"Well?"
"Well, she's queered us here. We can't do anything if my lady is going to camp on our trail and tell everybody we're shady customers, can we? The question now before the board is: Where now,—and how?"
"Amsterdam," Mulready chimed in. "I told you that in the beginning."
"But how?" argued Calendar. "The Lord knows I'm willing but ... we can't go by rail, thanks to the Hallam. We've got to lose her first of all."
"But wot I'm arskin' is, wot's the matter with—"
"TheAlethea, Cap'n? Nothing, so far as Dick and I are concerned. But my dutiful daughter is prejudiced; she's been so long without proper paternal discipline," Calendar laughed, "that she's rather high-spirited. Of course I might overcome her objections, but the girl's no fool, and every ounce of pressure I bring to bear just now only helps make her more restless and suspicious."
"You leave her to me," Mulready interposed, with a brutal laugh. "I'll guarantee to get her aboard, or..."
"Drop it, Dick!" Calendar advised quietly. "And go a bit easy with that bottle for five minutes, can't you?"
"Well, then," Stryker resumed, apparently concurring in Calendar's attitude, "w'y don't one of you tyke the stuff, go off quiet and dispose of it to a proper fence, and come back to divide. I don't see w'y that—"
"Naturally you wouldn't," chuckled Calendar. "Few people besides the two of us understand the depth of affection existing between Dick, here, and me. We just can't bear to get out of sight of each other. We're sure inseparable—since night before last. Odd, isn't it?"
"You drop it!" snarled Mulready, in accents so ugly that the listener was startled. "Enough's enough and—"
"There, there, Dick! All right; I'll behave," Calendar soothed him. "We'll forget and say no more about it."
"Well, see you don't."
"But 'as either of you a plan?" persisted Stryker.
"I have," replied Mulready; "and it's the simplest and best, if you could only make this long-lost parent here see it."
"Wot is it?"
Mulready seemed to ignore Calendar and address himself to the captain. He articulated with some difficulty, slurring his words to the point of indistinctness at times.
"Simple enough," he propounded solemnly. "We've got the gladstone bag here; Miss Dolly's at the hotel—that's her papa's bright notion; he thinks she's to be trusted ... Now then, what's the matter with weighing anchor and slipping quietly out to sea?"
"Leavin' the dootiful darter?"
"Cert'n'y. She's only a drag any way. 'Better off without her.... Then we can wait our time and get highest market prices—"
"You forget, Dick," Calendar put it, "that there's a thousand in it for each of us if she's kept out of England for six weeks. A thousand's five thousand in the land I hail from; I can use five thousand in my business."
"Why can't you be content with what you've got?" demanded Mulready wrathfully.
"Because I'm a seventh son of a seventh son; I can see an inch or two beyond my nose. If Dorothy ever finds her way back to England she'll spoil one of the finest fields of legitimate graft I ever licked my lips to look at. The trouble with you, Mul, is you're too high-toned. You want to play the swell mobs-man from post to finish. A quick touch and a clean getaway for yours. Now, that's all right; that has its good points, but you don't want to underestimate the advantages of a good blackmailing connection.... If I can keep Dorothy quiet long enough, I look to the Hallam and precious Freddie to be a great comfort to me in my old age."
"Then, for God's sake," cried Mulready, "go to the hotel, get your brat by the scruif of her pretty neck and drag her aboard. Let's get out of this."
"I won't," returned Calendar inflexibly.
The dispute continued, but the listener had heard enough. He had to get away and think, could no longer listen; indeed, the voices of the three blackguards below came but indistinctly to his ears, as if from a distance. He was sick at heart and ablaze with indignation by turns. Unconsciously he was trembling violently in every limb; swept by alternate waves of heat and cold, feverish one minute, shivering the next. All of which phenomena were due solely to the rage that welled inside his heart.
Stealthily he crept away to the rail, to stand grasping it and staring across the water with unseeing eyes at the gay old city twinkling back with her thousand eyes of light. The cool night breeze, sweeping down unhindered over the level Netherlands from the bleak North Sea, was comforting to his throbbing temples. By degrees his head cleared, his rioting pulses subsided, he could think; and he did.
Over there, across the water, in the dingy and disreputable Hôtel du Commerce, Dorothy waited in her room, doubtless the prey of unnumbered nameless terrors, while aboard the brigantine her fate was being decided by a council of three unspeakable scoundrels, one of whom, professing himself her father, openly declared his intention of using her to further his selfish and criminal ends.
His first and natural thought, to steal away to her and induce her to accompany him back to England, Kirkwood perforce discarded. He could have wept over the realization of his unqualified impotency. He had no money,—not even cab-fare from the hotel to the railway station. Something subtler, more crafty, had to be contrived to meet the emergency. And there was one way, one only; he could see none other. Temporarily he must make himself one of the company of her enemies, force himself upon them, ingratiate himself into their good graces, gain their confidence, then, when opportunity offered, betray them. And the power to make them tolerate him, if not receive him as a fellow, the knowledge of them and their plans that they had unwittingly given him, was his.
And Dorothy, was waiting....
He swung round and without attempting to muffle his footfalls strode toward the companionway. He must pretend he had just come aboard.
Subconsciously he had been aware, during his time of pondering, that the voices in the cabin had been steadily gaining in volume, rising louder and yet more loud, Mulready's ominous, drink-blurred accents dominating the others. There was a quarrel afoot; as soon as he gave it heed, Kirkwood understood that Mulready, in the madness of his inflamed brain, was forcing the issue while Calendar sought vainly to calm and soothe him.
The American arrived at the head of the companionway at a critical juncture. As he moved to descend some low, cool-toned retort of Calendar's seemed to enrage his confederate beyond reason. He yelped aloud with wrath, sprang to his feet, knocking over a chair, and leaping back toward the foot of the steps, flashed an adroit hand behind him and found his revolver.
