The Black Bag

by Louis Joseph Vance

Oddly enough, the shock of recognition brought him to his senses,—temporarily. He was even able to indulge himself in a quiet, sobering grin at his own folly. He passed the policeman with a nod and a cool word in response to the man's good-natured, "Good-night, sir." Number 9 was on the other side of the street; and he favored its blank and dreary elevation with a prolonged and frank stare—that profited him nothing, by the way. For a crazy notion popped incontinently into his head, and would not be cast forth.

At the corner he swerved and crossed, still possessed of his devil of inspiration. It would be unfair to him to say that he did not struggle to resist it, for he did, because it was fairly and egregiously asinine; yet struggling, his feet trod the path to which it tempted him.

"Why," he expostulated feebly, "I might's well turn back and beat that bobby over the head with my cane!..."

But at the moment his hand was in his change pocket, feeling over that same brass door-key which earlier he had been unable to account for, and he was informing himself how very easy it would have been for the sovereign purse to have dropped from his waistcoat pocket while he was sliding on his ear down the dark staircase. To recover it meant, at the least, shelter for the night, followed by a decent, comfortable and sustaining morning meal. Fortified by both he could redeem his luggage, change to clothing more suitable for daylight traveling, pawn his valuables, and enter into negotiations with the steamship company for permission to exchange his passage, with a sum to boot, for transportation on another liner. A most feasible project! A temptation all but irresistible!

But then—the risk.... Supposing (for the sake of argument) the customary night-watchman to have taken up a transient residence in Number 9; supposing the police to have entered with him and found the stunned man on the second floor: would the watchman not be vigilant for another nocturnal marauder? would not the police now, more than ever, be keeping a wary eye on that house of suspicious happenings?

Decidedly, to reënter it would be to incur a deadly risk. And yet, undoubtedly, beyond question! his sovereign purse was waiting for him somewhere on the second flight of stairs; while as his means of clandestine entry lay warm in his fingers—the key to the dark entry, which he had by force of habit pocketed after locking the door.

He came to the Hog-in-the-Pound. Its windows were dim with low-turned gas-lights. Down the covered alleyway, Quadrant Mews slept in a dusk but fitfully relieved by a lamp or two round which the friendly mist clung close and thick.

There would be none to see....

Skulking, throat swollen with fear, heart beating like a snare-drum, Kirkwood took his chance. Buttoning his overcoat collar up to his chin and cursing the fact that his hat must stand out like a chimney-pot on a detached house, he sped on tiptoe down the cobbled way and close beneath the house-walls of Quadrant Mews. But, half-way in, he stopped, confounded by an unforeseen difficulty. How was he to identify the narrow entry of Number 9, whose counterparts doubtless communicated with the mews from every residence on four sides of the city block?

The low inner tenements were yet high enough to hide the rear elevations of Frognall Street houses, and the mist was heavy besides; otherwise he had made shift to locate Number 9 by ticking off the dwellings from the corner. If he went on, hit or miss, the odds were anything-you-please to one that he would blunder into the servant's quarters of some inhabited house, and—be promptly and righteously sat upon by the service-staff, while the bobby was summoned.