The Black Bag Part 30

"Oh, indeed."

The captain let the implication pa.s.s, perhaps on the consideration that he could afford to ignore it; and said no more. The pause held for several minutes, Kirkwood having fallen into a mood of grave distraction. Finally Captain Stryker thoughtfully measured out a second drink, limited only by the capacity of the tumbler, engulfed it noisily, and got up.

"Guess I'll be turnin' in," he volunteered affably, yawning and stretching.

"I was about to ask you to do me a service...." began Kirkwood.

"Yes?"--with the rising inflection of mockery.

Kirkwood quietly produced his cigar-case, a gold match-box, gold card-case, and slipped a signet ring from his finger. "Will you buy these?" he asked.

"Or will you lend me five pounds and hold them as security?"

Stryker examined the collection with exaggerated interest strongly tinctured with mistrust. "I'll buy 'em," he offered eventually, looking up.

"That's kind of you--"

"Ow, they ain't much use to me, but Bill Stryker's allus willin' to accommodate a friend.... Four quid, you said?"

"Five...."

"They ain't wuth over four to me."

"Very well; make it four," Kirkwood a.s.sented contemptuously.

The captain swept the articles into one capacious fist, pivoted on one heel at the peril of his neck, and lumbered unsteadily off to his room. Pausing at the door he turned back in inquiry.

"I sye, 'ow did you come to get the impression there was a party named Almanack aboard this wessel?"

"Calendar--"

"'Ave it yer own wye," Stryker conceded gracefully.

"There isn't, is there?"

"You 'eard me."

"Then," said Kirkwood sweetly, "I'm sure you wouldn't be interested."

The captain pondered this at leisure. "You seemed pretty keen abaht seein'

'im," he remarked conclusively.

"I was."

"Seems to me I did 'ear the nyme sumw'eres afore." The captain appeared to wrestle with an obdurate memory. "Ow!" he triumphed. "I know. 'E was a chap up Manchester wye. Keeper in a loonatic asylum, 'e was. 'That yer party?"

"No," said Kirkwood wearily.

"I didn't know but mebbe 'twas. Excuse me. 'Thought as 'ow mebbe you'd escyped from 'is tender care, but, findin' the world cold, chynged yer mind and wanted to gow back."

Without waiting for a reply he lurched into his room and banged the door to. Kirkwood, divided between amus.e.m.e.nt and irritation, heard him stumbling about for some time; and then a hush fell, grateful enough while it lasted; which was not long. For no sooner did the captain sleep than a penetrating snore added itself unto the cacophony of waves and wind and tortured s.h.i.+p.

Kirkwood, comforted at first by the blessed tobacco, lapsed insensibly into dreary meditations. Coming after the swift movement and sustained excitement of the eighteen hours preceding his long sleep, the monotony of s.h.i.+pboard confinement seemed irksome to a maddening degree. There was absolutely nothing he could discover to occupy his mind. If there were books aboard, none was in evidence; beyond the report of Mr. Stranger's Manhattan night's entertainment the walls were devoid of reading matter; and a round of the picture gallery proved a diversion weariful enough when not purely revolting.

Wherefore Mr. Kirkwood stretched himself out on the transom and smoked and reviewed his adventures in detail and seriatim, and was by turns indignant, sore, anxious on his own account as well as on Dorothy's, and out of all patience with himself. Mystified he remained throughout, and the edge of his curiosity held as keen as ever, you may believe.

Consistently the affair presented itself to his fancy in the guise of a puzzle-picture, which, though you study it never so diligently, remains incomprehensible, until by chance you view it from an unexpected angle, when it reveals itself intelligibly. It had not yet been his good fortune to see it from the right viewpoint. To hold the metaphor, he walked endless circles round it, patiently seeking, but ever failing to find the proper perspective.... Each incident, however insignificant, in connection with it, he handled over and over, examining its every facet, bright or dull, as an expert might inspect a clever imitation of a diamond; and like a perfect imitation it defied a.n.a.lysis.

Of one or two things he was convinced; for one, that Stryker was a liar worthy of cla.s.sification with Calendar and Mrs. Hallam. Kirkwood had not only the testimony of his sense to a.s.sure him that the s.h.i.+p's name, _Alethea_ (not a common one, by the bye), had been mentioned by both Calendar and Mulready during their altercation on Bermondsey Old Stairs, but he had the confirmatory testimony of the sleepy waterman, William, who had directed Old Bob and Young William to the anchorage off Bow Creek. That there should have been two vessels of the same unusual name at one and the same time in the Port of London, was a coincidence too preposterous altogether to find place in his calculations.

His second impregnable conclusion was that those whom he sought had boarded the _Alethea_, but had left her before she tripped her anchor. That they were not stowed away aboard her seemed unquestionable. The brigantine was hardly large enough for the presence of three persons aboard her to be long kept a secret from an inquisitive fourth,--unless, indeed, they lay in hiding in the hold; for which, once the s.h.i.+p got under way, there could be scant excuse. And Kirkwood did not believe himself a person of sufficient importance in Calendar's eyes, to make that worthy endure the discomforts of a'tween-decks imprisonment throughout the voyage, even to escape recognition.

With every second, then, he was traveling farther from her to whose aid he had rushed, impelled by motives so hot-headed, so innately, chivalric, so unthinkingly gallant, so exceptionally idiotic!