"I've stood enough from you!" he screamed, his voice oddly clear in that moment of insanity. "You've played with me as long as you will, you hulking American hog! And now I'm going to show—"
As he held his fire to permit his denunciation to bite home, Kirkwood, appalled to find himself standing on the threshold of a tragedy, gathered himself together and launched through the air, straight for the madman's shoulders.
As they went down together, sprawling, Mulready's head struck against a transom and the revolver fell from his limp fingers.
XIVSTRATAGEMS AND SPOILS
Prepared as he had been for the shock, Kirkwood was able to pick himself up quickly, uninjured, Mulready's revolver in his grasp.
On his feet, straddling Mulready's insentient body, he confronted Calendar and Stryker. The face of the latter was a sickly green, the gift of his fright. The former seemed coldly composed, already recovering from his surprise and bringing his wits to bear upon the new factor which had been so unceremoniously injected into the situation.
Straddling Mulready's body, he confronted Calendar and Stryker.
Standing, but leaning heavily upon a hand that rested flat on the table, in the other he likewise held a revolver, which he had apparently drawn in self-defense, at the crisis of Mulready's frenzy. Its muzzle was deflected. He looked Kirkwood over with a cool gray eye, the color gradually returning to his fat, clean-shaven cheeks, replacing the pardonable pallor which had momentarily rested thereon.
As for Kirkwood, he had covered the fat adventurer before he knew it. Stryker, who had been standing immediately in the rear of Calendar, immediately cowered and cringed to find himself in the line of fire.
Of the three conscious men in the brigantine's cabin, Calendar was probably the least confused or excited. Stryker was palpably unmanned. Kirkwood was tingling with a sense of mastery, but collected and rapidly revolving the combinations for the reversed conditions which had been brought about by Mulready's drunken folly. His elation was apparent in his shining, boyish eyes, as well as in the bright color that glowed in his cheeks. When he decided to speak it was with rapid enunciation, but clearly and concisely.
"Calendar," he began, "if a single shot is fired about this vessel the river police will be buzzing round your ears in a brace of shakes."
The fat adventurer nodded assent, his eyes contracting.
"Very well!" continued Kirkwood brusquely. "You must know that I have personally nothing to fear from the police; if arrested, I wouldn't be detained a day. On the other hand, you ... Hand me that pistol, Calendar, butt first, please. Look sharp, my man! If you don't..."
He left the ellipsis to be filled in by the corpulent blackguard's intelligence. The latter, gray eyes still intent on the younger man's face, wavered, plainly impressed, but still wondering.
"Quick! I'm not patient to-night..."
No longer was Calendar of two minds. In the face of Kirkwood's attitude there was but one course to be followed: that of obedience. Calendar surrendered an untenable position as gracefully as could be wished.
"I guess you know what you mean by this," he said, tendering the weapon as per instructions; "I'm doggoned if I do.... You'll allow a certain latitude in consideration of my relief; I can't say we were anticipating this—ah—Heaven-sent visitation."
Accepting the revolver with his left hand and settling his forefinger on the trigger, Kirkwood beamed with pure enjoyment. He found the deference of the older man, tempered though it was by his indomitable swagger, refreshing in the extreme.
"A little appreciation isn't exactly out of place, come to think of it," he commented, adding, with an eye for the captain: "Stryker, you bold, bad butterfly, have you got a gun concealed about your unclean person?"
The captain shook visibly with contrition. "No, Mr. Kirkwood," he managed to reply in a voice singularly lacking in his wonted bluster.
"Say 'sir'!" suggested Kirkwood.
"No, Mr. Kirkwood, sir," amended Stryker eagerly.
"Now come round here and let's have a look at you. Please stay where you are, Calendar.... Why, Captain, you're shivering from head to foot! Not ill are you, you wag? Step over to the table there, Stryker, and turn out your pockets; turn 'em inside out and let's see what you carry in the way of offensive artillery. And, Stryker, don't be rash; don't do anything you'd be sorry for afterwards."
"No fear of that," mumbled the captain, meekly shambling toward the table, and, in his anxiety to give no cause for unpleasantness, beginning to empty his pockets on the way.
"Don't forget the 'sir,' Stryker. And, Stryker, if you happen to think of anything in the line of one of your merry quips or jests, don't strain yourself holding in; get it right off your chest, and you'll feel better."
Kirkwood chuckled, in high conceit with himself, watching Calendar out of the corner of his eye, but with his attention centered on the infinitely diverting spectacle afforded by Stryker, whose predacious hands were trembling violently as, one by one, they brought to light the articles of which he had despoiled his erstwhile victim.
"Come, come, Stryker! Surely you can think of something witty, surely you haven't exhausted the possibilities of that almanac joke! Couldn't you ring another variation on the lunatic wheeze? Don't hesitate out of consideration for me, Captain; I'm joke proof—perhaps you've noticed?"
Stryker turned upon him an expression at once ludicrous, piteous and hateful. "That's all, sir," he snarled, displaying his empty palms in token of his absolute tractability.
"Good enough. Now right about face—quick! Your back's prettier than your face, and besides, I want to know whether your hip-pockets are empty. I've heard it's the habit of you gentry to pack guns in your clothes.... None? That's all right, then. Now roost on the transom, over there in the corner, Stryker, and don't move. Don't let me hear a word from you. Understand?"
Submissively the captain retired to the indicated spot. Kirkwood turned to Calendar; of whose attitude, however, he had not been for an instant unmindful.
"Won't you sit down, Mr. Calendar?" he suggested pleasantly. "Forgive me for keeping you waiting."
For his own part, as the adventurer dropped passively into his chair, Kirkwood stepped over Mulready and advanced to the middle of the cabin, at the same time thrusting Calendar's revolver into his own coat pocket. The other, Mulready's, he nursed significantly with both hands, while he stood temporarily quiet, surveying the fleshy face of the prime factor in the intrigue.
A quaint, grim smile played about the American's lips, a smile a little contemptuous, more than a little inscrutable. In its light Calendar grew restive and lost something of his assurance. His feet shifted uneasily beneath the table and his dark eyes wavered, evading Kirkwood's. At length he seemed to find the suspense unendurable.
