his right hand had moved toward his chest; now, with a movement
marvelously deft, it had slipped in and out of his breast pocket. And a
six-inch blade of tarnished steel was winging toward Kirkwood’s throat
with the speed of light.
Instinctively he stepped back; as instinctively he guarded with his
right forearm, lifting the hand that held the satchel. The knife,
catching in his sleeve, scratched the arm beneath painfully, and
simultaneously was twisted from the mate’s grasp, while in his surprise
Kirkwood’s grip on the bag-handle relaxed. It was torn forcibly from
his fingers just as he received a heavy blow on his chest from the
mate’s fist. He staggered back.
By the time he had recovered from the shock, Hobbs was a score of feet
away, the satchel tucked under his arm, his body bent almost double,
running like a jack-rabbit. Ere Kirkwood could get under way, in
pursuit, the mate had dodged out of sight round the corner. When the
American caught sight of him again, he was far down the block, and
bettering his pace with every jump.
He was approaching, also, some six or eight good citizens of Calais,
men of the laboring class, at a guess. Their attention attracted by his
frantic flight, they stopped to wonder. One or two moved as though to
intercept him, and he doubled out into the middle of the street with
the quickness of thought; an instant later he shot round another corner
and disappeared, the natives streaming after in hot chase, electrified
by the inspiring strains of “Stop, thief!”—or its French equivalent.
Kirkwood, cheering them on with the same wild cry, followed to the
farther street; and there paused, so winded and weak with laughter that
he was fain to catch at a fence picket for support. Standing thus he
saw other denizens of Calais spring as if from the ground miraculously
to swell the hue and cry; and a dumpling of a gendarme materialized
from nowhere at all, to fall in behind the rabble, waving his sword
above his head and screaming at the top of his lungs, the while his fat
legs twinkled for all the world like thick sausage links marvelously
animated.
The mob straggled round yet another corner and was gone; its clamor
diminished on the still Spring air; and Kirkwood, recovering, abandoned
Mr. Hobbs to the justice of the high gods and the French system of
jurisprudence (at least, he hoped the latter would take an interest in
the case, if haply Hobbs were laid by the heels), and went his way
rejoicing.
As for the scratch on his arm, it was nothing, as he presently
demonstrated to his complete satisfaction in the seclusion of a
chance-sent fiacre. Kirkwood, commissioning it to drive him to the
American Consulate, made his diagnosis _en route_; wound a handkerchief
round the negligible wound, rolled down his sleeve, and forgot it
altogether in the joys of picturing to himself Hobbs in the act of
opening the satchel in expectation of finding therein the gladstone
bag.
At the consulate door he paid off the driver and dismissed him; the
fiacre had served his purpose, and he could find his way to the
Terminus Hôtel at infinitely less expense. He had a considerably harder
task before him as he ascended the steps to the consular doorway,
knocked and made known the nature of his errand.
No malicious destiny could have timed the hour of his call more
appositely; the consul was at home and at the disposal of his
fellow-citizens—within bounds.
In the course of thirty minutes or so Kirkwood emerged with dignity
from the consulate, his face crimson to the hair, his soul smarting
with shame and humiliation; and left an amused official representative
of his country’s government with the impression of having been
entertained to the point of ennui by an exceptionally clumsy but
pertinacious liar.
For the better part of the succeeding hour Kirkwood circumnavigated the
neighborhood of the steamer pier and the Terminus Hôtel, striving to
render himself as inconspicuous as he felt insignificant, and keenly on
the alert for any sign or news of Hobbs. In this pursuit he was
pleasantly disappointed.
At noon precisely, his suspense grown too onerous for his strength of
will, throwing caution and their understanding to the winds, he walked
boldly into the Terminus, and inquired for Miss Calendar.
The assurance he received that she was in safety under its roof did not
deter him from sending up his name and asking her to receive him in the
public lounge; he required the testimony of his senses to convince him
that no harm had come to her in the long hour and a half that had
elapsed since their separation.
Woman-like, she kept him waiting. Alone in the public rooms of the
hotel, he suffered excruciating torments. How was he to know that
Calendar had not arrived and found his way to her?
When at length she appeared on the threshold of the apartment, bringing
with her the traveling bag and looking wonderfully the better for her
ninety minutes of complete repose and privacy, the relief he
experienced was so intense that he remained transfixed in the middle of
the floor, momentarily able neither to speak nor to move.
On her part, so fagged and distraught did he seem, that at sight of his
care-worn countenance she hurried to him with outstretched,
compassionate hands and a low pitiful cry of concern, forgetful
entirely of that which he himself had forgotten—the emotion she had
betrayed on parting.
“Oh, nothing wrong,” he hastened to reassure her, with a sorry ghost of
his familiar grin; “only I have lost Hobbs and the satchel with your
things; and there’s no sign yet of Mr. Calendar. We can feel pretty
comfortable now, and—and I thought it time we had something like a
meal.”
The narrative of his adventure which he delivered over their _déjeuner
à la fourchette_ contained no mention either of his rebuff at the
American Consulate or the scratch he had sustained during Hobbs’
murderous assault; the one could not concern her, the other would seem
but a bid for her sympathy. He counted it a fortunate thing that the
mate’s knife had been keen enough to penetrate the cloth of his sleeve
without tearing it; the slit it had left was barely noticeable. And he
purposely diverted the girl with flashes of humorous description, so
that they discussed both meal and episode in a mood of wholesome
merriment.
It was concluded, all too soon for the taste of either, by the waiter’s
announcement that the steamer was on the point of sailing.
Outwardly composed, inwardly quaking, they boarded the packet, meeting
with no misadventure whatever—if we are to except the circumstance
that, when the restaurant bill was settled and the girl had
punctiliously surrendered his change with the tickets, Kirkwood found
himself in possession of precisely one franc and twenty centimes.
He groaned in spirit to think how differently he might have been fixed,
had he not in his infatuated spirit of honesty been so anxious to give
Calendar more than ample value for his money!
An inexorable anxiety held them both near the gangway until it was cast
off and the boat began to draw away from the pier. Then, and not till
then, did an unimpressive, small figure of a man detach itself from the
shield of a pile of luggage and advance to the pier-head. No second
glance was needed to identify Mr. Hobbs; and until the perspective
dwarfed him indistinguishably, he was to be seen, alternately waving
Kirkwood ironic farewell and blowing violent kisses to Miss Calendar
from the tips of his soiled fingers.
So he had escaped arrest....
At first by turns indignant and relieved to realize that thereafter
they were to move in scenes in which his hateful shadow would not form
an essentially component part, subsequently Kirkwood fell a prey to
prophetic terrors. It was not alone fear of retribution that had
induced Hobbs to relinquish his persecution—or so Kirkwood became
convinced; if the mate’s calculation had allowed for them the least
fraction of a chance to escape apprehension on the farther shores of
the Channel, nor fears nor threats would have prevented him from
sailing with the fugitives.... Far from having left danger behind them
on the Continent, Kirkwood believed in his secret heart that they were
but flying to encounter it beneath the smoky pall of London.
XVII
ROGUES AND VAGABONDS
A westering sun striking down through the drab exhalations of
ten-thousand sooty chimney-pots, tinted the atmosphere with the hue of
copper. The glance that wandered purposelessly out through the carriage
windows, recoiled, repelled by the endless dreary vista of the Surrey
Side’s unnumbered roofs; or, probing instantaneously the hopeless
depths of some grim narrow thoroughfare fleetingly disclosed, as the
evening boat-train from Dover swung on toward Charing Cross, its trucks
level with the eaves of Southwark’s dwellings, was saddened by the
thought that in all the world squalor such as this should obtain and
flourish unrelieved.
For perhaps the tenth time in the course of the journey Kirkwood
withdrew his gaze from the window and turned to the girl, a question
ready framed upon his lips.
“Are you quite sure—” he began; and then, alive to the clear and
penetrating perception in the brown eyes that smiled into his from
under their level brows, he stammered and left the query uncompleted.
Continuing to regard him steadily and smilingly, Dorothy shook her head
in playful denial and protest. “Do you know,” she commented, “that this
is about the fifth repetition of that identical question within the
last quarter-hour?”
“How do you know what I meant to say?” he demanded, staring.
“I can see it in your eyes. Besides, you’ve talked and thought of
nothing else since we left the boat. Won’t you believe me, please, when
I say there’s absolutely not a soul in London to whom I could go and
ask for shelter? I don’t think it’s very nice of you to be so openly
anxious to get rid of me.”
This latter was so essentially undeserved and so artlessly insincere,
that he must needs, of course, treat it with all seriousness.
“That isn’t fair, Miss Calendar. Really it’s not.”
“What am I to think? I’ve told you any number of times that it’s only
an hour’s ride on to Chiltern, where the Pyrfords will be glad to take
me in. You may depend upon it,—by eight to-night, at the latest, you’ll
have me off your hands,—the drag and worry that I’ve been ever since—”
“Don’t!” he pleaded vehemently. “Please!... You _know_ it isn’t that. I
_don’t_ want you off my hands, ever.... That is to say, I—ah—” Here he
was smitten with a dumbness, and sat, aghast at the enormity of his
blunder, entreating her forgiveness with eyes that, very likely,
pleaded his cause more eloquently than he guessed.
“I mean,” he floundered on presently, in the fatuous belief that he
would this time be able to control both mind and tongue, “_what_ I mean
is I’d be glad to go on serving you in any way I might, to the end of
time, if you’d give me....”
He left the declaration inconclusive—a stroke of diplomacy that would
have graced an infinitely more adept wooer. But he used it all
unconsciously. “O Lord!” he groaned in spirit. “Worse and more of it!
Why in thunder can’t I say the right thing _right_?”
Egotistically absorbed by the problem thus formulated, he was heedless
of her failure to respond, and remained pensively preoccupied until
roused by the grinding and jolting of the train, as it slowed to a halt
preparatory to crossing the bridge.
Then he sought to read his answer in the eyes of Dorothy. But she was
looking away, staring thoughtfully out over the billowing sea of roofs
that merged illusively into the haze long ere it reached the horizon;
and Kirkwood could see the pulsing of the warm blood in her throat and
cheeks; and the glamorous light that leaped and waned in her eyes, as
the ruddy evening sunlight warmed them, was something any man might be
glad to live for and die for.... And he saw that she had understood,
had grasped the thread of meaning that ran through the clumsy fabric of
his halting speech and his sudden silences.
She had understood without resentment!
While, incredulous, he wrestled with the wonder of this fond discovery,
she grew conscious of his gaze, and turned her head to meet it with one
fearless and sweet, if troubled.
“Dear Mr. Kirkwood,” she said gently, bending forward as if to read
between the lines anxiety had graven on his countenance, “won’t you
tell me, please, what it can be that so worries you? Is it possible
that you still have a fear of my father? But don’t you know that he can
do nothing now—now that we’re safe? We have only to take a cab to
Paddington Station, and then—”
“You mustn’t underestimate the resource and ability of Mr. Calendar,”
he told her gloomily; “we’ve got a chance—no more. It wasn’t....” He
shut his teeth on his unruly tongue—too late.
Woman-quick she caught him up. “It wasn’t that? Then what was it that
worried you? If it’s something that affects me, is it kind and right of
you not to tell me?”
“It—it affects us both,” he conceded drearily. “I—I don’t—”
The wretched embarrassment of the confession befogged his wits; he felt
unable to frame the words. He appealed speechlessly for tolerance, with
a face utterly woebegone and eyes piteous.
The train began to move slowly across the Thames to Charing Cross.
Mercilessly the girl persisted. “We’ve only a minute more. Surely you
can trust me....”
In exasperation he interrupted almost rudely. “It’s only this: I—I’m
strapped.”
“Strapped?” She knitted her brows over this fresh specimen of American
slang.
“Flat strapped—busted—broke—on my uppers—down and out,” he reeled off
synonyms without a smile. “I haven’t enough money to pay cab-fare
across the town—”
“Oh!” she interpolated, enlightened.
“—to say nothing of taking us to Chiltern. I couldn’t buy you a glass
of water if you were thirsty. There isn’t a soul on earth, within hail,
who would trust me with a quarter—I mean a shilling—across London
Bridge. I’m the original Luckless Wonder and the only genuine Jonah
extant.”