Idiot! Kirkwood groaned with despair of his inability to fathom the abyss of his self-contempt. There seemed to be positively no excuse for _him_.

Stryker had befriended him indeed, had he permitted him to drown. Yet he had acted for the best, as he saw it. The fault lay in himself: an admirable fault, that of harboring and nurturing generous and compa.s.sionate instincts. But, of course, Kirkwood couldn't see it that way.

"What else could I do?" he defended himself against the indictment of common sense. "I couldn't leave her to the mercies of that set of rogues!... And Heaven knows I was given every reason to believe she would be aboard this s.h.i.+p! Why, she herself told me that she was sailing ...!"

Heaven knew, too, that this folly of his had cost him a pretty penny, first and last. His watch was gone beyond recovery, his homeward pa.s.sage forfeited; he no longer harbored illusions as to the steams.h.i.+p company presenting him with another berth in lieu of that called for by that water-soaked slip of paper then in his pocket--courtesy of Stryker. He had sold for a pittance, a t.i.the of its value, his personal jewelry, and had spent every penny he could call his own. With the money Stryker was to give him he would be able to get back to London and his third-rate hostelry, but not with enough over to pay that one week's room-rent, or ...

"Oh, the devil!" he groaned, head in hands.

The future loomed wrapped in unspeakable darkness, lightened by no least ray of hope. It had been bad enough to lose a comfortable living through a gigantic convulsion of Nature; but to think that he had lost all else through his own egregious folly, to find himself reduced to the kennels--!

So Care found him again in those weary hours,--came and sat by his side, slipping a grisly hand in his and tightening its grip until he could have cried out with the torment of it; the while whispering insidiously subtile, evil things in his ear. And he had not even Hope to comfort him; at any previous stage he had been able to distil a sort of bitter-sweet satisfaction from the thought that he was suffering for the love of his life. But now--now Dorothy was lost, gone like the glamour of Romance in the searching light of day.

Stryker, emerging from his room for breakfast, found the pa.s.senger with a hostile look in his eye and a jaw set in ugly fas.h.i.+on. His eyes, too, were the abiding-place of smoldering devils; and the captain, recognizing them, considerately forbore to stir them up with any untimely pleasantries. To be sure, he was autocrat in his own s.h.i.+p, and Kirkwood's standing aboard was _nil_; but then there was just enough yellow in the complexion of Stryker's soul to incline him to sidestep trouble whenever feasible. And besides, he entertained dark suspicions of his guest--suspicions he scarce dared voice even to his inmost heart.

The morning meal, therefore, pa.s.sed off in constrained silence. The captain ate voraciously and vociferously, pushed back his chair, and went on deck to relieve the mate. The latter, a stunted little c.o.c.kney with a wizened countenance and a mind as foul as his tongue, got small change of his attempts to engage the pa.s.senger in conversation on topics that he considered fit for discussion. After the sixth or eighth snubbing he rose in dudgeon, discharged a poisonous bit of insolence, and retired to his berth, leaving Kirkwood to finish his breakfast in peace; which the latter did literally, to the last visible sc.r.a.p of food and the ultimate drop of coffee, poor as both were in quality.

To the tune of a moderating wind, the morning wearied away. Kirkwood went on deck once, for distraction from the intolerable monotony of it all, got a sound drenching of spray, with a glimpse of a dark line on the eastern horizon, which he understood to be the low littoral of Holland, and was glad to dodge below once more and dry himself.

He had the pleasure of the mate's company at dinner, the captain remaining on deck until Hobbs had finished and gone up to relieve him; and by that time Kirkwood likewise was through.

Stryker blew down with a bl.u.s.tery show of cheer. "Well, well, my little man!" (It happened that he topped Kirkwood's stature by at least five inches.) "Enj'yin' yer sea trip?"

"About as much as you'd expect," snapped Kirkwood.

"Ow?" The captain began to shovel food into his face. (The author regrets he has at his command no more delicate expression that is literal and ill.u.s.trative.) Kirkwood watched him, fascinated with suspense; it seemed impossible that the man could continue so to employ his knife without cutting his throat from the inside. But years of such manipulation had made him expert, and his guest, keenly disappointed, at length ceased to hope.

Between gobbles Stryker eyed him furtively.

"'Treat you all right?" he demanded abruptly.

Kirkwood started out of a brown study. "What? Who? Why, I suppose I ought to be--indeed, I _am_ grateful," he a.s.serted. "Certainly you saved my life, and--"

"Ow, I don't mean that." Stryker gathered the imputation into his paw and flung it disdainfully to the four winds of Heaven. "Bless yer 'art, you're welcome; I wouldn't let no dorg drownd, 'f I could 'elp it. No," he declared, "nor a loonatic, neither."

He thrust his plate away and s.h.i.+fted sidewise in his chair. "I 'uz just wonderin'," he pursued, picking his teeth meditatively with a pen-knife, "'ow they feeds you in them _as_-ylums. 'Avin' never been inside one, myself, it's on'y natural I'd be cur'us.... There was one of them inst.i.tootions near where I was borned--Birming'am, that is. I used to see the loonies playin' in the grounds. I remember _just_ as well!... One of 'em and me struck up quite an acquaintance--"