"Well?" he demanded testily. "What d'you want of me?"
"I was just wondering at you, Calendar. In the last few days you've given me enough cause to wonder, as you'll admit."
The adventurer plucked up spirit, deluded by Kirkwood's pacific tone. "I wonder at you, Mr. Kirkwood," he retorted. "It was good of you to save my life and—"
"I'm not so sure of that! Perhaps it had been more humane—"
Calendar owned the touch with a wry grimace. "But I'm damned if I understand this high-handed attitude of yours!" he concluded heatedly.
"Don't you?" Kirkwood's humor became less apparent, the smile sobering. "You will," he told the man, adding abruptly: "Calendar, where's your daughter?"
The restless eyes sought the companionway.
"Dorothy," the man lied spontaneously, without a tremor, "is with friends in England. Why? Did you want to see her?"
"I rather expected to."
"Well, I thought it best to leave her home, after all."
"I'm glad to hear she's in safe hands," commented Kirkwood.
The adventurer's glance analyzed his face. "Ah," he said slowly, "I see. You followed me on Dorothy's account, Mr. Kirkwood?"
"Partly; partly on my own. Let me put it to you fairly. When you forced yourself upon me, back there in London, you offered me some sort of employment; when I rejected it, you used me to your advantage for the furtherance of your purposes (which I confess I don't understand), and made me miss my steamer. Naturally, when I found myself penniless and friendless in a strange country, I thought again of your offer; and tried to find you, to accept it."
"Despite the fact that you're an honest man, Kirkwood?" The fat lips twitched with premature enjoyment.
"I'm a desperate man to-night, whatever I may have been yesterday." The young man's tone was both earnest and convincing. "I think I've shown that by my pertinacity in hunting you down."
"Well—yes." Calendar's thick fingers caressed his lips, trying to hide the dawning smile.
"Is that offer still open?"
His nonchalance completely restored by the very naïveté of the proposition, Calendar laughed openly and with a trace of irony. The episode seemed to be turning out better than he had anticipated. Gently his mottled fat fingers played about his mouth and chins as he looked Kirkwood up and down.
"I'm sorry," he replied, "that it isn't—now. You're too late, Kirkwood; I've made other arrangements."
"Too bad." Kirkwood's eyes narrowed. "You force me to harsher measures, Calendar."
Genuinely diverted, the adventurer laughed a second time, tipping back in his chair, his huge frame shaking with ponderous enjoyment. "Don't do anything you'd be sorry for," he parroted, sarcastical, the young man's recent admonition to the captain.
"No fear, Calendar. I'm just going to use my advantage, which you won't dispute,"—the pistol described an eloquent circle, gleaming in the lamplight—"to levy on you a little legitimate blackmail. Don't be alarmed; I shan't hit you any harder than I have to."
"What?" stammered Calendar, astonished. "What in hellareyou driving at?"
"Recompense for my time and trouble. You've cost me a pretty penny, first and last, with your nasty little conspiracy—whatever it's all about. Now, needing the money, I purpose getting some of it back. I shan't precisely rob you, but this is a hold-up, all right.... Stryker," reproachfully, "I don't see my pearl pin."
"I got it 'ere," responded the sailor hastily, fumbling with his tie.
"Give it me, then." Kirkwood held out his hand and received the trinket. Then, moving over to the table, the young man, while abating nothing of his watchfulness, sorted out his belongings from the mass of odds and ends Stryker had disgorged. The tale of them was complete; the captain had obeyed him faithfully. Kirkwood looked up, pleased.
"Now see here, Calendar; this collection of truck that I was robbed of by this resurrected Joe Miller here, cost me upwards of a hundred and fifty. I'm going to sell it to you at a bargain—say fifty dollars, two hundred and fifty francs."
"The juice you are!" Calendar's eyes opened wide, partly in admiration. "D'you realize that this is next door to highway robbery, my young friend?"
"High-seas piracy, if you prefer," assented Kirkwood with entire equanimity. "I'm going to have the money, and you're going to give it up. The transaction by any name would smell no sweeter, Calendar. Come—fork over!"
"And if I refuse?"
"I wouldn't refuse, if I were you."
"Why not?"
"The consequences would be too painful."
"You mean you'd puncture me with that gun?"
"Not unless you attack or attempt to follow me. I mean to say that the Belgian police are notoriously a most efficient body, and that I'll make it my duty and pleasure to introduce 'em to you, if you refuse. But you won't," Kirkwood added soothingly, "will you, Calendar?"
"No." The adventurer had become suddenly thoughtful. "No, I won't. 'Glad to oblige you."
He tilted his chair still farther back, straightening out his elephantine legs, inserted one fat hand into his trouser pocket and with some difficulty extracted a combined bill-fold and coin-purse, at once heavy with gold and bulky with notes. Moistening thumb and forefinger, "How'll you have it?" he inquired with a lift of his cunning eyes; and when Kirkwood had advised him, slowly counted out four fifty-franc notes, placed them near the edge of the table, and weighted them with five ten-franc pieces. And, "'That all?" he asked, replacing the pocket-book.
"That will be about all. I leave you presently to your unholy devices, you and that gay dog, over there." The captain squirmed, reddening. "Just by way of precaution, however, I'll ask you to wait in here till I'm off." Kirkwood stepped backwards to the door of the captain's room, opened it and removed the key from the inside. "Please take Mulready in with you," he continued. "By the time you get out, I'll be clear of Antwerp. Please don't think of refusing me,—I really mean it!"