With a face the hue of fire, he cocked his eyebrows askew and attempted
to laugh unconcernedly to hide his bitter shame. “I’ve led you out of
the fryingpan into the fire, and I don’t know what to do! Please call
me names.”
And in a single instant all that he had consistently tried to avoid
doing, had been irretrievably done; if, with dawning comprehension,
dismay flickered in her eyes—such dismay as such a confession can rouse
only in one who, like Dorothy Calendar, has never known the want of a
penny—it was swiftly driven out to make place for the truest and most
gracious and unselfish solicitude.
“Oh, poor Mr. Kirkwood! And it’s all because of me! You’ve beggared
yourself—”
“Not precisely; I was beggared to begin with.” He hastened to disclaim
the extravagant generosity of which she accused him. “I had only three
or four pounds to my name that night we met.... I haven’t told you—I—”
“You’ve told me nothing, nothing whatever about yourself,” she said
reproachfully.
“I didn’t want to bother you with my troubles; I tried not to talk
about myself.... You knew I was an American, but I’m worse than that;
I’m a Californian—from San Francisco.” He tried unsuccessfully to make
light of it. “I told you I was the Luckless Wonder; if I’d ever had any
luck I would have stored a little money away. As it was, I lived on my
income, left my principal in ’Frisco; and when the earthquake came, it
wiped me out completely.”
“And you were going home that night we made you miss your steamer!”
“It was my own fault, and I’m glad this blessed minute that I did miss
it. Nice sort I’d have been, to go off and leave you at the mercy—”
“Please! I want to think, I’m trying to remember how much you’ve gone
through—”
“Precisely what I don’t want you to do. Anyway, I did nothing more than
any other fellow would’ve! Please don’t give me credit that I don’t
deserve.”
But she was not listening; and a pause fell, while the train crawled
warily over the trestle, as if in fear of the foul, muddy flood below.
“And there’s no way I can repay you....”
“There’s nothing to be repaid,” he contended stoutly.
She clasped her hands and let them fall gently in her lap. “I’ve not a
farthing in the world!... I never dreamed.... I’m so sorry, Mr.
Kirkwood—terribly, terribly sorry!... But what can we do? I can’t
consent to be a burden—”
“But you’re not! You’re the one thing that ...” He swerved sharply, at
an abrupt tangent. “There’s one thing we can do, of course.”
She looked up inquiringly.
“Craven Street is just round the corner.”
“Yes?”—wonderingly.
“I mean we must go to Mrs. Hallam’s house, first off.... It’s too late
now,—after five, else we could deposit the jewels in some bank.
Since—since they are no longer yours, the only thing, and the proper
thing to do is to place them in safety or in the hands of their owner.
If you take them directly to young Hallam, your hands will be clear....
And—I never did such a thing in my life, Miss Calendar; but if he’s got
a spark of gratitude in his make-up, I ought to be able to—er—to borrow
a pound or so of him.”
“Do you think so?” She shook her head in doubt. “I don’t know; I know
so little of such things.... You are right; we must take him the
jewels, but...” Her voice trailed off into a sigh of profound
perturbation.
He dared not meet her look.
Beneath his wandering gaze a County Council steam-boat darted swiftly
down-stream from Charing Cross pier, in the shadow of the railway
bridge. It seemed curious to reflect that from that very floating pier
he had started first upon his quest of the girl beside him, only—he had
to count—three nights ago! Three days and three nights! Altogether
incredible seemed the transformation they had wrought in the complexion
of the world. Yet nothing material was changed.... He lifted his eyes.
Beyond the river rose the Embankment, crawling with traffic, backed by
the green of the gardens and the shimmering walls of glass and stone of
the great hotels, their windows glowing weirdly golden in the late
sunlight. A little down-stream Cleopatra’s Needle rose, sadly the worse
for London smoke, flanked by its couchant sphinxes, wearing a nimbus of
circling, sweeping, swooping, wheeling gulls. Farther down, from the
foot of that magnificent pile, Somerset House, Waterloo Bridge sprang
over-stream in its graceful arch.... All as of yesterday; yet all
changed. Why? Because a woman had entered into his life; because he had
learned the lesson of love and had looked into the bright face of
Romance....
With a jar the train started and began to move more swiftly.
Kirkwood lifted the traveling bag to his knees.
“Don’t forget,” he said with some difficulty, “you’re to stick by me,
whatever happens. You mustn’t desert me.”
“You _know_,” the girl reproved him.
“I know; but there must be no misunderstanding.... Don’t worry; we’ll
win out yet, I’ve a plan.”
_Splendide mendax_! He had not the glimmering of a plan.
The engine panting, the train drew in beneath the vast sounding dome of
the station, to an accompaniment of dull thunderings; and stopped
finally.
Kirkwood got out, not without a qualm of regret at leaving the
compartment; therein, at least, they had some title to consideration,
by virtue of their tickets; now they were utterly vagabondish,
penniless adventurers.
The girl joined him. Slowly, elbow to elbow, the treasure bag between
them, they made their way down toward the gates, atoms in a tide-rip of
humanity,—two streams of passengers meeting on the narrow strip of
platform, the one making for the streets, the other for the suburbs.
Hurried and jostled, the girl clinging tightly to his arm lest they be
separated in the crush, they came to the ticket-wicket; beyond the
barrier surged a sea of hats—shining “toppers,” dignified and
upstanding, the outward and visible manifestation of the sturdy, stodgy
British spirit of respectability; “bowlers” round and sleek and humble;
shapeless caps with cloth visors, manufactured of outrageous plaids;
flower-like miracles of millinery from Bond Street; strangely plumed
monstrosities from Petticoat Lane and Mile End Road. Beneath any one of
these might lurk the maleficent brain, the spying eyes of Calendar or
one of his creatures; beneath all of them that he encountered, Kirkwood
peered in fearful inquiry.
Yet, when they had passed unhindered the ordeal of the wickets, had run
the gantlet of those thousand eyes without lighting in any pair a spark
of recognition, he began to bear himself with more assurance, to be
sensible to a grateful glow of hope. Perhaps Hobbs’ telegram had not
reached its destination, for unquestionably the mate would have wired
his chief; perhaps some accident had befallen the conspirators; perhaps
the police had apprehended them.... No matter how, one hoped against
hope that they had been thrown off the trail.
And indeed it seemed as if they must have been misguided in some
providential manner. On the other hand, it would be the crassest of
indiscretions to linger about the place an instant longer than
absolutely necessary.
Outside the building, however, they paused perforce, undergoing the
cross-fire of the congregated cabbies. It being the first time that he
had ever felt called upon to leave the station afoot, Kirkwood cast
about irresolutely, seeking the sidewalk leading to the Strand.
Abruptly he caught the girl by the arm and unceremoniously hurried her
toward a waiting hansom.
“Quick!” he begged her. “Jump right in—not an instant to spare.—”
She nodded brightly, lips firm with courage, eyes shining.
“My father?”
“Yes.” Kirkwood glanced back over his shoulder. “He hasn’t seen us yet.
They’ve just driven up. Stryker’s with him. They’re getting down.” And
to himself, “Oh, the devil!” cried the panic-stricken young man.
He drew back to let the girl precede him into the cab; at the same time
he kept an eye on Calendar, whose conveyance stood half the length of
the station-front away.
The fat adventurer had finished paying off the driver, standing on the
deck of the hansom. Stryker was already out, towering above the mass of
people, and glaring about him with his hawk-keen vision. Calendar had
started to alight, his foot was leaving the step when Stryker’s glance
singled out their quarry. Instantly he turned and spoke to his
confederate. Calendar wheeled like a flash, peering eagerly in the
direction indicated by the captain’s index finger, then, snapping
instructions to his driver, threw himself heavily back on the seat.
Stryker, awkward on his land-legs, stumbled and fell in an
ill-calculated attempt to hoist himself hastily back into the vehicle.
To the delay thus occasioned alone Kirkwood and Dorothy owed a respite
of freedom. Their hansom was already swinging down toward the great
gates of the yard, the American standing to make the driver comprehend
the necessity for using the utmost speed in reaching the Craven Street
address. The man proved both intelligent and obliging; Kirkwood had
barely time to drop down beside the girl, ere the cab was swinging out
into the Strand, to the peril of the toes belonging to a number of
righteously indignant pedestrians.
“Good boy!” commented Kirkwood cheerfully. “That’s the greatest comfort
of all London, the surprising intellectual strength the average cabby
displays when you promise him a tip.... Great Heavens!” he cried,
reading the girl’s dismayed expression. “A tip! I never thought—!” His
face lengthened dismally, his eyebrows working awry. “Now we are in for
it!”
Dorothy said nothing.
He turned in the seat, twisting his neck to peep through the small rear
window. “I don’t see their cab,” he announced. “But of course they’re
after us. However, Craven Street’s just round the corner; if we get
there first, I don’t fancy Freddie Hallam will have a cordial reception
for our pursuers. They must’ve been on watch at Cannon Street, and
finding we were not coming in that way—of course they were expecting us
because of Hobbs’ wire—they took cab for Charing Cross. Lucky for
us.... Or is it lucky?” he added doubtfully, to himself.
The hansom whipped round the corner into Craven Street. Kirkwood sprang
up, grasping the treasure bag, ready to jump the instant they pulled in
toward Mrs. Hallam’s dwelling. But as they drew near upon the address
he drew back with an exclamation of amazement.
The house was closed, showing a blank face to the street—blinds drawn
close down in the windows, area gate padlocked, an estate-agent’s board
projecting from above the doorway, advertising the property “To be let,
furnished.”
Kirkwood looked back, craning his neck round the side of the cab. At
the moment another hansom was breaking through the rank of humanity on
the Strand crossing. He saw one or two figures leap desperately from
beneath the horse’s hoofs. Then the cab shot out swiftly down the
street.
The American stood up again, catching the cabby’s eye.
“Drive on!” he cried excitedly. “Don’t stop—drive as fast as you dare!”
“W’ere to, sir?”
“See that cab behind? Don’t let it catch us—shake it off, lose it
somehow, but for the love of Heaven don’t let it catch us! I’ll make it
worth your while. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” The driver looked briefly over his shoulder and lifted his
whip. “Don’t worry, sir,” he cried, entering into the spirit of the
game with gratifying zest. “Shan’t let ’em over’aul you, sir. Mind your
’ead!”
And as Kirkwood ducked, the whip-lash shot out over the roof with a
crack like the report of a pistol. Startled, the horse leaped
indignantly forward. Momentarily the cab seemed to leave the ground,
then settled down to a pace that carried them round the Avenue Theatre
and across Northumberland Avenue into Whitehall Place apparently on a
single wheel.
A glance behind showed Kirkwood that already they had gained, the
pursuing hansom having lost ground through greater caution in crossing
the main-traveled thoroughfare.
“Good little horse!” he applauded.
A moment later he was indorsing without reserve the generalship of
their cabby; the quick westward turn that took them into Whitehall,
over across from the Horse Guards, likewise placed them in a pocket of
traffic; a practically impregnable press of vehicles closed in behind
them ere Calendar’s conveyance could follow out of the side street.
That the same conditions, but slightly modified, hemmed them in ahead,
went for nothing in Kirkwood’s estimation.
“Good driver!” he approved heartily. “He’s got a head on his
shoulders!”
The girl found her voice. “How,” she demanded in a breath, face blank
with consternation, “how did you dare?”
“Dare?” he echoed exultantly; and in his veins excitement was running
like liquid fire. “What wouldn’t I dare for you, Dorothy?”
“What have you not?” she amended softly, adding with a shade of
timidity: “Philip...”
The long lashes swept up from her cheeks, like clouds revealing stars,
unmasking eyes radiant and brave to meet his own; then they fell, even
as her lips drooped with disappointment. And she sighed.... For he was
not looking. Man-like, hot with the ardor of the chase, he was deaf and
blind to all else.
She saw that he had not even heard. Twice within the day she had
forgotten herself, had overstepped the rigid bounds of her breeding in
using his Christian name. And twice he had been oblivious to that token
of their maturing understanding. So she sighed, and sighing, smiled
again; resting an elbow on the window-sill and flattening one small
gloved hand against the frame for a brace against the jouncing of the
hansom. It swept on with unabated speed, up-stream beside the tawny
reaches of the river; and for a time there was no speech between them,
the while the girl lost consciousness of self and her most imminent
peril, surrendering her being to the lingering sweetness of her long,
dear thoughts....
