Anthony Trent, Master Criminal
by Wyndham Martyn · English · Gutenberg #40909 · 472,981 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Anthony Trent, Master Criminal
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Anthony Trent, Master Criminal
Author: Wyndham Martyn
Release date: October 1, 2012 [eBook #40909]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40909
Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTHONY TRENT, MASTER CRIMINAL ***
ANTHONY TRENT, MASTER CRIMINAL
ANTHONY TRENT,
MASTER CRIMINAL
BY
WYNDHAM MARTYN
NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
MOFFAT YARD & COMPANY
TO
THOSE OLD AND TRIED FRIENDS OF MINE
LILY AND ERNEST CARR
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE FIRST STEP 1
II ANTHONY TRENT TALKS ON CRIME 14
III THE DAY OF TEMPTATION 24
IV BEGINNING THE GAME 36
V ANTHONY PULLS UP STAKES 45
VI FOOLING SHYLOCK DRUMMOND 55
VII THE DANGER OF SENTIMENT 68
VIII WHEN A WOMAN SMILED 82
IX “THE COUNTESS” 94
X ANTHONY TRENT SAVES A PIANO 100
XI ESPIONAGE AT CLOSE RANGE 116
XII THE SINN FEIN PLOT 126
XIII ANTHONY TRENT INTERESTS
HIMSELF IN POLICE GOSSIP 135
XIV AMBULANCES AND DIAMONDS 144
XV THE BARON LENDS A HAND 156
XVI THE MOUNT AUBYN RUBY 162
XVII TRENT TAKES A HOLIDAY 172
XVIII THE GREAT BLACK BIRD 180
XIX TRENT ACQUIRES A HOME 192
XX “WANTED--AN EMERALD” 196
XXI THE MURDER OF ANDREW APTHORPE 208
XXII A THIEF TO CATCH A THIEF 219
XXIII THE SECRET OF THE BLACK BAG 227
XXIV DEVLIN’S PROMISE 232
XXV ON THE TRAIL OF “THE COUNTESS” 236
XXVI ANTHONY TRENT--“PAYING GUEST” 251
XXVII MRS. KINNEY MAKES A CONFESSION 267
XXVIII THE GERMAN SPY MERCHANT 284
XXIX MRS. KINNEY INTERVENES 297
XXX “PRIVATE TRENT” 301
XXXI DEVLIN’S REVENGE 309
ANTHONY TRENT
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST STEP
AUSTIN the butler gave his evidence in a straightforward fashion. He was
a man slightly below middle height, inclined to portliness, but bore
himself with the dignity of one who had been likened to an archbishop.
Although he had been examined by a number of minor officials, hectored
by them, threatened or cajoled as they interpreted their duty, his
testimony remained the same. And when he hoped this tedious business was
all over, he was brought before Inspector McWalsh and compelled to begin
all over again. It was McWalsh’s theory that a man may be startled into
telling the truth that will convict him. He had a habit of leaning
forward, chin thrust out, great fists clenched, and hurling accusations
at suspects.
He disliked Austin at sight. The feeling was not wholly of national
origin. McWalsh liked witnesses, no less than criminals, to exhibit some
indications of the terrors his name had inspired to the guilty. Austin
gazed about him as though the surroundings were not to his taste. His
attitude was one of deferential boredom. He recognized the inspector as
one representing justly constituted authority to be accepted with
respect in everything but a social sense.
Inspector McWalsh permitted himself to make jocose remarks as to
Austin’s personal appearance. McWalsh passed for a wit among his
inferiors.
“At half past twelve on Tuesday I came into the library,” the butler
repeated patiently, “and asked Mr. Warren if he wanted anything before I
went to bed.”
“What did he say?” demanded the inspector.
“That he did not want anything and that I could go to bed.”
“And you did?”
“Naturally,” the butler returned.
“What duties have you the last thing before retiring?”
“I see that the doors and windows are fastened.”
The inspector sneered. The small black eyes set in his heavy red face
regarded the smaller man malevolently.
“And you did it so damn well that within an hour or so, ten thousand
dollars’ worth of valuables was walked off with by a crook! How do you
account for that?”
“I don’t try to,” the butler answered suavely, “that’s for you gentlemen
of the police. I have my duties and I attend to them as my testimonials
show. I don’t presume to give you advice but I should say it was because
the crook was cleverer than your men.”
“Don’t get funny,” snapped McWalsh. He had on the table before him
Austin’s modest life history which consisted mainly in terms of service
to wealthy families in England and the United States. These proved him
to be efficient and trustworthy. “I want answers to my questions and not
comments from you.”
Austin’s manner nettled him. It was that slightly superior air, the
servants’ mark of contempt. And never before had the inspector been
referred to as “a gentleman of the police;” he suspected a slight.
“Let’s get this thing straight,” he went on. “You went to bed when your
services were no longer required. Your employer said to you, ‘You can go
to bed, Austin, I don’t want anything,’ so you locked up and retired.
You didn’t know anything about the burglary until half past six o’clock
on Wednesday morning--this morning---- You aroused your employer who
sent for the police. That’s correct?”
“Absolutely,” Austin returned. He was, plainly, not much interested.
“And you still stick to it that Mr. Warren made that remark?”
Austin looked at the inspector quickly. His bored manner was gone.
“Yes,” he said deliberately. “To the best of my knowledge those were his
words. I may have made a mistake in the phrasing but that is what he
meant.”
“What’s the good of your coming here and lying to me?” The inspector
spoke in an aggrieved tone.
“I was brought here against my will,” Austin reminded him, “and I have
not lied, although your manner has been most offensive. You see, sir,
I’m accustomed to gentlefolk.”
McWalsh motioned him to be silent.
“That’ll do,” he commanded, “I’m not interested in what you think. Now
answer this carefully. What clothes was Mr. Warren wearing?”
“Evening dress,” said the butler, “but a claret-colored velvet smoking
jacket instead of a black coat.”
“How was he looking?”
“Do you mean in what direction?”
“You know I don’t. I mean was he looking as usual? Was there anything
unusual in his look?”
“Nothing that I noticed,” Austin told him, “but then his back was to me
so I am not competent to judge.”
“When you speak to any one don’t you go up and look ’em in the face like
a man same as I’m talking and looking at you?”
Austin permitted himself to smile.
“Do you suggest I should look at Mr. Warren as you are looking at me?
Pardon me, sir, but I should lose my place if I did.”
McWalsh flushed a darker red.
“Why didn’t you look at him in your own way then?”
“It’s very clear,” Austin answered with dignity, “that you know very
little of the ways of an establishment like ours. I stood at the door as
I usually do, asked a question I have done hundreds of times and
received the same answer I do as a rule. If I’d known I was to have to
answer all these questions I might have recollected more about it.”
“What was Mr. Warren doing?”
“Reading a paper and smoking.”
“He was alone?”
“Yes.”
“And all the other servants had gone to bed?”
“Yes.”
“You heard no unusual sounds that night?”
“If I had I should have investigated them.”
“No doubt,” sneered the other, “you look like a man who would enjoy
running into a crook with a gun.”
“I should not enjoy it,” Austin returned seriously.
Inspector McWalsh beckoned to one of his inferiors.
“Keep this man outside till I send for him and see he don’t speak to his
boss who’s waiting. Send Mr. Warren right in.”
Conington Warren, one of the most popular men in society, member of the
desirable clubs, millionaire owner of thoroughbreds, came briskly in. He
was now about fifty, handsome still, but his florid face was marked by
the convivial years. Inspector McWalsh had long followed the Warren
colors famous on the big race courses. His manner showed his respect for
the owner of his favorite stable.
“I asked you to come here,” he began, “because you told my secretary
over the phone that you had some new light on this burglary. So far it
seems just an ordinary case without any unusual angles.”
“It’s not as ordinary as you think,” said Conington Warren. He offered
McWalsh one of his famous cigars. “Incidentally it does not show me up
very favorably as I’m bound to admit.”
McWalsh regarded his cigar reverently. Warren smoked nothing but these
superb things. What a man! What a man!
“I can’t believe that, Mr. Warren,” he returned.
“Are you interested in the thoroughbreds, McWalsh?”
“Am I?” cried the other enthusiastically. “Why when I couldn’t spend a
few hours at old Sheepshead Bay I nearly resigned. Why, Mr. Warren, I
made enough on Conington when he won the Brooklyn Handicap to pay the
mortgage off on my home!”
“Then you’ll understand,” the sportsman said graciously. “It’s like
this. Last year I bought a number of yearlings at the Newmarket sales in
England. There’s one of them--a chestnut colt named Saint Beau--who did
a most remarkable trial a day or two since. In confidence, inspector, it
was better than Conington’s best. Make a note of that but keep it under
your hat.”
“I surely will, sir,” cried the ecstatic McWalsh.
“When I heard the time of the trial I gave a little dinner to a number
of good pals at Voisin’s.”
The names he mentioned were all of them prominently known in the
fashionable world of sport.
“We had more champagne than was good for us and when the dinner was over
we all went to Reggie Camplyn’s rooms where he invented the Saint Beau
cocktail. I give you my word, inspector, the thing has a thoro’bred kick
to it. It’s one of those damned insidious cocktails wrapped up in cream
to make you think it’s innocent. After I’d had a few I said to Camplyn,
‘You’ve made me what I am to-night; I insist on sleeping here.”
“But you didn’t!” cried McWalsh.
“Until four in the morning. The Saint Beau cocktail made me so ill at
four that I got up and walked down to my house.”
“What time did you get there?”
“Exactly at five. I felt the need of the cool air, so I took a long walk
first.”
“Then at half past twelve you were at----”
“Voisin’s as a score of people can prove. I had a table in the balcony
and saw all the people I ever knew it seemed to me.”
“But this morning you told the officers who made an investigation of
the robbery a totally different story. You corroborated your butler’s
evidence that you were at home at half past twelve and told him to go to
bed because you didn’t want anything else. How do you account for that?”
The inspector was troubled. His only consolation was that he would have
another session soon with the supercilious Austin. He licked his lips at
the thought. But he did not wish to involve the horseman in any
difficulties if he could avoid it.
Conington Warren laughed easily.
“You know how it is, inspector. You can understand that sometimes a man
suddenly waked out of heavy sleep can forget what happened the night
before for the time being. That’s what happened with me. I clean forgot
the dinner, Camplyn’s Saint Beau cocktail, everything. I only knew I had
the devil of a head. I always rely on Austin.”
“When did you remember?” McWalsh demanded.
“When Camplyn came in to see me and ask for the ingredients of the
cocktail which he claims I invented. Then I recollected everything and
telephoned to you.”
“I knew that damned fellow was lying,” McWalsh cried. “He thought he was
clever. He’ll find out just how smart he is! Tell me, Mr. Warren, what
did he want to put up that fiction for?”
Warren put a hot hand to a head which still ached.
“I can’t imagine,” he answered. “I’ve never found him out in a lie yet.
He’s too damn conceited to descend to one. I don’t think you should
suspect Austin.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Warren, but I’ve got to. He lied to you and he lied to
me and--ten thousand dollars’ worth of stuff was stolen. He’s in the
outer room now. I’ll have him brought in.”
Austin entered with his precise and measured tread and bowed with
respectful affection to his employer. He liked Conington Warren better
than any American with whom he had taken service. The hearty,
horse-loving type was one which appealed to Austin. He had several times
been obliged to throw up lucrative jobs because employers persisted in
treating him as an equal.
“This is a bad mix-up,” his master began. “The inspector seems to think
you have been deceiving him.”
“He has and he knows it,” cried McWalsh.
“He’s inclined to be hasty, sir,” said Austin tolerantly.
“See here,” snapped the inspector, “you say you found Mr. Warren in his
library at half past twelve. Did you hear him enter the house?”
“No,” the butler returned, “he has his key.”
“The thing we want to clear up,” interrupted Mr. Warren in a kindly
tone, “is simply this. What did I say to you when you spoke to me?”
Austin looked uncomfortable.
“It was a gesture, sir, rather than a word. You waved your arm and I
knew what you meant.”
“You are one prize liar!” roared the inspector. “You said something
quite different when I asked you.”
“I don’t see that it matters much,” Austin returned acidly. “On Monday
night Mr. Warren may have said for me to go to bed. On Tuesday he may
have waved his hand impatient like. On Wednesday he may have asked for
cigars or the evening papers. I remember only that on this occasion I
was not asked for anything.” He turned to his employer, “I should like
to remind you, sir, that we are giving a dinner party to-night and I
ought to be seeing after it now. Can I go, sir?”
“You cannot,” cried Inspector McWalsh, “you’re under arrest!”
“I told you he was hasty, sir,” said Austin without emotion. “What for
may I ask?”
“Let me answer him please, inspector,” begged Conington Warren. “You
told the police that you saw me sitting in my library. Are you prepared
to swear to that, Austin?”
“Certainly, sir,” said the man. “You were in the big turkish rocker,
smoking one of the cigars you are smoking now and reading the Sporting
Times.”
“I’d give a thousand dollars to know who that was!” Warren commented.
“It wasn’t I at all. I was dining at Voisin’s at that hour.”
For the first time Austin was acutely disturbed.
“I don’t understand,” he stammered. “It looked like you, sir, it did
indeed.”
“And if you’d only gone up like a man and looked in his face you’d have
seen the burglar,” McWalsh said scowling.
Austin looked at the speaker coldly.
“It is not my business to suspect my employer of being a crook. If it’s
crime to be deceived then I’m guilty. I admit I didn’t look very
closely. I was sleepy and wanting to get to bed, but I did notice that
whoever it was wore a claret colored velvet smoking jacket.”
“I’ve a list here,” said McWalsh, “given my men by the footman of the
people who called at Mr. Warren’s house yesterday. Look it over and see
if you can supplement it.”
“There was one other visitor,” Austin said slowly, “an intimate friend
of Mr. Warren’s, but I don’t know his name. I didn’t admit him.”
“That’s curious,” said his employer. “I thought you knew every one who
was intimate enough to come to my home. What was he like?”
“I didn’t see him full face,” the other admitted, “but he was tall,
about your height, but dark in coloring with a rather large nose. It
struck me he was a trifle in liquor if I may say so.”
“I don’t remember any one like that,” Warren asserted.
“The gentleman,” said Austin anxious to establish his point, “who bet
you ten thousand dollars that his filly could beat your Saint Beau at
five furlongs.”
“This is all damned nonsense,” returned Conington Warren a little
crossly, “I’m in possession of my full senses now at all events. I made
no such wager.”
“I told you he was a crook, Mr. Warren,” cried McWalsh gleefully. “See
what he’s trying to put over on you now!”
“Surely, sir,” said the butler anxiously, “you remember asking a
gentleman to come into your dressing room?”
“You’re crazy,” his master declared, “I asked nobody. Why should I?”
“He was standing just inside the room as I passed by. He was very merry.
He was calling you ‘Connie’ like only your very intimate friends do.”
“And what was I saying?” Warren returned, impressed with the earnestness
of one in whom he believed.
“I didn’t listen, sir,” the butler answered. “I was just passing along
the hall.”
“Did you hear Mr. Warren’s voice?” McWalsh demanded suddenly.
Austin reflected.
“I wouldn’t swear to it,” he decided.
“What time was it?” Warren asked.
“A little after ten,” said Austin.
“I left the house at eight, so you are not likely to have heard me. I
was at Voisin’s from half past eight until nearly one. When did you
first see this supposed friend?”
“I was going up the main stairway as he was about to come down toward
me. Almost directly I saw him--and I didn’t at the time think he saw
me--he turned back as if you had called him from your room. He said,
‘What is it, Connie?’ then he walked down the corridor and stood half
way in your room talking to you as I supposed. He looked like a
gentleman who might belong to your clubs, sir, and spoke like one. What
was I to think?”
“I’m not blaming you,” said Conington Warren. “I’m as puzzled as you
are. Didn’t Yogotama see him when he went to my room to get my smoking
jacket which you say he wore? What was Yogotama doing to allow that sort
of thing?”
“You forget, sir,” explained Austin, “that Yogotama wasn’t there.”
“Why wasn’t he?”
“Directly he got your note he went off to the camp.”
“This gets worse and worse,” Warren asserted. “I sent him no note.”
“He got one in your writing apparently written on the stationery of the
Knickerbocker Club. I saw it. You told him to go instantly to your camp
and prepare it for immediate occupancy. He was to take Evans and one of
the touring cars. He got the note about half past eight.”
