Chapter IV: Part 4

“Gorblimy!” he declared feelingly. “I’d ’a’ took my oath I sore’m run in ’ere!” And then, in answer to an inaudible question: “No, ’e ain’t. Gorn an’ let the fool go to ’ell. ’Oo wants ’im to share goo’ liker? Not I!...”

Joining his companion he departed, leaving behind him a trail of sulphur-tainted air. The mews quieted gradually. Indoors Kirkwood faced unhappily the enigma of fortuity, wondering: Was this by any possibility Number 9? The key had fitted; the bolts had been drawn on the inside; and while the key had been one of ordinary pattern and would no doubt have proven effectual with any one of a hundred common locks, the finger of probability seemed to indicate that his luck had brought him back to Number 9. In spite of all this, he was sensible of little confidence; though this were truly Number 9, his freedom still lay on the knees of the gods, his very life, belike, was poised, tottering, on a pinnacle of chance. In the end, taking heart of desperation, he stooped and removed his shoes; a precaution which later appealed to his sense of the ridiculous, in view of the racket he had raised in entering, but which at the moment seemed most natural and in accordance with common sense. Then rising, he held his breath, staring and listening. About him the pitch darkness was punctuated with fading points of fire, and in his ears was a noise of strange whisperings, very creepy—until, gritting his teeth, he controlled his nerves and gradually realized that he was alone, the silence undisturbed. He went forward gingerly, feeling his way like a blind man on strange ground. Ere long he stumbled over a door-sill and found that the walls of the passage had fallen away; he had entered a room, a black cavern of indeterminate dimensions. Across this he struck at random, walked himself flat against a wall, felt his way along to an open door, and passed through to another apartment as dark as the first.

Here, endeavoring to make a circuit of the walls, he succeeded in throwing himself bodily across a bed, which creaked horribly; and for a full minute lay as he had fallen, scarce daring to think. But nothing followed, and he got up and found a shut door which let him into yet a third room, wherein he barked both shins on a chair; and escaped to a fourth whose atmosphere was highly flavored with reluctant odors of bygone cookery, stale water and damp plumbing—probably the kitchen. Thence progressing over complaining floors through what may have been the servants’ hall, a large room with a table in the middle and a number of promiscuous chairs (witness his tortured shins!), he finally blundered into the basement hallway.

By now a little calmer, he felt assured that this was really Number 9, Frognall Street, and a little happier about it all, though not even momentarily forgetful of the potential police and night-watchman.

However, he mounted the steps to the ground floor without adventure and found himself at last in the same dim and ghostly hall which he had entered some six hours before; the mockery of dusk admitted by the fan-light was just strong enough to enable him to identify the general lay of the land and arrangement of furniture.

More confidently with each uncontested step, he continued his quest. Elation was stirring his spirit when he gained the first floor and moved toward the foot of the second flight, approaching the spot whereat he was to begin the search for the missing purse. The knowledge that he lacked means of obtaining illumination deterred him nothing; he had some hope of finding matches in one of the adjacent rooms, but, failing that, was prepared to ascend the stairs on all fours, feeling every inch of their surface, if it took hours. Ever an optimistic soul, instinctively inclined to father faith with a hope, he felt supremely confident that his search would not prove fruitless, that he would win early release from his temporary straits.

And thus it fell out that, at the instant he was thinking it time to begin to crawl and hunt, his stockinged feet came into contact with something heavy, yielding, warm—something that moved, moaned, and caused his hair to bristle and his flesh to creep.

We will make allowances for him; all along he had gone on the assumption that his antagonist of the dark stairway would have recovered and made off with all expedition, in the course of ten or twenty minutes, at most, from the time of his accident. To find him still there was something entirely outside of Kirkwood’s reckoning: he would as soon have thought to encounter say, Calendar,—would have preferred the latter, indeed. But this fellow whose disability was due to his own interference, who was reasonably to be counted upon to raise the very deuce and all of a row!

The initial shock, however shattering to his equanimity, soon, lost effect. The man evidently remained unconscious, in fact had barely moved; while the moan that Kirkwood heard, had been distressingly faint.

“Poor devil!” murmured the young man. “He must be in a pretty bad way, for sure!” He knelt, compassion gentling his heart, and put one hand to the insentient face. A warm sweat moistened his fingers; his palm was fanned by steady respiration.

Immeasurably perplexed, the American rose, slipped on his shoes and buttoned them, thinking hard the while. What ought he to do? Obviously flight suggested itself,—incontinent flight, anticipating the man’s recovery. On the other hand, indubitably the latter had sustained such injury that consciousness, when it came to him, would hardly be reinforced by much aggressive power. Moreover, it was to be remembered that the one was in that house with quite as much warrant as the other, unless Kirkwood had drawn a rash inference from the incident of the ragged sentry. The two of them were mutual, if antagonistic, trespassers; neither would dare bring about the arrest of the other. And then—and this was not the least consideration to influence Kirkwood—perhaps the fellow would die if he got no attention.

Kirkwood shut his teeth grimly. “I’m no assassin,” he informed himself, “to strike and run. If I’ve maimed this poor devil and there are consequences, I’ll stand ’em. The Lord knows it doesn’t matter a damn to anybody, not even to me, what happens to me; while _he_ may be valuable.”

Light upon the subject, actual as well as figurative, seemed to be the first essential; his mind composed, Kirkwood set himself in search of it. The floor he was on, however, afforded him no assistance; the mantels were guiltless of candles and he discovered no matches, either in the wide and silent drawing-room, with its ghastly furniture, like mummies in their linen swathings, or in the small boudoir at the back. He was to look either above or below, it seemed.

After some momentary hesitation, he went up-stairs, his ascent marked by a single and grateful accident; half-way to the top he trod on an object that clinked underfoot, and, stooping, retrieved the lost purse. Thus was he justified of his temerity; the day was saved—that is, to-morrow was.