The latter clause came sharply as Calendar seemed to hesitate, his weary, wary eyes glimmering with doubt. Kirkwood, watching him as a cat her prey, intercepted a lightning-swift sidelong glance that shifted from his face to the port lockers, forward. But the fat adventurer was evidently to a considerable degree deluded by the very child-like simplicity of Kirkwood's attitude. If the possibility that his altercation with Mulready had been overheard, crossed his mind, Calendar had little choice other than to accept the chance. Either way he moved, the risk was great; if he refused to be locked in the captain's room, there was the danger of the police, to which Kirkwood had convincingly drawn attention; if he accepted the temporary imprisonment, he took a risk with the gladstone bag. On the other hand, he had estimated Kirkwood's honesty as thorough-going, from their first interview; he had appraised him as a gentleman and a man of honor. And he did not believe the young man knew, after all ... Perplexed, at length he chose the smoother way, and with an indulgent lifting of eyebrows and fat shoulders, rose and waddled over to Mulready.
"Oh, all right," he conceded with deep toleration in his tone for the idiosyncrasies of youth. "It's all the same to me, beau." He laughed a nervous laugh. "Come along and lend us a hand, Stryker."
The latter glanced timidly at Kirkwood, his eyes pleading for leave to move; which Kirkwood accorded with an imperative nod and a fine flourish of the revolver. Promptly the captain, sprang to Calendar's assistance; and between the two of them, the one taking Mulready's head, the other his feet, they lugged him quickly into the stuffy little state-room. Kirkwood, watching and following to the threshold, inserted the key.
"One word more," he counseled, a hand on the knob. "Don't forget I've warned you what'll happen if you try to break even with me."
"Never fear, little one!" Calendar's laugh was nervously cheerful. "The Lord knows you're welcome."
"Thank you 'most to death," responded Kirkwood politely. "Good-by—and good-by to you, Stryker. 'Glad to have humored your desire to meet me soon again."
Kirkwood, turning the key in the lock, withdrew it and dropped it on the cabin table; at the same time he swept into his pocket the money he had extorted of Calendar. Then he paused an instant, listening; from the captain's room came a sound of murmurs and scuffling. He debated what they were about in there—but time pressed. Not improbably they, were crowding for place at the keyhole, he reflected, as he crossed to the port locker forward.
He had its lid up in a twinkling, and in another had lifted out the well-remembered black gladstone bag.
This seems to have been his first compound larceny.
As if stimulated by some such reflection he sprang for the companionway, dropping the lid of the locker with a bang which must have been excruciatingly edifying to the men in the captain's room. Whatever their emotions, the bang was mocked by a mighty kick, shaking the door; which, Kirkwood reflected, opened outward and was held only by the frailest kind of a lock: it would not hold long.
Spurred onward by a storm of curses, Stryker's voice chanting infuriated cacophony with Calendar's, Kirkwood leapt up the companionway even as the second tremendous kick threatened to shatter the panels. Heart in mouth, a chill shiver of guilt running up and down his spine, he gained the deck, cast loose the painter, drew in his rowboat, and dropped over the side; then, the gladstone bag nestling between his feet, sat down and bent to the oars.
And doubts assailed him, pressing close upon the ebb of his excitement—doubts and fears innumerable.
There was no longer a distinction to be drawn between himself and Calendar; no more could he esteem himself a better and more honest man than that accomplished swindler. He was not advised as to the Belgian code, but English law, he understood, made no allowance for the good intent of those caught in possession of stolen property; though he was acting with the most honorable motives in the world, the law, if he came within its cognizance, would undoubtedly place him on Calendar's plane and judge him by the same standard. To all intents and purposes he was a thief, and thief he would remain until the gladstone bag with its contents should be restored to its rightful owner.
Voluntarily, then, he had stepped from the ranks of the hunters to those of the hunted. He now feared police interference as abjectly as did Calendar and his set of rogues; and Kirkwood felt wholly warranted in assuming that the adventurer, with his keen intelligence, would not handicap himself by ignoring this point. Indeed, if he were to be judged by what Kirkwood had inferred of his character, Calendar would let nothing whatever hinder him, neither fear of bodily hurt nor danger of apprehension at the hands of the police, from making a determined and savage play to regain possession of his booty.
Well! (Kirkwood set his mouth savagely) Calendar should have a run for his money!
For the present he could compliment himself with the knowledge that he had outwitted the rogues, had lifted the jewels and probably two-thirds of their armament; he had also the start, the knowledge of their criminal guilt and intent, and his own plans, to comfort him. As for the latter, he did not believe that Calendar would immediately fathom them; so he took heart of grace and tugged at the oars with a will, pulling directly for the city and permitting the current to drift him down-stream at its pleasure. There could be no more inexcusable folly than to return to theQuai Steenlanding and (possibly) the arms of the despoiled boat-owner.
At first he could hear crash after splintering crash sounding dully muffled from the cabin of theAlethea: a veritable devil's tattoo beaten out by the feet of the prisoners. Evidently the fastening was serving him better than he had dared hope. But as the black rushing waters widened between boat and brigantine, the clamor aboard the latter subsided, indicating that Calendar and Stryker had broken out or been released by the crew. In ignorance as to whether he were seen or being pursued, Kirkwood pulled on, winning in under the shadow of the quais and permitting the boat to drift down to a lonely landing on the edge of the dockyard quarter of Antwerp.
Here alighting, he made the boat fast and, soothing his conscience with a surmise that its owner would find it there in the morning, strode swiftly over to the train line that runs along the embankment, swung aboard an adventitious car and broke his first ten-franc piece in order to pay his fare.
The car made a leisurely progress up past the old Steen castle and the Quai landing, Kirkwood sitting quietly, the gladstone bag under his hand, a searching gaze sweeping the waterside. No sign of the adventurers rewarded him, but it was now all chance, all hazard. He had no more heart for confidence.
They passed the Hôtel du Commerce. Kirkwood stared up at its windows, wondering....
A little farther on, a disengaged fiacre, its driver alert for possible fares, turned a corner into the esplanade. At sight of it Kirkwood, inspired, hopped nimbly off the tram-car and signaled the cabby. The latter pulled up and Kirkwood started to charge him with instructions; something which he did haltingly, hampered by a slight haziness of purpose. While thus engaged, and at rest in the stark glare of the street-lamps, with no chance of concealing himself, he was aware of a rising tumult in the direction of the landing, and glancing round, discovered a number of people running toward him. With no time to wonder whether or no he was really the object of the hue-and-cry, he tossed the driver three silver francs.