“Just after you’d left the house,” McWalsh commented.
“It didn’t take Yogotama a half hour to prepare,” added Austin.
“What do you make of it, inspector?” Warren demanded.
“A clever crook, that’s all,” said the other, “but he can’t pull
anything like that in this town and get away with it.”
Austin made a polite gesture implying doubt. It incensed the official.
“You don’t think so, eh?”
“Not from what I’ve seen of your methods. I’ve no doubt you can deal
with the common ruck of criminals, but this man is different. It may be
easy enough for a man to deceive you people by pretending to be a
gentleman but we can see through them. Frankly,” said Austin growing
bolder, “I don’t think you gentlemen of the police have the native wit
for the higher kind of work.”
Warren looked from one to the other of them. This was a new and
rebellious Austin, a man chafing under a personal grievance, a
belligerent butler.
“You mustn’t speak like that to Inspector McWalsh,” he commanded. “He is
doing his duty.”
“That may be sir,” Austin remarked, “but how would you like to be called
‘Little Lancelot from Lunnon’?”
“You look it,” McWalsh said roughly. “Anyway I’ve no time to argue with
house servants. What you’ve got to do is to look through our collection
of pictures and see if you can identify any of ’em with the man you say
you saw.”
Austin surveyed the faces with open aversion.
“He’s not here,” said Austin decisively. “He was not this criminal type
at all. I tell you I mistook him for a member of Mr. Warren’s clubs, the
kind of gentleman who dines at the house. These,” and he pointed
derisively to the pillories of crime. “You wouldn’t be likely to see any
of these at our house. They are just common.”
McWalsh sneered.
“I see. Look more like policemen I suppose?”
Austin smiled blandly.
“The very thing that was in my mind.”
CHAPTER II
ANTHONY TRENT TALKS ON CRIME
ANTHONY TRENTwas working his typewriter at top speed when there came a
sudden, peremptory knocking at his door.
“Lord!” he grumbled, rising, “it must be old Lund to say I’m keeping him
awake.”
He threw open his door to find a small, choleric and elderly man clad in
a faded dressing gown. It was a man with a just grievance and a desire
to express it.
“This is no time to hammer on your typewriter,” said Mr. Lund fiercely.
“This is a boarding house and not a private residence. Do you realize
that you generally begin work at midnight?”
“Come in,” said Anthony Trent genially. With friendly force he dragged
the smaller man along and placed him in a morris chair. “Come in and
give me your opinion of the kind of cigar smoked by the president of the
publishing house for whose magazines I work noisily at midnight.”
Mr. Lund found himself a few seconds later sitting by an open window, an
excellent cigar between his teeth, and the lights of New York spread
before him. And he found his petulance vanishing. He wondered why it was
that although he had before this come raging to Anthony Trent’s door, he
always suffered himself to be talked out of his ill humors. It was
something magnetic and engaging that surrounded this young writer of
short stories.
“I can’t smoke a cigar when I’m working,” said Trent, lighting a pipe.
“Surely,” said Mr. Lund, not willing so soon to be robbed of his
grievance, “you choose the wrong hours to work. Mrs. Clarke says you
hardly ever touch your typewriter till late.”
“That’s because you don’t appreciate the kind of story I write,” Anthony
Trent told him. “If I wrote the conventional story of love or matrimony
I could work so many hours a day and begin at nine like any business
man. But I don’t. I begin to write just when the world I write of begins
to live. My men and women are waking into life now, just when the other
folks are climbing into their suburban beds.”
“I understood you wrote detective stories,” Mr. Lund remarked. His
grievances were vanishing. His opinion of the president of Trent’s
magazine was a high one.
“Crook stories,” Anthony Trent confided. “Not the professional doings of
thoughtless thugs. They don’t interest me a tinker’s curse. I like
subtlety in crime. I could take you now into the great restaurants on
Broadway or Fifth Avenue and point out to you some of the kings of
crime--men who are clever enough to protect themselves from the police.
Men who play the game as a good chess player does against a poorer one,
with the certainty of being a move ahead.”
Mr. Lund conjured up a vision of such a restaurant peopled by such a
festive crowd. He felt in that moment that an early manhood spent in
Somerville had perhaps robbed him of a chance to live.
“They all get caught sooner or later,” asserted the little man in the
morris chair.
“Because they get careless or because they trust another. If you want to
be a successful crook, Mr. Lund, you’ll have to map out your plan of
life as carefully as an athlete trains for a specific event. Now if you
went in for crime you’d have to examine your weaknesses.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Lund a little huffily, “I am not going in for a
life of crime. I am perfectly content with my own line.” This, with
unconscious sarcasm for Mr. Lund, pursued what he always told the
borders was “the advertising.”
“There are degrees in crime I admit,” said Anthony Trent, “but I am
perfectly serious in what I say. The ordinary crook has a low mental
capacity. He generally gets caught in the end as all such clumsy asses
should. The really big man in crime often gets caught because he is not
aware of his weaknesses. Drink often brings out an incautious boasting
side of a man. If you are going in for crime, Mr. Lund, cut out drink I
beg of you.”
“I do not need your advice,” Mr. Lund returned with some dignity. “I
have tasted rum once only in my life.”
Trent looked at him interested.
“It would probably make you want to fight,” he said.
“I don’t care to think of it,” said Mr. Lund.
“And the curious part of it is,” mused Trent, “that in the sort of crowd
these high class crooks mix with it is most unusual not to drink, and
the man who doesn’t is almost always under suspicion. The great thing is
to be able to take your share and stop before the danger mark is
reached. Did you ever hear of Captain Despard?”
“I think not,” Lund answered.
“A boyhood idol of mine,” Anthony Trent admitted. “One of the few
gentleman crooks. Most of the so-called gentlemen criminals have been
anything but gentlemen born. Despard was. I was in Devonshire on my last
trip to the other side and I made a pilgrimage to the place where he was
born. Funny to think that a man brought up in one of the ‘stately homes
of England, how beautiful they stand,’ should come to what he was.”
“Woman, I suppose,” said Lund, as one man of the world to another.
“Not in the beginning,” Anthony Trent answered. “He was a cavalry
officer in India--Kipling type you know--and had a craze for precious
stones. Began to collect them honestly enough and found his pay and
private fortune insufficient. He got kicked out of his regiment anyway
and went to Cape Town. One night a very large diamond was stolen from a
bedroom of the Mount Nelson hotel and he was suspected. They couldn’t
prove anything, but he came over here to New York and sold it, under
another name, and with a different history, to one of the Pierpoints.
The trouble with Captain Despard was that he used to drink heavily when
he had pulled a big thing off. While he was planning a _coup_ he was
temperate and he never touched a drop while he was working.”
“Started to boast, I suppose?” Lund suggested.
“No,” said Anthony Trent. “Not that sort at all. He lived at a pretty
fair sort of club here in the forties and was well enough liked until
the drink was in him. It was then that he began to think of his former
mode of life and the kind he was now living. He used to think the other
members were trying to slight him or avoid him. He laboriously picked
quarrels with some of them. He beat up one of them in a fist fight in
the club billiard room. This fellow brooded over his licking for a long
time and then with another man, also inflamed with cocktails, went up to
Despard’s room to beat him up. Despard was out, so they broke his
furniture. They found that the legs of chairs and tables had been
hollowed so as to conceal what Despard stole. It was in one of the
chairs that they found the Crediton pearls which had been missing for a
year. They waited for him and he was sent to Sing Sing but escaped. He
shot a man later in Denver and was executed. He might have been living
comfortably but for getting suspicious when he had been drinking.”
“You must have studied this thing deeply,” Lund commented.
“I have,” Anthony Trent admitted; “I know the histories of most of the
great criminals and their crimes. The police do too, but I know more
than they. I make a study of the man as well as his crime. I find vanity
at the root of many failures.”
“_Cherchez la femme_,” Mr. Lund insisted.
“Not that sort of vanity,” Anthony Trent corrected. “I mean the sheer
love to boast about one’s abilities when other men are boasting of
theirs. There was a man called Paul Vierick, by profession a second
story man. He was short, stout and a great consumer of beer and in his
idle hours fond of bowling. He was staying in Stony Creek, Connecticut,
one summer, when a tennis ball was hit up high and lodged in a gutter
pipe on the roof. Vierick told the young man who had hit it there how to
get it. It was so dangerous looking a climb that the lad refused. Some
of the guests suggested in fun that Vierick should try. They made him
mad. He thought they were laughing at his two hundred pound look. They
were not to know that a more expert porch climber didn’t exist than this
man who had been a professional trapeze man in a circus. They say he ran
up the side of that house like a monkey. Directly he had done it and
people began talking he knew he’d been unwise. He had been posing as a
retired dentist and here he was running up walls like the count in
Dracula. He moved away and presently denied the story so vehemently that
an intelligent young lawyer investigated him and he is now up the
river.”
“That’s an interesting study,” Mr. Lund commented. He was thoroughly
taken up with the subject. “Do you know any more instances like that?”
“I know hundreds,” Anthony Trent returned smiling. “I could keep on all
night. Your town of Somerville produced Blodgett the Strangler. You must
have heard of him?”
“I was at school with him,” Lund said almost excitedly. It was a secret
he had buried in his breast for years. Now it seemed to admit him to
something of a kinship with Anthony Trent. “He was always chasing after
women.”
“That wasn’t the thing which got him. It was the desire to set right a
Harvard professor of anatomy on the subject of strangulation. Blodgett
had his own theories. You may remember he strangled his stepfather when
he was only fifteen.”
“He nearly strangled me once,” Mr. Lund exclaimed. “He would have done
if I hadn’t had sufficient presence of mind to bite him in the thumb.”
“Good for you,” said the other heartily. “You’ll find the history of
crime is full of the little mistakes that take the cleverest of them to
the chair. And yet,” he mused, “it’s a great life. One man pitting his
courage and knowledge against all the forces organized by society to
stamp him out. You’ve got to be above the average in almost every
quality to succeed if you work alone.”
Mr. Lund felt a trifle uncomfortable. The bright laughing face that had
been Anthony Trent to him had given place to a sterner cast of
countenance. The new Trent reminded him of a hawk. There was suddenly
brought to the rather timid and elderly man the impression of ruthless
strength and tireless energy. He had been a score of times in Anthony
Trent’s room and had always found him amusing and light hearted. Never
until to-night had they touched upon crime. The New York over which Mr.
Lund gazed from the seat by the window no longer seemed a friendly city.
Crime and violence lurked in its every corner, he reflected.
Mr. Lund was annoyed with himself for feeling nervous. To brace up his
courage he reverted to his former grievance. The sustaining cigar had
long ceased to give comfort.
“I must protest at being waked up night after night by your typewriting
machine. Everybody seems to be in bed and asleep but you. I must have my
eight hours, Mr. Trent.”
Anthony Trent came to his side.
“Everybody asleep?” he gibed. “Why, man, the shadows are alive if you’ll
only look into them. And as to the night, it is never quiet. A myriad
strange sounds are blended into this stillness you call night.” His
voice sank to a whisper and he took the discomfited Lund’s arm. “Can you
see a woman standing there in the shadow of that tree?”
“It might be a woman,” Lund admitted guardedly.
“It is,” he was told; “she followed not ten yards behind you as you came
from the El. She’s been waiting for a man and he ought to be by in a few
minutes now. She’s known in every rogues’ gallery in the world. Scotland
Yard knows her as Gipsey Lee, and if ever a woman deserved the chair she
does.”
“Not murder?” Lund hazarded timidly. He shivered. “It’s a little cold by
the window.”
“Don’t move,” Anthony commanded. “You may see a tragedy unroll itself
before your eyes in a little while. She’s waiting for a banker named
Pereira who looted Costa Rica. He’s a big, heavy man.”
“He’s coming now,” Lund whispered. “I don’t like this at all, Mr.
Trent.”
“He won’t either,” muttered the other.
Unable to move Mr. Lund watched a tall man come toward the shadows which
hid Gipsey Lee.
“We ought to warn him,” Mr. Lund protested.
“Not on your life,” he was told. “This time it is punishment, not
murder. She saved his life and he deserted her. Pereira’s pretending to
be drunk. I wonder why. He dare not touch a drop because he has Bright’s
disease in the last stages.”
A minute later Mr. Lund, indignant and commanding as his inches
permitted, was shaking an angry finger at his host.
“You’ve no right to frighten me,” he exclaimed, “with your Gipsey Lee
and Pereira when it was only poor Mrs. Clarke waiting for that drunken
scamp of a husband who spends all he earns at the corner saloon.”
Heavy steps passed along the passage. It was Clarke making his bedward
way to his wife’s verbal accompaniment.
“You ought to be pleased to get a thrill like that for nothing,” said
Anthony Trent laughing. “I’d pay good money for it.”
“I don’t like it,” Mr. Lund insisted. “I thought you meant it.”
“I did,” the other asserted, “for the moment. New York is full of such
stories and if they don’t happen in this street they happen in another.
They always happen after midnight and I’ve got to put them down on the
old machine. Somewhere a Gipsey Lee is waiting for a defaulting South
American banker or a Captain Despard is planning to get a priceless
stone, or a humbler Vierick plotting to climb into an inviting window,
or some one like your boyhood chum Blodgett planning to get his hands
around some one’s throat.”
Anthony Trent leaned from the window and breathed in the soft night air.
“It’s a great old city,” he said, half affectionately, “and I make my
living by letting my hook down into the night and drawing up a mystery.
You mustn’t mind if I sometimes rattle the old Royal when better folks
are asleep.”
“If you’ll take the advice of an older man,” said Mr. Lund with an air
of firmness, “you’ll let crook stories alone and choose something a
little healthier. Your mind is full of them.”
Still a little outraged Mr. Lund bowed himself from the room. Anthony
Trent fed his ancient briar and took the seat by the window.
“I wonder if he’s right,” mused Anthony Trent.
CHAPTER III
THE DAY OF TEMPTATION
THE dawn had long passed and the milkmen had awakened their unwilling
clients two hours agone before Anthony Trent finished his story. He was
not a quick worker. His was a mind that labored heavily unless the
details of his work were accurate. This time he was satisfied. It was a
good story and the editor for whom he was doing a series would be
pleased. He might even increase his rates.
Crosbeigh, the editor of the magazine which sought Anthony Trent’s crook
stories, was an amiable being who had won a reputation for profundity by
reason of eloquent silences. He would have done well in any line of work
where originality was not desired. He knew, from what his circulation
manager told him, that Trent’s stories made circulation and he liked the
writer apart from his work. Perhaps because he was not a disappointed
author he was free from certain editorial prejudices.
“Sit down,” he cried cordially, when Anthony Trent was shown in. “Take a
cigarette and I’ll read this right away.” Crosbeigh was a nervous man
who battled daily with subway crowds and was apt to be irritable.
“It’s great,” he said when he had finished it, “Great! Doyle, Hornung,
well--there you are!” It was one of his moments of silent eloquence.
The listener might have inferred anything.
“But they are paid real money,” replied Anthony Trent gloomily.
“You get two cents a word,” Crosbeigh reminded him, “you haven’t a wife
and children to support.”
“I’d be a gay little adventurer to try it on what I make at writing,”
Trent told him. “It takes me almost a month to write one of those yarns
and I get a hundred and fifty each.”
“You are a slow worker,” his editor declared.
“I have to be,” he retorted. “If I were writing love slush and pretty
heroine stuff it would be different. Do you know, Crosbeigh, there isn’t
a thing in these stories of mine that is impossible? I take the most
particular care that my details are correct. When I began I didn’t know
anything about burglar alarms. What did I do? I got a job in the shop
that makes the best known one. I’m worth more than two cents a word!”
“That’s our maximum,” Crosbeigh asserted. “These are not good days for
the magazine business. Shot to pieces. If I said what I knew. If you
knew what _I_ got and how much I had to do with it!”
Anthony Trent looked at him critically. He saw a very carefully dressed
Crosbeigh to-day, a man whose trousers were pressed, whose shoes were
shined, who exuded prosperity. Never had he seen him so apparently
affluent.
“Come into money?” he enquired. “Whence the prosperity? Whose wardrobe
have you robbed?”
“These are my own clothes,” returned Crosbeigh with dignity, “at least
leave me my clothes.”
“Sure,” said Trent amiably, “if I took ’em you’d be arrested. But tell
me why this sartorial display. Are you going to be photographed for the
‘great editors’ series?”