The rooms of the second-floor were bedchambers, broad, deep, stately, inhabited by seven devils of loneliness. In one, on a dresser, Kirkwood found a stump of candle in a china candlestick; the two charred ends of matches at its base were only an irritating discovery, however—evidence that real matches had been the mode in Number 9, at some remote date. Disgusted and oppressed by cumulative inquisitiveness, he took the candle-end back to the hall; he would have given much for the time and means to make a more detailed investigation into the secret of the house.

Perhaps it was mostly his hope of chancing on some clue to the mystery of Dorothy Calender—bewitching riddle that she was!—that fascinated his imagination so completely. Aside from her altogether, the great house that stood untenanted, yet in such complete order, so self-contained in its darkened quiet, intrigued him equally with the train of inexplicable events that had brought him within its walls. Now—since his latest entrance—his vision had adjusted itself to cope with the obscurity to some extent; and the street lights, meagerly reflected through the windows from the bosom of a sullen pall of cloud, low-swung above the city, had helped him to piece together many a detail of decoration and furnishing, alike somber and richly dignified. Kirkwood told himself that the owner, whoever he might be, was a man of wealth and taste inherited from another age; he had found little of meretricious to-day in the dwelling, much that was solid and sedate and homely, and—Victorian.... He could have wished for more; a box of early Victorian vestas had been highly acceptable.

Making his way down-stairs to the stricken man—who was quite as he had been—Kirkwood bent over and thrust rifling fingers into his pockets, regardless of the wretched sense of guilt and sneakishness imparted by the action, stubbornly heedless of the possibility of the man’s awakening to find himself being searched and robbed.

In the last place he sought, which should (he realized) have been the first, to wit, the fob pocket of the white waistcoat, he found a small gold matchbox, packed tight with wax vestas; and, berating himself for crass stupidity—he had saved a deal of time and trouble by thinking of this before—lighted the candle.

As its golden flame shot up with scarce a tremor, preyed upon by a perfectly excusable concern, he bent to examine the man’s countenance.... The arm which had partly hidden it had fallen back into a natural position. It was a young face that gleamed pallid in the candlelight—a face unlined, a little vapid and insignificant, with features regular and neat, betraying few characteristics other than the purely negative attributes of a character as yet unformed, possibly unformable; much the sort of a face that he might have expected to see, remembering those thin and pouting lips that before had impressed him. Its owner was probably little more than twenty. In his attire there was a suspicion of a fop’s preciseness, aside from its accidental disarray; the cut of his waistcoat was the extreme of the then fashion, the white tie (twisted beneath one ear) an exaggerated “butterfly,” his collar nearly an inch too tall; and he was shod with pumps suitable only for the dancing-floor,—a whim of the young-bloods of London of that year.

“I can’t make him out at all!” declared Kirkwood. “The son of a gentleman too weak to believe that cubs need licking into shape? Reared to man’s estate, so sheltered from the wicked world that he never grew a bark?... The sort that never had a quarrel in his life, ’cept with his tailor?... Now what the devil is _this_ thing doing in this midnight mischief?... Damn!”

It was most exasperating, the incongruity of the boy’s appearance assorted with his double rôle of persecutor of distressed damsels and nocturnal house-breaker!

Kirkwood bent closer above the motionless head, with puzzled eyes striving to pin down some elusive resemblance that he thought to trace in those vacuous features—a resemblance to some one he had seen, or known, at some past time, somewhere, somehow.

“I give it up. Guess I’m mistaken. Anyhow, five young Englishmen out of every ten of his class are just as blond and foolish. Now let’s see how bad he’s hurt.”

With hands strong and gentle, he turned the round, light head. Then, “Ah!” he commented in the accent of comprehension. For there was an angry looking bump at the base of the skull; and, the skin having been broken, possibly in collision with the sharp-edged newel-post, a little blood had stained and matted the straw-colored hair.

Kirkwood let the head down and took thought. Recalling a bath-room on the floor above, thither he went, unselfishly forgetful of his predicament if discovered, and, turning on the water, sopped his handkerchief until it dripped. Then, returning, he took the boy’s head on his knees, washed the wound, purloined another handkerchief (of silk, with a giddy border) from the other’s pocket, and of this manufactured a rude but serviceable bandage.

Toward the conclusion of his attentions, the sufferer began to show signs of returning animation. He stirred restlessly, whimpered a little, and sighed. And Kirkwood, in consternation, got up.

“So!” he commented ruefully. “I guess I am an ass, all right—taking all that trouble for you, my friend. If I’ve got a grain of sense left, this is my cue to leave you alone in your glory.”

He was lingering only to restore to the boy’s pockets such articles as he had removed in the search for matches,—the match-box, a few silver coins, a bulky sovereign purse, a handsome, plain gold watch, and so forth. But ere he concluded he was aware that the boy was conscious, that his eyes, open and blinking in the candlelight, were upon him.

They were blue eyes, blue and shallow as a doll’s, and edged with long, fine lashes. Intelligence, of a certain degree, was rapidly informing them. Kirkwood returned their questioning glance, transfixed in indecision, his primal impulse to cut-and-run for it was gone; he had nothing to fear from this child who could not prevent his going whenever he chose to go; while by remaining he might perchance worm from him something about the girl.

“You’re feeling better?” He was almost surprised to hear his own voice put the query.

“I—I think so. Ow, my head!... I say, you chap, whoever you are, what’s happened?... I want to get up.” The boy added peevishly: “Help a fellow, can’t you?”

“You’ve had a nasty fall,” Kirkwood observed evenly, passing an arm beneath the boy’s shoulder and helping him to a sitting position. “Do you remember?”