“I’ve got a scheme!” Kirkwood declared so explosively that she caught
her breath with the surprise of it. “There’s the Pless; they know me
there, and my credit’s good. When we shake them off, we can have the
cabby take us to the hotel. I’ll register and borrow from the
management enough to pay our way to Chiltern and the tolls for a cable
to New York. I’ve a friend or two over home who wouldn’t let me want
for a few miserable pounds.... So you see,” he explained boyishly,
“we’re at the end of our troubles already!”
She said something inaudible, holding her face averted. He bent nearer
to her, wondering. “I didn’t understand,” he suggested.
Still looking from him, “I said you were very good to me,” she said in
a quavering whisper.
“Dorothy!” Without his knowledge or intention before the fact, as
instinctively as he made use of her given name, intimately, his strong
fingers dropped and closed upon the little hand that lay beside him.
“What _is_ the matter, dear?” He leaned still farther forward to peer
into her face, till glance met glance in the ending and his racing
pulses tightened with sheer delight of the humid happiness in her
glistening eyes. “Dorothy, child, don’t worry so. No harm shall come to
you. It’s all working out—all working out _right_. Only have a little
faith in me, and I’ll _make_ everything work out right, Dorothy.”
Gently she freed her fingers. “I wasn’t,” she told him in a voice that
quivered between laughter and tears, “I wasn’t worrying. I was ... You
wouldn’t understand. Don’t be afraid I shall break down or—or
anything.”
“I shan’t,” he reassured her; “I know you’re not that sort. Besides,
you’d have no excuse. We’re moving along famously. That cabby knows his
business.”
In fact that gentleman was minute by minute demonstrating his peculiar
fitness for the task he had so cheerfully undertaken. The superior
horsemanship of the London hackney cabman needs no exploitation, and he
in whose hands rested the fate of the Calendar treasure was peer of his
compeers. He was instant to advantage himself of every opening to
forward his pliant craft, quick to foresee the fortunes of the way and
govern himself accordingly.
Estimating with practised eye the precise moment when the police
supervisor of traffic at the junction of Parliament and Bridge Streets,
would see fit to declare a temporary blockade, he so managed that his
was the last vehicle to pass ere the official wand, to ignore which
involves a forfeited license, was lifted; and indeed, so close was his
calculation that he escaped only with a scowl and word of warning from
the bobby. A matter of no importance whatever, since his end was gained
and the pursuing cab had been shut off by the blockade.
In Calendar’s driver, however, he had an adversary of abilities by no
means to be despised. Precisely how the man contrived it, is a
question; that he made a detour by way of Derby Street is not
improbable, unpleasant as it may have been for Stryker and Calendar to
find themselves in such close proximity to “the Yard.” At all events,
he evaded the block, and hardly had the chase swung across Bridge
Street, than the pursuer was nimbly clattering in its wake.
Past the Houses of Parliament, through Old Palace Yard, with the Abbey
on their left, they swung away into Abingdon Street, whence suddenly
they dived into the maze of backways, great and mean, which lies to the
south of Victoria. Doubling and twisting, now this way, now that, the
driver tooled them through the intricate heart of this labyrinth,
leading the pursuers a dance that Kirkwood thought calculated to
dishearten and shake off the pursuit in the first five minutes. Yet
always, peering back through the little peephole, he saw Calendar’s cab
pelting doggedly in their rear—a hundred yards behind, no more, no
less, hanging on with indomitable grit and determination.
By degrees they drew westwards, threading Pimlico, into Chelsea—once
dashing briefly down the Grosvenor Road, the Thames a tawny flood
beyond the river wall.
Children cheered them on, and policemen turned to stare, doubting
whether they should interfere. Minutes rolled into tens, measuring out
an hour; and still they hammered on, hunted and hunters, playing their
game of hare-and-hounds through the highways and byways of those staid
and aged quarters.
In the leading cab there were few words spoken. Kirkwood and Dorothy
alike sat spellbound with the fascination of the game; if it is
conceivable that the fox enjoys his part in the day’s sport, then they
were enjoying themselves. Now one spoke, now another—chiefly in the
clipped phraseology, of excitement. As—
“We’re gaining?”
“Yes—think so.”
Or, “We’ll tire them out?”
“Sure-ly.”
“They can’t catch us, can they, Philip?”
“Never in the world.”
But he spoke with a confidence that he himself did not feel, for hope
as he would he could never see that the distance between the two had
been materially lessened or increased. Their horses seemed most evenly
matched.
The sun was very low behind the houses of the Surrey Side when Kirkwood
became aware that their horse was flagging, though (as comparison
determined) no more so than the one behind.
In grave concern the young man raised his hand, thrusting open the trap
in the roof. Immediately the square of darkling sky was eclipsed by the
cabby’s face.
“Yessir?”
“You had better drive as directly as you can to the Hotel Pless,”
Kirkwood called up. “I’m afraid it’s no use pushing your horse like
this.”
“I’m sure of it, sir. ’E’s a good ’oss, ’e is, but ’e carn’t keep goin’
for hever, you know, sir.”
“I know. You’ve done very well; you’ve done your best.”
“Very good, sir. The Pless, you said, sir? Right.”
The trap closed.
Two blocks farther, and their pace had so sensibly moderated that
Kirkwood was genuinely alarmed. The pursuing cabby was lashing his
animal without mercy, while, “It aren’t no use my w’ippin’ ’im, sir,”
dropped through the trap. “’E’s doing orl ’e can.”
“I understand.”
Despondent recklessness tightened Kirkwood’s lips and kindled an
unpleasant light in his eyes. He touched his side pocket; Calendar’s
revolver was still there.... Dorothy should win away clear, if—if he
swung for it.
He bent forward with the traveling bag in his hands.
“What are you going to do?” The girl’s voice was very tremulous.
“Stand a chance, take a losing hazard. Can you run? You’re not too
tired?”
“I can run—perhaps not far—a little way, at least.”
“And will you do as I say?”
Her eyes met his, unwavering, bespeaking her implicit faith.
“Promise!”
“I promise.”
“We’ll have to drop off in a minute. The horse won’t last.... They’re
in the same box. Well, I undertake to stand ’em off for a bit; you take
the bag and run for it. Just as soon as I can convince them, I’ll
follow, but if there’s any delay, you call the first cab you see and
drive to the Pless. I’ll join you there.”
He stood up, surveying the neighborhood. Behind him the girl lifted her
voice in protest.
“No, Philip, no!”
“You’ve promised,” he said sternly, eyes ranging the street.
“I don’t care; I won’t leave you.”
He shook his head in silent contradiction, frowning; but not frowning
because of the girl’s mutiny. He was a little puzzled by a vague
impression, and was striving to pin it down for recognition; but was so
thoroughly bemused with fatigue and despair that only with great
difficulty could he force his faculties to logical reasoning, his
memory to respond to his call upon it.
The hansom was traversing a street in Old Brompton—a quaint, prim
by-way lined with dwellings singularly Old-Worldish, even for London.
He seemed to know it subjectively, to have retained a memory of it from
another existence: as the stage setting of a vivid dream, all
forgotten, will sometimes recur with peculiar and exasperating
intensity, in broad daylight. The houses, with their sloping, red-tiled
roofs, unexpected gables, spontaneous dormer windows, glass panes set
in leaded frames, red brick façades trimmed with green shutters and
doorsteps of white stone, each sitting back, sedate and
self-sufficient, in its trim dooryard fenced off from the public
thoroughfare: all wore an aspect hauntingly familiar, and yet strange.
A corner sign, remarked in passing, had named the spot “Aspen Villas”;
though he felt he knew the sound of those syllables as well as he did
the name of the Pless, strive as he might he failed to make them convey
anything tangible to his intelligence. When had he heard of it? At what
time had his errant footsteps taken him through this curious survival
of Eighteenth Century London?
Not that it mattered when. It could have no possible bearing on the
emergency. He really gave it little thought; the mental processes
recounted were mostly subconscious, if none the less real. His
objective attention was wholly preoccupied with the knowledge that
Calendar’s cab was drawing perilously near. And he was debating whether
or not they should alight at once and try to make a better pace afoot,
when the decision was taken wholly out of his hands.
Blindly staggering on, wilted with weariness, the horse stumbled in the
shafts and plunged forward on its knees. Quick as the driver was to
pull it up, with a cruel jerk of the bits, Kirkwood was caught
unprepared; lurching against the dashboard, he lost his footing,
grasped frantically at the unstable air, and went over, bringing up in
a sitting position in the gutter, with a solid shock that jarred his
very teeth.
For a moment dazed he sat there blinking; by the time he got to his
feet, the girl stood beside him, questioning him with keen solicitude.
“No,” he gasped; “not hurt—only surprised. Wait....”
Their cab had come to a complete standstill; Calendar’s was no more
than twenty yards behind, and as Kirkwood caught sight of him the fat
adventurer was in the act of lifting himself ponderously out of the
seat.
Incontinently the young man turned to the girl and forced the
traveling-bag into her hands.
“Run for it!” he begged her. “Don’t stop to argue. You promised—run!
I’ll come....”
“Philip!” she pleaded.
“Dorothy!” he cried in torment.
Perhaps it was his unquestionable distress that weakened her. Suddenly
she yielded—with whatever reason. He was only hazily aware of the swish
of her skirts behind him; he had no time to look round and see that she
got away safely. He had only eyes and thoughts for Calendar and
Stryker.
They were both afoot, now, and running toward him, the one as awkward
as the other, but neither yielding a jot of their malignant purpose. He
held the picture of it oddly graphic in his memory for many a day
thereafter: Calendar making directly, for him, his heavy-featured face
a dull red with the exertion, his fat head dropped forward as if too
heavy for his neck of a bull, his small eyes bright with anger; Stryker
shying off at a discreet angle, evidently with the intention of
devoting himself to the capture of the girl; the two cabs with their
dejected screws, at rest in the middle of the quiet, twilit street. He
seemed even to see himself, standing stockily prepared, hands in his
coat pockets, his own head inclined with a suggestion of pugnacity.
To this mental photograph another succeeds, of the same scene an
instant later; all as it had been before, their relative positions
unchanged, save that Stryker and Calendar had come to a dead stop, and
that Kirkwood’s right arm was lifted and extended, pointing at the
captain.
So forgetful of self was he, that it required a moment’s thought to
convince him that he was really responsible for the abrupt
transformation. Incredulously he realized that he had drawn Calendar’s
revolver and pulled Stryker up short, in mid-stride, by the mute menace
of it, as much as by his hoarse cry of warning:
“Stryker—not another foot—”
With this there chimed in Dorothy’s voice, ringing bell-clear from a
little distance:
“Philip!”
Like a flash he wheeled, to add yet another picture to his mental
gallery.
Perhaps two-score feet up the sidewalk a gate stood open; just outside
it a man of tall and slender figure, rigged out in a bizarre costume
consisting mainly of a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, was waiting
in an attitude of singular impassivity; within it, pausing with a foot
lifted to the doorstep, bag in hand, her head turned as she looked
back, was Dorothy.
[Illustration: A costume consisting mainly of a flowered
dressing-gown and slippers.]
As he comprehended these essential details of the composition, the man
in the flowered dressing-gown raised a hand, beckoning to him in a
manner as imperative as his accompanying words.
“Kirkwood!” he saluted the young man in a clear and vibrant voice, “put
up that revolver and stop this foolishness.” And, with a jerk of his
head towards the doorway, in which Dorothy now waited, hesitant: “Come,
sir—quickly!”
Kirkwood choked on a laugh that was half a sob. “Brentwick!” he cried,
restoring the weapon to his pocket and running toward his friend. “Of
all happy accidents!”
“You may call it that,” retorted the elder man with a fleeting smile as
Kirkwood slipped inside the dooryard. “Come,” he said; “let’s get into
the house.”
“But you said—I thought you went to Munich,” stammered Kirkwood; and so
thoroughly impregnated was his mind with this understanding that it was
hard for him to adjust his perceptions to the truth.
“I was detained—by business,” responded Brentwick briefly. His gaze,
weary and wistful behind his glasses, rested on the face of the girl on
the threshold of his home; and the faint, sensitive flush of her face
deepened. He stopped and honored her with a bow that, for all his
fantastical attire, would have graced a beau of an earlier decade.