“I’m lunching with an old friend,” Crosbeigh answered, “a man of
affairs, a man of millions, a man about whom I could say many things.”
“Say them,” his contributor demanded, “let me in on a man for whom you
have arrayed yourself in all your glory. Who is your friend? Is she
pretty? I don’t believe it’s a man at all.”
“It’s a man I know and respect,” he said, a trifle nettled at the
comments his apparel had drawn. “It’s the man who takes me every year to
the Yale-Harvard boat race.”
“Your annual jag party? He’s no fit company for a respectable editor.”
“It is college spirit,” Crosbeigh explained.
“You can call it by any name but it’s too strong for you. What is the
name of your honored friend?”
“Conington Warren,” Crosbeigh said proudly.
“That’s the millionaire sportsman with the stable of steeple-chasers,
isn’t it?” Trent demanded.
“He wins all the big races,” Crosbeigh elaborated.
“He’s enormously rich, splendidly generous, has everything. Only one
thing--drink.” Crosbeigh fell into silence.
“You’ve led him astray you mean?” The spectacle of the sober editor
consorting with reckless bloods of the Conington Warren type amused
Trent.
“Same year at college,” Crosbeigh explained, “and he has always been
friendly. God knows why,” the editor said gloomily. The difference in
their lot seemed suddenly to appal him.
“There must be something unsuspectedly bad in your make-up,” Trent
declared, “which attracts him to you. It can’t be he wants to sell you a
story.”
“There are all sorts of rumors about him,” Crosbeigh went on
meditatively, “started by his wife’s people, I believe. He was wild.
Sometimes he has hinted at it. I know him well enough to call him
‘Connie’ and go up to his dressing-room sometimes. That’s a mark of
intimacy. My Lord, Trent, but it makes me envious to see with what
luxury the rich can live. He has a Japanese valet and masseur, Togoyama,
and an imported butler who looks like a bishop. They know him at his
worst and worship him. He’s magnetic, that’s what Connie is, magnetic.
Have you ever thought what having a million a year means?”
“Ye Gods,” groaned Trent, “don’t you read my lamentations in every story
you buy from me at bargain rates?”
“And a shooting box in Scotland which he uses two weeks a year in the
grouse season. A great Tudor residence in Devonshire overlooking Exmoor,
a town house in Park Lane which is London’s Fifth Avenue! And you know
what he’s got here in his own country. Can you imagine it?”
“Not on forty dollars a week,” said Anthony Trent gloomily.
“You’d make more if you were the hero of your own stories,” Crosbeigh
told him.
Anthony Trent turned on him quickly, “What do you mean?”
“Why this crook you are making famous gets away with enough plunder to
live as well as Conington Warren.”
“Ah, but that’s in a story,” returned the author.
“Then you mean they aren’t as exact and possible as you’ve been telling
me?”
“They are what I said they were,” their author declared. “They could be
worked out, with ordinary luck, by any man with an active body, good
education and address. The typical thick-witted criminal wouldn’t have a
chance.”
It was a curious thing, thought Anthony Trent, that Crosbeigh should
mention the very thing that had been running in his mind for weeks. To
live in such an elaborate manner as Conington Warren was not his
ambition. The squandering of large sums of money on stage favorites of
the moment was not to his taste; but he wanted certainly more than he
was earning. Trent had a passion for fishing, golf and music. Not the
fishing that may be indulged in on Sunday and week-day on fishing
steamers, making excursions to the banks where one may lose an ear on
another angler’s far flung hook, but the fly fishing where the gallant
trout has a chance to escape, the highest type of fishing that may
appeal to man.
And his ambitions to lower his golf handicap until it should be scratch
could not well be accomplished by his weekly visit to Van Cortlandt
Park. He wished to be able to join Garden City or Baltusrol and play a
round a day in fast company. And this could not be accomplished on what
he was making.
And as to music, he longed to compose an opera. It was a laudable
ambition and would commence, he told himself, with a grand piano. He had
only a hard-mouthed hired upright so far. Sometimes he had seen himself
in the rôle of his hero amply able to indulge himself in his moderate
ambitions. It was of this he had been thinking when Mr. Lund came to his
room. And now the very editor for whom he had created his characters was
making the suggestion.
“I was only joking,” Crosbeigh assured him.
“It is not a good thing to joke about,” Anthony Trent answered, “and an
honest man at forty a week is better than an outlaw with four hundred.”
He made this remark to set his thoughts in less dangerous channels, but
it sounded dreadfully hollow and false. He half expected that Crosbeigh
would laugh aloud at such a hackneyed sentiment, but Crosbeigh looked
grave and earnest. “Very true,” he answered. “A man couldn’t think of
it.”
“And why not?” Anthony Trent demanded; “would the fictional character I
created do as much harm to humanity as some cotton mill owner who
enslaved little children and gave millions to charity?”
A telephone call relieved Crosbeigh of the need to answer. Trent swept
into his brief case the carbon copy of his story which he had brought by
mistake.
“Where are you going?” the editor demanded.
“Van Cortlandt,” the contributor answered; “I’m going to try and get my
drive back. I’ve been slicing for a month.”
“Conington Warren has a private eighteen-hole course on his Long Island
place,” Crosbeigh said with pride. “I’ve been invited to play.”
“You’re bent on driving me to a life of crime,” Trent exclaimed
frowning. “An eighteen-hole private course while I struggle to get a
permit for a public one!”
But Anthony Trent did not play golf that afternoon at Van Cortlandt
Park. As a matter of fact he never again invaded that popular field of
play.
Outside Crosbeigh’s office he was hailed by an old Dartmouth chum, one
Horace Weems.
“Just in time for lunch,” said Weems wringing his hand. Weems had always
admired Anthony Trent and had it been possible would have remodeled
himself physically and mentally in the form of another Trent. Weems was
short, blond and perspired profusely.
“Hello, Tubby,” said Trent without much cordiality, “you look as though
the world had been treating you right.”
“It has,” said Weems happily. “Steel went to a hundred and twelve last
week and it carried me up with it.”
Weems had been, as Trent remembered, a bond salesman. Weems could sell
anything. He had an ingratiating manner and a disability to perceive
snubs or insults when intent on making sales. He had paid his way
through college by selling books. Trent had been a frequent victim.
“What do you want to sell me this time?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” Weems retorted, “I’m going to buy you the best little lunch
that Manhattan has to offer. Anywhere you say and anything you like to
eat and drink.” Weems stopped a cruising taxi. “Hop in, old scout, and
tell the pirate where to go.”
Trent directed the man to one of the three famous and more or less
exclusive restaurants New York possesses.
“I hope you have the price,” he commented, “otherwise I shall have to
cash a check I’ve just received for a story.”
“Keep your old check,” jeered Weems, “I’m full of money. Why, boy, I own
an estate and have a twelve-cylinder car of my own.”
Over the luncheon Horace Weems babbled cheerfully. He had made over
three hundred thousand dollars and was on his way to millionairedom.
“You ought to see my place up in Maine,” he said presently.
“Maine?” queried his guest. It was in Maine that Anthony Trent, were he
fortunate enough, would one day erect a camp. “Where?”
“On Kennebago lake,” Weems told him and stopped when an expression of
pain crossed the other’s face. “What’s the matter? That sauce wrong?”
“Just sheer envy,” Trent admitted, “you’ve got what I want. I know every
camp on the Lake. Which is it?”
“The Stanley place,” said Weems. “The finest camp on the whole Lake. I
bought it furnished and it’s some furniture believe me. There’s a grand
piano--that would please you--and pictures that are worth thousands, one
of ’em by some one named Constable. Ever hear of him?”
“Yes,” Trent grunted, “I have. Fancy you with a Constable and a grand
piano when you don’t know one school of painting from another and think
the phonograph the only instrument worth listening to!”
“I earned it,” Weems said, a little huffily. “Why don’t you make money
instead of getting mad because I do?”
“Because I haven’t your ability, I suppose,” Trent admitted. “It’s a
gift and the gods forgot me.”
“Some of the boys used to look down on me,” said Weems, “but all I ask
is ‘where is little Horace to-day?’ This money making game is the only
thing that counts, believe me. Up in Hanover I wasn’t one, two, three,
compared with you. Your father was well off and mine hadn’t a nickel.
You graduated _magna cum laude_ and I had to work like a horse to slide
by. You were popular because you made the football team and could sing
and play.” Weems paused reflectively, “I never did hear any one who
could mimic like you. You should have taken it up and gone into
vaudeville. How much do you make a week?”
“Forty--with luck.”
“I give that to my chauffeur and I’m not rich yet. But I shall be. I’m
out to be as rich as that fellow over there.”
He pointed to a rather high colored extremely well dressed man about
town to whom the waiters were paying extreme deference.
“That’s Conington Warren,” Weems said with admiration in his voice,
“he’s worth a million per annum.”
Anthony Trent turned to look at him. There was no doubt that Conington
Warren was a personage. Just now he was engaged in an argument with the
head waiter concerning _Château Y’Quem_. Trent noticed his gesture of
dismissal when he had finished. It was an imperious wave of his hand. It
was his final remark as it were.
“Some spender,” Weems commented. “Who’s the funny old dodger with him?
Some other millionaire I suppose.”
“I’ll tell him that next time I see him,” laughed Trent beholding
Crosbeigh, Crosbeigh who looked wise where vintages were discussed and
knew not one from another. A well-dressed man paused at Warren’s side
and Weems, always anxious to acquire information, begged his guest to be
silent.
“Did you get that?” he asked when the man had moved away.
“I don’t make it a habit to listen to private conversations,” Trent
returned stiffly.
“Well I do,” said Weems unabashed. “If I hadn’t I shouldn’t have got in
on this Steel stuff. I’m a great little listener. That fellow who spoke
is Reginald Camplyn, the man who drives a coach and four and wins blue
ribbons at the horse show. Warren asked him to a dinner here to-morrow
night at half past eight in honor of some horse who’s done a fast
trial.” Weems made an entry in his engagement book.
“Are you going, too?” Trent demanded.
“I’m putting down the plug’s name,” said Weems, “Sambo,” he said.
“That’s no name for a thoroughbred. Say couldn’t you introduce me?”
“I don’t know him,” Trent asserted.
“You know the man with him. That’s enough for me. If you do it right the
other fellow’s bound to introduce you. Then you beckon me over and we’ll
all sit down together.”
“That isn’t my way of doing things,” replied Trent with a frown.
Weems made a gesture of despair and resignation.
“That’s why you’ll always be poor. That’s why you’ll never have a grand
piano and a Constable and a swell place up in Maine.”
Anthony Trent looked at him and smiled.
“There may be other ways,” he said slowly.
“You try ’em,” Weems retorted crossly. “Here you are almost thirty years
old, highly educated, prep school and college and you make a week what I
give my chauffeur.”
“I think I will,” Trent answered.
Weems attacked his salad angrily. If only Trent had been what he termed
aggressive, an introduction could easily have been effected. Then Weems
would have seen to it that he and Warren left the restaurant together.
Some one would be bound to see them. Then, for Weems had an expansive
fancy, it would be rumored that he, Horace Weems, who cleaned up on
Steel, was friendly with the great Conington Warren. It might lead to
anything!
“Well,” he commented, “I’d rather be little Horace Weems, who can’t tell
a phonograph from a grand piano than Mr. Anthony Trent, who makes with
luck two thousand a year.”
“I’m in bad company to-day,” replied Trent. “First Crosbeigh and now you
tempting me. You know very well I haven’t that magic money making
ability you have. My father hadn’t it or he would have left money when
he died and not debts.”
“Magic!” Weems snorted. “Common sense, that’s what it is.”
“It’s magic,” the other insisted, “as a boy you exchanged a jack knife
for a fishing pole and the fishing pole for a camera and the camera for
a phonograph and the phonograph for a canoe and the canoe for a sailing
boat and so on till you’ve got your place in Maine and a chauffeur who
makes more than I do! Magic’s the only name for it.”
“You must come up and see me in Maine,” Weems said, later.
“Make your mind easy,” Trent assured him, “I will.”
CHAPTER IV
BEGINNING THE GAME
WHEN he left Weems, it was too late to start a round of golf so Trent
took his homeward way intent on starting another story. Crosbeigh was
always urging him to turn out more of them.
His boarding house room seemed shabbier than ever. The rug, which had
never been a good one, showed its age. The steel engravings on the wall
were offensive. “And Weems,” he thought, “owns a Constable!”
His upright piano sounded thinner to his touch. “And Weems,” he sighed,
“has been able to buy a grand.”
Up from the kitchen the triumphant smell of a “boiled New England
dinner” sought out every corner of the house. High above all the varied
odors, cabbage was king. The prospect of the dinner table was appalling,
with Mr. Lund, distant and ready to quarrel over any infringement of his
rights or curtailment of his portion. Mrs. Clarke ready to resent any
jest as to her lord’s habits. The landlady eager to give battle to such
as sniffed at what her kitchen had to offer. Wearisome banter between
brainless boarders tending mainly to criticism of moving picture
productions and speculations as to the salaries of the stars. Not a soul
there who had ever heard of William Blake or Ravel! Overdressed girls
who were permanently annoyed with Anthony Trent because he would never
take them to ice-cream parlors. Each new boarder as she came set her cap
for him and he remained courteous but disinterested.
One of the epics of Mrs. Sauer’s boarding house was that night when Miss
Margaret Rafferty, incensed at the coldness with which her advances were
received and the jeers of her girl friends, brought as a dinner guest a
former sweetheart, now enthusiastically patrolling city sidewalks as a
guardian of the peace. It was not difficult to inflame McGuire. He
disliked Anthony Trent on sight and exercised an untrammeled wit during
the dinner at his expense. It was afterwards in the little garden where
the men went to smoke an after dinner cigar that the unforgivable phrase
was passed.
McGuire was just able to walk home. He had met an antagonist who was a
lightning hitter, whose footwork was quick and who boxed admirably and
kept his head.
After this a greater meed of courtesy was accorded the writer of
stories. But the bibulous Clarke alone amused him, Clarke who had been
city editor of a great daily when Trent was a police reporter on it, and
was now a Park Row derelict supported by the generosity of his old
friends and acquaintances. Only Mrs. Clarke knew that Anthony Trent on
numerous occasions gave her a little money each week until that day in
the Greek kalends when her husband would find another position.
Anthony Trent settled himself at his typewriter and began looking over
the carbon copy of the story he had just sold to Crosbeigh. He wished
to assure himself of certain details in it. Among the pages was an
envelope with the name of a celebrated Fifth Avenue club embossed upon
it. Written on it in pencil was Crosbeigh’s name. Unquestionably he had
swept it from the editorial desk when he had taken up the carbon copy of
his story.
Opening it he found a note written in a rather cramped and angular hand.
The stationery was of the Fifth Avenue club. The signature was
unmistakable, “Conington Warren.” Trent read:
“My dear Crosbeigh:
“I am sending this note by Togoyama because I want to be sure that
you will lunch with me at Voisin’s to-morrow at one o’clock. I wish
affairs permitted me to see more of my old Yale comrades but I am
enormously busy. By the way, a little friend of mine thinks she can
write. I don’t suppose she can, but I promised to show her efforts
to you. I’m no judge but it seems to me her work is very much the
kind you publish in your magazine. We will talk it over to-morrow.
Of course she cares nothing about what you would pay her. She wants
to see her name in print.
“Yours ever,
“CONINGTON WARREN.”
Trent picked up an eraser and passed it over the name on the envelope.
It had been written with a soft pencil and was easily swept away.
Over the body of the letter he spent a long time. He copied it exactly.
A stranger would have sworn that the copy had been written by the same
hand which indited the original. And when this copy had been made to
Trent’s satisfaction, he carefully erased everything in the original but
the signature. Then remembering Weems’ description of the Conington
Warren camp in the Adirondacks, he wrote a little note to one Togoyama.
It was five when he had finished. There was no indecision about him.
Twenty minutes later he was at the Public Library consulting a large
volume in which were a hundred of the best known residences in New York.
So conscientious was the writer that there were plans of every floor and
in many instances descriptions of their interior decoration. Anthony
Trent chuckled to think of the difficulties with which the unlettered
crook has to contend. “Chicago Ed. Binner,” for example, had married
half a hundred servant maids to obtain information as to the disposition
of rooms that he could have obtained by the mere consultation of such a
book as this.
It was while Mrs. Sauer’s wards were finishing their boiled dinner that
some of them had a glimpse of Anthony Trent in evening dress descending
the stairs.