The other snuffled childishly and scrubbed across the floor to rest his back against the wall.

“Why-y ... I remember fallin’; and then ... I woke up and it was all dark and my head achin’ fit to split. I presume I went to sleep again ... I say, what’re you, doing here?”

Instead of replying, Kirkwood lifted a warning finger.

“Hush!” he said tensely, alarmed by noises in the street. “You don’t suppose—?”

He had been conscious of a carriage rolling up from the corner, as well as that it had drawn up (presumably) before a near-by dwelling. Now the rattle of a key in the hall-door was startlingly audible. Before he could move, the door itself opened with a slam.

Kirkwood moved toward the stair-head, and drew back with a cry of disgust. “Too late!” he told himself bitterly; his escape was cut off. He could run up-stairs and hide, of course, but the boy would inform against him and....

He buttoned up his coat, settled his hat on his head, and moved near the candle, where it rested on the floor. One glimpse would suffice to show him the force of the intruders, and one move of his foot put out the light; then—_perhaps_—he might be able to rush them.

Below, a brief pause had followed the noise of the door, as if those entering were standing, irresolute, undecided which way to turn; but abruptly enough the glimmer of candlelight must have been noticed. Kirkwood heard a hushed exclamation, a quick clatter of high heels on the parquetry, pattering feet on the stairs, all but drowned by swish and ripple of silken skirts; and a woman stood at the head of the flight—to the American an apparition profoundly amazing as she paused, the light from the floor casting odd, theatric shadows beneath her eyes and over her brows, edging her eyes themselves with brilliant light beneath their dark lashes, showing her lips straight and drawn, and shimmering upon the spangles of an evening gown, visible beneath the dark cloak which had fallen back from her white, beautiful shoulders.

VIII MADAME L’INTRIGANTE

“Mrs. Hallam!” cried Kirkwood, beneath his breath.

The woman ignored his existence. Moving swiftly forward, she dropped on both knees by the side of the boy, and caught up one of his hands, clasping it passionately in her own.

“Fred!” she cried, a curious break in her tone. “My little Freddie! Oh, what has happened, dearie?”

“Oh, hello, Mamma,” grunted that young man, submitting listlessly to her caresses and betraying no overwhelming surprise at her appearance there. Indeed he seemed more concerned as to what Kirkwood, an older man, would be thinking, to see him so endeared and fondled, than moved by any other emotion. Kirkwood could see his shamefaced, sidelong glances; and despised him properly for them.

But without attending to his response, Mrs. Hallam rattled on in the uneven accents of excitement. “I waited until I couldn’t wait any longer, Freddie dear. I had to know—had to come. Eccles came home about nine and said that you had told him to wait outside, that some one had followed you in here, and that a bobby had told him to move on. I didn’t know what—”

“What’s o’clock now?” her son interrupted.

“It’s about three, I think ... Have you hurt yourself, dear? Oh, why _didn’t_ you come home? You must’ve known I was dying of anxiety!”

“Oh, I say! Can’t you see I’m hurt? ’Had a nasty fall and must’ve been asleep ever since.”

“My precious one! How—?”

“Can’t say, hardly ... I say, don’t paw a chap so, Mamma ... I brought Eccles along and told him to wait because—well, because I didn’t feel so much like shuttin’ myself up in this beastly old tomb. So I left the door ajar, and told him not to let anybody come in. Then I came up-stairs. There must’ve been somebody already in the house; I know I _thought_ there was. It made me feel creepy, rather. At any rate, I heard voices down below, and the door banged, and somebody began hammerin’ like fun on the knocker.”

The boy paused, rolling an embarrassed eye up at the stranger.

“Yes, yes, dear!” Mrs. Hallam urged him on.

“Why, I—I made up my mind to cut my stick—let whoever it was pass me on the stairs, you know. But he followed me and struck me, and then I jumped at him, and we both fell down the whole flight. And that’s all. Besides, my head’s achin’ like everything.”

“But this man—?”

Mrs. Hallam looked up at Kirkwood, who bowed silently, struggling to hide both his amusement and perplexity. More than ever, now, the case presented a front inscrutable to his wits; try as he might, he failed to fit an explanation to any incident in which he had figured, while this last development—that his antagonist of the dark stairway had been Mrs. Hallam’s son!—seemed the most astounding of all, baffling elucidation completely.

He had abandoned all thought of flight and escape. It was too late; in the brisk idiom of his mother-tongue, he was “caught with the goods on.” “May as well face the music,” he counseled himself, in resignation. From what he had seen and surmised of Mrs. Hallam, he shrewdly suspected that the tune would prove an exceedingly lively one; she seemed a woman of imagination, originality, and an able-bodied temper.

“_You_, Mr. Kirkwood!”

Again he bowed, grinning awry.

She rose suddenly. “You will be good enough to explain your presence here,” she informed him with dangerous serenity.

“To be frank with you—”

“I advise that course, Mr. Kirkwood.”

“Thanks, awf’ly.... I came here, half an hour ago, looking for a lost purse full—well, not _quite_ full of sovereigns. It was my purse, by the way.”

Suspicion glinted like foxfire in the cold green eyes beneath her puckered brows. “I do not understand,” she said slowly and in level tones.

“I didn’t expect you to,” returned Kirkwood; “no more do I.... But, anyway, it must be clear to you that I’ve done my best for this gentleman here.” He paused with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows.

“‘This gentleman’ is my son, Frederick Hallam.... But you will explain—”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Hallam; I shall explain nothing, at present. Permit me to point out that your position here—like mine—is, to say the least, anomalous.” The random stroke told, as he could tell by the instant contraction of her eyes of a cat. “It would be best to defer explanations till a more convenient time—don’t you think? Then, if you like, we can chant confidences in an antiphonal chorus. Just now your—er—son is not enjoying himself apparently, and ... the attention of the police had best not be called to this house too often in one night.”