"Gare Centrale!" he cried. "And drive like the devil!"
Diving into the fiacre he shut the door and stuck his head out of the window, taking observations. A ragged fringe of silly rabble was bearing down upon them, with one or two gendarmes in the forefront, and a giant, who might or might not be Stryker, a close second. Furthermore, another cab seemed to have been requisitioned for the chase. His heart misgave him momentarily; but his driver had taken him at his word and generosity, and in a breath the fiacre had turned the corner on two wheels, and the glittering reaches of the embankment, drive and promenade, were blotted out, as if smudged with lamp-black, by the obscurity of a narrow and tortuous side street.
He drew in his head the better to preserve his brains against further emergencies.
After a block or two Kirkwood picked up the gladstone bag, gently opened the door, and put a foot on the step, pausing to look back. The other cab was pelting after him with all the enthusiasm of a hound on a fresh trail. He reflected that this mad progress through the thoroughfares of a civilized city would not long endure without police intervention. So he waited, watching his opportunity. The fiacre hurtled onward, the driver leaning forward from his box to urge the horse with lash of whip and tongue, entirely unconscious of his fare's intentions.
Between two streets the mouth of a narrow and darksome byway flashed into view. Kirkwood threw wide the door, and leaped, trusting to the night to hide his stratagem, to luck to save his limbs. Neither failed him; in a twinkling he was on all fours in the mouth of the alley, and as he picked himself up, the second fiacre passed, Calendar himself poking a round bald poll out of the window to incite his driver's cupidity with promises of redoubled fare.
Kirkwood mopped his dripping forehead and whistled low with dismay; it seemed that from that instant on it was to be a vendetta with a vengeance. Calendar, as he had foreseen, was stopping at nothing.
At a dog trot he sped down the alley to the next street, on which he turned back—more sedately—toward the river, debouching on the esplanade just one block from the Hôtel du Commerce. As he swung past the serried tables of a café, whatever fears he had harbored were banished by the discovery that the excitement occasioned by the chase had already subsided. Beneath the garish awnings the crowd was laughing and chattering, eating and sipping its bock with complete unconcern, heedless altogether of the haggard and shabby young man carrying a black hand-bag, with the black Shade of Care for company and a blacker threat of disaster dogging his footsteps. Without attracting any attention whatever, indeed, he mingled with the strolling crowds, making his way toward the Hôtel du Commerce. Yet he was not at all at ease; his uneasy conscience invested the gladstone bag with a magnetic attraction for the public eye. To carry it unconcealed in his hand furnished him with a sensation as disturbing as though its worn black sides had been stenciled STOLEN! in letters of flame. He felt it rendered him a cynosure of public interest, an object of suspicion to the wide cold world, that the gaze which lit upon the bag traveled to his face only to espy thereon the brand of guilt.
For ease of mind, presently, he turned into a convenient shop and spent ten invaluable francs for a hand satchel big enough to hold the gladstone bag.
With more courage, now that he had the hateful thing under cover, he found and entered the Hôtel du Commerce.
In the little closet which served for an office, over a desk visibly groaning with the weight of an enormous and grimy registry book, a sleepy, fat, bland and good-natured woman of the Belgianbourgeoisiepresided, a benign and drowsy divinity of even-tempered courtesy. To his misleading inquiry for Monsieur Calendar she returned a cheerful permission to seek that gentleman for himself.
"Three flights, M'sieu', in the front; suite seventeen it is. M'sieu' does not mind walking up?" she inquired.
M'sieu' did not in the least, though by no strain of the imagination could it, be truthfully said that he walked up those steep and redolent stairways of the Hôtel du Commerce d'Anvers. More literally, he flew with winged feet, spurning each third padded step with a force that raised a tiny cloud of fine white dust from the carpeting.
Breathless, at last he paused at the top of the third flight. His heart was hammering, his pulses drumming like wild things; there was a queer constriction in his throat, a fire of hope in his heart alternating with the ice of doubt. Suppose she were not there! What if he were mistaken, what if he had misunderstood, what if Mulready and Calendar had referred to another lodging-house?
Pausing, he gripped the balustrade fiercely, forcing his self-control, forcing himself to reflect that the girl (presuming, for the sake of argument, he were presently to find her) could not be expected to understand how ardently he had discounted this moment of meeting, or how strangely it affected him. Indeed, he himself was more than a little disturbed by the latter phenomenon, though he was no longer blind to its cause. But he was not to let her see the evidences of his agitation, lest she be frightened.
Slowly schooling himself to assume a masque of illuding self-possession and composure, he passed down the corridor to the door whose panels wore the painted legend, 17; and there knocked.
Believing that he overheard from within a sudden startled exclamation, he smiled patiently, tolerant of her surprise.
Burning with impatience as with a fever, he endured a long minute's wait.
Misgivings were prompting him to knock again and summon her by name, when he heard footfalls on the other side of the door, followed by a click of the lock. The door was opened grudgingly, a bare six inches.
Of the alarmed expression in the eyes that stared into his, he took no account. His face lengthened a little as he stood there, dumb, panting, staring; and his heart sank, down, deep down into a gulf of disappointment, weighted sorely with chagrin.
Then, of the two the first to recover countenance, he doffed his cap and bowed.
"Good evening, Mrs. Hallam," he said with a rueful smile.
Now, if Kirkwood's emotion was poignant, Mrs. Hallam's astonishment paralleled, and her relief transcended it. In order to understand this it must be remembered that while Mr. Kirkwood was aware of the lady's presence in Antwerp, on her part she had known nothing of him since he had so ungallantly fled her company in Sheerness. She seemed to anticipate that either Calendar or one of his fellows would be discovered at the door,—to have surmised it without any excessive degree of pleasure.