“Dinner not good enough for his nibs,” commented one boarder seeking to
curry the Sauer favor.
“I’d rather have my boarders pay and not eat than eat and not pay,” said
Mrs. Sauer grimly. It was three weeks since she had received a dollar
from the speaker.
“Drink,” exclaimed Mr. Clarke, suddenly roused from meditation of a day
now dead when a highball could be purchased for fifteen cents. “This
food shortage now. That could be settled easily. Take the tax off
liquor and people wouldn’t want to eat so much. It’s the high cost of
drinking that’s the trouble. What’s the use of calling ourselves a free
people? I tell you it was keeping vodka from the Russians that caused
the whole trouble. Don’t argue with me. I know.”
Mr. Clarke went from the dinner table to his bed and awoke around
midnight possessed with the seven demons of unsatiated thirst. He
determined to go down and call upon Anthony Trent. He would plead for
enough money to go to the druggist and get his wife’s prescription
filled. Trent, good lad that he was, always fell for it. And, he argued,
it was a friendly act to do, this midnight call on a hard working young
writer who had once been at his command.
For the first time Anthony Trent’s door was locked. And the voice that
snapped out an interrogation was different from the leisurely and
amiable invitation to enter which was usual. The door was suddenly flung
open, so sudden that poor Clarke was startled. And facing him, his fists
clenched and a certain tensity of attitude that was a strange one to the
visitor, was Anthony Trent still in evening dress. Clarke construed it
into an expression of resentment at his intrusion. He could not
understand the sudden affability that took possession of his former
reporter.
“Come in, Mr. Clarke,” said Trent cordially. “I am sorry your wife’s
heart is troubling her but I agree with you that you should rush with
all haste to the nearby druggist and have that prescription filled. And
as the man who owes you money did not pay you to-day as he promised, but
will without fail to-morrow at midday, take this five dollar bill with
my blessing.”
“How did you know?” gasped Clarke.
“I am a mind reader,” Trent retorted. “It saves time.” He led Mr. Clarke
gently to the door. “Now I’m tired and want to go to sleep so don’t call
in on your way back with the change. Just trot up to bed as quietly as
you can.”
When the door was locked and a chair-back wedged against the handle,
Trent lowered the shades. Then he cleared his table of the litter of
paper. A half dozen pages of the first draft of his new story held his
attention for a few seconds. Then he deliberately tore the pages into
little fragments, threw them into the waste paper basket. And to this
cenotaph he added the contents of the table drawer, made up of notes for
future stories, the results of weeks of labor.
“Dust to dust,” he murmured, “ashes to ashes!”
It was the end of the career of Anthony Trent, writer.
And on the table which had formerly held only writing paper a quaint
miscellany was placed. Eight scarf pins, each holding in golden claws
stones of price. Apparently Conington Warren had about him only what was
good. And there was a heavy platinum ring with a ruby of not less than
four carats, a lady’s ring. It would not be difficult for a man so
clever with his hands and apt mechanically to remove these jewels from
their setting. Nor was there any difficulty in melting the precious
metals.
It seemed to Trent that he had gloated over these glistening stones for
hours before he put them away.
Then he took out a roll of bills and counted them. Conington Warren, it
seemed, must have had considerable faith in the excellent Togoyama now
hurrying to the Adirondack camp, for he had left three thousand dollars
in the upper left hand drawer of a Sheraton desk.
Morning was coming down the skies when Trent, now in dressing gown,
lighted his pipe and sat down by the window.
“Well,” he muttered softly, “I’ve done it and there’s no going back.
Yesterday I was what people call an honest man. Now----?”
He shrugged his shoulders and puffed quickly. Out of the window grey
clouds of smoke rose as fragrant incense.
He had never meant to take up a career of crime. Looking back he could
see how little things coming together had provoked in him an insatiable
desire for an easier life. In all his personal dealings heretofore, he
had been scrupulously honest, and there had never been any reflection on
his honor as a sportsman. He had played games for their own sake. He had
won without bragging and lost with excuses. Up in Hanover there were
still left those who chanted his praise. What would people think of him
if he were placed in the dock as a criminal?
His own people were dead. There were distant cousins in Cleveland, whom
he hardly remembered. There was no family honor to trail in the dust, no
mother or sweetheart to blame him for a broken heart.
He stirred uneasily as he thought of the possibility of capture. Even
now those might be on his trail who would arrest him. It would be
ironical if, before he tasted the fruits of leisure, he were taken to
prison--perhaps by Officer McGuire! It had all been so absurdly easy.
Within a few minutes of receiving the forged note the Japanese was on
his way to the mountains.
The bishop-like butler who adored his master according to Crosbeigh, had
seemed utterly without suspicion when he passed Trent engaged in
animated converse with his supposed employer. The bad moment was when
the man had come into the library where the intruder was hiding himself
and stood there waiting for an answer to his question. Trent had seen to
it that the light was low. It was a moment of inspiration when he called
to mind Conington Warren’s imperious gesture as he waved away Voisin’s
head waiter, and another which had made him put on the velvet smoking
jacket. And it had all come out without a hitch. But he was playing a
game now when he could never be certain he was not outguessed. It might
be the suave butler was outside in the shadows guiding police to the
capture.
He looked out of the window and down the silent street. There was indeed
a man outside and looking up at him. But it was only poor Clarke whose
own prescription had been too well filled. He had captured, so he
fancied, an errant lamppost wantonly disporting itself.
Anthony Trent looked at him with a relief in which disgust had its part.
He swore, by all the high gods, never to sink to that level. A curious
turn of mind, perhaps, for a burglar to take. But so far the sporting
simile presented itself to him. It was a game, a big game in which he
took bigger risks than any one else. He was going to pit his wit,
strength and knowledge against society as it was organized.
“I don’t see why I can’t play it decently,” he said to himself as he
climbed into bed.
CHAPTER V
ANTHONY PULLS UP STAKES
WHEN those two great Australians, Norman Brooks and Anthony Wilding, had
played their brilliant tennis in America, Trent had been a close
follower of their play. He had interviewed them for his paper. In those
days he himself was a respectable performer at the game. Brooks had
given him one of his own rackets which was no longer in first class
condition. It was especially made for the Australian by a firm in
Melbourne. So pleased was Trent with it that he, later, sent to
Australia for two more. It happened that the manager of the sporting
goods store in Melbourne was a young American who believed in the
efficacy of “follow up” letters. It was a large and prosperous firm and
it followed up Anthony Trent with thoroughness. He received square
envelopes addressed by hand by every third Australian mail.
Mrs. Sauer’s boarders, being of that kind which interests itself in
others’ affairs and discusses them, were intrigued at these frequent
missives from the Antipodes.
Finally Trent invented an Uncle Samuel who had, so he affirmed, left his
native land when an adventurous child of nine and made a great fortune
among the Calgoorlie gold fields. Possessing a nimble wit he related to
his fellow boarders amazing accounts of his uncle’s activities. The
boarders often discussed this uncle, his strange dislike of women, the
beard which fell to his knees, the team of racing kangaroos which drew
his buggy, and so forth.
At the breakfast table on the morning when Anthony Trent faced his world
no longer an honest man, it was observed that he was disinclined to
talk. As a matter of fact he wanted a reasonable excuse for leaving the
Sauer establishment. The woman had been kind and considerate to him and
he had few grievances.
The mail brought him an enticing letter from Melbourne offering him all
that the tennis player needs, at special prices.
“I trust your uncle is well,” Mrs. Clarke observed.
It was in that moment Trent got his inspiration.
“I’m afraid he is very ill,” he said sadly, “at his age--he must be
almost ninety----”
“Only eighty-four,” Mrs. Clarke reminded him. She remembered the year of
his emigration.
“Eighty-four is a great age to attain,” he declared, “and he has lived
not wisely but well. I feel I should go out and see if there’s anything
I can do.”
“You are going to leave us?” gasped Mrs. Sauer. His going would deprive
her of a most satisfactory lodger.
“I’m afraid my duty is plain,” he returned gravely.
Thus he left Mrs. Sauer’s establishment. Years later he wondered whether
if he had enjoyed better cooking he would have fallen from grace, and if
he could not with justice blame a New England boiled dinner for his
lapse.
For a few days he stayed at a quiet hotel. He wanted a small apartment
on Central Park. There were reasons for this. First, he must live alone
in a house where no officious elevator boys observed his going and his
coming. Central Park West offered many such houses. And if it should
happen that he ever had to flee from the pursuit of those who guarded
the mansions that faced him on the park’s eastern side, there was no
safer way home than across the silent grass. He was one of those New
Yorkers who know their Central Park. There had been a season when a
friend gave him the use of a saddle horse and there was no bridle path
that he did not know.
He was fortunate in finding rooms at the top of a fine old brownstone
house in the eighties. There were four large rooms all overlooking the
Park. That he was compelled to climb five flights of stairs was no
objection in his eyes. A little door to the left of his own entrance
gave admission to a ladder leading to the roof. None of the other
tenants, so the agent informed him, ever used it. Anthony Trent was
relieved to hear it.
“I sleep badly,” he said, “possibly because I read a great deal and am
anxious to try open air sleeping. If I might have the right to use the
roof for that I should be very willing to pay extra.”
“Glad to have you there,” said the agent heartily, “you’ll be a sort of
night watchman for the property.” He laughed at his jest. “Insomnia is
plain hell, ain’t it? I used to suffer that way. I walk a great deal now
and that cures me. Do you take drugs?”
“I’m afraid of them,” Anthony Trent declared. “I walk a good deal at
night when the streets are quiet.”
The agent reported to his office that Trent was a studious man who slept
badly and wanted to sleep on the roof; also that he took long tramps at
night. A good tenant, in fine. Thus he spread abroad the report which
Trent desired.
The selection of a housekeeper was of extreme importance. She must be an
elderly, quiet body without callers or city relatives. Her references
must be examined thoroughly. He interviewed a score of women before he
found what he wanted. She was a Mrs. Phoebe Kinney from Agawam, a
village overlooking Buzzard’s Bay. A widow, childless and friendless,
she had occupied similar positions in Massachusetts but this would be
the first one in New York. He observed in his talk with her that she
conceived the metropolis to be the world center of wickedness. She
assured her future employer that she kept herself to herself because she
could never be certain that the man or woman who addressed a friendly
remark to her might not be a criminal.
“Keep that attitude and we two shall agree splendidly,” he said. “I have
few friends and no callers. I am of a studious disposition and cannot
bear interruptions. If you had friends in New York I should not hire
you. I sometimes keep irregular hours but I shall expect to find you
there all the time. You can have two weeks in the summer if you want
them.”
Next day Mrs. Kinney was inducted to her new home. It was a happy choice
for she cooked well and had the New England passion for cleanliness.
Trent noticed with pleasure that she was even suspicious of the
tradespeople who sent their wares up the dumb waiter. And she
discouraged their gossip who sold meat and bread to her. The many papers
he took were searched for their crimes by Mrs. Kinney. Discovery of such
records affirmed her in her belief of the city’s depravity.
In his examination of her former positions Trent discovered that she had
been housekeeper to the Clent Bulstrodes. He knew they were a fine, old
Boston family of Back Bay, with a mansion on Beacon street. When he
questioned her about it she told him it was as housekeeper of their
summer home on Buzzards’ Bay. Young Graham Bulstrode had been a tennis
player of note years before. Many a time Anthony Trent had seen him at
Longwood. He had dropped out because he drank too much to keep fit. The
two were of an age. Mrs. Kinney related the history of the Bulstrode
family at length and concluded by remarking that when she first saw her
employer at the agency she was reminded of Mr. Graham. “But he looks
terrible now,” she added, “they say he drinks brandy before breakfast!”
The next day the society columns of the _Herald_ informed him that the
Clent Bulstrodes had bought a New York residence in East 73d street,
just off the Avenue. This information was of peculiar interest to Trent.
Now he was definitely engaged in a precarious profession he was
determined to make a success of it. He had smoked innumerable pipes in
tabulating those accidents which brought most criminals to sentence. He
believed in the majority of cases they had not the address to get away
with plausible excuses. It was an ancient and frayed excuse, that of
pretending to be sent to read the water or electric meter. And besides,
it was not Trent’s intention to take to disguises of this sort.
He was now engaged in working out the solution of his second adventure.
He was to make an attempt upon the house of William Drummond, banker,
who lived in 93rd street and in the same number as did the Clent
Bulstrodes, twenty blocks to the south. He had learned a great deal
about Drummond from Clarke, his one-time city editor. Clarke remembered
most of the interesting things about the big men of his day. He told
Trent that Drummond invariably carried a great deal of money on his
person. He expatiated on the Drummond history. This William Drummond had
begun life on an Iowa farm. He had gradually saved a little money and
then lent it at extravagant interest. Later he specialized on mortgages,
foreclosing directly he knew his client unable to meet his notes. His
type was a familiar one and had founded many fortunes. Clarke painted
him as a singularly detestable creature.
“But why,” demanded Anthony Trent, “does a man like that risk his money
if he’s so keen on conserving it? One would think he wouldn’t take out
more than his car fare for fearing either of being robbed or borrowed
from.”
“As for robbing,” Clarke returned, “he’s a great husky beast although
he’s nearly sixty. And as to being borrowed from, that’s why he takes it
out. He belongs to a lot of clubs--not the Knickerbocker type--but the
sort of clubs where rich young fellows go to play poker. They know old
Drummond can lend ’em the ready cash without any formalities any time
they wish it. Ever sit in a poker game, son, and get a hunch that if
you were able to buy just one more pile of chips you’d clean up?”
“I have,” said the other smiling, “but my hunch has generally been
wrong.”
“Most hunches are,” Clarke commented. “Theirs are, too, but that old
scoundrel makes thousands out of just such hunches. He puts it up to the
borrower that it’s between club members and so forth, not a money
lending transaction. Tells ’em he doesn’t lend money as a rule, and so
forth and so on. I know he was asked to resign from one club for it.
He’s a bloodsucker and if I had an automobile I’d watch for him to cross
the street and then run him down.”
“Has he ever stung you?” Trent asked.
“Me? Not on your life. He specializes in rich men’s sons. He wouldn’t
lend you or me a nickel if we were starving. You remember young Hodgson
Grant who committed suicide last year. They said it was the heat that
got him. It was William Drummond.”
“Why does he keep up a house on such a street as he does? I should think
he’d live cheaper.”
“A young second wife. Threw the old one away, so to speak, and got a
high stepper that makes him speed up. She thinks she will get into
society. Not a chance, son, not a chance. I know.”
It was on some of William Drummond’s money that Anthony Trent had set
his heart. It salved what was still a conscience to know that he was
taking back profits unlawfully made, bleeding a blood sucker.
Owing to the second Mrs. Drummond’s desire to storm society she
cultivated publicity. There were pictures of herself and her prize
winning Red Chows in dog papers. In other magazines she was seen
driving her two high stepping hackneys, Lord Ping and Lady Pong, at the
Mineola Horse Show. Also, there was an article on her home in a magazine
devoted to interior decoration. A careful study of it answered every
question concerning its lay-out that the most careful cracksman needed
to know. Trent spent a week in learning how Drummond occupied his time.
The banker invariably left his most profitable club at midnight, never
earlier. By half past twelve he was in his library smoking one of the
cigars that had been given him that night. Then a drink of gin and
water. Afterwards, bed. The house was protected by the Sherlock system
of burglar alarm, a tiresome invention to those who were ignorant of it.
Anthony Trent regarded it as an enemy and had mastered it successfully
for there were tricks of lock opening not hard to one as mechanically
able as he and many a criminal had talked to him openly when he had
covered police headquarters years before.
Drummond drank very little. When asked he invariably took a cigar. He
was possessed of great strength and still patronized the club gymnasium.
For two hours one night Drummond sat near him at a certain famous
athletic club. On that night there were certain changes to be observed
in the appearance of Anthony Trent. He seemed to have put on twenty
pounds in weight and ten years in age. The art of make-up which had been
forced upon him in college theatricals had recently engaged his
attention. It was an art of which he had thought little until for his
paper he had once interviewed Beerbohm Tree and had seen the amazing
changes skilful make-up may create.
Ordinarily he slipped in and out silently, not encouraging Mrs. Kinney
to talk. On this particular night he asked her a question concerning a
missing letter and she came out into the lighted hall.
