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Black Bag, The

<h2>XVIII</h2> <h3>ADVENTURES' LUCK</h3> </center> 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&#8212" "I can surmise," interrupted the elder man shrewdly. "You turned up in the nick of time, for all the world like&#8212" "Harlequin popping through a stage trap?" "No!&#8212an 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&#8212and 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&#8212" "Who," inquired the girl, lowering her voice, "who is the gentleman in the flowered dressing-gown?" "Brentwick&#8212George Silvester Brentwick: an old friend. I've known him for years,&#8212ever 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,&#8212a few days ago,&#8212the 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?'&#8212" "He did!" exclaimed Kirkwood. "But how&#8212?" "How can I say?" she expostulated. "At all events, he seemed to know me; and when he added something about calling you in, too&#8212he said 'Mr. Kirkwood '&#8212I didn't hesitate." "It's strange enough, surely&#8212and 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&#8212" 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&#8212" faltered the younger man, with a flaming face. "I&#8212why, no&#8212that is&#8212" 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&#8212I 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&#8212" "Tut, tut! How much did you say?" "Ten shillings&#8212or 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,&#8212"I am old enough, I trust, to call you such without offense,&#8212please 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&#8212" 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&#8212I intelligently deduce&#8212he is short of money. Eh?" "You were right," affirmed Kirkwood, with a rueful and crooked smile. "But&#8212" "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&#8212I should know! Time was when I was one of her most ardent admirers." "You&#8212y-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&#8212the 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&#8212or, 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&#8212" "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&#8212" "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&#8212!" "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&#8212to put it bluntly&#8212stole 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&#8212it 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&#8212I 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&#8212" "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&#8212&#8212. "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&#8212Dickie," 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,&#8212the 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&#8212which was unconcealed&#8212of 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&#8212" "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&#8212mechanician, 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&#8212and 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. <center> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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