Only briefly she hesitated, while her surprise swayed her; then with a hardening of the eyes and a curt little nod, "I'm sorry," she said with decision, "but I am busy and can't see you now, Mr. Kirkwood"; and attempted to shut the door in his face.
Deftly Kirkwood forestalled her intention by inserting both a foot and a corner of the newly purchased hand-bag between the door and the jamb. He had dared too greatly to be thus dismissed. "Pardon me," he countered, unabashed, "but I wish to speak with Miss Calendar."
"Dorothy," returned the lady with spirit, "is engaged...."
She compressed her lips, knitted her brows, and with disconcerting suddenness thrust one knee against the obstructing hand-bag; Kirkwood, happily, anticipated the movement just in time to reinforce the bag with his own knee; it remained in place, the door standing open.
The woman flushed angrily; their glances crossed, her eyes flashing with indignation; but Kirkwood's held them with a level and unyielding stare.
"I intend," he told her quietly, "to see Miss Calendar. It's useless your trying to hinder me. We may as well understand each other, Madam, and I'll tell you now that if you wish to avoid a scene—"
"Dorothy!" the woman called over her shoulder; "ring for the porter."
"By all means," assented Kirkwood agreeably. "I'll send him for a gendarme."
"You insolent puppy!"
"Madam, your wit disarms me—"
"What is the matter, Mrs. Hallam?" interrupted a voice from the other side of the door. "Who is it?" "Miss Calendar!" cried Kirkwood hastily, raising his voice. "Mr. Kirkwood!" the reply came on the instant. She knew his voice! "Please, Mrs. Hallam, I will see Mr. Kirkwood."
"You have no time to waste with him, Dorothy," said the woman coldly. "I must insist—"
"But you don't seem to understand; it is Mr. Kirkwood!" argued the girl,—as if he were ample excuse for any imprudence!
Kirkwood's scant store of patience was by this time rapidly becoming exhausted. "I should advise you not to interfere any further, Mrs. Hallam," he told her in a tone low, but charged with meaning.
How much did he know? She eyed him an instant longer, in sullen suspicion, then swung open the door, yielding with what grace she could. "Won't you come in, Mr. Kirkwood?" she inquired with acidulated courtesy. "If you press me," he returned winningly, "how can I refuse? You are too good!"
His impertinence disconcerted even himself; he wondered that she did not slap him as he passed her, entering the room; and felt that he deserved it, despite her attitude. But such thoughts could not long trouble one whose eyes were enchanted by the sight of Dorothy, confronting him in the middle of the dingy room, her hands, bristling dangerously with hat pins, busy with the adjustment of a small gray toque atop the wonder that was her hair. So vivacious and charming she seemed, so spirited and bright her welcoming smile, so foreign was she altogether to the picture of her, worn and distraught, that he had mentally conjured up, that he stopped in an extreme of disconcertion; and dropped the hand-bag, smiling sheepishly enough under her ready laugh—mirth irresistibly incited by the plainly-read play of expression on his mobile countenance.
"You must forgive the unconventionally, Mr. Kirkwood," she apologized, needlessly enough, but to cover his embarrassment. "I am on the point of going out with Mrs. Hallam—and of course you are the last person on earth I expected to meet here!"
"It's good to see you, Miss Calendar," he said simply, remarking with much satisfaction that her trim walking costume bore witness to her statement that she was prepared for the street.
The girl glanced into a mirror, patted the small, bewitching hat an infinitesimal fraction of an inch to one side, and turned to him again, her hands free. One of them, small but cordial, rested in his grasp for an instant all too brief, the while he gazed earnestly into her face, noting with concern what the first glance had not shown him,—the almost imperceptible shadows beneath her eyes and cheek-bones, pathetic records of the hours the girl had spent, since last he had seen her, in company with his own grim familiar, Care.
Not a little of care and distress of mind had seasoned her portion in those two weary days. He saw and knew it; and his throat tightened inexplicably, again, as it had out there in the corridor. Possibly the change in her had passed unchallenged by any eyes other than his, but even in the little time that he had spent in her society, the image of her had become fixed so indelibly on his memory, that he could not now be deceived. She was changed—a little, but changed; she had suffered, and was suffering and, forced by suffering, her nascent womanhood was stirring in the bud. The child that he had met in London, in Antwerp he found grown to woman's stature and slowly coming to comprehension of the nature of the change in herself,—the wonder of it glowing softly in her eyes....
The clear understanding of mankind that is an appanage of woman's estate, was now added to the intuitions of a girl's untroubled heart. She could not be blind to the mute adoration of his gaze; nor could she resent it. Beneath it she colored and lowered her lashes.
"I was about to go out," she repeated in confusion. "I—it's pleasant to see you, too."
"Thank you," he stammered ineptly; "I—I—"
"If Mr. Kirkwood will excuse us, Dorothy," Mrs. Hallam's sharp tones struck in discordantly, "we shall be glad to see him when we return to London."
"I am infinitely complimented, Mrs. Hallam," Kirkwood assured her; and of the girl quickly: "You're going back home?" he asked.
She nodded, with a faint, puzzled smile that included the woman. "After a little—not immediately. Mrs. Hallam is so kind—"
"Pardon me," he interrupted; "but tell me one thing, please: have you any one in England to whom you can go without invitation and be welcomed and cared for—any friends or relations?"
"Dorothy will be with me," Mrs. Hallam answered for her, with cold defiance.
Deliberately insolent, Kirkwood turned his back to the woman. "Miss Calendar, will you answer my question for yourself?" he asked the girl pointedly.
"Why—yes; several friends; none in London, but—"
"Dorothy—"
"One moment, Mrs. Hallam," Kirkwood flung crisply over his shoulder. "I'm going to ask you something rather odd, Miss Calendar," he continued, seeking the girl's eyes. "I hope—"
"Dorothy, I—"
"If you please, Mrs. Hallam," suggested the girl, with just the right shade of independence. "I wish to listen to Mr. Kirkwood. He has been very kind to me and has every right...." She turned to him again, leaving the woman breathless and speechless with anger.