“You gave me quite a shock,” she said. “You look as like Mr. Graham
Bulstrode as one pea is like another, although I’ve never seen him in
full evening dress.”
She was plainly impressed by her employer’s magnificence although she
feared this unusual flush on his ordinarily pale face meant that he had
been having more to drink than was good for him.
It was the tribute for which Trent had waited. If Mrs. Kinney had never
seen the son of her former master in the garb of fashion, her present
employer had, and that within the week. And he had observed him
carefully. He had seen that Bulstrode was wearing during the nights of
late Autumn an Inverness cape of light-weight black cloth, lined with
white silk. To Trent it seemed rather stagey but that did not prevent
him from ordering its duplicate from Bulstrode’s tailor. Bulstrode clung
to the opera hat rather than to the silk hat which has almost superseded
it. To-night Trent wore an opera hat.
Bulstrode came into the athletic club at half past eleven. He was
slightly under the influence of liquor and his face no redder than that
of Trent who waited across the street in the shadow of the Park wall. No
sooner had Bulstrode been whirled off in a taxi than Anthony Trent went
into the club. To the attendants it seemed that he had returned for
something forgotten. With his Inverness still on and his hat folded he
lost himself in the crowded rooms and found at last William Drummond.
The banker nodded cordially. It was evident to the impostor that the
banker wished to ingratiate himself with the new member. The Bulstrodes
had enormous wealth and a name that was recognized. To his greeting
Anthony Trent returned a solemn owl-like stare. “Shylock!” he hiccoughed
insolently.
Drummond flushed but said nothing. Indeed he looked about him to see if
the insult had been overheard by any other member. Inwardly Trent
chuckled. He had now no fear of being discovered. Bulstrode probably
knew few men at the club. He had not been in town as a resident for a
month yet. He sank into a chair and read an evening paper watching in
reality the man Drummond.
CHAPTER VI
FOOLING SHYLOCK DRUMMOND
THE night that he entered Drummond’s house was slightly foggy and
visibility was low. He was dressed as he had been when he encountered
Drummond at the club. He had seen the banker climb the five steps to his
front door at half past twelve. At half past one the lights were
switched off in the bedroom on the second floor. At two the door gently
opened and admitted Anthony Trent. He left it unlocked and ready for
flight. And he memorized the position of the furniture so that hasty
flight would be possible.
It was not a big house. The articles of furniture, the pictures, rugs
and hangings were splendid. The interior decorators had taken care of
that. But he had seen them all in the magazine. Trent knew very well
that to obtain such prizes as he sought could not be a matter of
certainty. Somewhere in this house was a lot of currency. And it might
be in a safe. Old fashioned safes presented few difficulties, but your
modern strong box is a different matter. Criminal investigator as he
was, he knew one man seldom attempted to dynamite a safe. It was a
matter for several men. In itself the technique was not difficult but he
had no accomplices and at best it is a matter better fitted for offices
in the night silences than a private residence.
He had been told by criminals that it was astonishing how careless rich
men were with their money. Anthony Trent proposed to test this. He had
made only a noiseless progress on a half dozen stairs on his upward
flight when a door suddenly opened, flooding the stairway with light. It
was from a room above him. And there were steps coming along a corridor
toward him. Feeling certain that the reception rooms leading off the
entrance hall were empty, he swiftly opened a door and stepped backward
into the room, watching intently to see that he had escaped the
observation of some one descending the staircase.
From the frying pan’s discomfort to the greater dangers of the fire was
what he had done for himself. He found himself in a long room at one end
of which he stood, swearing under breath at what he saw. At the other
Mr. William Drummond was seated at a table. And Mr. Drummond held in his
hand an ugly automatic of .38 calibre. Covering him with the weapon the
banker came swiftly toward him. It was the unexpected moment for which
Anthony Trent was prepared. Assuming the demeanor of the drunken man he
peered into the elder man’s face. He betrayed no fear of the pistol. His
speech was thickened, but he was reasonably coherent.
“It is old Drummond, isn’t it?” he demanded.
“What are you doing here?” the other snapped, and then gave a start when
he saw to whom he spoke. “Mr. Bulstrode!”
“I’ve come,” said the other swaying slightly, “to tell you I’m sorry. I
don’t know why I said it but the other fellers said it wasn’t right.
I’ve come to shake your hand.” He caught sight of the weapon. “Put that
damn thing down, Drummond.”
Obediently the banker slipped it into the pocket of his dressing gown.
He followed the swaying man as he walked toward the lighted part of the
room. He was frankly amazed. Wild as he was, and drunken as was his
evening custom, why had this heir to the Bulstrode millions entered his
house like a thief in the night? And for what was he sorry?
In a chair by the side of the desk Anthony Trent flung himself. He
wanted particularly to see what the banker had hidden with a swift
motion as he had risen. The yellow end of some notes of high
denomination caught his eye. Right on the table was what he sought. The
only method of getting it would be to overpower Drummond. There were
objections to this. The banker was armed and would certainly shoot. Or
there might be a terrific physical encounter in which the younger man
might kill unintentionally. And an end in the electric chair was no part
of Trent’s scheme of things. Also, there was some one else awake in the
house.
Drummond resumed his seat and the watcher saw him with elaborate
unconcern slide an evening paper over the partially concealed notes.
“Just what is on your mind, Mr. Bulstrode?” he began.
“I called you ‘Shylock,’” Trent returned. “No right to have said it.
What I should have said was, ‘Come and have a drink.’ Been ashamed of
myself ever since.”
Drummond looked at him fixedly. It was a calculating glance and a cold
one. And there was the contempt in it that a sober man has for one far
gone in drink.
“And do you usually break into a man’s house when you want to
apologize?” There was almost a sneer in his voice.
“Break in?” retorted the other, apparently slow at comprehending him,
“the damn door wasn’t locked. Any one could get in. Burglars could break
through and steal. Most foolish. I lock my door every night. All
sensible people do. Surprised at you.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Drummond. He took a grip on his visitor’s
arm and led him through the hall to the door. It was unlocked and the
burglar alarm system disconnected. It was not the first time that
Drummond’s man had forgotten it. In the morning he would be dismissed.
Apparently this irresponsible young ass had got the idea in his stupid
head that he had acted offensively and had calmly walked in. It was the
opportunity for the banker to cultivate him.
“As I came in,” Trent told him, “some one was coming down the stairs.
Better see who it was.”
Drummond looked at him suspiciously. Trent knew that he was not yet
satisfied that his visitor’s story was worthy of belief. Then he spoke
as one who humors a child.
“We’ll go and find out.”
Outside the door they came upon an elderly woman servant with a silver
tray in her hands.
“Madame,” she explained, “was not able to eat any luncheon or dinner and
has waked up hungry.”
Drummond raised the cover of a porcelain dish.
“Caviare sandwiches,” he grunted, “bad things to sleep on.”
He led the way back to the room. In his scheming mind was a vague scheme
to use this bêtise of Graham Bulstrode as a means to win his wife social
advancement. Mrs. Clent Bulstrode could do it. Money would not buy
recognition from her. Perhaps fear of exposure might. He glanced with
contempt at the huddled figure of the heir to Bulstrode millions. The
young man was too much intoxicated to offer any resistance.
Tall, huge and menacing he stood over Anthony Trent. There was a look in
his eye that caused a certain uneasiness in the impostor’s mind. In
another age and under different conditions Drummond would have been a
pirate.
“If it had been any other house than mine,” he began, “and you had not
been a fellow clubman an unexpected call like this might look a little
difficult of explanation.”
Anthony Trent acted his part superbly. Drunkenness in others had always
interested him. Drummond watching his vacuous face saw the inebriated
man’s groping for a meaning admirably portrayed.
“What do yer mean?”
“Simply this,” said Drummond distinctly. “At a time when I am supposed
to be in bed you creep into my house without knocking or ringing. You
come straight into a room where very valuable property is. While I
personally believe your story I doubt whether the police would. They are
taught to be suspicious. There would be a lot of scandal. Your mother,
for instance, would be upset. New York papers revel in that sort of
thing. You have suppressed news in Boston papers but that doesn’t go
here.” He nodded his head impressively. “I wouldn’t like to wager that
the police would be convinced. In fact it might take a lot of publicity
before you satisfied the New York police.”
The idea seemed to amuse the younger man.
“Let’s call ’em up and see,” he suggested and made a lurching step
toward the phone.
“No, no,” the other exclaimed hastily, “I wouldn’t have that happen for
the world.”
Over his visitor’s face Drummond could see a look of laboring
comprehension gradually stealing. It was succeeded by a frown. An idea
had been born which was soon to flower in high and righteous anger.
“You’re a damned old blackmailer!” cried Anthony Trent, struggling to
his feet. “When a gentleman comes to apologize you call him a robber.
I’m going home.”
Drummond stood over him threatening and powerful.
“I don’t know that I shall let you,” he said unpleasantly. “Why should
I? You are so drunk that in the morning you won’t remember a word I’ve
said to you. I’m going to make use of you, you young whelp. You’ve
delivered yourself into my hands. If I were to shoot you for a burglar I
should only get commended for it.”
“Like hell you would,” Trent chuckled, “that old girl with the caviare
sandwiches would tell the jury we were conversing amiably. You’d swing
for it, Drummond, old dear, and I’d come to see your melancholy end.”
“And there’s another thing,” Drummond reminded him, “you’ve got a bad
record. Your father didn’t give up the Somerset Club because he liked
the New York ones any better. They wanted to get you away from certain
influences there. I’ve got your whole history.”
“Haven’t you anything to drink?” Anthony Trent demanded.
From a cupboard in his black walnut desk Drummond took a large silver
flask. He did not want his guest to become too sober. Since it was the
first drink that Anthony Trent had taken that night he gulped eagerly.
“Good old Henessey!” he murmured. “Henessey’s a gentleman,” he added
pointedly.
“Look here,” said Drummond presently after deep thought. “You’ve got to
go home. I’m told there’s a butler who fetches you from any low dive you
may happen to be.”
“He hates it,” Trent chuckled. “He’s a prohibitionist. I made him one.”
Drummond came over to him and looked him clear in the eye.
“What’s your telephone number?” he snapped.
Trent was too careful a craftsman to be caught like that. He flung the
Bulstrode number back in a flash. “Ring him up,” he commanded, “there’s
a direct wire to his room after twelve.”
“What’s his name?” Drummond asked.
“Old Man Afraid of His Wife,” he was told. Mrs. Kinney had told him of
the nickname young Bulstrode had given the butler.
Drummond flushed angrily. “His real name? I’m not joking.”
“Nor am I,” Trent observed, “I always call him that.” He put on an
expression of obstinacy. “That’s all I’ll tell you. Give me the phone
and let me talk.”
It was a bad moment for Anthony Trent. It was probable that William
Drummond was going to call up the Bulstrode residence to make certain
that his visitor was indeed Graham Bulstrode. And if the butler were to
inform him that the heir already snored in his own bed there must come
the sudden physical struggle. And Drummond was armed. He had not failed
to observe that the door to the entrance hall was locked. When Drummond
had spoken to the servant outside he had taken this precaution. For a
moment Trent entertained the idea of springing at the banker as he stood
irresolutely with the telephone in his hand. But he abandoned it. That
would be to bring things to a head. And to wait might bring safety.
But he was sufficiently sure of himself to be amused when he heard
Drummond hesitatingly ask if he were speaking to Old Man Afraid of His
Wife. The banker hastily disclaimed any intention of being offensive.
“Mr. Graham Bulstrode is with me,” he informed the listener, “and that
is the only name he would give. I am particularly anxious that you
inform his father I am bringing him home. Also,” his voice sank to a
whisper, “I must speak to Mr. Bulstrode when I come. I shall be there
within half an hour. He will be sorry all his days if he refuses to see
me.” As he hung up the instrument he noted with pleasure that young
Bulstrode was conversing amicably with his old friend Henessey, whose
brandy is famous.
Drummond had mapped it all out. He would not stay to dress. Over his
dressing gown he would pull an automobile duster as though he had been
suddenly disturbed. He would accuse Graham of breaking in to steal. He
would remind the chastened father of several Boston scandals. He could
see the Back Bay blue blood beg for mercy. And the end of it would be
that in the society columns of the New York dailies it would be
announced that Mr. and Mrs. William Drummond had dined with Mr. and Mrs.
Clent Bulstrode.
No taxi was in sight when they came down the steps to the silent street.
Drummond was in an amazing good humor. His captor was now reduced
through his friendship with Henessey to a silent phase of his failing.
He clung tightly to the banker’s stalwart arm and only twice attempted
to break into song. Since the distance was not great the two walked.
Trent looked anxiously at every man they met when they neared the
Bulstrode mansion. He feared to meet a man of his own build wearing a
silk lined Inverness cape. It may be wondered why Anthony Trent, fleet
of foot and in the shadow of the park across which his modest apartment
lay, did not trip up the banker and make his easy escape. The answer
lies in the fact that Trent was not an ordinary breaker of the law. And
also that he had conceived a very real dislike to William Drummond, his
person, his character and his aspirations. He was determined that
Drummond should ride for a fall.
A tired looking man yawning from lack of sleep let them into the house.
It was a residence twice the size of Drummond’s. The banker peered about
the vast hall, gloomy in the darkness. In fancy he could see Mrs.
Drummond sweeping through it on her way to dinner.
“Mr. Bulstrode is in the library,” he said acidly. That another should
dare to use a nickname that fitted him so aptly filled him with
indignation. He barely glanced at the man noisily climbing the stairs to
his bedroom, the man who had coined the opprobrious phrase. Drummond was
ushered into the presence of Clent Bulstrode.
The Bostonian was a tall man with a cold face and a great opinion of his
social responsibilities. The only New Yorkers he cared to know were
those after whose families downtown streets had been named.
“I am not in the habit, sir,” he began icily, “of being summoned from my
bed at this time of night to talk to a stranger. I don’t like it, Mr.
Dummles----”
“Drummond,” his visitor corrected.
“The same thing,” cried Bulstrode. “I know no one bearing either name. I
can only hope your errand is justified. I am informed it has to do with
my son.”
“You know it has,” Drummond retorted. “He broke into my house to-night.
And he came, curiously enough, at a time when there was a deal of loose
cash in my room. Mr. Bulstrode, has he done that before? If he has I’m
afraid he could get into trouble if I informed the police.”
It was a triumphant moment when he saw a look of fear pass over
Bulstrode’s contemptuous countenance. It was a notable hit.
“You wouldn’t do that?” he cried.
“That depends,” Drummond answered.
Upon what it depended Clent Bulstrode never knew for there came the
noise of an automobile stopping outside the door. There was a honking of
the horn and the confused sound of many voices talking at once.
Drummond followed the Bostonian through the great hall to the open door.
They could see Old Man Afraid of His Wife assisting a young inebriate in
evening dress. And his Inverness cape was lined with white silk and over
his eyes an opera hat was pulled.
The chauffeur alone was sober. He touched his hat when he saw Mr.
Bulstrode.
“Where have you come from?” he demanded.
“I took the gentlemen to New Haven,” he said.
“Has my son been with you all the evening?”
“Yes, sir,” the chauffeur returned.
Drummond, his hopes dashed, followed Bulstrode to the library. “Now,”
said the clubman sneering, “I shall be glad to hear your explanation of
your slander of my son. In the morning I can promise you my lawyers will
attend to it in detail.”
“I was deceived,” the wretched Drummond sought to explain. “A man
dressed like your son whom I know by sight came in and----”
He went through the whole business. By this time the butler was standing
at the open door listening.
“I can only say,” Mr. Bulstrode remarked, “that these excuses you offer
so glibly will be investigated.”
“Excuses!” cried the other goaded to anger. “Excuses! I’ll have you know
that a father with a son like yours is more in need of excuses than I
am.”
He turned his head to see the butler entering the room. There was an
unpleasant expression on the man’s face which left him vaguely uneasy.
“Show this person out,” said Bulstrode in his most forbidding manner.
“Wait a minute,” Drummond commanded, “you owe it to me to have this
house searched. We all saw that impostor go upstairs. For all we know
he’s in hiding this very minute.”
“You needn’t worry,” Old Man Afraid of His Wife observed. “He went out
just before Mr. Graham came back in the motor. I was going to see what
it was when the car came between us.” The man turned to Clent Bulstrode.
“It’s my belief, sir, they’re accomplices.”
“What makes you say that?” demanded his master. He could see an unusual
expression of triumph in the butler’s eye.
