Chapter VIII: Part 8

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 Belgian _bourgeoisie_ presided, 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.

XV REFUGEES

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 French _chanson_ which 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.

“‘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 the _Alethea_.”

“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!”

XVI TRAVELS WITH A CHAPERON

The train, escaping the outskirts of the city, remarked the event with an exultant shriek, then settled down, droning steadily, to night-devouring flight. In the corridor-car the few passengers disposed themselves to drowse away the coming hour—the short hour’s ride that, in these piping days of frantic traveling, separates Antwerp from the capital city of Belgium.

A guard, slamming gustily in through the front door, reeled unsteadily down the aisle. Kirkwood, rousing from a profound reverie, detained him with a gesture and began to interrogate him in French. When he departed presently it transpired that the girl was unaquainted with that tongue.

“I didn’t understand, you know,” she told him with a slow, shy smile.

“I was merely questioning him about the trains from Brussels to-night. We daren’t stop, you see; we must go on,—keep Hobbs on the jump and lose him, if possible. There’s where our advantage lies—in having only Hobbs to deal with. He’s not particularly intellectual; and we’ve two heads to his one, besides. If we can prevent him from guessing our destination and wiring back to Antwerp, we may win away. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” she said, brightening. “And what do you purpose doing now?”

“I can’t tell yet. The guard’s gone to get me some information about the night trains on other lines. In the meantime, don’t fret about Hobbs; I’ll answer for Hobbs.”

“I shan’t be worried,” she said simply, “with you here....”

Whatever answer he would have made he was obliged to postpone because of the return of the guard, with a handful of time-tables; and when, rewarded with a modest gratuity, the man had gone his way, and Kirkwood turned again to the girl, she had withdrawn her attention for the time.

Unconscious of his bold regard, she was dreaming, her thoughts at loose-ends, her eyes studying the incalculable depths of blue-black night that swirled and eddied beyond the window-glass. The most shadowy of smiles touched her lips, the faintest shade of deepened color rested on her cheeks.... She was thinking of—him? As long as he dared, the young man, his heart in his own eyes, watched her greedily, taking a miser’s joy of her youthful beauty, striving with all his soul to analyze the enigma of that most inscrutable smile.

It baffled him. He could not say of what she thought; and told himself bitterly that it was not for him, a pauper, to presume a place in her meditations. He must not forget his circumstances, nor let her tolerance render him oblivious to his place, which must be a servant’s, not a lover’s.

The better to convince himself of this, he plunged desperately into a forlorn attempt to make head or tail of Belgian railway schedule, complicated as these of necessity are by the alternation from normal time notation to the abnormal system sanctioned by the government, and _vice-versa_, with every train that crosses a boundary line of the state.

So preoccupied did he become in this pursuit that he was subconsciously impressed that the girl had spoken twice, ere he could detach his interest from the exasperatingly inconclusive and incoherent cohorts of ranked figures.

“Can’t you find out anything?” Dorothy was asking.

“Precious little,” he grumbled. “I’d give my head for a Bradshaw! Only it wouldn’t be a fair exchange.... There seems to be an express for Bruges leaving the Gare du Nord, Brussels, at fifty-five minutes after twenty-three o’clock; and if I’m not mistaken, that’s the latest train out of Brussels and the earliest we can catch,... if we _can_ catch it. I’ve never been in Brussels, and Heaven only knows how long it would take us to cab it from the Gare du Midi to the Nord.”

In this statement, however, Mr. Kirkwood was fortunately mistaken; not only Heaven, it appeared, had cognizance of the distance between the two stations. While Kirkwood was still debating the question, with pessimistic tendencies, the friendly guard had occasion to pass through the coach; and, being tapped, yielded the desired information with entire tractability.

It would be a cab-ride of perhaps ten minutes. Monsieur, however, would serve himself well if he offered the driver an advance tip as an incentive to speedy driving. Why? Why because (here the guard consulted his watch; and Kirkwood very keenly regretted the loss of his own)—because this train, announced to arrive in Brussels some twenty minutes prior to the departure of that other, was already late. But yes—a matter of some ten minutes. Could that not be made up? Ah, Monsieur, but who should say?

The guard departed, doubtless with private views as to the madness of all English-speaking travelers.