"You told me once," Kirkwood continued quickly, and, he felt, brazenly, "that you considered me kind, thoughtful and considerate. You know me no better to-day than you did then, but I want to beg you to trust me a little. Can you trust yourself to my protection until we reach your friends in England?"
"Why, I—" the girl faltered, taken by surprise.
"Mr. Kirkwood!" cried Mrs. Hallam angrily, finding her voice.
Kirkwood turned to meet her onslaught with a mien grave, determined, unflinching. "Please do not interfere, Madam," he said quietly.
"You are impertinent, sir! Dorothy, I forbid you to listen to this person!"
The girl flushed, lifting her chin a trifle. "Forbid?" she repeated wonderingly.
Kirkwood was quick to take advantage of her resentment. "Mrs. Hallam is not fitted to advise you," he insisted, "nor can she control your actions. It must already have occurred to you that you're rather out of place in the present circumstances. The men who have brought you hither, I believe you already see through, to some extent. Forgive my speaking plainly ... But that is why you have accepted Mrs. Hallam's offer of protection. Will you take my word for it, when I tell you she has not your right interests at heart, but the reverse? I happen to know, Miss Calendar, and I—"
"How dare you, sir?"
Flaming with rage, Mrs. Hallam put herself bodily between them, confronting Kirkwood in white-lipped desperation, her small, gloved hands clenched and quivering at her sides, her green eyes dangerous.
But Kirkwood could silence her; and he did. "Do you wish me to speak frankly, Madam? Do you wish me to tell what I know—and all I know—," with rising emphasis,—"of your social status and your relations with Calendar and Mulready? I promise you that if you wish it, or force me to it...."
But he had need to say nothing further; the woman's eyes wavered before his and a little sob of terror forced itself between her shut teeth. Kirkwood smiled grimly, with a face of brass, impenetrable, inflexible. And suddenly she turned from him with indifferent bravado. "As Mr. Kirkwood says, Dorothy," she said in her high, metallic voice, "I have no authority over you. But if you're silly enough to consider for a moment this fellow's insulting suggestion, if you're fool enough to go with him, unchaperoned through Europe and imperil your—"
"Mrs. Hallam!" Kirkwood cut her short with a menacing tone.
"Why, then, I wash my hands of you," concluded the woman defiantly. "Make your choice, my child," she added with a meaning laugh and moved away, humming a snatch from a Frenchchansonwhich brought the hot blood to Kirkwood's face.
But the girl did not understand; and he was glad of that. "You may judge between us," he appealed to her directly, once more. "I can only offer you my word of honor as an American gentleman that you shall be landed in England, safe and sound, by the first available steamer—"
"There's no need to say more, Mr. Kirkwood," Dorothy informed him quietly. "I have already decided. I think I begin to understand some things clearly, now.... If you're ready, we will go."
From the window, where she stood, holding the curtains back and staring out, Mrs. Hallam turned with a curling lip.
From the window, Mrs. Hallam turned with a curling lip.
"'The honor of an American gentleman,'" she quoted with a stinging sneer; "I'm sure I wish you comfort of it, child!"
"We must make haste, Miss Calendar," said Kirkwood, ignoring the implication. "Have you a traveling-bag?"
She silently indicated a small valise, closed and strapped, on a table by the bed, and immediately passed out into the hall. Kirkwood took the case containing the gladstone bag in one hand, the girl's valise in the other, and followed.
As he turned the head of the stairs he looked back. Mrs. Hallam was still at the window, her back turned. From her very passiveness he received an impression of something ominous and forbidding; if she had lost a trick or two of the game she played, she still held cards, was not at the end of her resources. She stuck in his imagination for many an hour as a force to be reckoned with.
For the present he understood that she was waiting to apprise Calendar and Mulready of their flight. With the more haste, then, he followed Dorothy down the three flights, through the tiny office, where Madam sat sound asleep at her over-burdened desk, and out.
Opposite the door they were fortunate enough to find a fiacre drawn up in waiting at the curb. Kirkwood opened the door for the girl to enter.
"Gare du Sud," he directed the driver. "Drive your fastest—double fare for quick time!"
The driver awoke with a start from profound reverie, looked Kirkwood over, and bowed with gesticulative palms.
"M'sieu', I am desolated, but engaged!" he protested.
"Precisely." Kirkwood deposited the two bags on the forward seat of the conveyance, and stood back to convince the man. "Precisely," said he, undismayed. "The lady who engaged you is remaining for a time; I will settle her bill."
"Very well, M'sieu'!" The driver disclaimed responsibility and accepted the favor of the gods with a speaking shrug. "M'sieu' said the Gare du Sud?En voiture!"
Kirkwood jumped in and shut the door; the vehicle drew slowly away from the curb, then with gratifying speed hammered up-stream on the embankment. Bending forward, elbows on knees, Kirkwood watched the sidewalks narrowly, partly to cover the girl's constraint, due to Mrs. Hallam's attitude, partly on the lookout for Calendar and his confederates. In a few moments they passed a public clock.
"We've missed the Flushing boat," he announced. "I'm making a try for the Hoek van Holland line. We may possibly make it. I know that it leaves by the Sud Quai, and that's all I do know," he concluded with an apologetic laugh.
"And if we miss that?" asked the girl, breaking silence for the first time since they had left the hotel.
"We'll take the first train out of Antwerp."
"Where to?"
"Wherever the first train goes, Miss Calendar.... The main point is to get away to-night. That we must do, no matter where we land, or how we get there. To-morrow we can plan with more certainty."
"Yes..." Her assent was more a sigh than a word.
The cab, dashing down the Rue Leopold de Wael, swung into the Place du Sud, before the station. Kirkwood, acutely watchful, suddenly thrust head and shoulders out of his window (fortunately it was the one away from the depot), and called up to the driver.
"Don't stop! Gare Centrale now—and treble fare!"