“The black pearl stick pin that Mr. Graham values so much has been
stolen from his room.”
“What have I to do with that?” Drummond shouted.
“Simply this,” the other returned, “that you introduced this criminal to
my house and I shall expect you to make good what your friend took.”
“Friend!” repeated the outraged Drummond. “My friend!”
“It is a matter for the police,” Bulstrode yawned.
Drummond watched his tall, thin figure ascending the stairs. Plainly
there was nothing left but to go. Never in his full life had things
broken so badly for William Drummond. He could feel the butler’s baleful
stare as he slowly crossed the great hall. He felt he hated the man who
had witnessed his defeat and laughed at his humiliation. And Drummond
was not used to the contempt of underlings.
Yet the butler had the last word. As he closed the door he flung a
contemptuous good-night after the banker.
“Good-night,” he said, “Old Man Afraid of the Police.”
* * * * *
A broken and dispirited man William Drummond, banker, came to his own
house. The pockets in which he had placed his keys were empty. There was
no hole by which they might have been lost and he had not removed the
long duster. Only one man could have taken them. He called to mind how
the staggering creature who claimed to be Graham Bulstrode had again and
again clutched at him for support. And if he had taken them, to what use
had they been put?
It seemed he must have waited half an hour before a sleepy servant let
him in. Drummond pushed by him with an oath and went hastily to the
black walnut desk. There, seemingly unmoved, was the paper that he had
pulled over the notes when the unknown came into the room. It was when
he raised it to see what lay beneath that he understood to the full what
a costly night it had been for him. Across one of his own envelopes was
scrawled the single word--Shylock.
CHAPTER VII
THE DANGER OF SENTIMENT
AFTER leaving Drummond’s house Anthony Trent started without intemperate
haste for his comfortable apartment. In accordance with his
instructions, Mrs. Kinney retired not later than ten. There might come a
night when he needed to prove the alibi that she could unconsciously
nullify if she waited up for him.
In these early days of his career he was not much in fear of detection
and approached his door with little of the trepidation he was to
experience later when his name was unknown still but his reputation
exceedingly high with the police. Later he knew he must arrange his mode
of life with greater care.
New York, for example, is not an easy city for a man fleeing from police
pursuit. Its brilliant lighting, its sleeplessness, the rectangular
blocks and absence of helpful back alleys, all these were aids to the
law abiding.
He had not chosen his location heedlessly. From the roof on which he
often slept he could see five feet distant from its boundary, the wall
that circumscribed the top of another house such as his but having its
entrance on a side street. It would not be hard to get a key to fit the
front door; and since he would make use of it infrequently and then only
late at night there was little risk of detection.
Thinking several moves ahead of his game was one of Trent’s means to
insure success. He must have some plausible excuse in case he were
caught upon the roof. The excuse that suggested itself instantly was a
cat. He bought a large and frolicsome cat, tiger-striped and a stealthy
hunter by night, and introduced him to Mrs. Kinney. That excellent woman
was not pleased. A cat, she asserted, needed a garden. “Exactly,” agreed
her employer, “a roof garden.” So it was that Agrippa joined the
household and sought to prey upon twittering sparrows. And since Agrippa
looking seventy feet below was not in fear of falling, he leaped the
intermediate distance between the roofs and was rewarded with a sparrow.
Thereafter he used what roof offered the best hunting.
Two maiden ladies occupied the topmost flat, the Misses Sawyer, and were
startled one evening at a knock upon their door. An affable young
gentleman begged permission to retrieve his cat from their roof. The
hunting Agrippa had sprung the dreadful space and feared, he asserted
plausibly, to get back.
The Misses Sawyer loved cats, it seemed, but had none now, fearing to
seem disloyal to the memory of a peerless beast about whom they could
not talk without tear-flooded eyes. They told their neighbor cordially
that whenever Agrippa strayed again he was to make free of the roof.
“Ring our bell,” said one of them, “and we’ll let you in.”
“But how did you get in?” the other sister demanded, suddenly.
“The door was open,” he said blandly.
“That’s that dreadful Mr. Dietz again,” they cried in unison. “He
drinks, and when he goes out to the saloon, he puts the catch back so
there won’t be the bother of a key. I have complained but the janitor
takes no notice. I suppose we don’t offer him cigars and tips, so he
takes the part of Dietz.”
By this simple maneuver Anthony Trent established his right to use the
roof without incurring suspicion.
The Drummond loot proved not to be despised by one anxious to put a
hundred thousand dollars to his credit. The actual amount was three
thousand, eight hundred dollars. Furthermore, there was some of the
Drummond stationery, a bundle of letters and the two or three things he
had taken hastily from young Bulstrode’s room. He regretted there had
been so small an opportunity to investigate the Bulstrode mansion but
time had too great a value for him. The black pearl had flung itself at
him, and some yale keys and assorted club stationery--these were all he
could take. The stationery might prove useful. He had discovered that
fact in the Conington Warren affair. If it had not been that the butler
crept out of the dark hall to watch him as he left the Bulstrode house,
he would have tried the keys on the hall door. That could be done later.
It is not every rich house which is guarded by burglar resisting
devices.
It was the bundle of letters and I. O. U.’s that he examined with
peculiar care. They were enclosed in a long, blue envelope on which was
written “Private and Personal.”
When Trent had read them all he whistled.
“These will be worth ten times his measly thirty-eight hundred,” he said
softly.
But there was no thought of blackmail in his mind. That was a crime at
which he still wholesomely rebelled. It occurred to him sometimes that a
life such as his tended to lead to progressive deterioration. That there
might come a time when he would no longer feel bitterly toward
blackmailers. It was part of his punishment, this dismal thought of what
might be unless he reverted to the ways of honest men. Inasmuch as a man
may play a crooked game decently, so Anthony Trent determined to play
it.
Many of the letters in the blue envelope were from women whose names
were easily within the ken of one who studied the society columns of the
metropolitan dailies. Most of them seemed to have been the victims of
misplaced bets at Belmont Park or rash bidding at Auction. There was one
letter from the wife of a high official at Washington begging him on no
account to let her husband know she had borrowed money from him. A
prominent society golfing girl whose play Trent had a score of times
admired for its pluck and skill had borrowed a thousand dollars from
Drummond. There was her I. O. U. on the table. Scrawling a line on
Drummond stationery in what seemed to be Drummond handwriting, Anthony
Trent sent it back to her. There were acknowledgments of borrowings from
the same kind of rich waster that Graham Bulstrode represented. A score
of prominent persons would have slept the better for knowing that their
I. O. U.’s had passed from Drummond’s keeping. The man was more of a
usurer than banker.
What interested Anthony Trent most of all was a collection of letters
signed “N.G.” and written on the stationery of a very exclusive club.
It was a club to which Drummond did not belong.
The first letter was merely a request that Drummond meet the writer in
the library of the athletic club where Anthony Trent had seen him.
The second was longer and spelled a deeper distress.
“It’s impossible in a case like this,” wrote “N.G.,” “to get any man I
know well to endorse my note. If I could afford to let all the world
into my secret, I should not have come to you. You know very well that
as I am the only son your money is safe enough. I must pay this girl
fifty thousand dollars or let my father know all about it. He would be
angry enough to send me to some god-forsaken ranch to cut wild oats.”
The third letter was still more insistent. The writer was obviously
afraid that he would have to beg the money from his father.
“I have always understood,” he wrote, “that you would lend any amount on
reasonable security. I want only fifty thousand dollars but I’ve got to
have it at once. It’s quite beyond my mother’s power to get it for me
this time. I’ve been to that source too often and the old man is on to
it. E.G. insists that the money in cash must be paid to her on the
morning of the 18th when she will call at the house with her lawyer. I
am to receive my letters back and she will leave New York. Let me know
instantly.”
The next letter indicated that William Drummond had decided to lend
“N.G.” the amount but that his offer came too late.
“I wish you had made up your mind sooner,” said “N.G.” “It would have
saved me the devil of a lot of worry and you could have made money out
of it. As it is my father learned of it somehow. He talked about the
family honor as usual. But the result is that when she and her lawyer
call at ten on Thursday morning the money will be there. No check for
her; she’s far too clever, but fifty thousand in crisp new notes. As for
me, I’m to reform. That means I have to go down town every morning at
nine and work in my father’s brokerage business. Can you imagine me
doing that? I blame you for it, Drummond. You are too cautious by a damn
sight to please me.”
Anthony Trent was thus put into possession of the following facts. That
a rich man’s son, initials only known, had got into some sort of a
scrape with a girl, initials were E.G., who demanded fifty thousand
dollars in cash which was to be paid at the residence of the young man’s
father. The date set was Thursday the eighteenth. It was now the early
morning of Tuesday the sixteenth.
Trent had lists of the members of all the best clubs. He went through
the one on whose paper N.G. had written. There were several members with
those initials. Careful elimination left him with only one likely name,
that of Norton Guestwick. Norton Guestwick was the only son and heir of
a very rich broker. The elder Guestwick posed as a musical critic, had a
box in the Golden Horseshoe and patronized such opera singers as
permitted it. Many a time Anthony Trent had gazed on the Guestwick
family seated in their compelling box from the modest seat that was his.
Guestwick had even written a book, “Operas I Have Seen,” which might be
found in most public libraries. It was an elaborately illustrated tome
which reflected his shortcomings as a critic no less than his vanity as
an author. A collector of musical books, Trent remembered buying it with
high hopes and being disgusted at its smug ineffectiveness.
He had seldom seen Norton in the family box but the girls were seldom
absent. They, too, upheld the Arts. Long ago he had conceived a dislike
for Guestwick. He hated men who beat what they thought was time to music
whose composers had other ideas of it.
Turning up a recent file of _Gotham Gossip_ he came upon a reference to
the Guestwick heir. “We understand,” said this waspish, but usually
veracious weekly, “that Norton Guestwick’s attention to pretty Estelle
Grandcourt (née Sadie Cort) has much perturbed his aristocratic parents
who wish him to marry a snug fortune and a girl suited to be their
daughter-in-law. It is not violating a confidence to say that the lady
in question occupies a mansion on Commonwealth avenue and is one of the
most popular girls in Boston’s smart set.”
While many commentators will puzzle themselves over the identity of the
dark lady of the immortal sonnets, few could have failed to perceive
that E.G. was almost certain to be Estelle Grandcourt. Sundry tests of a
confirmatory nature proved it without doubt. He had thus two days in
which to make his preparations to annex the fifty thousand dollars.
There were difficulties. In these early days of his adventuring Anthony
Trent made no use of disguises. He had so far been but himself. Vaguely
he admitted that he must sooner or later come to veiling his identity.
For the present exploit it was necessary that he should find out the
name of the Guestwick butler.
He might have to get particulars from Clarke. But even Clarke’s help
could not now be called in and it was upon this seemingly unimportant
thing that his plan hinged. In a disguise such as many celebrated
cracksmen had used, he might have gained a kitchen door and learned by
what name Guestwick’s man called himself. Or he might have found it out
from a tradesman’s lad. But to ask, as Anthony Trent, what might link
him with a robbery was too risky.
Unfortunately for Charles Newman Guestwick his book, which had cost
Trent two dollars and was thrown aside as worthless, supplied the key to
what was needed.
It was the wordy, garrulous book that only a multi-millionaire author
might write and have published. The first chapter, “My Childhood,” was
succeeded by a lofty disquisition on music. Later there came revelations
of the Guestwick family life with portraits of their various homes. The
music room had a chapter to itself. Reading on, Anthony Trent came to
the chapter headed, rather cryptically, “After the Opera.”
“It is my custom,” wrote the excellent Guestwick, “to hold in my box an
informal reception after the performance is ended. My wide knowledge of
music, of singers and their several abilities lends me, I venture to
say, a unique position among amateurs.
“We rarely sup at hotel or restaurant after the performance. In my
library where there is also a grand piano--we have three such
instruments in our New York home and two more at Lenox--Mrs. Guestwick
and my daughters talk over what we have heard, criticizing here, lauding
there, until a simple repast is served by the butler who always waits up
for us. The rest of the servants have long since retired. My library
consists of perhaps the most valuable collection of musical literature
in the world.
“I have mentioned in another chapter the refining influence of music on
persons of little education. John Briggs, my butler, is a case in point.
He came to me from Lord Fitzhosken’s place in Northamptonshire, England.
The Fitzhoskens are immemoriably associated with fox-hunting and the
steeple-chase and all Briggs heard there in the way of music were the
cheerful rollicking songs of the hunt breakfast. I sent him to see
Götterdämmerung. He told me simply that it was a revelation to him. He
doubted in his uneducated way whether Wagner himself comprehended what
he had written.”
There were thirty other chapters in Mr. Guestwick’s book. In all he
revealed himself as a pompous ass assured only of tolerance among a
people where money consciousness had succeeded that of caste. But
Anthony Trent felt kindly toward him and the money he had spent was
likely to earn him big dividends if things went well.
Caruso sang on the night preceding the morning on which Estelle
Grandcourt was to appear and claim her heart balm. This meant a large
attendance; for tenors may come and go, press agents may announce other
golden voiced singers, but Caruso holds his pride of place honestly won
and generously maintained. It had been Trent’s experience that the
Guestwicks rarely missed a big night.
It was at half past nine Anthony Trent groaned that a professional
engagement compelled him to leave the Metropolitan. He had spent money
on a seat not this time for an evening of enjoyment, but to make certain
that the Guestwicks were in their box.
There was Charles Newman Guestwick beating false time with a pudgy hand.
His lady, weighted with Guestwick jewels, tried to create the impression
that, after all, Caruso owed much of his success to her amiable
patronage. The two daughters upheld the Guestwick tradition by being
exceedingly affable to those greater than they and using lorgnettes to
those who strove to know the Guestwicks.
Mr. John Briggs, drinking a mug of ale and wondering who was winning a
light weight contest at the National Sporting Club, was resting in his
sitting-room. He liked these long opera evenings, which gave him the
opportunity to rest, as much as he despised his employer for his
inordinate attendance at these meaningless entertainments. He shuddered
as he remembered “The Twilight of the Gods.”
At ten o’clock when Mr. Briggs was nodding in his chair the telephone
bell rang. Over the wire came his employer’s voice. It was not without
purpose that Anthony Trent’s unusual skill in mimicry had been employed.
As a youth he had acquired a reputation in his home town for imitations
of Henry Irving, Bryan, Otis Skinner and their like.
“Is this you, Briggs?” demanded the supposed Mr. Guestwick.
“Yes, sir,” returned Briggs.
“I wish you to listen carefully to my instructions,” he was commanded.
“They are very important.”
“Certainly, sir,” the man returned. He sensed a something, almost
agitation in the usually placid voice. “I hope there’s nothing serious,
sir.”
“There may be,” the other said, “that I can’t say yet. See that every
one goes to bed but you. Send them off at once. You must remain up until
a man in evening dress comes to the front door and demands admittance.
It will be a detective. Show him at once to the library and leave him
absolutely undisturbed. Absolutely undisturbed, Briggs, do you
understand?”
“I’ll do as you say, sir,” Briggs answered, troubled. He was sure now
that serious sinister things were afoot and wished the Guestwicks had
been as well disposed to dogs in the house as had been that hard
drinking, reckless Lord Fitzhosken. Suddenly an important thought came
to him. “Is there any way of making sure that the man who comes is the
detective?”
“I am glad you are so shrewd, Briggs,” said the millionaire. “It had not
occurred to me that an impostor might come. Say to the man, ‘What is
your errand?’ I shall instruct him to answer, ‘I have come to look at
Mr. Guestwick’s rare editions.’”
“Very good, sir,” said Briggs.
“Unless he answers that, do not admit him. You understand?”
“Perfectly,” the butler made answer.
At half past ten a man in evening dress rang the door of the Guestwick
mansion. He was a tall man with a hard look and a biting, gruff voice.
Briggs interposed his sturdy body between the stranger and the
entrance.
“What is your errand?” said Briggs suavely.
“I have come to look at Mr. Guestwick’s rare editions,” he was told.
“Step inside,” urged Briggs with cordiality.
“Everybody in bed?” the man snapped.
“Except me,” said the butler.
“Any one here except the servants?”
“We have no house guests,” said Briggs. “We don’t keep a deal of
company.”
“Show me to the library,” the stranger commanded.
Briggs, now stately and offended, led the way. Briggs resented the tone
the detective used. In his youth the butler had been handy with the
gloves. It was for this reason he was taken into service by the
fox-hunting nobleman so that he might box with his lordship every day
before breakfast. Briggs would have liked the opportunity to put on the
gloves with this frowning, overbearing, hawknosed detective.