“And there we are!” commented Kirkwood in factitious resignation. “If we’re obliged to stop overnight in Brussels, our friends will be on our back before we can get out in the morning, if they have to come by motor-car.” He reflected bitterly on the fact that with but a little more money at his disposal, he too could hire a motor-car and cry defiance to their persecutors. “However,” he amended, with rising spirits, “so much the better our chance of losing Mr. Hobbs. We must be ready to drop off the instant the train stops.”

He began to unfold another time-table, threatening again to lose himself completely; and was thrown into the utmost confusion by the touch of the girl’s hand, in appeal placed lightly on his own. And had she been observant, she might have seen a second time his knuckles whiten beneath the skin as he asserted his self-control—though this time not over his temper.

His eyes, dumbly eloquent, turned to meet hers. She was smiling.

“Please!” she iterated, with the least imperative pressure on his hand, pushing the folder aside.

“I beg pardon?” he muttered blankly.

“Is it quite necessary, now, to study those schedules? Haven’t you decided to try for the Bruges express?”

“Why yes, but—”

“Then please don’t leave me to my thoughts all the time, Mr. Kirkwood.” There was a tremor of laughter in her voice, but her eyes were grave and earnest. “I’m very weary of thinking round in a circle—and that,” she concluded, with a nervous little laugh, “is all I’ve had to do for days!”

“I’m afraid I’m very stupid,” he humored her. “This is the second time, you know, in the course of a very brief acquaintance, that you have found it necessary to remind me to talk to you.”

“Oh-h!” She brightened. “That night, at the Pless? But that was _ages_ ago!”

“It seems so,” he admitted.

“So much has happened!”

“Yes,” he assented vaguely.

She watched him, a little piqued by his absent-minded mood, for a moment; then, and not without a trace of malice: “Must I tell you again what to talk about?” she asked.

“Forgive me. I was thinking about, if not talking to, you.... I’ve been wondering just why it was that you left the _Alethea_ at Queensborough, to go on by steamer.”

And immediately he was sorry that his tactless query had swung the conversation to bear upon her father, the thought of whom could not but prove painful to her. But it was too late to mend matters; already her evanescent flush of amusement had given place to remembrance.

“It was on my father’s account,” she told him in a steady voice, but with averted eyes; “he is a very poor sailor, and the promise of a rough passage terrified him. I believe there was a difference of opinion about it, he disputing with Mr. Mulready and Captain Stryker. That was just after we had left the anchorage. They both insisted that it was safer to continue by the _Alethea_, but he wouldn’t listen to them, and in the end had his way. Captain Stryker ran the brigantine into the mouth of the Medway and put us ashore just in time to catch the steamer.”

“Were you sorry for the change?”

“I?” She shuddered slightly. “Hardly! I think I hated the ship from the moment I set foot on board her. It was a dreadful place; it was all night-marish, that night, but it seemed most terrible on the _Alethea_ with Captain Stryker and that abominable Mr. Hobbs. I think that my unhappiness had as much to do with my father’s insistence on the change, as anything. He ... he was very thoughtful, most of the time.”

Kirkwood shut his teeth on what he knew of the blackguard.

“I don’t know why,” she continued, wholly without affectation, “but I was wretched from the moment you left me in the cab, to wait while you went in to see Mrs. Hallam. And when we left you, at Bermondsey Old Stairs, after what you had said to me, I felt—I hardly know what to say—abandoned, in a way.”

“But you were with your father, in his care—”

“I know, but I was getting confused. Until then the excitement had kept me from thinking. But you made me think. I began to wonder, to question ... But what could I do?” She signified her helplessness with a quick and dainty movement of her hands. “He is my father; and I’m not yet of age, you know.”

“I thought so,” he confessed, troubled. “It’s very inconsiderate of you, you must admit.”

“I don’t understand...”

“Because of the legal complication. I’ve no doubt your father can ‘have the law on me’”—Kirkwood laughed uneasily—“for taking you from his protection.”

“Protection!” she echoed warmly. “If you call it that!”

“Kidnapping,” he said thoughtfully: “I presume that’d be the charge.”

“Oh!” She laughed the notion to scorn. “Besides, they must catch us first, mustn’t they?”