His levity seemed to displease and perturb the woman; she turned from him with an impatient movement of her shoulders.

“Freddie, dear, do you feel able to walk?”

“Eh? Oh, I dare say—I don’t know. Wonder would your friend—ah—Mr. Kirkwood, lend me an arm?”

“Charmed,” Kirkwood declared suavely. “If you’ll take the candle, Mrs. Hallam—”

He helped the boy to his feet and, while the latter hung upon him and complained querulously, stood waiting for the woman to lead the way with the light; something which, however, she seemed in no haste to do. The pause at length puzzled Kirkwood, and he turned, to find Mrs. Hallam holding the candlestick and regarding him steadily, with much the same expression of furtive mistrust as that with which she had favored him on her own door-stoop.

“One moment,” she interposed in confusion; “I won’t keep you waiting...;” and, passing with an averted face, ran quickly up-stairs to the second floor, taking the light with her. Its glow faded from the walls above and Kirkwood surmised that she had entered the front bedchamber. For some moments he could hear her moving about; once, something scraped and bumped on the floor, as if a heavy bit of furniture had been moved; again there was a resounding thud that defied speculation; and this was presently followed by a dull clang of metal.

His fugitive speculations afforded him little enlightenment; and, meantime, young Hallam, leaning partly against the wall and quite heavily on Kirkwood’s arm, filled his ears with puerile oaths and lamentations; so that, but for the excuse of his really severe shaking-up, Kirkwood had been strongly tempted to take the youngster by the shoulders and kick him heartily, for the health of his soul.

But eventually—it was not really long—there came the quick rush of Mrs. Hallam’s feet along the upper hall, and the woman reappeared, one hand holding her skirts clear of her pretty feet as she descended in a rush that caused the candle’s flame to flicker perilously.

Half-way down, “Mr. Kirkwood!” she called tempestuously.

“Didn’t you find it?” he countered blandly.

She stopped jerkily at the bottom, and, after a moment of confusion. “Find what, sir?” she asked.

“What you sought, Mrs. Hallam.”

Smiling, he bore unflinching the prolonged inspection of her eyes, at once somber with doubt of him and flashing with indignation because of his impudence.

“You knew I wouldn’t find it, then!... Didn’t you?”

“I may have suspected you wouldn’t.”

Now he was sure that she had been searching for the gladstone bag. That, evidently, was the bone of contention. Calendar had sent his daughter for it, Mrs. Hallam her son; Dorothy had been successful ... But, on the other hand, Calendar and Mrs. Hallam were unquestionably allies. Why, then—?

“Where is it, Mr. Kirkwood?”

“Madam, have you the right to know?”

Through another lengthening pause, while they faced each other, he marked again the curious contraction of her under lip.

“I have the right,” she declared steadily. “Where is it?”

“How can I be sure?”

“Then you don’t know—!”

“Indeed,” he interrupted, “I would be glad to feel that I ought to tell you what I know.”

“What you know!”

The exclamation, low-spoken, more an echo of her thoughts than intended for Kirkwood, was accompanied by a little shake of the woman’s head, mute evidence to the fact that she was bewildered by his finesse. And this delighted the young man beyond measure, making him feel himself master of a difficult situation. Mysteries had been woven before his eyes so persistently, of late, that it was a real pleasure to be able to do a little mystifying on his own account. By adopting this reticent and non-committal attitude, he was forcing the hand of a woman old enough to be his mother and most evidently a past-mistress in the art of misleading. All of which seemed very fascinating to the amateur in adventure.

The woman would have led again, but young Hallam cut in, none too courteously.

“I say, Mamma, it’s no good standing here, palaverin’ like a lot of flats. Besides, I’m awf’ly knocked up. Let’s get home and have it out there.”

Instantly his mother softened. “My poor boy!... Of course we’ll go.”

Without further demur she swept past and down the stairway before them—slowly, for their progress was of necessity slow, and the light most needed. Once they were in the main hall, however, she extinguished the candle, placed it on a side table, and passed out through the door.

It had been left open, as before; and Kirkwood was not at all surprised to see a man waiting on the threshold,—the versatile Eccles, if he erred not. He had little chance to identify him, as it happened, for at a word from Mrs. Hallam the man bowed and, following her across the sidewalk, opened the door of a four-wheeler which, with lamps alight and liveried driver on the box, had been waiting at the carriage-block.

As they passed out, Kirkwood shut the door; and at the same moment the little party was brought up standing by a gruff and authoritative summons.

“Just a minute, please, you there!”

“Aha!” said Kirkwood to himself. “I thought so.” And he halted, in unfeigned respect for the burly and impressive figure, garbed in blue and brass, helmeted and truncheoned, bull’s-eye shining on breast like the Law’s unblinking and sleepless eye, barring the way to the carriage.

Mrs. Hallam showed less deference for the obstructionist. The assumed hauteur and impatience of her pose was artfully reflected in her voice as she rounded upon the bobby, with an indignant demand: “What is the meaning of this, officer?”

“Precisely what I wants to know, ma’am,” returned the man, unyielding beneath his respectful attitude. “I’m obliged to ask you to tell me what you were doing in that ’ouse.... And what’s the matter with this ’ere gentleman?” he added, with a dubious stare at young Hallam’s bandaged head and rumpled clothing.

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” admitted Mrs. Hallam sweetly. “Of course—I see—it’s perfectly natural. The house has been shut up for some time and—”

“Thank you, ma’am; that’s just it. There was something wrong going on early in the evening, and I was told to keep an eye on the premises. It’s duty, ma’am; I’ve got my report to make.”