“Will you be pleased to enter?” he suggested punctiliously. “My house,
such as it is, is quite at your disposal. And,” he added, with a glance
over his shoulder, “I fancy that a word or two may presently be passed
which you would hardly care to hear.”
Dorothy’s hesitation was but transitory; Kirkwood was reassuring her
with a smile more like his wonted boyish grin than anything he had
succeeded in conjuring up throughout the day. Her own smile answered
it, and with a murmured word of gratitude and a little, half timid,
half distant bow for Brentwick, she passed on into the hallway.
Kirkwood lingered with his friend upon the door-stoop. Calendar,
recovered from his temporary consternation, was already at the gate,
bending over it, fat fingers fumbling with the latch, his round red
face, lifted to the house, darkly working with chagrin.
From his threshold, watching him with a slight contraction of the eyes,
Brentwick hailed him in tones of cloying courtesy.
“Do you wish to see me, sir?”
The fat adventurer faltered just within the gateway; then, with a
truculent swagger, “I want my daughter,” he declared vociferously.
Brentwick peered mildly over his glasses, first at Calendar, then at
Kirkwood. His glance lingered a moment on the young man’s honest eyes,
and swung back to Calendar.
“My good man,” he said with sublime tolerance, “will you be pleased to
take yourself off—to the devil if you like? Or shall I take the trouble
to interest the police?”
He removed one fine and fragile hand from a pocket of the flowered
dressing-gown, long enough to jerk it significantly toward the nearer
street-corner.
Thunderstruck, Calendar glanced hastily in the indicated direction. A
blue-coated bobby was to be seen approaching with measured stride,
diffusing upon the still evening air an impression of ineffably capable
self-contentment.
Calendar’s fleshy lips parted and closed without a sound. They
quivered. Beneath them quivered his assortment of graduated chins. His
heavy and pendulous cheeks quivered, slowly empurpling with the dark
tide of his apoplectic wrath. The close-clipped thatch of his iron gray
mustache, even, seemed to bristle like hairs upon the neck of a
maddened dog. Beneath him his fat legs trembled, and indeed his whole
huge carcass shook visibly, in the stress of his restrained wrath.
Suddenly, overwhelmed, he banged the gate behind him and waddled off to
join the captain; who already, with praiseworthy native prudence, had
fallen back upon their cab.
From his coign of strategic advantage, the comfortable elevation of his
box, Kirkwood’s cabby, whose huge enjoyment of the adventurers’
discomfiture had throughout been noisily demonstrative, entreated
Calendar with lifted forefinger, bland affability, and expressions of
heartfelt sympathy.
“Kebsir? ’Ave a kebsir, do! Try a ride be’ind a real ’orse, sir; don’t
you go on wastin’ time on ’im.” A jerk of a derisive thumb singled out
the other cabman. “’E aren’t pl’yin’ you fair, sir; I knows ’im,—’e’s a
hartful g’y deceiver, ’e is. Look at ’is ’orse,—w’ich it aren’t; it’s a
snyle, that’s w’at it is. Tyke a father’s hadvice, sir, and next time
yer fairest darter runs awye with the dook in disguise, chyse ’em in a
real kebsir, not a cheap imitashin.... Kebsir?... Garn, you
’ard-’arted—”
Here he swooped upwards in a dizzy flight of vituperation best
unrecorded. Calendar, beyond an absent-minded flirt of one hand by his
ear, as who should shoo away a buzzing insect, ignored him utterly.
Sullenly extracting money from his pocket, he paid off his driver, and
in company with Stryker, trudged in morose silence down the street.
Brentwick touched Kirkwood’s arm and drew him into the house.
XVIII
ADVENTURES’ LUCK
As the door closed, Kirkwood swung impulsively to Brentwick, with the
brief, uneven laugh of fine-drawn nerves.
“Good God, sir!” he cried. “You don’t know—”
“I can surmise,” interrupted the elder man shrewdly.
“You turned up in the nick of time, for all the world like—”
“Harlequin popping through a stage trap?”
“No!—an incarnation of the Providence that watches over children and
fools.”
Brentwick dropped a calming hand upon his shoulder. “Your simile seems
singularly happy, Philip. Permit me to suggest that you join the child
in my study.” He laughed quietly, with a slight nod toward an open door
at the end of the hallway. “For myself, I’ll be with you in one
moment.”
A faint, indulgent smile lurking in the shadow of his white mustache,
he watched the young man wheel and dart through the doorway. “Young
hearts!” he commented inaudibly—and a trace sadly. “Youth!...”
Beyond the threshold of the study, Kirkwood paused, eager eyes
searching its somber shadows for a sign of Dorothy.
A long room and deep, it was lighted only by the circumscribed disk of
illumination thrown on the central desk by a shaded reading-lamp, and
the flickering glow of a grate-fire set beneath the mantel of a
side-wall. At the back, heavy velvet portières cloaked the recesses of
two long windows, closed jealously even against the twilight. Aside
from the windows, doors and chimney-piece, every foot of wall space was
occupied by towering bookcases or by shelves crowded to the limit of
their capacity with an amazing miscellany of objects of art, the fruit
of years of patient and discriminating collecting. An exotic and heady
atmosphere, compounded of the faint and intangible exhalations of these
insentient things, fragrance of sandalwood, myrrh and musk, reminiscent
whiffs of half-forgotten incense, seemed to intensify the impression of
gloomy richness and repose...
By the fireplace, a little to one side, stood Dorothy, one small foot
resting on the brass fender, her figure merging into the dusky
background, her delicate beauty gaining an effect of elusive and
ethereal mystery in the waning and waxing ruddy glow upflung from the
bedded coals.
“Oh, Philip!” She turned swiftly to Kirkwood with extended hands and a
low, broken cry. “I’m _so_ glad....”
A trace of hysteria in her manner warned him, and he checked himself
upon the verge of a too dangerous tenderness. “There!” he said
soothingly, letting her hands rest gently in his palms while he led her
to a chair. “We can make ourselves easy now.” She sat down and he
released her hands with a reluctance less evident than actual. “If ever
I say another word against my luck—”
“Who,” inquired the girl, lowering her voice, “who is the gentleman in
the flowered dressing-gown?”
“Brentwick—George Silvester Brentwick: an old friend. I’ve known him
for years,—ever since I came abroad. Curiously enough, however, this is
the first time I’ve ever been here. I called once, but he wasn’t in,—a
few days ago,—the day we met. I thought the place looked familiar.
Stupid of me!”
“Philip,” said the girl with a grave face but a shaking voice, “it
was.” She laughed provokingly.... “It was so funny, Philip. I don’t
know why I ran, when you told me to, but I did; and while I ran, I was
conscious of the front door, here, opening, and this tall man in the
flowered dressing-gown coming down to the gate as if it were the most
ordinary thing in the world for him to stroll out, dressed that way, in
the evening. And he opened the gate, and bowed, and said, ever so
pleasantly, ‘Won’t you come in, Miss Calendar?’—”
“He did!” exclaimed Kirkwood. “But how—?”
“How can I say?” she expostulated. “At all events, he seemed to know
me; and when he added something about calling you in, too—he said ‘Mr.
Kirkwood’—I didn’t hesitate.”
“It’s strange enough, surely—and fortunate. Bless his heart!” said
Kirkwood.
And, “Hum!” said Mr. Brentwick considerately, entering the study. He
had discarded the dressing-gown and was now in evening dress.
The girl rose. Kirkwood turned. “Mr. Brentwick—” he began.
But Brentwick begged his patience with an eloquent gesture. “Sir,” he
said, somewhat austerely, “permit me to put a single question: Have you
by any chance paid your cabby?”
“Why—” faltered the younger man, with a flaming face. “I—why, no—that
is—”
The other quietly put his hand upon a bell-pull. A faint jingling sound
was at once audible, emanating from the basement.
“How much should you say you owe him?”
“I—I haven’t a penny in the world!”
The shrewd eyes flashed their amusement into Kirkwood’s. “Tut, tut!”
Brentwick chuckled. “Between gentlemen, my dear boy! Dear me! you are
slow to learn.”
“I’ll never be contented to sponge on my friends,” explained Kirkwood
in deepest misery. “I can’t tell when—”
“Tut, tut! How much did you say?”
“Ten shillings—or say twelve, would be about right,” stammered the
American, swayed by conflicting emotions of gratitude and profound
embarrassment.
A soft-footed butler, impassive as Fate, materialized mysteriously in
the doorway.
“You rang, sir?” he interrupted frigidly.
“I rang, Wotton.” His master selected a sovereign from his purse and
handed it to the servant. “For the cabby, Wotton.”
“Yes sir.” The butler swung automatically, on one heel.
“And Wotton!”
“Sir?”
“If any one should ask for me, I’m not at home.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And if you should see a pair of disreputable scoundrels skulking, in
the neighborhood, one short and stout, the other tall and evidently a
seafaring man, let me know.”
“Thank you, sir.” A moment later the front door was heard to close.
Brentwick turned with a little bow to the girl. “My dear Miss
Calendar,” he said, rubbing his thin, fine hands,—“I am old enough, I
trust, to call you such without offense,—please be seated.”
Complying, the girl rewarded him with a radiant smile. Whereupon,
striding to the fireplace, their host turned his back to it, clasped
his hands behind him, and glowered benignly upon the two. “Ah!” he
observed in accents of extreme personal satisfaction. “Romance!
Romance!”
“Would you mind telling us how you knew—” began Kirkwood anxiously.
“Not in the least, my dear Philip. It is simple enough: I possess an
imagination. From my bedroom window, on the floor above, I happen to
behold two cabs racing down the street, the one doggedly pursuing the
other. The foremost stops, perforce of a fagged horse. There alights a
young gentleman looking, if you’ll pardon me, uncommonly seedy; he is
followed by a young lady, if she will pardon me,” with another little
bow, “uncommonly pretty. With these two old eyes I observe that the
gentleman does not pay his cabby. Ergo—I intelligently deduce—he is
short of money. Eh?”
“You were right,” affirmed Kirkwood, with a rueful and crooked smile.
“But—”
“So! so!” pursued Brentwick, rising on his toes and dropping back
again; “so this world of ours wags on to the old, old tune!... And I,
who in my younger days pursued adventure without success, in dotage
find myself dragged into a romance by my two ears, whether I will or
no! Eh? And now you are going to tell me all about it, Philip. There is
a chair.... Well, Wotton?”
The butler had again appeared noiselessly in the doorway.
“Beg pardon, sir; they’re waiting, sir.”
“The caitiffs, Wotton?”
“Yessir.”
“Where waiting?”
“One at each end of the street, sir.”
“Thank you. You may bring us sherry and biscuit, Wotton.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The servant vanished.
Brentwick removed his glasses, rubbed them, and blinked thoughtfully at
the girl. “My dear,” he said suddenly, with a peculiar tremor in his
voice, “you resemble your mother remarkably. Tut—I should know! Time
was when I was one of her most ardent admirers.”
“You—y-you knew my mother?” cried Dorothy, profoundly moved.
“Did I not know you at sight? My dear, you are your mother reincarnate,
for the good of an unworthy world. She was a very beautiful woman, my
dear.”
Wotton entered with a silver serving tray, offering it in turn to
Dorothy, Kirkwood and his employer. While he was present the three held
silent—the girl trembling slightly, but with her face aglow; Kirkwood
half stupefied between his ease from care and his growing astonishment,
as Brentwick continued to reveal unexpected phases of his personality;
Brentwick himself outwardly imperturbable and complacent, for all that
his hand shook as he lifted his wine glass.
“You may go, Wotton—or, wait. Don’t you feel the need of a breath of
fresh air, Wotton?”
“Yessir, thank you, sir.”
“Then change your coat, Wotton, light your pipe, and stroll out for
half an hour. You need not leave the street, but if either the tall
thin blackguard with the seafaring habit, or the short stout rascal
with the air of mystery should accost you, treat them with all
courtesy, Wotton. You will be careful not to tell either of them
anything in particular, although I don’t mind your telling them that
Mr. Brentwick lives here, if they ask. I am mostly concerned to
discover if they purpose becoming fixtures on the street-corners,
Wotton.”