“You’ve got your orders?” cried the stranger.
“I have,” Briggs answered, a trace of insolence perceptible.
“Then get out and don’t worry me. Remember this, answer no phone
messages or door bells. My men outside will attend to the people who
want to get into this house.”
Briggs tried new tactics. He was feverishly anxious to find out what was
suspected.
“As man to man,” Briggs began with a fine affability.
Imperiously he was ordered from the room.
Anthony Trent sank into a chair and laughed gently. It had all been so
absurdly easy. Two good hours were before him. None would interrupt. It
was known that young Norton had been bundled out of town until his
charmer had disappeared. _Gotham Gossip_ had told him so much. It was
almost certain that the Guestwicks would not return to their home until
half past twelve. That would give him a sufficient time to examine every
likely looking place in the house. The old time crook would no doubt
have hit Mr. Briggs over the head with a black jack and run a risk in
the doing of it. The representative of the newer school had simply sent
all the servants to bed.
Looking quickly about the great apartment, book-lined and imposing,
Trent’s eyes fell on an edition in twenty fat volumes of _Penroy’s
Encyclopædia of Music and Art_. Scrutiny told the observer that behind
these steel-bound fake books there was a safe. It was an old dodge,
this. If the money for Miss Grandcourt was not here there were, no
doubt, negotiable papers and jewels. This was just the sort of
sacro-sanct spot where valuables might be laid away.
To pry open the glass door of the book case, roll back the works of the
unknown Penroy and come face to face with the old fashioned safe took
less than two minutes. It was amazing that so shrewd a man as Guestwick
must be in business matters should rely on this. It was rather that he
relied on the integrity of his servants and an efficient system of
burglar alarm.
From the cane that Anthony Trent had carelessly thrown on a chair, he
took some finely tempered steel drills and presently assembled the tools
necessary to his task. As a boy he had been the rare kind who could take
a watch apart and put it together again and have no parts left over. It
was largely owing to an inborn mechanical skill that he had persuaded
himself he could make good at his calling.
It was striking eleven by the ship’s clock--six bells--when he rolled
the doors open. He rose to his feet and stretched. Kneeling before the
safe had cramped his muscles. Sinking into a big black leathern chair he
contemplated the strong box that was now at his mercy. He allowed
himself the luxury of a cigarette. There passed before his mind’s eye a
vista of pleasant shaded pools wherein big trout were lying. Weems did
not own the only desirable camp on Kennebago.
He was suddenly called back from this dreaming, this castle-building, to
a realization that such prospects might never be his. It was the low,
pleasant, tones of a cultivated woman’s voice which wrought the amazing
change.
“I suppose you’re a burglar,” the voice said. There was no trace of
nervousness in her tone.
He sprang to his feet and looked around. Not twenty feet distant he saw
her. She was a tall, graceful girl about twenty-two or three, clad in a
charming evening gown. Over her white arm trailed a fur cloak costly and
elegant. And, although the moment was hardly one for thinking of female
charms, he was struck by her unusual beauty. She possessed an air of
extreme sophistication and stood looking at him as if the man before her
were some unusual and bizarre specimen of his kind.
CHAPTER VIII
WHEN A WOMAN SMILED
ANTHONY TRENT apparently was in no way confused at this interruption.
The woman was not to guess that his _nonchalant_ manner and the careless
lighting of a cigarette, cloaked in reality a feeling of despair at the
untoward ending of his adventure. Calmly she walked past him and looked
at the assemblage of finely tempered steel instruments of his
profession.
“So you’re a burglar!” she said with an air of decision.
“That is a term I dislike,” said Anthony Trent genially. “Call me rather
a professional collector, an abstractor, a connoisseur--anything but
that.”
“It amounts to the same thing,” she returned severely, “you came here to
steal my father’s money.”
“Your father’s money,” he returned slowly. “Then--then you are Miss
Guestwick?”
“Naturally,” she retorted eyeing him keenly, “and if you offer any
violence I shall have you arrested.”
She was amazed to see a pleasant smile break over the intruder’s face.
He was exceedingly attractive when he smiled.
“What a hard heart you have!”
“You ought to realize this is no time to jest,” she said stiffly.
“I am not so sure,” he made answer.
She looked at him haughtily. He realized that he had rarely seen so
beautiful a girl. There was a look of high courage about her that
particularly appealed to him. She had long Oriental eyes of jade green.
He amended his guess as to her age. She must be seven and twenty he told
himself.
“It is my duty to call the police and have you arrested,” she exclaimed.
“That is the usual procedure,” he agreed.
She stood there irresolute.
“I wonder what makes you steal!”
“Abstract,” he corrected, “collect, borrow, annex--but not steal.”
She took no notice of his interruption.
“It isn’t as though you were ill or starving--that might be some sort of
excuse--but you are well dressed. I’ve done a great deal of social work
among the poor and often I’ve met the wives of thieves and have actually
found myself pitying men who have stolen for bread.”
“Jean Valjean stuff,” he smiled, “it has elements of pathos. Jean got
nineteen years for it if you remember.”
She paid no heed to his flippancy.
“You talk like an educated man. Economic determination did not bring you
to this. You have absolutely no excuse.”
“I have offered none,” he said drily.
She spoke with a sudden air of candor.
“Do you know this situation interests me very much. One reads about
burglars, of course, but that sort of thing seems rather remote. We’ve
never had any robberies here before, and now to come face to face with
a real burglar, cracking--isn’t that the word you use?--a safe, is
rather disconcerting.”
“You bear up remarkably well,” he assured her.
It was her turn to smile.
“I’m just wondering,” she said slowly. “My father detests notoriety.”
The intruder permitted himself to laugh gently. He thought of that
pretentious tome “Operas I Have Seen.”
“How well Mr. Guestwick conceals it!”
Apparently she had not heard him. It was plain she was in the throes of
making up her mind.
“I wonder if I ought to do it,” she mused.
“Do what?” he demanded.
“Let you get away. You have so far stolen nothing so I should not be
aiding or abetting a crime.”
“Indeed you would,” he said promptly. “My very presence here is illegal
and as you see I have opened that absurd safe.”
“What an amazing burglar!” she cried, “he does not want his freedom.”
“It is your duty as Mr. Guestwick’s daughter to send me to jail and I
shan’t respect you if you don’t.”
She was again the haughty young society woman gazing at a curious
specimen of man.
“It is very evident,” she snapped, “that you don’t appreciate your
position. Instead of sending you to prison I am willing to give you
another chance. Will you promise me never to do this sort of thing again
if I let you go?”
Trent looked up.
“I have enjoyed your conversation very much,” he observed genially,
“but I have work to do. Inside that safe I expect to find fifty thousand
dollars and possibly some odd trinkets. I am in particular need of the
money and I propose to get it.”
Swiftly she crossed the room to a telephone.
“I don’t think you’ll succeed,” she said, her hand on the instrument.
“Put it to the test,” he suggested. “The wires are not cut.”
“Why aren’t you afraid?” she demanded; “don’t you realize your
position?”
“Fully,” he retorted, “but remember you’ll have just the same difficulty
as I in explaining your presence here. Now go ahead and get the police.”
“What do you mean?” she cried. He noticed that she paled at what he said
and her hands had been for a moment not quite steady.
“First that you are not a Miss Guestwick. There are only two of them and
I have just left them at the Opera. Next you are neither servant nor
guest. The servants are all abed and there are no house guests. I am not
accustomed to making mistakes in matters of this sort. Now, I’m not
inviting confidences and I’m not making threats, but the doors are
locked and I intend to get what I came for. Ring all you like and see if
a servant answers you. By the way how is it I overlooked you when I came
in?”
“I hid behind those portières.”
“It was excusable,” he commented, “not to have looked there.”
She sank into a chair her whole face suffused with gloom. He steeled his
heart against feeling sympathy for her. He would liked to have learned
all about her but there was not much time. The Guestwicks might return
earlier than usual or Briggs might be lurking the other side of the
door.
“You’ve found me out,” she said quietly, “I’m not one of the Guestwick
girls.”
“I told you so,” he said a little impatiently.
“Don’t you want to know anything about me?” she demanded.
“Some other time,” he returned, “I’m busy now.”
“But what are you going to do?” she asked.
“I thought I told you. I’m going to see what Mr. Guestwick has which
interests me. Then I shall get a bite to eat somewhere and go home to
bed.”
“Are you going to take that fifty thousand dollars?” she demanded. Her
tone was a tragic one.
“That’s what I came for,” he told her.
“You mustn’t, you mustn’t,” she declared and then fell to weeping
bitterly.
Beauty in distress moved Anthony Trent even when his business most
engrossed his attention. It was his nature to be considerate of women.
When he had garnered enough money to buy himself a home he intended to
marry and settle down to domestic joys. As to this weeping woman, there
was little doubt in his mind as to the reason she was in the Guestwick
home. Perhaps she noticed the harder look that came to his face.
“Whom do you think I am?” she asked.
“I have not forgotten,” he answered, “that women also are abstractors at
times.”
She gazed at him wide open eyes, a look of horror on her face.
“You think I’m here to steal?”
“I wish I didn’t,” he answered. “It’s bad enough for a man, but for a
woman like you. What am I to think when I find you hiding in a house
where you have no right to be?”
“That’s the whole tragedy of it,” she exclaimed, “that I’ve no right to
be here. I suppose I shall have to tell you everything. Can’t you guess
who I am?”
Anthony Trent looked at the clock. Precious seconds were chasing one
another into minutes and he had wasted too much time already.
“I don’t see that it matters at all to me,” he pointed to the safe, “I’m
here on business.”
It annoyed him to feel he was not quite living up to the debonair heroes
he had created once upon a time. They would not have permitted
themselves to be so brusque with a lovely girl upon whose exquisite
cheeks tears were still wet.
“You must listen to me,” she implored, “I’m Estelle Grandcourt. Now do
you understand why I’ve come?”
“For the money that you think is already yours,” he said, a trifle
sulkily. Matters were becoming complicated.
“Money!” cried the amazing chorus girl, “I hate it!”
His face cleared.
“If that’s the case,” he said genially, “we shall not quarrel. Frankly,
Miss Grandcourt, I love it.”
She glanced at him through tear-beaded lashes.
“I suppose you’ve always thought of a show girl as a scheming
adventuress always on the lookout for some foolish, rich old man or else
some silly boy with millions to spend.”
“Not at all!” he protested.
“But you have,” she contradicted, “I can tell by your manner. For my
part I have always thought of burglars as brutal, low-browed men without
chivalry or courtesy. I’ve been wrong too. I imagined the
gentleman-crook was only a fiction and now I find him a fact. Will you
please tell me what you’ve heard about me. I’m not fishing for
compliments. I want, really and truly, to know.”
Trent hesitated a moment. He thought, as he looked at her, that never
had he seen a sweeter face. She was wholly in earnest.
“Please, please,” she entreated.
“It’s probably all wrong,” he observed, “but the general impression is
that Norton Guestwick is a wild, weak lad for whom you set your snares.
And when Mr. Guestwick tried to break it off you asked fifty-thousand
dollars in cash as a price.”
“Do you believe that?” she asked looking at him almost piteously.
“It was common report,” he said, seeking to exonerate himself, “I read
some of it in _Gotham Gossip_.”
“And just because of what some spiteful writer said you condemn me
unheard.”
He looked at the inviting safe and fidgeted.
“I’m not condemning,” he reminded her. “I don’t know anything about the
affair. I don’t yet see why you are here, Miss Grandcourt.”
“Because I have the right to be,” she said, looking him full in the
face. “I pretended I was a Miss Guestwick. If you wish to know the
truth, I am Mrs. Norton Guestwick. I can show you our marriage
certificate. This is the first time I have ever been in the house of my
father-in-law.”
“How did you get in?” he demanded. He felt certain that Briggs the
butler had shown him into the library believing it to be unoccupied.
“I bribed a servant who used to be in our employ.”
“Your employ?” he queried.
“Why not?” she flung back at him. “Is it also reported that I come from
the slums? We were never rich as the Guestwicks are rich, but until my
father died we lived in good style as we know it in the South. I am at
least as well educated as my sisters-in-law who refuse to recognize that
I exist. I was at the Sacred Heart Convent in Paris. I sing and paint
and play the piano as well as most girls but do none of these well
enough to make a living at it. I came here to New York hoping that
through the influence of my father’s friends I could get some sort of a
position which would give me a living wage.” She shrugged her shoulders,
“I wonder if you know how differently people look at one when one is
well off and when one comes begging favors?”
“None better,” he exclaimed bitterly.
“So I had to get in to the chorus because they said my figure would do
even if I hadn’t a good enough voice. Then I met Norton.”
She looked at Anthony Trent with a little friendly smile that stirred
him oddly. In that moment he envied Norton Guestwick more than any
living creature.
“What do they say about my husband?” she asked.
“You can never believe reports,” he said evasively.
“I’ll tell you,” she returned, “they say he is a waster, a libertine,
weak and degenerate. They are wrong. He is full of sweet, generous
impulses. His mother has so pampered him that he was almost hopeless
till I met him. I expect you think it’s conceited of me but I have a
great influence on him.”
“You would on any man,” he said fervently.
She looked at him in a way that suggested a certain subtle tribute to
his best qualities.
“Ah, but you are different,” she sighed, “you are strong and resolute.
You would sway the woman you loved and make her what you wanted her to
be. He is clay for my molding and I want him to be a splendid, fine son
like my father.” She looked at Trent with a tender, proud smile, “If you
had ever met my father you would understand.”
Anthony Trent shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He had not
dared for months now to think of that kindly country physician who died
from the exposure attendant on a trip during a blizzard to aid a
penniless patient.
“I know what you mean,” he said at length, “and I think it is splendid
of you. Good God! why can people like the Guestwicks object to a girl
like you?”
“They’ve never seen me,” she explained, “and that’s the main trouble.
They persist in thinking of me as a champagne-drinking adventuress who
wants to blackmail them. That money"--she pointed to the safe, “I didn’t
ask for it. Mr. Guestwick offered it to me as a bribe to give up my
husband and consent to a divorce.”
“But I still don’t see why you are here,” he said.
“Our old servant arranged it. She says they always come up here after
the opera, all four of them. If I confront them they must see I’m not
the sort of girl they think me. I’m dreading it horribly but it’s the
only way.”
Anthony Trent looked at her with open admiration.
“You’ll win,” he cried enthusiastically, “I feel it in my bones.”
“And when I absolutely refuse to take their money they _must_ see I’m
not the adventuress they call me.”
Anthony Trent had by this time forgotten the money. The mention of it
reminded him of his errand and the fleeting minutes.
“If you don’t take it, what is going to happen to it?”
“I’m going to tell Mr. Guestwick that he can’t buy me.”
“But I’m willing to be bought,” he said, forcing a smile. “In fact
that’s what I came for.”
She shrunk back as though he had struck her. Her big eyes looked
reproach at him. Tremulous eager words seemed forced from her by the
agitation into which his words had thrown her.
“You couldn’t do that now,” she wailed, “not now you know. They’ll be in
very soon now and what could I say if the money was gone? Don’t you see
they would send me away in disgrace and Norton would believe that I was
just as bad as they said? Then he’d divorce me and I think my heart
would break.”
“Damn!” muttered Trent. Things were happening in an unexpected fashion.
He tried not to look at her piteous face.
“Please be kind to me,” she begged, “this is your opportunity to do one
great noble thing.”
“It really means so much to you?” he asked.
“It means everything,” she said simply.
He paced the room for a minute or more. He was fighting a great battle.
There remained in him, despite his mode of living, a certain generosity
of character, a certain fineness bequeathed him by generations of
honorable folk. He saw clearly what the girl meant. She was here to
fight for her happiness and the redemption of the man she loved. How
small a thing, it seemed to him suddenly, was the necessity he had felt
for obtaining the miserable money. What stinging mordant memories would
always be his if he refused her!
There was a tenderness, a protective look in his eyes when he glanced
down at her. He was his father’s son again.
“It means something to me, too,” he told her, “to do as you want, and I
don’t believe there’s a person on this green earth I’d do it for but
you.”
His hand lingered for a moment on her white shoulder.
“Good luck, little girl.”
The partly lighted hall full of mysterious shadows awakened no fear in
him as he quietly descended the stairs. And when he came to the avenue
he did not glance up and down as he usually did to see whether or not he
was being followed.