“The house,” said Mrs. Hallam, with the long-suffering patience of one elucidating a perfectly plain proposition to a being of a lower order of intelligence, “is the property of my son, Arthur Frederick Burgoyne Hallam, of Cornwall. This is—”

“Beg pardon, ma’am, but I was told Colonel George Burgoyne, of Cornwall—”

“Colonel Burgoyne died some time ago. My son is his heir. This is my son. He came to the house this evening to get some property he desired, and—it seems—tripped on the stairs and fell unconscious. I became worried about him and drove over, accompanied by my friend, Mr. Kirkwood.”

The policeman looked his troubled state of mind, and wagged a doubtful head over the case. There was his duty, and there was, opposed to it, the fact that all three were garbed in the livery of the well-to-do.

At length, turning to the driver, he demanded, received, and noted in his memorandum-book, the license number of the equipage.

“It’s a very unusual case, ma’am,” he apologized; “I hopes you won’t ’old it against me. I’m only trying to do my duty—”

“And safeguard our property. You are perfectly justified, officer.”

“Thank you, ma’am. And would you mind giving me your cards, please, all of you?”

“Certainly not.” Without hesitation the woman took a little hand-bag from the seat of the carriage and produced a card; her son likewise found his case and handed the officer an oblong slip.

“I’ve no cards with me,” the American told the policeman; “my name, however, is Philip Kirkwood, and I’m staying at the Pless.”

“Very good, sir; thank you.” The man penciled the information in his little book. “Thank you, ma’am, and Mr. Hallam, sir. Sorry to have detained you. Good morning.”

Kirkwood helped young Hallam into the carriage, gave Mrs. Hallam his hand, and followed her. The man Eccles shut the door, mounting the box beside the driver. Immediately they were in motion.

The American got a final glimpse of the bobby, standing in front of Number 9, Frognall Street, and watching them with an air of profound uncertainty. He had Kirkwood’s sympathy, therein; but he had little time to feel with him, for Mrs. Hallam turned upon him very suddenly.

“Mr. Kirkwood, will you be good enough to tell me who and what you are?”

The young man smiled his homely, candid smile. “I’ll be only too glad, Mrs. Hallam, when I feel sure you’ll do as much for yourself.”

She gave him no answer; it, was as if she were choosing words. Kirkwood braced himself to meet the storm; but none ensued. There was rather a lull, which strung itself out indefinitely, to the monotonous music of hoofs and rubber tires.

Young Hallam was resting his empty blond head against the cushions, and had closed his eyes. He seemed to doze; but, as the carriage rolled past the frequent street-lights, Kirkwood could see that the eyes of Mrs. Hallam were steadily directed to his face.

His outward composure was tempered by some amusement, by more admiration; the woman’s eyes were very handsome, even when hardest and most cold. It was not easy to conceive of her as being the mother of a son so immaturely mature. Why, she must have been at least thirty-eight or -nine! One wondered; she did not look it....

The carriage stopped before a house with lighted windows. Eccles jumped down from the box and scurried to open the front door. The radiance of a hall-lamp was streaming out into the misty night when he returned to release his employers.

They were returned to Craven Street! “One more lap round the track!” mused Kirkwood. “Wonder will the next take me back to Bermondsey Old Stairs.”

At Mrs. Hallam’s direction, Eccles ushered him into the smoking-room, on the ground floor in the rear of the dwelling, there to wait while she helped her son up-stairs and to bed. He sighed with pleasure at first glimpse of its luxurious but informal comforts, and threw himself carelessly into a heavily padded lounging-chair, dropping one knee over the other and lighting the last of his expensive cigars, with a sensation of undiluted gratitude; as one coming to rest in the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

Over his shoulder a home-like illumination was cast by an electric reading-lamp shaded with red silk. At his feet brass fire-dogs winked sleepily in the fluttering blaze of a well-tended stove. The walls were hung with deep red, the doors and divans upholstered in the same restful shade. In one corner an old clock ticked soberly. The atmosphere would have proved a potent invitation to reverie, if not to sleep—he was very sleepy—but for the confusion in the house.

In its chambers, through the halls, on the stairs, there were hurryings and scurryings of feet and skirts, confused with murmuring voices. Presently, in an adjoining room, Philip Kirkwood heard a maid-servant wrestling hopefully with that most exasperating of modern time-saving devices, the telephone as countenanced by our English cousins. Her patience and determination won his approval, but availed nothing for her purpose; in the outcome the telephone triumphed and the maid gave up the unequal contest.

Later, a butler entered the room; a short and sturdy fellow, extremely ill at ease. Drawing a small taboret to the side of Kirkwood’s chair, he placed thereon a tray, deferentially imparting the information that “Missis ’Allam ’ad thought ’ow as Mister Kirkwood might care for a bit of supper.”

“Please thank Mrs. Hallam for me.” Kirkwood’s gratified eyes ranged the laden tray. There were sandwiches, biscuit, cheese, and a pot of black coffee, with sugar and cream. “It was very kindly thought of,” he added.

“Very good, sir, thank you, sir.”

The man turned to go, shuffling soundlessly. Kirkwood was suddenly impressed with his evasiveness; ever since he had entered the room, his countenance had seemed turned from the guest.

“Eccles!” he called sharply, at a venture.

The butler halted, thunderstruck. “Ye-es, s-sir?”

“Turn round, Eccles; I want a look at you.”

Eccles faced him unwillingly, with a stolid front but shifty eyes. Kirkwood glanced him up and down, grinning.

“Thank you, Eccles; I’ll remember you now. You’ll remember me, too, won’t you? You’re a bad actor, aren’t you, Eccles?”

“Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” mumbled the man unhappily; and took instant advantage of the implied permission to go.