“Quite so, sir.”
“Now you may go.... Wotton,” continued his employer as the butler took
himself off as softly as a cat, “grows daily a more valuable mechanism.
He is by no means human in any respect, but I find him extremely handy
to have round the house.... And now, my dear,” turning to Dorothy,
“with your permission I desire to drink to the memory of your beautiful
mother and to the happiness of her beautiful daughter.”
“But you will tell me—”
“A number of interesting things, Miss Calendar, if you’ll be good
enough to let me choose the time. I beg you to be patient with the
idiosyncrasies of an old man, who means no harm, who has a reputation
as an eccentric to sustain before his servants.... And now,” said
Brentwick, setting aside his glass, “now, my dear boy, for the
adventure.”
Kirkwood chuckled, infected by his host’s genial humor. “How do you
know—”
“How can it be otherwise?” countered Brentwick with a trace of
asperity. “Am I to be denied my adventure? Sir, I refuse without
equivocation. Your very bearing breathes of Romance. There must be an
adventure forthcoming, Philip; otherwise my disappointment will be so
acute that I shall be regretfully obliged seriously to consider my
right, as a householder, to show you the door.”
“But Mr. Brentwick—!”
“Sit down, sir!” commanded Brentwick with such a peremptory note that
the young man, who had risen, obeyed out of sheer surprise. Upon which
his host advanced, indicting him with a long white forefinger. “Would
you, sir,” he demanded, “again expose this little lady to the
machinations of that corpulent scoundrel, whom I have just had the
pleasure of shooing off my premises, because you choose to resent an
old man’s raillery?”
“I apologize,” Kirkwood humored him.
“I accept the apology in the spirit in which it is offered.... I
repeat, now for the adventure, Philip. If the story’s long, epitomize.
We can consider details more at our leisure.”
Kirkwood’s eyes consulted the girl’s face; almost imperceptibly she
nodded him permission to proceed.
“Briefly, then,” he began haltingly, “the man who followed us to the
door here, is Miss Calendar’s father.”
“Oh? His name, please?”
“George Burgoyne Calendar.”
“Ah! An American; I remember, now. Continue, please.”
“He is hounding us, sir, with the intention of stealing some property,
which he caused to be stolen, which we—to put it bluntly—stole from
him, to which he has no shadow of a title, and which, finally, we’re
endeavoring to return to its owners.”
“My dear!” interpolated Brentwick gently, looking down at the girl’s
flushed face and drooping head.
“He ran us to the last ditch,” Kirkwood continued; “I’ve spent my last
farthing trying to lose him.”
“But why have you not caused his arrest?” Brentwick inquired.
Kirkwood nodded meaningly toward the girl. Brentwick made a sound
indicating comprehension, a click of the tongue behind closed teeth.
“We came to your door by the merest accident—it might as well have been
another. I understood you were in Munich, and it never entered my head
that we’d find you home.”
“A communication from my solicitors detained me,” explained Brentwick.
“And now, what do you intend to do?”
“Trespass as far on your kindness as you’ll permit. In the first place,
I—I want the use of a few pounds with which to cable some friends in
New York, for money; on receipt of which I can repay you.”
“Philip,” observed Brentwood, “you are a most irritating child. But I
forgive you the faults of youth. You may proceed, bearing in mind, if
you please, that I am your friend equally with any you may own in
America.”
“You’re one of the best men in the world,” said Kirkwood.
“Tut, tut! Will you get on?”
“Secondly, I want you to help us to escape Calendar to-night. It is
necessary that Miss Calendar should go to Chiltern this evening, where
she has friends who will receive and protect her.”
“Mm-mm,” grumbled their host, meditative. “My faith!” he commented,
with brightening eyes. “It sounds almost too good to be true! And I’ve
been growing afraid that the world was getting to be a most humdrum and
uninteresting planet!... Miss Calendar, I am a widower of so many years
standing that I had almost forgotten I had ever been anything but a
bachelor. I fear my house contains little that will be of service to a
young lady. Yet a room is at your disposal; the parlor-maid shall show
you the way. And Philip, between you and me, I venture to remark that
hot water and cold steel would add to the attractiveness of your
personal appearance; my valet will attend you in my room. Dinner,”
concluded Brentwick with anticipative relish, “will be served in
precisely thirty minutes. I shall expect you to entertain me with a
full and itemized account of every phase of your astonishing adventure.
Later, we will find a way to Chiltern.”
Again he put a hand upon the bell-pull. Simultaneously Dorothy and
Kirkwood rose.
“Mr. Brentwick,” said the girl, her eyes starred with tears of
gratitude, “I don’t, I really don’t know how—”
“My dear,” said the old gentleman, “you will thank me most
appropriately by continuing, to the best of your ability, to resemble
your mother more remarkably every minute.”
“But I,” began Kirkwood——.
“You, my dear Philip, can thank me best by permitting me to enjoy
myself; which I am doing thoroughly at the present moment. My pleasure
in being invited to interfere in your young affairs is more keen than
you can well surmise. Moreover,” said Mr. Brentwick, “so long have I
been an amateur adventurer that I esteem it the rarest privilege to
find myself thus on the point of graduating into professional ranks.”
He rubbed his hands, beaming upon them. “And,” he added, as a maid
appeared at the door, “I have already schemed me a scheme for the
discomfiture of our friends the enemy: a scheme which we will discuss
with our dinner, while the heathen rage and imagine a vain thing, in
the outer darkness.”
Kirkwood would have lingered, but of such inflexible temper was his
host that he bowed him into the hands of a man servant without
permitting him another word.
“Not a syllable,” he insisted. “I protest I am devoured with curiosity,
my dear boy, but I have also bowels of compassion. When we are well on
with our meal, when you are strengthened with food and drink, then you
may begin. But now—Dickie,” to the valet, “do your duty!”
Kirkwood, laughing with exasperation, retired at discretion, leaving
Brentwick the master of the situation: a charming gentleman with a will
of his own and a way that went with it.
He heard the young man’s footsteps diminish on the stairway; and again
he smiled the indulgent, melancholy smile of mellow years. “Youth!” he
whispered softly. “Romance!... And now,” with a brisk change of tone as
he closed the study door, “now we are ready for this interesting Mr.
Calendar.”
Sitting down at his desk, he found and consulted a telephone directory;
but its leaves, at first rustling briskly at the touch of the slender
and delicate fingers, were presently permitted to lie unturned,—the
book resting open on his knees the while he stared wistfully into the
fire.
A suspicion of moisture glimmered in his eyes. “Dorothy!” he whispered
huskily. And a little later, rising, he proceeded to the telephone....
An hour and a half later Kirkwood, his self-respect something restored
by a bath, a shave, and a resumption of clothes which had been hastily
but thoroughly cleansed and pressed by Brentwick’s valet; his
confidence and courage mounting high under the combined influence of
generous wine, substantial food, the presence of his heart’s mistress
and the admiration—which was unconcealed—of his friend, concluded at
the dinner-table, his narration.
“And that,” he said, looking up from his savory, “is about all.”
“Bravo!” applauded Brentwick; eyes shining with delight.
“All,” interposed Dorothy in warm reproach, “but what he hasn’t told—”
“Which, my dear, is to be accounted for wholly by a very creditable
modesty, rarely encountered in the young men of the present day. It
was, of course, altogether different with those of my younger years.
Yes, Wotton?”
Brentwick sat back in his chair, inclining an attentive ear to a
communication murmured by the butler.
Kirkwood’s gaze met Dorothy’s across the expanse of shining cloth; he
deprecated her interruption with a whimsical twist of his eyebrows.
“Really, you shouldn’t,” he assured her in an undertone. “I’ve done
nothing to deserve...” But under the spell of her serious sweet eyes,
he fell silent, and presently looked down, strangely abashed; and
contemplated the vast enormity of his unworthiness.
Coffee was set before them by Wotton, the impassive, Brentwick refusing
it with a little sigh. “It is one of the things, as Philip knows,” he
explained to the girl, “denied me by the physician who makes his life
happy by making mine a waste. I am allowed but three luxuries; cigars,
travel in moderation, and the privilege of imposing on my friends. The
first I propose presently, to enjoy, by your indulgence; and the second
I shall this evening undertake by virtue of the third, of which I have
just availed myself.”
Smiling at the involution, he rested his head against the back of the
chair, eyes roving from the girl’s face to Kirkwood’s. “Inspiration to
do which,” he proceeded gravely, “came to me from the seafaring
picaroon (Stryker did you name him?) via the excellent Wotton. While
you were preparing for dinner, Wotton returned from his constitutional
with the news that, leaving the corpulent person on watch at the
corner, Captain Stryker had temporarily, made himself scarce. However,
we need feel no anxiety concerning his whereabouts, for he reappeared
in good time and a motor-car. From which it becomes evident that you
have not overrated their pertinacity; the fiasco of the cab-chase is
not to be reënacted.”
Resolutely the girl repressed a gasp of dismay. Kirkwood stared moodily
into his cup.
“These men bore me fearfully,” he commented at last.
“And so,” continued Brentwick, “I bethought me of a counter-stroke. It
is my good fortune to have a friend whose whim it is to support a
touring-car, chiefly in innocuous idleness. Accordingly I have
telephoned him and commandeered the use of this machine—mechanician,
too.... Though not a betting man, I am willing to risk recklessly a few
pence in support of my contention, that of the two, Captain Stryker’s
car and ours, the latter will prove considerably the most speedy....
“In short, I suggest,” he concluded, thoughtfully lacing his long white
fingers, “that, avoiding the hazards of cab and railway carriage, we
motor to Chiltern: the night being fine and the road, I am told,
exceptionally good. Miss Dorothy, what do you think?”
Instinctively the girl looked to Kirkwood; then shifted her glance to
their host. “I think you are wonderfully thoughtful and kind,” she said
simply.
“And you, Philip?”
“It’s an inspiration,” the younger man declared. “I can’t think of
anything better calculated to throw them off, than to distance them by
motor-car. It would be always possible to trace our journey by rail.”
“Then,” announced Brentwick, making as if to rise, “we had best go. If
neither my hearing nor Captain Stryker’s car deceives me, our fiery
chariot is panting at the door.”
A little sobered from the confident spirit of quiet gaiety in which
they had dined, they left the table. Not that, in their hearts, either
greatly questioned their ultimate triumph; but they were allowing for
the element of error so apt to set at naught human calculations.
Calendar himself had already been proved fallible. Within the bounds of
possibility, their turn to stumble might now be imminent.
When he let himself dwell upon it, their utter helplessness to give
Calendar pause by commonplace methods, maddened Kirkwood. With another
scoundrel it had been so simple a matter to put a period to his
activities by a word to the police. But he was her father; for that
reason he must continually be spared ... Even though, in desperate
extremity, she should give consent to the arrest of the adventurers,
retaliation would follow, swift and sure. For they might not overlook
nor gloze the fact that hers had been the hands responsible for the
theft of the jewels; innocent though she had been in committing that
larceny, a cat’s-paw guided by an intelligence unscrupulous and malign,
the law would not hold her guiltless were she once brought within its
cognizance. Nor, possibly, would the Hallams, mother and son.
Upon their knowledge and their fear of this, undoubtedly Calendar was
reckoning: witness the barefaced effrontery with which he operated
against them. His fear of the police might be genuine enough, but he
was never for an instant disturbed by any doubt lest his daughter
should turn against him. She would never dare that.
Before they left the house, while Dorothy was above stairs resuming her
hat and coat, Kirkwood and Brentwick reconnoitered from the
drawing-room windows, themselves screened from observation by the
absence of light in the room behind.
Before the door a motor-car waited, engines humming impatiently,
mechanician ready in his seat, an uncouth shape in goggles and leather
garments that shone like oilskins under the street lights.
At one corner another and a smaller car stood in waiting, its lamps
like baleful eyes glaring through the night.
In the shadows across the way, a lengthy shadow lurked: Stryker, beyond
reasonable question. Otherwise the street was deserted. Not even that
adventitous bobby of the early evening was now in evidence.
Dorothy presently joining them, Brentwick led the way to the door.
Wotton, apparently nerveless beneath his absolute immobility, let them
out—and slammed the door behind them with such promptitude as to give
cause for the suspicion that he was a fraud, a sham, beneath his icy
exterior desperately afraid lest the house be stormed by the
adventurers.