“Of course; and”—with a simulation of confidence sadly deceitful—“they shan’t, Mr. Hobbs to the contrary notwithstanding.”

“You make me share your confidence, against my better judgment.”

“I wish your better judgment would counsel you to share your confidence with me,” he caught her up. “If you would only tell me what it’s all about, as far as you know, I’d be better able to figure out what we ought to do.”

Briefly the girl sat silent, staring before her with sweet somber eyes. Then, “In the very beginning,” she told him with a conscious laugh,—“this sounds very story-bookish, I know—in the very beginning, George Burgoyne Calendar, an American, married his cousin a dozen times removed, and an Englishwoman, Alice Burgoyne Hallam.”

“Hallam!”

“Wait, please.” She sat up, bending forward and frowning down upon her interlacing, gloved fingers; she was finding it difficult to say what she must. Kirkwood, watching hungrily the fair drooping head, the flawless profile clear and radiant against the night-blackened window, saw hot signals of shame burning on her cheek and throat and forehead.

“But never mind,” he began awkwardly.

“No,” she told him with decision. “Please let me go on....” She continued, stumbling, trusting to his sympathy to bridge the gaps in her narrative. “My father ... There was trouble of some sort.... At all events, he disappeared when I was a baby. My mother ... died. I was brought up in the home of my great-uncle, Colonel George Burgoyne, of the Indian Army—retired. My mother had been his favorite niece, they say; I presume that was why he cared for me. I grew up in his home in Cornwall; it was my home, just as he was my father in everything but fact.

“A year ago he died, leaving me everything,—the town house in Frognall Street, his estate in Cornwall: everything was willed to me on condition that I must never live with my father, nor in any way contribute to his support. If I disobeyed, the entire estate without reserve was to go to his nearest of kin.... Colonel Burgoyne was unmarried and had no children.”

The girl paused, lifting to Kirkwood’s face her eyes, clear, fearless, truthful. “I never was given to understand that there was anybody who might have inherited, other than myself,” she declared.

“I see... Last week I received a letter, signed with my father’s name, begging me to appoint an interview with him in London. I did so,—guess how gladly! I was alone in the world, and he, my father, whom I had never thought to see.... We met at his hotel, the Pless. He wanted me to come and live with him,—said that he was growing old and lonely and needed a daughter’s love and care. He told me that he had made a fortune in America and was amply able to provide for us both. As for my inheritance, he persuaded me that it was by rights the property of Frederick Hallam, Mrs. Hallam’s son.”

“I have met the young gentleman,” interpolated Kirkwood.

“His name was new to me, but my father assured me that he was the next of kin mentioned in Colonel Burgoyne’s will, and convinced me that I had no real right to the property.... After all, he was my father; I agreed; I could not bear the thought of wronging anybody. I was to give up everything but my mother’s jewels. It seems,—my father said,—I don’t—I can’t believe it now—”

She choked on a little, dry sob. It was some time before she seemed able to continue.

“I was told that my great-uncle’s collection of jewels had been my mother’s property. He had in life a passion for collecting jewels, and it had been his whim to carry them with him, wherever he went. When he died in Frognall Street, they were in the safe by the head of his bed. I, in my grief, at first forgot them, and then afterwards carelessly put off removing them.

“To come back to my father: Night before last we were to call on Mrs. Hallam. It was to be our last night in England; we were to sail for the Continent on the private yacht of a friend of my father’s, the next morning.... This is what I was told—and believed, you understand.

“That night Mrs. Hallam was dining at another table at the Pless, it seems. I did not then know her. When leaving, she put a note on our table, by my father’s elbow. I was astonished beyond words.... He seemed much agitated, told me that he was called away on urgent business, a matter of life and death, and begged me to go alone to Frognall Street, get the jewels and meet him at Mrs. Hallam’s later.... I wasn’t altogether a fool, for I began dimly to suspect, then, that something was wrong; but I was a fool, for I consented to do as he desired. You understand—you know—?”

“I do, indeed,” replied Kirkwood grimly. “I understand a lot of things now that I didn’t five minutes ago. Please let me think...”

But the time he took for deliberation was short. He had hoped to find a way to spare her, by sparing Calendar; but momentarily he was becoming more impressed with the futility of dealing with her save in terms of candor, merciful though they might seem harsh.