Intensely diverted by the recollection of Eccles’ abortive attempt to stop him at the door of Number 9, and wondering—now that he came to think of it—why, precisely, young Hallam had deemed it necessary to travel with a body-guard and adopt such furtive methods to enter into as well as to obtain what was asserted to be his own property, Kirkwood turned active attention to the lunch.

Thoughtfully he poured himself a cup of coffee, swallowing it hot and black as it came from the silver pot; then munched the sandwiches.

It _was_ kindly thought of, this early morning repast; Mrs. Hallam seemed more and more a remarkable woman with each phase of her character that she chose to disclose. At odds with him, she yet took time to think of his creature needs!

What could be her motive,—not in feeding him, but in involving her name and fortune in an affair so strangely flavored?... This opened up a desert waste of barren speculation. “What’s anybody’s motive, who figures in this thundering dime-novel?” demanded the American, almost contemptuously. And—for the hundredth time—gave it up; the day should declare it, if so hap he lived to see that day: a distant one, he made no doubt. The only clear fact in his befogged and bemused mentality was that he was at once “broke” and in this business up to his ears. Well, he’d see it through; he’d nothing better to do, and—there was the girl:

Dorothy, whose eyes and lips he had but to close his own eyes to see again as vividly as though she stood before him; Dorothy, whose unspoiled sweetness stood out in vivid relief against this moil and toil of conspiracy, like a star of evening shining clear in a stormy sky.

“Poetic simile: I’m going fast,” conceded Kirkwood; but he did not smile. It was becoming quite too serious a matter for laughter. For her sake, he was in the game “for keeps”; especially in view of the fact that everything—his own heart’s inclination included—seemed to conspire to keep him in it. Of course he hoped for nothing in return; a pauper who turns squire-of-dames with matrimonial intent is open to the designation, “penniless adventurer.” No; whatever service he might be to the girl would be ample recompense to him for his labors. And afterwards, he’d go his way in peace; she’d soon forget him—if she hadn’t already. Women (he propounded gravely) are queer: there’s no telling anything about them!

One of the most unreadable specimens of the sex on which he pronounced this highly original dictum, entered the room just then; and he found himself at once out of his chair and his dream, bowing.

“Mrs. Hallam.”

The woman nodded and smiled graciously. “Eccles has attended to your needs, I hope? Please don’t stop smoking.” She sank into an arm-chair on the other side of the hearth and, probably by accident, out of the radius of illumination from the lamp; sitting sidewise, one knee above the other, her white arms immaculate against the somber background of shadowed crimson.

She was very handsome indeed, just then; though a keener light might have proved less flattering.

“Now, Mr. Kirkwood?” she opened briskly, with a second intimate and friendly nod; and paused, her pose receptive.

Kirkwood sat down again, smiling good-natured appreciation of her unprejudiced attitude.

“Your son, Mrs. Hallam—?”

“Oh, Freddie’s doing well enough.... Freddie,” she explained, “has a delicate constitution and has seen little of the world. Such melodrama as to-night’s is apt to shock him severely. We must make allowances, Mr. Kirkwood.”

Kirkwood grinned again, a trace unsympathetically; he was unable to simulate any enthusiasm on the subject of poor Freddie, whom he had sized up with passable acumen as a spoiled and coddled child completely under the thumb of an extremely clever mother.

“Yes,” he responded vaguely; “he’ll be quite fit after a night’s sleep, I dare say.”

The woman was watching him keenly, beneath her lowered lashes. “I think,” she said deliberately, “that it is time we came to an understanding.”

Kirkwood agreed—“Yes?” affably.

“I purpose being perfectly straightforward. To begin with, I don’t place you, Mr. Kirkwood. You are an unknown quantity, a new factor. Won’t you please tell me what you are and.... Are you a friend of Mr. Calendar’s?”

“I think I may lay claim to that honor, though”—to Kirkwood’s way of seeing things some little frankness on his own part would be essential if they were to get on—“I hardly know him, Mrs. Hallam. I had the pleasure of meeting him only this afternoon.”

She knitted her brows over this statement.

“That, I assure you, is the truth,” he laughed.

“But ... I really don’t understand.”

“Nor I, Mrs. Hallam. Calendar aside, I am Philip Kirkwood, American, resident abroad for some years, a native of San Francisco, of a certain age, unmarried, by profession a poor painter.”

“And—?”

“Beyond that? I presume I must tell you, though I confess I’m in doubt....” He hesitated, weighing candor in the balance with discretion.

“But who are you for? Are you in George Calendar’s pay?”

“Heaven forfend!”—piously. “My sole interest at the present moment is to unravel a most entrancing mystery—”

“Entitled ‘Dorothy Calendar’! Of course. You’ve known her long?”

“Eight hours, I believe,” he admitted gravely; “less than that, in fact.”

“Miss Calendar’s interests will not suffer through anything you may tell me.”

“Whether they will or no, I see I must swing a looser tongue, or you’ll be showing me the door.”

The woman shook her head, amused, “Not until,” she told him significantly.

“Very well, then.” And he launched into an abridged narrative of the night’s events, as he understood them, touching lightly on his own circumstances, the real poverty which had brought him back to Craven Street by way of Frognall. “And there you have it all, Mrs. Hallam.”

She sat in silent musing. Now and again he caught the glint of her eyes and knew that he was being appraised with such trained acumen as only long knowledge of men can give to women. He wondered if he were found wanting.... Her dark head bended, elbow on knee, chin resting lightly in the cradle of her slender, parted fingers, the woman thought profoundly, her reverie ending with a brief, curt laugh, musical and mirthless as the sound of breaking glass.

“It is so like Calendar!” she exclaimed: “so like him that one sees how foolish it was to trust—no, not to trust, but to believe that he could ever be thrown off the scent, once he got nose to ground. So, if we suffer, my son and I, I shall have only myself to thank!”