Kirkwood to the right, Brentwick to the left of Dorothy, the former
carrying the treasure bag, they hastened down the walk and through the
gate to the car.
The watcher across the way was moved to whistle shrilly; the other car
lunged forward nervously.
Brentwick taking the front seat, beside the mechanician, left the
tonneau to Kirkwood and Dorothy. As the American slammed the door, the
car swept smoothly out into the middle of the way, while the pursuing
car swerved in to the other curb, slowing down to let Stryker jump
aboard.
Kirkwood put himself in the seat by the girl’s side and for a few
moments was occupied with the arrangement of the robes. Then, sitting
back, he found her eyes fixed upon him, pools of inscrutable night in
the shadow of her hat.
“You aren’t afraid, Dorothy?”
She answered quietly: “I am with you, Philip.”
Beneath the robe their hands met...
Exalted, excited, he turned and looked back. A hundred yards to the
rear four unwinking eyes trailed them, like some modern Nemesis in
monstrous guise.
XIX
I——THE UXBRIDGE ROAD
At a steady gait, now and again checked in deference to the street
traffic, Brentwick’s motor-car rolled, with resonant humming of the
engine, down the Cromwell Road, swerved into Warwick Road and swung
northward through Kensington to Shepherd’s Bush. Behind it Calendar’s
car clung as if towed by an invisible cable, never gaining, never
losing, mutely testifying to the adventurer’s unrelenting, grim
determination to leave them no instant’s freedom from surveillance, to
keep for ever at their shoulders, watching his chance, biding his time
with sinister patience until the moment when, wearied, their vigilance
should relax....
To some extent he reckoned without his motor-car. As long as they
traveled within the metropolitan limits, constrained to observe a
decorous pace in view of the prejudices of the County Council, it was a
matter of no difficulty whatever to maintain his distance. But once
they had won through Shepherd’s Bush and, paced by huge doubledeck
trolley trams, were flying through Hammersmith on the Uxbridge Road;
once they had run through Acton, and knew beyond dispute that now they
were without the city boundaries, then the complexion of the business
was suddenly changed.
Not too soon for honest sport; Calendar was to have (Kirkwood would
have said in lurid American idiom) a run for his money. The scattered
lights of Southall were winking out behind them before Brentwick chose
to give the word to the mechanician.
Quietly the latter threw in the clutch for the third speed—and the
fourth. The car leaped forward like a startled race-horse. The motor
lilted merrily into its deep-throated song of the open road, its
contented, silken humming passing into a sonorous and sustained purr.
Kirkwood and the girl were first jarred violently forward, then thrown
together. She caught his arm to steady herself; it seemed the most
natural thing imaginable that he should take her hand and pass it
beneath his arm, holding her so, his fingers closed above her own.
Before they had recovered, or had time to catch their breath, a mile of
Middlesex had dropped to the rear.
Not quite so far had they distanced Calendar’s trailing Nemesis of the
four glaring eyes; the pursuers put forth a gallant effort to hold
their place. At intervals during the first few minutes a heavy roaring
and crashing could be heard behind them; gradually it subsided, dying
on the wings of the free rushing wind that buffeted their faces as mile
after mile was reeled off and the wide, darkling English countryside
opened out before them, sweet and wonderful.
Once Kirkwood looked back; in the winking of an eye he saw four faded
disks of light, pallid with despair, top a distant rise and glide down
into darkness. When he turned, Dorothy was interrogating him with eyes
whose melting, shadowed loveliness, revealed to him in the light of the
far, still stars, seemed to incite him to that madness which he had
bade himself resist with all his strength.
He shook his head, as if to say: They can not catch us.
His hour was not yet; time enough to think of love and marriage (as if
he were capable of consecutive thought on any other subject!)—time
enough to think of them when he had gone back to his place, or rather
when he should have found it, in the ranks of bread-winners, and so
have proved his right to mortal happiness; time enough then to lay
whatever he might have to offer at her feet. Now he could conceive of
no baser treachery to his soul’s-desire than to advantage himself of
her gratitude.
Resolutely he turned his face forward, striving with all his will and
might to forget the temptation of her lips, weary as they were and
petulant with waiting; and so sat rigid in his time of trial, clinging
with what strength he could to the standards of his honor, and trying
to lose his dream in dreaming of the bitter struggle that seemed likely
to be his future portion.
Perhaps she guessed a little of the fortunes of the battle that was
being waged within him. Perhaps not. Whatever the trend of her
thoughts, she did not draw away from him.... Perhaps the breath of
night, fresh and clean and fragrant with the odor of the fields and
hedges, sweeping into her face with velvety caress, rendered her
drowsy. Presently the silken lashes drooped, fluttering upon her
cheeks, the tired and happy smile hovered about her lips....
In something less than half an hour of this wild driving, Kirkwood
roused out of his reverie sufficiently to become sensible that the
speed was slackening. Incoherent snatches of sentences, fragments of
words and phrases spoken by Brentwick and the mechanician, were flung
back past his ears by the rushing wind. Shielding his eyes he could see
dimly that the mechanician was tinkering (apparently) with the driving
gear. Then, their pace continuing steadily to abate, he heard Brentwick
fling at the man a sharp-toned and querulously impatient question: What
was the trouble? His reply came in a single word, not distinguishable.
The girl sat up, opening her eyes, disengaging her arm.
Kirkwood bent forward and touched Brentwick on the shoulder; the latter
turned to him a face lined with deep concern.
“Trouble,” he announced superfluously. “I fear we have blundered.”
“What is it?” asked Dorothy in a troubled voice.
“Petrol seems to be running low. Charles here” (he referred to the
mechanician) “says the tank must be leaking. We’ll go on as best we can
and try to find an inn. Fortunately, most of the inns nowadays keep
supplies of petrol for just such emergencies.”
“Are we—? Do you think—?”
“Oh, no; not a bit of danger of that,” returned Brentwick hastily.
“They’ll not catch up with us this night. That is a very inferior car
they have,—so Charles says, at least; nothing to compare with this. If
I’m not in error, there’s the Crown and Mitre just ahead; we’ll make
it, fill our tanks, and be off again before they can make up half their
loss.”
Dorothy looked anxiously to Kirkwood, her lips forming an unuttered
query: What did he think?
“Don’t worry; we’ll have no trouble,” he assured her stoutly; “the
chauffeur knows, undoubtedly.”
None the less he was moved to stand up in the tonneau, conscious of the
presence of the traveling bag, snug between his feet, as well as of the
weight of Calendar’s revolver in his pocket, while he stared back along
the road.
There was nothing to be seen of their persecutors.
The car continued to crawl. Five minutes dragged out tediously.
Gradually they, drew abreast a tavern standing back a distance from the
road, embowered in a grove of trees between whose ancient boles the
tap-room windows shone enticingly, aglow with comfortable light. A
creaking sign-board, much worn by weather and age, swinging from a
roadside post, confirmed the accuracy of Brentwick’s surmise,
announcing that here stood the Crown and Mitre, house of entertainment
for man and beast.
Sluggishly the car rolled up before it and came to a dead and silent
halt. Charles, the mechanician, jumping out, ran hastily up the path
towards the inn. In the car Brentwick turned again, his eyes curiously
bright in the starlight, his forehead quaintly furrowed, his voice
apologetic.
“It may take a few minutes,” he said undecidedly, plainly endeavoring
to cover up his own dark doubts. “My dear,” to the girl, “if I have
brought trouble upon you in this wise, I shall never earn my own
forgiveness.”
Kirkwood stood up again, watchful, attentive to the sounds of night;
but the voice of the pursuing motor-car was not of their company. “I
hear nothing,” he announced.
“You will forgive me,—won’t you, my dear?—for causing you these few
moments of needless anxiety?” pleaded the old gentleman, his tone
tremulous.
“As if you could be blamed!” protested the girl. “You mustn’t think of
it that way. Fancy, what should we have done without you!”
“I’m afraid I have been very clumsy,” sighed Brentwick, “clumsy and
impulsive ... Kirkwood, do you hear anything?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Brentwick a little later, “perhaps we had better
alight and go up to the inn. It would be more cosy there, especially if
the petrol proves hard to obtain, and we have long to wait.”
“I should like that,” assented the girl decidedly.
Kirkwood nodded his approval, opened the door and jumped out to assist
her; then picked up the bag and followed the pair,—Brentwick leading
the way with Dorothy on his arm.
At the doorway of the Crown and Mitre, Charles met them evidently
seriously disturbed. “No petrol to be had here, sir,” he announced
reluctantly; “but the landlord will send to the next inn, a mile up the
road, for some. You will have to be patient, I’m afraid, sir.”
“Very well. Get some one to help you push the car in from the road,”
ordered Brentwick; “we will be waiting in one of the private parlors.”
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir.” The mechanician touched the visor of his
cap and hurried off.
“Come, Kirkwood.” Gently Brentwick drew the girl in with him.
Kirkwood lingered momentarily on the doorstep, to listen acutely. But
the wind was blowing into that quarter whence they had come, and he
could hear naught save the soughing in the trees, together with an
occasional burst of rude rustic laughter from the tap-room. Lifting his
shoulders in dumb dismay, and endeavoring to compose his features, he
entered the tavern.
II——THE CROWN AND MITRE
A rosy-cheeked and beaming landlady met him in the corridor and, all
bows and smiles, ushered him into a private parlor reserved for the
party, immediately bustling off in a desperate flurry, to secure
refreshments desired by Brentwick.
The girl had seated herself on one end of an extremely comfortless
lounge and was making a palpable effort to seem at ease. Brentwick
stood at one of the windows, shoulders rounded and head bent, hands
clasped behind his back as he peered out into the night. Kirkwood
dropped the traveling bag beneath a chair the farthest removed from the
doorway, and took to pacing the floor.
In a corner of the room a tall grandfather’s clock ticked off ten
interminable minutes. For some reason unconscionably delaying, the
landlady did not reappear. Brentwick, abruptly turning from the window,
remarked the fact querulously, then drew a chair up to a marble-topped
table in the middle of the floor.
“My dear,” he requested the girl, “will you oblige me by sitting over
here? And Philip, bring up a chair, if you will. We must not permit
ourselves to worry, and I have something here which may, perhaps,
engage your interest for a while.”
To humor him and alleviate his evident distress of mind, they acceded.
Kirkwood found himself seated opposite Dorothy, Brentwick between them.
After some hesitation, made the more notable by an air of uneasiness
which sat oddly on his shoulders, whose composure and confident mien
had theretofore been so complete and so reassuring, the elder gentleman
fumbled in an inner coat-pocket and brought to light a small black
leather wallet. He seemed to be on the point of opening it when hurried
footfalls sounded in the hallway. Brentwick placed the wallet, still
with its secret intact, on the table before him, as Charles burst
unceremoniously in, leaving the door wide open.
“Mr. Brentwick, sir!” he cried gustily. “That other car—”
With a smothered ejaculation Kirkwood leaped to his feet, tugging at
the weapon in his pocket. In another instant he had the revolver
exposed. The girl’s cry of alarm, interrupting the machinist, fixed
Brentwick’s attention on the young man. He, too, stood up, reaching
over very quickly, to clamp strong supple fingers round Kirkwood’s
wrist, while with the other hand he laid hold of the revolver and by a
single twist wrenched it away.
Kirkwood turned upon him in fury. “So!” he cried, shaking with passion.
“This is what your hospitality meant! You’re going to—”
“My dear young friend,” interrupted Brentwick with a flash of
impatience, “remember that if I had designed to betray you, I could
have asked no better opportunity than when you were my guest under my
own roof.”
“But—hang it all, Brentwick!” expostulated Kirkwood, ashamed and
contrite, but worked upon by desperate apprehension; “I didn’t mean
that, but—”
“Would you have bullets flying when she is near?” demanded Brentwick
scathingly. Hastily he slipped the revolver upon a little shelf beneath
the table-top. “Sir!” he informed Kirkwood with some heat, “I love you
as my own son, but you’re a young fool!... as I have been, in my time
... and as I would to Heaven I might be again! Be advised, Philip,—be
calm. Can’t you see it’s the only way to save your treasure?”
“Hang the jewels!” retorted Kirkwood warmly. “What—”
“Sir, who said anything about the jewels?”