"Oui, M'sieu'! Allons!"
The whip cracked and the horse swerved sharply round the corner into the Avenue du Sud. The young man, with a hushed exclamation, turned in his seat, lifting the flap over the little peephole in the back of the carriage.
He had not been mistaken. Calendar was standing in front of the station; and it was plain to be seen, from his pose, that the madly careering fiacre interested him more than slightly. Irresolute, perturbed, the man took a step or two after it, changed his mind, and returned to his post of observation.
Kirkwood dropped the flap and turned back to find the girl's wide eyes searching his face. He said nothing.
"What was that?" she asked after a patient moment.
"Your father, Miss Calendar," he returned uncomfortably.
There fell a short pause; then: "Why—will you tell me—is it necessary to run away from my father, Mr. Kirkwood?" she demanded, with a moving little break in her voice.
Kirkwood hesitated. It were unfeeling to tell her why; yet it was essential that she should know, however painful the knowledge might prove to her.
And she was insistent; he might not dodge the issue. "Why?" she repeated as he paused.
"I wish you wouldn't press me for an answer just now, Miss Calendar."
"Don't you think I had better know?"
Instinctively he inclined his head in assent.
"Then why—?"
Kirkwood bent forward and patted the flank of the satchel that held the gladstone bag.
"What does that mean, Mr. Kirkwood?"
"That I have the jewels," he told her tersely, looking straight ahead.
At his shoulder he heard a low gasp of amazement and incredulity commingled.
"But—! How did you get them? My father deposited them in bank this morning?"
"He must have taken them out again.... I got them on board the Alethea, where your father was conferring with Mulready and Captain Stryker."
"The Alethea!"
"Yes."
"You took them from those men?—you!... But didn't my father—?"
"I had to persuade him," said Kirkwood simply.
"But there were three of them against you!"
"Mulready wasn't—ah—feeling very well, and Stryker's a coward. They gave me no trouble. I locked them in Stryker's room, lifted the bag of jewels, and came away.... I ought to tell you that they were discussing the advisability of sailing away without you—leaving you here, friendless and without means. That's why I considered it my duty to take a hand.... I don't like to tell you this so brutally, but you ought to know, and I can't see how to tone it down," he concluded awkwardly.
"I understand...."
But for some moments she did not speak. He avoided looking at her.
The fiacre, rolling at top speed but smoothly on the broad avenues that encircle the ancient city, turned into the Avenue de Keyser, bringing into sight the Gare Centrale.
"You don't—k-know—" began the girl without warning, in a voice gusty with sobs.
"Steady on!" said Kirkwood gently. "I do know, but don't let's talk about it now. We'll be at the station in a minute, and I'll get out and see what's to be done about a train, if neither Mulready or Stryker are about. You stay in the carriage.... No!" He changed his mind suddenly. "I'll not risk losing you again. It's a risk we'll have to run in company."
"Please!" she agreed brokenly.
The fiacre slowed up and stopped.
"Are you all right, Miss Calendar?" Kirkwood asked.
The girl sat up, lifting her head proudly. "I am quite ready," she said, steadying her voice.
Kirkwood reconnoitered through the window, while the driver was descending.
"Gare Centrale, M'sieu'," he said, opening the door.
"No one in sight," Kirkwood told the girl. "Come, please."
He got out and gave her his hand, then paid the driver, picked up the two bags, and hurried with Dorothy into the station, to find in waiting a string of cars into which people were moving at leisurely rate. His inquiries at the ticket-window developed the fact that it was the 22:26 for Brussels, the last train leaving the Gare Centrale that night, and due to start in ten minutes.
The information settled their plans for once and all; Kirkwood promptly secured through tickets, also purchasing "Reserve" supplementary tickets which entitled them to the use of those modern corridor coaches which take the place of first-class compartments on the Belgian state railways.
"It's a pleasure," said Kirkwood lightly, as he followed the girl into one of these, "to find one's self in a common-sense sort of a train again. 'Feels like home." He put their luggage in one of the racks and sat down beside her, chattering with simulated cheerfulness in a vain endeavor to lighten her evident depression of spirit. "I always feel like a traveling anachronism in one of your English trains," he said. "You can't appreciate—"
The girl smiled bravely.... "And after Brussels?" she inquired.
"First train for the coast," he said promptly. "Dover, Ostend, Boulogne,—whichever proves handiest, no matter which, so long as it gets us on English soil without undue delay."
She said "Yes" abstractedly, resting an elbow on the window-sill and her chin in her palm, to stare with serious, sweet brown eyes out into the arc-smitten night that hung beneath the echoing roof.
Kirkwood fidgeted in despite of the constraint he placed himself under, to be still and not disturb her needlessly. Impatience and apprehension of misfortune obsessed his mental processes in equal degree. The ten minutes seemed interminable that elapsed ere the grinding couplings advertised the imminence of their start.
The guards began to bawl, the doors to slam, belated travelers to dash madly for the coaches. The train gave a preliminary lurch ere settling down to its league-long inland dash.
Kirkwood, in a fever of hope and an ague of fear, saw a man sprint furiously across the platform and throw himself on the forward steps of their coach, on the very instant of the start.
Presently he entered by the forward door and walked slowly through, narrowly inspecting the various passengers. As he approached the seats occupied by Kirkwood and Dorothy Calendar, his eyes encountered the young man's, and he leered evilly. Kirkwood met the look with one that was like a kick, and the fellow passed with some haste into the car behind.
"Who was that?" demanded the girl, without moving her head.
"How did you know?" he asked, astonished. "You didn't look—"
"I saw your knuckles whiten beneath the skin.... Who was it?"
"Hobbs," he acknowledged bitterly; "the mate of theAlethea."
"I know.... And you think—?"
"Yes. He must have been ashore when I was on board the brigantine; he certainly wasn't in the cabin. Evidently they hunted him up, or ran across him, and pressed him into service.... You see, they're watching every outlet.... But we'll win through, never fear!"