Kirkwood waited in patient attention till she chose to continue. When she did “Now for my side of the case!” cried Mrs. Hallam; and rising, began to pace the room, her slender and rounded figure swaying gracefully, the while she talked.

“George Calendar is a scoundrel,” she said: “a swindler, gambler,—what I believe you Americans call a confidence-man. He is also my late husband’s first cousin. Some years since he found it convenient to leave England, likewise his wife and daughter. Mrs. Calendar, a country-woman of yours, by the bye, died shortly afterwards. Dorothy, by the merest accident, obtained a situation as private secretary in the household of the late Colonel Burgoyne, of The Cliffs, Cornwall. You follow me?”

“Yes, perfectly.”

“Colonel Burgoyne died, leaving his estates to my son, some time ago. Shortly afterwards Dorothy Calendar disappeared. We know now that her father took her away, but then the disappearance seemed inexplicable, especially since with her vanished a great deal of valuable information. She alone knew of the location of certain of the old colonel’s personal effects.”

“He was an eccentric. One of his peculiarities involved the secreting of valuables in odd places; he had no faith in banks. Among these valuables were the Burgoyne family jewels—quite a treasure, believe me, Mr. Kirkwood. We found no note of them among the colonel’s papers, and without Dorothy were powerless to pursue a search for them. We advertised and employed detectives, with no result. It seems that father and daughter were at Monte Carlo at the time.”

“Beautifully circumstantial, my dear lady,” commented Kirkwood—to his inner consciousness. Outwardly he maintained consistently a pose of impassive gullibility.

“This afternoon, for the first time, we received news of the Calendars. Calendar himself called upon me, to beg a loan. I explained our difficulty and he promised that Dorothy should send us the information by the morning’s post. When I insisted, he agreed to bring it himself, after dinner, this evening.... I make it quite clear?” she interrupted, a little anxious.

“Quite clear, I assure you,” he assented encouragingly.

“Strangely enough, he had not been gone ten minutes when my son came in from a conference with our solicitors, informing me that at last a memorandum had turned up, indicating that the heirlooms would be found in a safe secreted behind a dresser in Colonel Burgoyne’s bedroom.”

“At Number 9, Frognall Street.”

“Yes.... I proposed going there at once, but it was late and we were dining at the Pless with an acquaintance, a Mr. Mulready, whom I now recall as a former intimate of George Calendar. To our surprise we saw Calendar and his daughter at a table not far from ours. Mr. Mulready betrayed some agitation at the sight of Calendar, and told me that Scotland Yard had a man out with a warrant for Calendar’s arrest, on old charges. For old sake’s sake, Mr. Mulready begged me to give Calendar a word of warning. I did so—foolishly, it seems: Calendar was at that moment planning to rob us, Mulready aiding and abetting him.”

The woman paused before Kirkwood, looking down upon him. “And so,” she concluded, “we have been tricked and swindled. I can scarcely believe it of Dorothy Calendar.”

“I, for one, don’t believe it.” Kirkwood spoke quietly, rising. “Whatever the culpability of Calendar and Mulready, Dorothy was only their hoodwinked tool.”

“But, Mr. Kirkwood, she must have known the jewels were not hers.”

“Yes,” he assented passively, but wholly unconvinced.

“And what,” she demanded with a gesture of exasperation, “what would you advise?”

“Scotland Yard,” he told her bluntly.

“But it’s a family secret! It must not appear in the papers. Don’t you understand—George Calendar is my husband’s cousin!”

“I can think of nothing else, unless you pursue them in person.”

“But—whither?”

“That remains to be discovered; I can tell you nothing more than I have.... May I thank you for your hospitality, express my regrets that I should unwittingly have been made the agent of this disaster, and wish you good night—or, rather, good morning, Mrs. Hallam?”

For a moment she held him under a calculating glance which he withstood with graceless fortitude. Then, realizing that he was determined not by any means to be won to her cause, she gave him her hand, with a commonplace wish that he might find his affairs in better order than seemed probable; and rang for Eccles.

The butler showed him out.

He took away with him two strong impressions; the one visual, of a strikingly handsome woman in a wonderful gown, standing under the red glow of a reading-lamp, in an attitude of intense mental concentration, her expression plainly indicative of a train of thought not guiltless of vindictiveness; the other, more mental but as real, he presently voiced to the huge bronze lions brooding over desolate Trafalgar Square.

“Well,” appreciated Mr. Kirkwood with gusto, “_she’s_ got Ananias and Sapphira talked to a standstill, all right!” He ruminated over this for a moment. “Calendar can lie some, too; but hardly with her picturesque touch.... Uncommon ingenious, _I_ call it. All the same, there were only about a dozen bits of tiling that didn’t fit into her mosaic a little bit.... I think they’re all tarred with the same stick—all but the girl. And there’s something afoot a long sight more devilish and crafty than that shilling-shocker of madam’s.... Dorothy Calendar’s got about as much active part in it as I have. I’m only from California, but they’ve got to show me, before I’ll believe a word against her. Those infernal scoundrels!...Somebody’s got to be on the girl’s side and I seem to have drawn the lucky straw.... Good Heavens! is it possible for a grown man to fall heels over head in love in two short hours? I don’t believe it. It’s just interest—nothing more.... And I’ll have to have a change of clothes before I can do anything further.”

He bowed gratefully to the lions, in view of their tolerant interest in his soliloquy, and set off very suddenly round the square and up St. Martin’s Lane, striking across town as directly as might be for St. Pancras Station. It would undoubtedly be a long walk, but cabs were prohibited by his straitened means, and the busses were all abed and wouldn’t be astir for hours.

He strode along rapidly, finding his way more through intuition than by observation or familiarity with London’s geography—indeed, was scarce aware of his surroundings; for his brain was big with fine imagery, rapt in a glowing dream of knighterrantry and chivalric deeds.