As Brentwick spoke, Calendar’s corpulent figure filled the doorway;
Stryker’s weather-worn features loomed over his shoulder, distorted in
a cheerful leer.
“As to the jewels,” announced the fat adventurer, “I’ve got a word to
say, if you put it to me that way.”
He paused on the threshold, partly for dramatic effect, partly for his
own satisfaction, his quick eyes darting from face to face of the four
people whom he had caught so unexpectedly. A shade of complacency
colored his expression, and he smiled evilly beneath the coarse short
thatch of his gray mustache. In his hand a revolver appeared, poised
for immediate use if there were need.
There was none. Brentwick, at his primal appearance, had dropped a
peremptory hand on Kirkwood’s shoulder, forcing the young man back to
his seat; at the same time he resumed his own. The girl had not stirred
from hers since the first alarm; she sat as if transfixed with terror,
leaning forward with her elbows on the table, her hands tightly
clasped, her face, a little blanched, turned to the door. But her
scarlet lips were set and firm with inflexible purpose, and her brown
eyes met Calendar’s with a look level and unflinching. Beyond this she
gave no sign of recognition.
Nearest of the four to the adventurers was Charles, the mechanician,
paused in affrighted astonishment at sight of the revolver. Calendar,
choosing to advance suddenly, poked the muzzle of the weapon jocularly
in the man’s ribs. “Beat it, Four-eyes!” he snapped. “This is your cue
to duck! Get out of my way.”
The mechanician jumped as if shot, then hastily, retreated to the
table, his sallow features working beneath the goggle-mask which had
excited the fat adventurer’s scorn.
“Come right in, Cap’n,” Calendar threw over one shoulder; “come in,
shut the door and lock it. Let’s all be sociable, and have a nice quiet
time.” vStryker obeyed, with a derisive grimace for Kirkwood.
Calendar, advancing jauntily to a point within a yard of the table,
stopped, smiling affably down upon his prospective victims, and airily
twirling his revolver.
“_Good_ evening, all!” he saluted them blandly. “Dorothy, my child,”
with assumed concern, “you’re looking a trifle upset; I’m afraid you’ve
been keeping late hours. Little girls must be careful, you know, or
they lose the bloom of roses in their cheeks.... Mr. Kirkwood, it’s a
pleasure to meet you again! Permit me to paraphrase your most sound
advice, and remind you that pistol-shots are apt to attract undesirable
attention. It wouldn’t be wise for _you_ to bring the police about our
ears. I believe that in substance such was your sapient counsel to me
in the cabin of the _Alethea_; was it not?... And you, sir!”—fixing
Brentwick with a cold unfriendly eye. “You animated fossil, what d’you
mean by telling me to go to the devil?... But let that pass; I hold no
grudge. What might your name be?”
[Illustration: “_Good_ evening, all!” he saluted them blandly.]
“It might be Brentwick,” said that gentleman placidly.
“Brentwick, eh? Well, I like a man of spirit. But permit me to advise
you—”
“Gladly,” nodded Brentwick.
“Eh?... Don’t come a second time between father and daughter; another
man might not be as patient as I, Mister Brentwick. There’s a law in
the land, if you don’t happen to know it.”
“I congratulate you on your success in evading it,” observed Brentwick,
undisturbed. “And it was considerate of you not to employ it in this
instance.” Then, with a sharp change of tone, “Come, sir!” he demanded.
“You have unwarrantably intruded in this room, which I have engaged for
my private use. Get through with your business and be off with you.”
“All in my good time, my antediluvian friend. When I’ve wound up my
business here I’ll go—not before. But, just to oblige you, we’ll get
down to it.... Kirkwood, you have a revolver of mine. Be good enough to
return it.”
“I have it here,—under the table,” interrupted Brentwick suavely.
“Shall I hand it to you?”
“By the muzzle, if you please. Be very careful; this one’s loaded,
too—apt to explode any minute.”
To Kirkwood’s intense disgust Brentwick quietly slipped one hand
beneath the table and, placing the revolver on its top, delicately with
his finger-tips shoved it toward the farther edge. With a grunt of
approval, Calendar swept the weapon up and into his pocket.
“Any more ordnance?” he inquired briskly, eyes moving alertly from face
to face. “No matter; you wouldn’t dare use ’em anyway. And I’m about
done. Dorothy, my dear, it’s high time you returned to your father’s
protection. Where’s that gladstone bag?”
“In my traveling bag,” the girl told him in a toneless voice.
“Then you may bring it along. You may also say good night to the kind
gentlemen.”
Dorothy did not move; her pallor grew more intense and Kirkwood saw her
knuckles tighten beneath the gloves. Otherwise her mouth seemed to grow
more straight and hard.
“Dorothy!” cried the adventurer with a touch of displeasure. “You heard
me?”
“I heard you,” she replied a little wearily, more than a little
contemptuously. “Don’t mind him, please, Mr. Kirkwood!”—with an
appealing gesture, as Kirkwood, unable to contain himself, moved
restlessly in his chair, threatening to rise. “Don’t say anything. I
have no intention whatever of going with this man.”
Calendar’s features twitched nervously; he chewed a corner of his
mustache, fixing the girl with a black stare. “I presume,” he remarked
after a moment, with slow deliberation, “you’re aware that, as your
father, I am in a position to compel you to accompany me.”
“I shall not go with you,” iterated Dorothy in a level tone. “You may
threaten me, but—I shall not go. Mr. Brentwick and Mr. Kirkwood are
taking me to—friends, who will give me a home until I can find a way to
take care of myself. That is all I have to say to you.”
“Bravo, my dear!” cried Brentwick encouragingly.
“Mind your business, sir!” thundered Calendar, his face darkening.
Then, to Dorothy, “You understand, I trust, what this means?” he
demanded. “I offer you a home—and a good one. Refuse, and you work for
your living, my girl! You’ve forfeited your legacy—”
“I know, I know,” she told him in cold disdain. “I am content. Won’t
you be kind enough to leave me alone?”
For a breath, Calendar glowered over her; then, “I presume,” he
observed, “that all these heroics are inspired by that whipper-snapper,
Kirkwood. Do you know that he hasn’t a brass farthing to bless himself
with?”
“What has that—?” cried the girl indignantly.
“Why, it has everything to do with me, my child. As your doting parent,
I can’t consent to your marrying nothing-a-year.... For I surmise you
intend to marry this Mr. Kirkwood, don’t you?”
There followed a little interval of silence, while the warm blood
flamed in the girl’s face and the red lips trembled as she faced her
tormentor. Then, with a quaver that escaped her control, “If Mr.
Kirkwood asks me, I shall,” she stated very simply.
“That,” interposed Kirkwood, “is completely understood.” His gaze
sought her eyes, but she looked away.
“You forget that I am your father,” sneered Calendar; “and that you are
a minor. I can refuse my consent.”
“But you won’t,” Kirkwood told him with assurance.
The adventurer stared. “No,” he agreed, after slight hesitation; “no, I
shan’t interfere. Take her, my boy, if you want her—and a father’s
blessing into the bargain. The Lord knows I’ve troubles enough; a
parent’s lot is not what it’s cracked up to be.” He paused, leering,
ironic. “But,”—deliberately, “there’s still this other matter of the
gladstone bag. I don’t mind abandoning my parental authority, when my
child’s happiness is concerned, but as for my property—”
“It is not your property,” interrupted the girl.
“It was your mother’s, dear child. It’s now mine.”
“I dispute that assertion,” Kirkwood put in.
“You may dispute it till the cows come home, my boy: the fact will
remain that I intend to take my property with me when I leave this
room, whether you like it or not. Now are you disposed to continue the
argument, or may I count on your being sensible?”
“You may put away your revolver, if that’s what you mean,” said
Kirkwood. “We certainly shan’t oppose you with violence, but I warn you
that Scotland Yard—”
“Oh, that be blowed!” the adventurer snorted in disgust. “I can sail
circles round any tec. that ever blew out of Scotland Yard! Give me an
hour’s start, and you’re free to do all the funny business you’ve a
mind to, with—Scotland Yard!”
“Then you admit,” queried Brentwick civilly, “that you’ve no legal
title to the jewels in dispute?”
“Look here, my friend,” chuckled Calendar, “when you catch me admitting
anything, you write it down in your little book and tell the bobby on
the corner. Just at present I’ve got other business than to stand round
admitting anything about anything.... Cap’n, let’s have that bag of my
dutiful daughter’s.”
“’Ere you are.” Stryker spoke for the first time since entering the
room, taking the valise from beneath the chair and depositing it on the
table.
“Well, we shan’t take anything that doesn’t belong to us,” laughed
Calendar, fumbling with the catch; “not even so small a matter as my
own child’s traveling bag. A small—heavy—gladstone bag,” he grunted,
opening the valise and plunging in one greedy hand, “will—just—about—do
for mine!” With which he produced the article mentioned. “This for the
discard, Cap’n,” he laughed contentedly, pushing the girl’s valise
aside; and, rumbling with stentorian mirth, stood beaming benignantly
over the assembled company.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “this moment is worth all it cost me! My children,
I forgive you freely. Mr. Kirkwood, I felicitate you cordially on
having secured a most expensive wife. Really—d’you know?—I feel as if I
ought to do a little something for you both.” Gurgling with delight he
smote his fat palms together. “I just tell you what,” he resumed, “no
one yet ever called Georgie Calendar a tight-wad. I just believe I’m
going to make you kids a handsome wedding present.... The good Lord
knows there’s enough of this for a fellow to be a little generous and
never miss it!”
The thick mottled fingers tore nervously at the catch; eventually he
got the bag open. Those about the table bent forward, all quickened by
the prospect of for the first time beholding the treasure over which
they had fought, for which they had suffered, so long....
A heady and luscious fragrance pervaded the atmosphere, exhaling from
the open mouth of the bag. A silence, indefinitely sustained, impressed
itself upon the little audience,—a breathless pause ended eventually by
a sharp snap of Calendar’s teeth. “_Mmm_!” grunted the adventurer in
bewilderment. He began to pant.
Abruptly his heavy hands delved into the contents of the bag, like the
paws of a terrier digging in earth. To Kirkwood the air seemed
temporarily thick with flying objects. Beneath his astonished eyes a
towel fell upon the table—a crumpled, soiled towel, bearing on its
dingy hem the inscription in indelible ink: “_Hôtel du Commerce,
Anvers_.” A tooth-mug of substantial earthenware dropped to the floor
with a crash. A slimy soap-dish of the same manufacture slid across the
table and into Brentwick’s lap. A battered alarm clock with never a
tick left in its abused carcass rang vacuously as it fell by the open
bag.... The remainder was—oranges: a dozen or more small, round, golden
globes of ripe fruit, perhaps a shade overripe, therefore the more
aromatic.
The adventurer ripped out an oath. “Mulready, by the living God!” he
raged in fury. “Done up, I swear! Done by that infernal sneak—me, blind
as a bat!”
He fell suddenly silent, the blood congesting in his face; as suddenly
broke forth again, haranguing the company.
“That’s why he went out and bought those damned oranges, is it? Think
of it—me sitting in the hotel in Antwerp and him lugging in oranges by
the bagful because he was fond of fruit! When did he do it? How do I
know? If I knew, would I be here and him the devil knows where, this
minute? When my back was turned, of course, the damned snake! That’s
why he was so hot about picking a fight on the boat, hey? Wanted to get
thrown off and take to the woods—leaving me with _this_! And that’s why
he felt so awful done up he wouldn’t take a hand at hunting you two
down, hey? Well—by—the—Eternal! I’ll camp on his trail for the rest of
his natural-born days! I’ll have his eye-teeth for this, I’ll—”
He swayed, gibbering with rage, his countenance frightfully contorted,
his fat hands shaking as he struggled for expression.
And then, while yet their own astonishment held Dorothy, Kirkwood,
Brentwick and Stryker speechless, Charles, the mechanician, moved
suddenly upon the adventurer.
There followed two metallic clicks. Calendar’s ravings were abrupted as
if his tongue had been paralyzed. He fell back a pace, flabby jowls
pale and shaking, ponderous jaw dropping on his breast, mouth wide and
eyes crazed as he shook violently before him his thick fleshy
wrists—securely handcuffed.
