The Black Bag Part 48

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

ADVENTURERS' LUCK

As the door closed, Kirkwood swung impulsively to Brentwick, with the brief, uneven laugh of fine-drawn nerves.

"Good G.o.d, 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 circ.u.mscribed 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 portieres 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 s.p.a.ce 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 bra.s.s 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 bas.e.m.e.nt.

"How much should you say you owe him?"

"I--I haven't a penny in the world!"

The shrewd eyes flashed their amus.e.m.e.nt 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 s.h.i.+llings--or say twelve, would be about right," stammered the American, swayed by conflicting emotions of grat.i.tude and profound embarra.s.sment.

A soft-footed butler, impa.s.sive 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!"