Thus is it ever and alway with those who in the purity of young hearts rush in where angels fear to tread; if these, Kirkwood and his ilk, be fools, thank God for them, for with such foolishness is life savored and made sweet and sound! To Kirkwood the warp of the world and the woof of it was Romance, and it wrapped him round, a magic mantle to set him apart from all things mean and sordid and render him impregnable and invisible to the haunting Shade of Care.

Which, by the same token, presently lost track of him entirely, and wandered off to find and bedevil some other poor devil. And Kirkwood, his eyes like his spirit elevated, saw that the clouds of night were breaking, the skies clearing, that the East pulsed ever more strongly with the dim golden promise of the day to come. And this he chose to take for an omen—prematurely, it may be.

IX AGAIN “BELOW BRIDGE”; AND BEYOND

Kirkwood wasted little time, who had not much to waste, were he to do that upon whose doing he had set his heart. It irked him sore to have to lose the invaluable moments demanded by certain imperative arrangements, but his haste was such that all was consummated within an hour.

Within the period of a single hour, then, he had ransomed his luggage at St. Pancras, caused it to be loaded upon a four-wheeler and transferred to a neighboring hotel of evil flavor but moderate tariff, where he engaged a room for a week, ordered an immediate breakfast, and retired with his belongings to his room; he had shaved and changed his clothes, selecting a serviceable suit of heavy tweeds, stout shoes, a fore-and-aft cap and a negligée shirt of a deep shade calculated at least to seem clean for a long time; finally, he had devoured his bacon and eggs, gulped down his coffee and burned his mouth, and, armed with a stout stick, set off hotfoot in the still dim glimmering of early day.

By this time his cash capital had dwindled to the sum of two pounds, ten shillings, eight-pence, and would have been much less had he paid for his lodging in advance. But he considered his trunks ample security for the bill, and dared not wait the hour when shopkeepers begin to take down shutters and it becomes possible to realize upon one’s jewelry. Besides which, he had never before been called upon to consider the advisability of raising money by pledging personal property, and was in considerable doubt as to the right course of procedure in such emergency.

At King’s Cross Station on the Underground an acute disappointment awaited him; there, likewise, he learned something about London. A sympathetic bobby informed him that no trains would be running until after five-thirty, and that, furthermore, no busses would begin to ply until half after seven.

“It’s tramp it or cab it, then,” mused the young man mournfully, his longing gaze seeking a nearby cab-rank—just then occupied by a solitary hansom, driver somnolent on the box. “Officer,” he again addressed the policeman, mindful of the English axiom: “When in doubt, ask a bobby.”—“Officer, when’s high-tide this morning?”

The bobby produced a well-worn pocket-almanac, moistened a massive thumb, and rippled the pages.

“London Bridge, ’igh tide twenty minutes arfter six, sir,” he announced with a glow of satisfaction wholly pardonable in one who combines the functions of perambulating almanac, guide-book, encyclopedia, and conserver of the peace.

Kirkwood said something beneath his breath—a word in itself a comfortable mouthful and wholesome and emphatic. He glanced again at the cab and groaned: “O Lord, I just dassent!” With which, thanking the bureau of information, he set off at a quick step down Grey’s Inn Road.

The day had closed down in brilliance upon the city—and the voice of the milkman was to be heard in the land—when he trudged, still briskly if a trifle wearily, into Holborn, and held on eastward across the Viaduct and down Newgate Street; the while addling his weary wits with heart-sickening computations of minutes, all going hopelessly to prove that he would be late, far too late even presupposing the unlikely. The unlikely, be it known, was that the _Alethea_ would not attempt to sail before the turn of the tide.

For this was his mission, to find the _Alethea_ before she sailed. Incredible as it may appear, at five o’clock, or maybe earlier, on the morning of the twenty-second of April, 1906, A.D., Philip Kirkwood, normally a commonplace but likable young American in full possession of his senses, might have been seen (and by some was seen) plodding manfully through Cheapside, London, England, engaged upon a quest as mad, forlorn, and gallant as any whose chronicle ever inspired the pen of a Malory or a Froissart. In brief he proposed to lend his arm and courage to be the shield and buckler of one who might or might not be a damsel in distress; according as to whether Mrs. Hallam had spoken soothly of Dorothy Calendar, or Kirkwood’s own admirable faith in the girl were justified of itself.

Proceeding upon the working hypothesis that Mrs. Hallam was a polished liar in most respects, but had told the truth, so far as concerned her statement to the effect that the gladstone bag contained valuable real property (whose ownership remained a moot question, though Kirkwood was definitely committed to the belief that it was none of Mrs. Hallam’s or her son’s): he reasoned that the two adventurers, with Dorothy and their booty, would attempt to leave London by a water route, in the ship, _Alethea_, whose name had fallen from their lips at Bermondsey Old Stairs.

Kirkwood’s initial task, then, would be to find the needle in the haystack—the metaphor is poor: more properly, to sort out from the hundreds of vessels, of all descriptions, at anchor in midstream, moored to the wharves of ’long-shore warehouses, or in the gigantic docks that line the Thames, that one called _Alethea_; of which he was so deeply mired in ignorance that he could not say whether she were tramp-steamer, coastwise passenger boat, one of the liners that ply between Tilbury and all the world, Channel ferry-boat, private yacht (steam or sail), schooner, four-master, square-rigger, barque or brigantine.

A task to stagger the optimism of any but one equipped with the sublime impudence of Youth! Even Kirkwood was disturbed by some little awe when he contemplated the vast proportions of his undertaking. None the less doggedly he plugged ahead, and tried to keep his mind from vain surmises as to what would be his portion when eventually he should find himself a passenger, uninvited and unwelcome, upon the _Alethea_....