Simultaneously the mechanician whirled about, bounded eagerly across
the floor, and caught Stryker at the door, his dexterous fingers
twisting in the captain’s collar as he jerked him back and tripped him.
“Mr. Kirkwood!” he cried. “Here, please—one moment. Take this man’s
gun, from him, will you?”
Kirkwood sprang to his assistance, and without encountering much
trouble, succeeded in wresting a Webley from Stryker’s limp, flaccid
fingers.
Roughly the mechanician shook the man, dragging him to his feet. “Now,”
he ordered sternly, “you march to that corner, stick your nose in it,
and be good! You can’t get away if you try. I’ve got other men outside,
waiting for you to come out. Understand?”
Trembling like a whipped cur, Stryker meekly obeyed his instructions to
the letter.
The mechanician, with a contemptuous laugh leaving him, strode back to
Calendar, meanwhile whipping off his goggles; and clapped a hearty hand
upon the adventurer’s quaking shoulders.
“Well!” he cried. “And are you still sailing circles round the men from
Scotland Yard, Simmons, or Bellows, or Sanderson, or Calendar, or
Crumbstone, or whatever name you prefer to sail under?”
Calendar glared at him aghast; then heaved a profound sigh, shrugged
his fat shoulders, and bent his head in thought. An instant later he
looked up. “You can’t do it,” he informed the detective vehemently;
“you haven’t got a shred of evidence against me! What’s there? A pile
of oranges and a peck of trash! What of it?... Besides,” he threatened,
“if you pinch me, you’ll have to take the girl in, too. I swear that
whatever stealing was done, she did it. I’ll not be trapped this way by
her and let her off without a squeal. Take me—take her; d’you hear?”
“I think,” put in the clear, bland accents of Brentwick, “we can
consider that matter settled. I have here, my man,”—nodding to the
adventurer as he took up the black leather wallet,—“I have here a
little matter which may clear up any lingering doubts as to your
standing, which you may be disposed at present to entertain.”
He extracted a slip of cardboard and, at arm’s length, laid it on the
table-edge beneath the adventurer’s eyes. The latter, bewildered, bent
over it for a moment, breathing heavily; then straightened back, shook
himself, laughed shortly with a mirthless note, and faced the
detective.
“It’s come with you now, I guess?” he suggested very quietly.
“The Bannister warrant is still out for you,” returned the man.
“That’ll be enough to hold you on till extradition papers arrive from
the States.”
“Oh, I’ll waive those; and I won’t give you any trouble, either.... I
reckon,” mused the adventurer, jingling his manacles thoughtfully, “I’m
a back-number, anyway. When a half-grown girl, a half-baked boy, a flub
like Mulready—damn his eyes!—and a club-footed snipe from Scotland Yard
can put it all over me this way,... why, I guess it’s up to me to go
home and retire to my country-place up the Hudson.” He sighed wearily.
“Yep; time to cut it out. But I would like to be free long enough to
get in one good lick at that mutt, Mulready. My friend, you get your
hands on him, and I’ll squeal on him till I’m blue in the face. That’s
a promise.”
“You’ll have the chance before long,” replied the detective. “We
received a telegram from the Amsterdam police late this afternoon,
saying they’d picked up Mr. Mulready with a woman named Hallam, and
were holding them on suspicion. It seems,”—turning to Brentwick,—“they
were opening negotiations for the sale of a lot of stones, and seemed
in such a precious hurry that the diamond merchant’s suspicions were
roused. We’re sending over for them, Miss Calendar, so you can make
your mind easy about your jewels; you’ll have them back in a few days.”
“Thank you,” said the girl with an effort.
“Well,” the adventurer delivered his peroration, “I certainly am blame’
glad to hear it. ’Twouldn’t ’ve been a square deal, any other way.”
He paused, looking his erstwhile dupes over with a melancholy eye;
then, with an uncertain nod comprehending the girl, Kirkwood and
Brentwick, “So long!” he said thickly; and turned, with the detective’s
hand under his arm and, accompanied by the thoroughly cowed Stryker,
waddled out of the room.
III——THE JOURNEY’S END
Kirkwood, following the exodus, closed the door with elaborate care and
slowly, deep in thought, returned to the table.
Dorothy seemed not to have moved, save to place her elbows on the
marble slab, and rest her cheeks between hands that remained clenched,
as they had been in the greatest stress of her emotion. The color had
returned to her face, with a slightly enhanced depth of hue to the
credit of her excitement. Her cheeks were hot, her eyes starlike
beneath the woven, massy sunlight of her hair. Temporarily unconscious
of her surroundings she stared steadfastly before her, thoughts astray
in the irridescent glamour of the dreams that were to come....
Brentwick had slipped down in his chair, resting his silvered head upon
its back, and was smiling serenely up at the low yellow ceiling. Before
him on the table his long white fingers were drumming an inaudible
tune. Presently rousing, he caught Kirkwood’s eye and smiled
sheepishly, like a child caught in innocent mischief.
The younger man grinned broadly. “And you were responsible for all
that!” he commented, infinitely amused.
Brentwick nodded, twinkling self-satisfaction. “I contrived it all,” he
said; “neat, I call it, too.” His old eyes brightened with reminiscent
enjoyment. “Inspiration!” he crowed softly. “Inspiration, pure and
simple. I’d been worrying my wits for fully five minutes before Wotton
settled the matter by telling me about the captain’s hiring of the
motor-car. Then, in a flash, I had it.... I talked with Charles by
telephone,—his name is really Charles, by, the bye,—overcame his
conscientious scruples about playing his fish when they were already
all but landed, and settled the artistic details.”
He chuckled delightedly. “It’s the instinct,” he declared emphatically,
“the instinct for adventure. I knew it was in me, latent somewhere, but
never till this day did it get the opportunity to assert itself. A born
adventurer—that’s what I am!... You see, it was essential that they
should believe we were frightened and running from them; that way, they
would be sure to run after us. Why, we might have baited a dozen traps
and failed to lure them into my house, after that stout scoundrel knew
you’d had the chance to tell me the whole yarn... Odd!”
“Weren’t you taking chances, you and Charles?” asked Kirkwood
curiously.
“Precious few. There was another motor from Scotland Yard trailing
Captain Stryker’s. If they had run past, or turned aside, they would
have been overhauled in short order.”
He relapsed into his whimsical reverie; the wistful look returned to
his eyes, replacing the glow of triumph and pleasure. And he sighed a
little regretfully.
“What I don’t understand,” contended Kirkwood, “is how you convinced
Calendar that he couldn’t get revenge by pressing his charge against
Miss Calendar—Dorothy.”
“Oh-h?” Mr. Brentwick elevated his fine white eyebrows and sat up
briskly. “My dear boy, that was the most delectable dish on the entire
menu. I have been reserving it, I don’t mind owning, that I might
better enjoy the full relish of it.... I may answer you best, perhaps,
by asking you to scan what I offered to the fat scoundrel’s respectful
consideration, my dear sir.”
He leveled a forefinger at the card.
At first glance it conveyed nothing to the younger man’s benighted
intelligence. He puzzled over it, twisting his brows out of alignment.
An ordinary oblong slip of thin white cardboard, it was engraved in
fine script as follows:
MR. GEORGE BURGOYNE CALENDAR
81, ASPEN VILLAS, S. W.
“Oh!” exclaimed Kirkwood at length, standing up, his face bright with
understanding. “_You_—!”
“I,” laconically assented the elder man.
Impulsively Kirkwood leaned across the table. “Dorothy,” he said
tenderly; and when the girl’s happy eyes met his, quietly drew her
attention to the card.
Then he rose hastily, and went over to stand by the window, staring
mistily into the blank face of night beyond its unseen panes.
Behind him there was a confusion of little noises; the sound of a chair
pushed hurriedly aside, a rustle of skirts, a happy sob or two, low
voices intermingling; sighs.... Out of it finally came the father’s
accents.
“There, there, my dear! My dearest dear!” protested the old gentleman.
“Positively I don’t deserve a tithe of this. I—” The young old voice
quavered and broke, in a happy laugh.... “You must understand,” he
continued more soberly, “that no consideration of any sort is due me.
When we married, I was too old for your mother, child; we both knew it,
both believed it would never matter. But it did. By her wish, I went
back to America; we were to see what separation would do to heal the
wounds dissension had caused. It was a very foolish experiment. Your
mother died before I could return....”
There fell a silence, again broken by the father. “After that I was in
no haste to return. But some years ago, I came to London to live. I
communicated with the old colonel, asking permission to see you. It was
refused in a manner which precluded the subject being reopened by me: I
was informed that if I persisted in attempting to see you, you would be
disinherited.... He was very angry with me—justly, I admit.... One must
grow old before one can see how unforgivably one was wrong in youth....
So I settled down to a quiet old age, determined not to disturb you in
your happiness.... Ah—Kirkwood!”
The old gentleman was standing, his arm around his daughter’s
shoulders, when Kirkwood turned.
“Come here, Philip; I’m explaining to Dorothy, but you should hear....
The evening I called on you, dear boy, at the Pless, returning home I
received a message from my solicitors, whom I had instructed to keep an
eye on Dorothy’s welfare. They informed me that she had disappeared.
Naturally I canceled my plans to go to Munich, and stayed, employing
detectives. One of the first things they discovered was that Dorothy
had run off with an elderly person calling himself George Burgoyne
Calendar—the name I had discarded when I found that to acknowledge me
would imperil my daughter’s fortune.... The investigations went deeper;
Charles—let us continue to call him—had been to see me only this
afternoon, to inform me of the plot they had discovered. This Hallam
woman and her son—it seems that they were legitimately in the line of
inheritance, Dorothy out of the way. But the woman was—ah—a bad lot.
Somehow she got into communication with this fat rogue and together
they plotted it out. Charles doesn’t believe that the Hallam woman
expected to enjoy the Burgoyne estates for very many days. Her plan was
to step in when Dorothy stepped out, gather up what she could, realize
on it, and decamp. That is why there was so much excitement about the
jewels: naturally the most valuable item on her list, the most easy to
convert into cash.... The man Mulready we do not place; he seems to
have been a shady character the fat rogue picked up somewhere. The
latter’s ordinary line of business was diamond smuggling, though he
would condescend to almost anything in order to turn a dishonest
penny....
“That seems to exhaust the subject. But one word more.... Dorothy, I am
old enough and have suffered enough to know the wisdom of seizing one’s
happiness when one may. My dear, a little while ago, you did a very
brave deed. Under fire you said a most courageous, womanly, creditable
thing. And Philip’s rejoinder was only second in nobility to yours....
I do hope to goodness that you two blessed youngsters won’t let any
addlepated scruples stand between yourselves and—the prize of Romance,
your inalienable inheritance!”
Abruptly Brentwick, who was no longer Brentwick, but the actual
Calendar, released the girl from his embrace and hopped nimbly toward
the door. “Really, I must see about that petrol!” he cried. “While it’s
perfectly true that Charles lied about it’s running out, we must be
getting on. I’ll call you when we’re ready to start.”
And the door crashed to behind him....
Between them was the table. Beyond it the girl stood with head erect,
dim tears glimmering on the lashes of those eyes with which she met
Philip’s steady gaze so fearlessly.
Singing about them, the silence deepened. Fascinated, though his heart
was faint with longing, Kirkwood faltered on the threshold of his
kingdom.
“Dorothy!... You did mean it, dear?”
She laughed, a little, low, sobbing laugh that had its source deep in
the hidden sanctuary of her heart of a child.
“I meant it, my dearest.... If you’ll have a girl so bold and forward,
who can’t wait till she’s asked but throws herself into the arms of the
man she loves—Philip, I meant it, every word!...”
And as he went to her swiftly, round the table, she turned to meet him,
arms uplifted, her scarlet lips a-tremble, the brown and bewitching
lashes drooping over her wondrously lighted eyes....
After a time Philip Kirkwood laughed aloud.
And there was that quality in the ring of his laughter that caused the
Shade of Care, which had for the past ten minutes been uneasily luffing
and filling in the offing and, on the whole, steadily diminishing and
becoming more pale and wan and emaciated and indistinct—there was that
in the laughter of Philip Kirkwood, I say, which caused the Shade of
Care to utter a hollow croak of despair as, incontinently, it vanished
out of his life.