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THE BLACK BAG


By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOMAS FOGARTY


1908




TO MY MOTHER




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

    I. DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN

   II. "AND SOME THERE BE WHO HAVE ADVENTURES THRUST UPON THEM"

  III. CALENDAR'S DAUGHTER

   IV. 9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C.

    V. THE MYSTERY OF A FOUR-WHEELER

   VI. "BELOW BRIDGE"

  VII. DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN--RESUMED

 VIII. MADAME L'INTRIGANTE

   IX. AGAIN "BELOW BRIDGE"; AND BEYOND

    X. DESPERATE MEASURES

   XI. OFF THE NORE

  XII. PICARESQUE PASSAGES

 XIII. A PRIMER OF PROGRESSIVE CRIME

  XIV. STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS

   XV. REFUGEES

  XVI. TRAVELS WITH A CHAPERON

 XVII. ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

XVIII. ADVENTURERS' LUCK

  XIX. i--THE UXBRIDGE ROAD

      ii--THE CROWN AND MITRE

     iii--THE JOURNEY'S END


THE BLACK BAG




I


DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN

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

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

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

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

"True! But you shall: I am the Shade of Care--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There came a rapping at the door.

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

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

"Mister Kirkwood?"

Kirkwood nodded.

"Gentleman to see you, sir."

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

"Mr. Brentwick!" Kirkwood almost shouted, jumping forward to seize his
visitor's hand.

"My dear boy!" replied the latter. "I'm delighted to see you. 'Got your
note not an hour ago, and came at once--you see!"

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

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

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

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

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

"You're going home--" A shadow clouded Brentwick's clear eyes.

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

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

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

"And your fortune--?"

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

"You have heard from Mr. Vanderlip?"

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

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

"When I got the