until,” she told him
significantly.

“Very well, then.” And he launched into an abridged 

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