“I must tell you,” he said, “that you have been outrageously misled, swindled and deceived. I have heard from your father’s own lips that Mrs. Hallam was to pay him two thousand pounds for keeping you out of England and losing you your inheritance. I’m inclined to question, furthermore, the assertion that these jewels were your mother’s. Frederick Hallam was the man who followed you into the Frognall Street house and attacked me on the stairs; Mrs. Hallam admits that he went there to get the jewels. But he didn’t want anybody to know it.”

“But that doesn’t prove—”

“Just a minute.” Rapidly and concisely Kirkwood recounted the events wherein he had played a part, subsequent to the adventure of Bermondsey Old Stairs. He was guilty of but one evasion; on one point only did he slur the truth: he conceived it his honorable duty to keep the girl in ignorance of his straitened circumstances; she was not to be distressed by knowledge of his distress, nor could he tolerate the suggestion of seeming to play for her sympathy. It was necessary, then, to invent a motive to excuse his return to 9, Frognall Street. I believe he chose to exaggerate the inquisitiveness of his nature and threw in for good measure a desire to recover a prized trinket of no particular moment, esteemed for its associations, and so forth. But whatever the fabrication, it passed muster; to the girl his motives seemed less important than the discoveries that resulted from them.

“I am afraid,” he concluded the summary of the confabulation he had overheard at the skylight of the Alethea’s cabin, “you’d best make up your mind that your father—”

“Yes,” whispered the girl huskily; and turned her face to the window, a quivering muscle in the firm young throat alone betraying her emotion.

“It’s a bad business,” he pursued relentlessly: “bad all round. Mulready, in your father’s pay, tries to have him arrested, the better to rob him. Mrs. Hallam, to secure your property for that precious pet, Freddie, connives at, if she doesn’t instigate, a kidnapping. Your father takes her money to deprive you of yours,—which could profit him nothing so long as you remained in lawful possession of it; and at the same time he conspires to rob, through you, the rightful owners—if they are rightful owners. And if they are, why does Freddie Hallam go like a thief in the night to secure property that’s his beyond dispute?... I don’t really think you owe your father any further consideration.”

He waited patiently. Eventually, “No-o,” the girl sobbed assent.

“It’s this way: Calendar, counting on your sparing him in the end, is going to hound us. He’s doing it now: there’s Hobbs in the next car, for proof. Until these jewels are returned, whether to Frognall Street or to young Hallam, we’re both in danger, both thieves in the sight of the law. And your father knows that, too. There’s no profit to be had by discounting the temper of these people; they’re as desperate a gang of swindlers as ever lived. They’ll have those jewels if they have to go as far as murder—”

“Mr. Kirkwood!” she deprecated, in horror.

He wagged his head stubbornly, ominously. “I’ve seen them in the raw. They’re hot on our trail now; ten to one, they’ll be on our backs before we can get across the Channel. Once in England we will be comparatively safe. Until then ... But I’m a brute—I’m frightening you!”

“You are, dreadfully,” she confessed in a tremulous voice.

“Forgive me. If you look at the dark side first, the other seems all the brighter. Please don’t worry; we’ll pull through with flying colors, or my name’s not Philip Kirkwood!”

“I have every faith in you,” she informed him, flawlessly sincere. “When I think of all you’ve done and dared for me, on the mere suspicion that I needed your help—”

“We’d best be getting ready,” he interrupted hastily. “Here’s Brussels.”

It was so. Lights, in little clusters and long, wheeling lines, were leaping out of the darkness and flashing back as the train rumbled through the suburbs of the little Paris of the North. Already the other passengers were bestirring themselves, gathering together wraps and hand luggage, and preparing for the journey’s end.

Rising, Kirkwood took down their two satchels from the overhead rack, and waited, in grim abstraction planning and counterplanning against the machinations in whose wiles they two had become so perilously entangled.

Primarily, there was Hobbs to be dealt with; no easy task, for Kirkwood dared not resort to violence nor in any way invite the attention of the authorities; and threats would be an idle waste of breath, in the case of that corrupt and malignant, little cockney, himself as keen as any needle, adept in all the artful resources of the underworld whence he had sprung, and further primed for action by that master rogue, Calendar.

The train was pulling slowly into the station when he reluctantly abandoned his latest unfeasible scheme for shaking off the little Englishman, and concluded that their salvation was only to be worked out through everlasting vigilance, incessant movement, and the favor of the blind goddess, Fortune. There was comfort of a sort in the reflection that the divinity of chance is at least blind; her favors are impartially distributed; the swing of the wheel of the world is not always to the advantage of the wrongdoer and the scamp.

He saw nothing of Hobbs as they alighted and hastened from the station, and hardly had time to waste looking for him, since their train had failed to make up the precious ten minutes. Consequently he dismissed the fellow from his thoughts until—with Brussels lingering in their memories a garish vision of brilliant streets and glowing cafés, glimpsed furtively from their cab windows during its wild dash over the broad mid-city, boulevards—at midnight they settled themselves in a carriage of the Bruges express. They were speeding along through the open country with a noisy clatter; then a minute’s investigation sufficed to discover the mate of the _Alethea_ serenely ensconced in the coach behind.

The little man seemed rarely complacent, and impudently greeted Kirkwood’s scowling visage, as the latter peered through the window in the coach-door, with a smirk and a waggish wave of his hand. The American by main strength of will-power mastered an impulse to enter and wring his neck, and returned to the girl, more disturbed than he cared to let her know.

There resulted from his review of the case but one plan for outwitting Mr. Hobbs, and that lay in trusting to his confidence that Kirkwood and Dorothy Calendar would proceed as far toward Ostend as the train would take them—namely, to the limit of the run, Bruges.

Thus inspired, Kirkwood took counsel with the girl, and when the train paused at Ghent, they made an unostentatious exit from their coach, finding themselves, when the express had rolled on into the west, upon a station platform in a foreign city at nine minutes past one o’clock in the morning—but at length without their shadow. Mr. Hobbs had gone on to Bruges.

Kirkwood sped his journeyings with an unspoken malediction, and collected himself to cope with a situation which was to prove hardly more happy for them than the espionage they had just eluded. The primal flush of triumph which had saturated the American’s humor on this signal success, proved but fictive and transitory when inquiry of the station attendants educed the information that the two earliest trains to be obtained were the 5:09 for Dunkerque and the 5:37 for Ostend. A minimum delay of four hours was to be endured in the face of many contingent features singularly unpleasant to contemplate. The station waiting-room was on the point of closing for the night, and Kirkwood, already alarmed by the rapid ebb of the money he had had of Calendar, dared not subject his finances to the strain of a night’s lodging at one of Ghent’s hotels. He found himself forced to be cruel to be kind to the girl, and Dorothy’s cheerful acquiescence to their sole alternative of tramping the street until daybreak did nothing to alleviate Kirkwood’s exasperation.

It was permitted them to occupy a bench outside the station. There the girl, her head pillowed on the treasure bag, napped uneasily, while Kirkwood plodded restlessly to and fro, up and down the platform, communing with the Shade of Care and addling his poor, weary wits with the problem of the future,—not so much his own as the future of the unhappy child for whose welfare he had assumed responsibility. Dark for both of them, in his understanding To-morrow loomed darkest for her.

Not until the gray, formless light of the dawn-dusk was wavering over the land, did he cease his perambulations. Then a gradual stir of life in the city streets, together with the appearance of a station porter or two, opening the waiting-rooms and preparing them against the traffic of the day, warned him that he must rouse his charge. He paused and stood over her, reluctant to disturb her rest, such as it was, his heart torn with compassion for her, his soul embittered by the cruel irony of their estate.

If what he understood were true, a king’s ransom was secreted within the cheap, imitation-leather satchel which served her for a pillow. But it availed her nothing for her comfort. If what he believed were true, she was absolute mistress of that treasure of jewels; yet that night she had been forced to sleep on a hard, uncushioned bench, in the open air, and this morning he must waken her to the life of a hunted thing. A week ago she had had at her command every luxury known to the civilized world; to-day she was friendless, but for his inefficient, worthless self, and in a strange land. A week ago,—had he known her then,—he had been free to tell her of his love, to offer her the protection of his name as well as his devotion; to-day he was an all but penniless vagabond, and there could be no dishonor deeper than to let her know the nature of his heart’s desire.