There was a lightness of heart and an exaltation of spirit which he had
never experienced. It was that happiness which alone comes to the man
who has made a sacrifice. There was never a moment since he had
abandoned fiction that he was nearer to returning to its uncertain
rewards. Pipe after pipe he smoked when he was once more in his quiet
room and asked himself why he had done this thing. There were two
reasons hard to dissociate. First, this wonderful girl had reminded him
of the man he had passionately admired--his father, the father who had
taught him to play fair. And then he was forced to admit he had never
been more drawn to any woman than to this girl, who must, before his
last pipe was smoked, have won her victory or gone down to defeat. Again
and again he told himself that there was no man he envied so much as
Norton Guestwick.
CHAPTER IX
“THE COUNTESS”
The next morning Anthony Trent observed that Mrs. Kinney was filled with
the excitement that attended the reading of an unusual crime as set
forth by the morning papers. It was in those crimes committed in the
higher circles of society which intrigued her most, that society which
she had served.
As a rule Trent let her wander on feeling that her pleasures were few.
Sometimes he thought it a little curious that she should concern herself
with affairs in which he was sure, sooner or later, to be involved. It
was a relief to know she spoke of them to none but him. He rarely
bothered to follow her rambling recitals, contenting himself now and
again with exclamations of supposed interest. But this morning he was
suddenly roused from his meditations by the mention of the word
Guestwick.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
“I was telling you about the Guestwick robbery, sir,” she said as she
filled his cup.
He did not as a rule look at the paper until his breakfast was done. To
send her for it now might, later, be used as a chain in the evidence
that might even now be forging for him. He affected a luke-warm
interest.
“What was it?” he asked.
“Money mad!” returned Mrs. Kinney, shaking her head. “All money mad. The
root of all evil.”
“A robbery was it?”
“It was like this,” Mrs. Kinney responded, strangely gratified that her
employer found her recital worth listening to. “There was fifty-thousand
dollars in cash in the safe in Mr. Guestwick’s library. He’s a
millionaire and lives on Fifth Avenue. It’s a most mysterious case. The
butler swears his master rang him up and told him to send all the
servants to bed.”
At length Mrs. Kinney recited Briggs’s evidence before the police
captain who was hurriedly summoned to the mansion. “They arrested the
butler,” said Mrs. Kinney. “Mr. Guestwick says he came from one of those
castles in England where dissolute noblemen do nothing but shoot foxes
all day and play cards all night. The police theory is that the butler
admitted them and then went bed so as to prove an alibi.”
“Mr. Guestwick denies sending any such message?”
“Yes. He was at the Opera.”
Anthony Trent fought down the desire to rush out into the kitchen and
take the paper from before Mrs. Kinney’s plate. She had said that Briggs
was to have admitted more than one person.
“How many did this suspected butler let in?”
“Only one, the man. He was in evening dress. Briggs suspected him from
the first, but daren’t go against his master’s positive instructions.
Briggs, the butler, says the man must have opened the door to his
accomplice when he’d been sent off to bed with instructions not to
answer any bell or telephone. The other was a beautiful young woman
dressed just as she’d come from the Opera herself.”
“Who saw her if Briggs did not?” he demanded.
“They caught her,” Mrs. Kinney returned triumphantly, “and the arrest of
her accomplice is expected any minute. They know who he is.”
Anthony Trent put down his untasted coffee.
“That’s interesting,” he commented. “Do they mention his name?”
“I don’t know as they did,” she replied. “I’ll go fetch the paper.”
He read it through with a deeper interest than he had ever taken in
printed sheet before. Such was Guestwick’s importance that two columns
had been devoted to him.
Mr. Guestwick on returning from the Opera was incensed to find none to
let him in his own house. He was compelled to use a latchkey. The house
was silent and unlighted. Mr. Guestwick, although a man of courage, felt
the safety of his women folk would be better guarded if he called in a
passing policeman. In the library they came face to face with crime.
There, standing at the closed safe, her skirt caught as the heavy doors
had swung to, was a beautiful woman engaged as they came upon her in
trying to tear off the imprisoning garments. Five minutes later and she
would have escaped said police sapience.
Finger prints revealed her as a very well-known criminal known to the
continental police as “The Countess.” She was one of a high-class gang
which operated as a rule on the French and Italian Riviera, and owed its
success to the ease with which it could assume the manners and customs
of the aristocracy it planned to steal from. “The Countess,” for
example, spoke English with a perfection of idiom and inflection that
was unequaled by a foreigner. She was believed to come from an old
family of Tuscany. Despite a rigid examination by the police she had
declined to make any explanation. That, she told them, would be done in
court.
Anthony Trent looked at the clock. It was nine and she would be brought
before a magistrate at half-past ten.
So he had been fooled! All those high resolves of his had been brought
into being by a woman who must have been laughing at him all the while,
who must have congratulated herself that her lies had touched a man’s
heart and left fifty thousand dollars for her.
It was a bitter and harder Anthony Trent that came to the police court;
a man who was now almost as ashamed at his determination of last night
to abandon his career as he was now anxious to pursue it.
There was possibly some danger in going. Briggs would be there. The
woman might point at him in open court. There were a hundred dangers,
but they had no power to deter him. He swore to watch her, gain what
particulars he might as to her past life and associates, and then take
his revenge. God! How she had hoodwinked him!
His face he must, of course, disguise in some simple manner. It was not
difficult. In court he took a seat not too far back. Chewing gum, as he
had often observed in the subway, had a marvelous power in altering an
expression. He sat there, his lower jaw thrust out and his mouth drawn
down, ceaselessly chewing. And one eye was partially closed. He had
brought the thing to perfection. With shoulders hunched he looked
without fear of detection into the fascinating green eyes of “The
Countess.”
By this time her defense was arranged. Last night, her lawyer explained,
she was so overcome with the shock that she could not make even a simple
statement to the police.
Miss Violet Benyon, he declared, of London, England, and temporarily at
the Plaza, had felt on the previous evening need for a walk. Knowing
Fifth Avenue to be absolutely safe she walked North. Passing the
Guestwick mansion she saw a man in evening dress stealing down the
steps, across the road and into the Park. Fearing robbery she had rung
the bell. Getting no answer and finding the door open she went in. The
only light was in the library. Of a fearless nature, Miss Benyon of
London went boldly in. There was an open safe. This she closed and in
the doing of it was imprisoned. That was all. The lawyer swept the
finger-prints aside as unworthy evidence. He was appearing before a
neolithic magistrate who was prejudiced against them.
An imposing old lady who claimed to be Miss Benyon’s aunt went bail for
her niece’s appearance to the amount of ten thousand dollars. She
mentioned as close friends names of well known Americans, socially
elect, who would rush to her rescue ere the day was out. So impressive
was she, and so splendid a witness did Miss Benyon make, that the
magistrate disregarded Mr. Guestwick’s plea and admitted her to bail.
Trent knew very well that Central Office men would dog the steps of aunt
and niece, making escape almost impossible. But he was nevertheless
convinced that Miss Violet Benyon of London, or the Countess from the
Riviera, would never return to the magistrate’s court as that trusting
jurist anticipated.
And Anthony Trent was right. The two women, despite police surveillance,
left the hotel and merged themselves among the millions. The younger
woman taking advantage of a new maid’s inexperience offered her a reward
for permitting her to escape by back ways in order to win, as she
averred, a bet. The aunt’s escape was unexplained by the police. They
found awaiting the elder woman’s coming a girl from a milliner’s shop.
She was allowed to go without examination. Trent read the account very
carefully and stored every published particular in his trained memory.
There was no doubt in his mind that the milliner’s assistant was the
so-called aunt. He remembered her as a slim, elderly woman, very much
made-up.
On his own account he called at the milliner’s and made some inquiries.
He found that there was no account with the Benyons and no assistant had
been sent to the hotel. It was none of his business to aid police
authorities. And he was not anxious that the two should be caught in
that way. There would come a time when he was retired from his present
occupation when he would feel the need of excitement. Getting even with
the clever actress who prevented him from taking the Guestwick money
would call for his astutest planning.
CHAPTER X
ANTHONY TRENT SAVES A PIANO
FOR some months now Trent had been preparing a campaign against the
collection of precious stones belonging to Carr Faulkner whose white
stone mansion looked across the Park from his home. But whereas Trent’s
house faced east, the Faulkner abode looked west. And in matter of
residence locality there is an appreciable difference in this outlook.
The Faulkner millions were in the main inherited. There was a
conservative banking house on Broad Street bearing the Faulkner name but
it did not look for new business and found its principal work in
guarding the vast Faulkner fortune.
Faulkner’s first wife had been a collector of pearls, those modest
stones whose assembled value is always worth the criminal’s attention.
The second wife, a young woman of less aristocratic stock, eschewed
pearls, holding the theory that each one was a tear. She wanted flashing
stones which advertised their value more ostentatiously. Trent had seen
her at the Opera and marked her down as a profitable client.
It was because Trent worked so carefully that he made so few mistakes.
He had no friends to ask him leading questions and gossip about his mode
of life. He had been half a year collecting information about the Carr
Faulkners, the style in which they lived, the intimate friends they had
and a hundred little details which a careful professional must know
before he can hope to make a success.
The system of burglar alarm installed in the mansion was an elaborate
one but he was not unskilled in matters of this sort. For three months
he had worked in the shop where they were made and his general inborn
mechanical skill had been aided by conscientious study. Attention to
detail had saved him more than once, and is an aid to be counted on more
than luck.
Yet it was sheer blind, kindly, garrulous luck that finally took Trent
unsuspected into the Carr Faulkner mansion. Riding up Madison avenue in
a trolley car late one afternoon, he overheard one of the Faulkner’s
maids discussing the family.
One of the girls had knocked over a vase of cut flowers which stood on a
grand piano in Mrs. Carr Faulkner’s boudoir and the water had leaked
through onto the wire and wood, doing some little damage.
“She was madder’n a wet hen,” said the girl.
“Them things cost a lot of money,” her companion commented, “and that
was inlaid like all the other things in her room. Gee! the way Mr.
Faulkner spends the money on her is a crime.”
“Second wives have a cinch,” said the first girl, sneering. “From all I
hear the first was a perfect lady and kind to the maids, but this one is
down-right ordinary. You should have heard what she said about me over
the ‘phone when she told the piano people to send a tuner up, and me
standing there. Said I was “clumsy” and “stupid” and “a love-sick fool.”
I could tell something about love-sick fools if I wanted to! And she
knows it.”
Her friend cautioned her.
“Be careful,” she whispered, “you may want to lose your job but I don’t.
Don’t talk so loud.”
It was hardly five o’clock. Anthony Trent left the car and started for a
telephone booth. He went methodically through the lists of the better
known piano makers. There was one firm whose high-priced instrument was
frequently encased in rare woods for specially furnished rooms.
“This is Mr. Carr Faulkner’s secretary speaking,” he began when the
number was given to him. “Have you been instructed to see about a piano
here?”
“We are sending a man right away,” he was told.
“To-morrow morning will do,” said the supposed secretary. “We are giving
a small dance to-night and it will not be convenient.”
“We should prefer to send now,” came the answer. “A valuable instrument
might be extensively damaged if not attended to right away.”
Trent became confidential. He dropped his voice.
“It’s nothing for Mr. Faulkner to buy a new instrument if it’s needed,
but it’s a serious thing if a dance that Mrs. Faulkner gives is
interrupted. Money is no consideration here as you ought to know.”
The piano man, remembering the price that was exacted for the special
case, smiled to himself. It would be better for him to sell a new
instrument. It would not surprise him if this affable secretary called
in some fine morning and hinted at commission. Such things had been done
before in the trade.
“It’s just as you say,” he returned. “At what hour shall our Mr. Jackson
call?”
“As soon as he likes after ten,” said the obliging Trent, and rang off.
Then he called up the Carr Faulkner house and told the answering man
servant that Mr. Jackson of Stoneham’s would call at half past six. He
was switched on to the private wire of Mrs. Carr Faulkner.
“It’s disgraceful that you can’t come before,” she stormed.
“Yours is specially made instrument,” he reminded her, “and I need
special tools.”
Then he took the crosstown car to his home and changed into a neat dark
business suit. He also arrayed himself in a brand new shirt and collar.
Mrs. Kinney always washed these, and many a criminal has had his
identity proved by his laundry mark. Trent, like a wise man, admitted
the possibility that some day he might be caught but was determined
never to take the risks that lesser craftsmen hardly thought of.
Anthony Trent thought it most probable that the Faulkner’s butler would
be of the imported species. He hoped so. He found that they were more
easily impressed by good manners and dress than the domestic breed.
Some day he determined to write an essay on butlers. There was Conington
Warren’s bishop-like Austin, cold, severe, aloof. There was Guestwick’s
man, the jovial sportsman type molding himself no doubt on some admired
employer of earlier days.
Faulkner’s butler was an amiable creature and inclined to associate with
a piano tuner on equal terms. He had rather fine features and was
admired of the female domestics. His dignity forbade him to indulge in
much familiarity with the men beneath him and he welcomed the
pseudo-tuner as an opportunity to converse.
“I knew you by your voice,” said the butler cordially. “Come in.”
There was little chance that the maid servants behind whom he had sat on
the car would recognize him. Or if they did there was no reason why they
should be suspicious.
Mrs. Carr Faulkner’s boudoir was a delightful room on the third floor. A
little electric, self-operated elevator leading to it was pointed out by
the butler.
“Not for the likes of you or me,” said the man. “We can walk.”
Mrs. Carr Faulkner was a dissatisfied looking blonde woman. In her opera
box surrounded by friends and displaying her famous jewels she had
seemed a vision of loveliness to the gazing far-away Trent. Here in her
own home and dealing with those whom she considered her inferiors, she
made no effort to be even civil.
“Who is this person?” she demanded of the butler.
“The man come to look at the piano, ma’am,” he returned.
“You’re not Mr. Jackson,” she said with abruptness.
It was plain Jackson was known. Trent blamed himself for not thinking of
this possibility.
“I am the head tuner,” he said with dignity, “we understood it was a
case where the highest skill was needed.”
She looked at him coldly.
“I don’t know that it demands much of what you call skill,” she
retorted acidly. “You have come at a singularly inconvenient hour.
Please get to work at once.”
With this she left the room. The butler gazed after her scowling.
“Do you have to put up with that all day?” Trent asked him.
“How the boss stands it I don’t know,” said the butler.
“Why take it out on a mere piano tuner?” Trent asked.
The butler winked knowingly. He dug Trent in the ribs with a fine, free
and friendly gesture.
“Speaking as one man of the world to another,” he observed, “I guess you
spoiled a little _tête-à-tête_ as we say in gay Paree. Mr. Carr Faulkner
leaves the Union Club at seven and walks up the Avenue in time to dress
for his dinner at eight. There’s another gentleman leaves another club
on the same Avenue and gets here as a rule at six and leaves in time to
avoid the master.” The butler leaned forward and whispered in the
tuner’s ear, “She’s crazy about him. The only man who doesn’t know is
the boss. It’s always the way,” added the self-confessed man of the
world, “I wouldn’t trust any woman living. The more they have the worse
they are. If ever I marry I’ll take a job as lighthouse keeper and take
my wife along.”
“Will they come in here?” Trent asked anxiously. He wanted the
opportunity to do his own work while the family dined and he did not
want to be seen by an unnecessary person. He disliked taking even a
million to one shot.
The cynical butler interpreted his interest differently.
“You won’t understand a word of what they’re saying. They talk in
French. She was at school in Lausanne and he’s a French count, or says
he is. I’ve made a mistake in scorning foreign languages,” the butler
admitted, “I’d give a lot to know what they talk about.” He was not to
know that Trent knew French moderately well.
Left to himself Trent called to mind the actions of a piano tuner. He
had often watched his own grand being tuned. When Mrs. Carr Faulkner
came into the room she beheld an earnest young man delving among the
piano’s depths. She was interested in no man but Jules d’Aucquier who
filled her heart and emptied her purse.
“Is the thing much damaged?” she asked presently.
“I think not,” he replied.
“Then you need not stay long?”
“I shall go as soon as possible,” he said.
She sank into a deep chair and thought of Jules. And there came to her
face a softer, happier look. The butler’s talk Trent dismissed as mere
servants’ gossip. Of Carr Faulkner he knew nothing except that he was
years older than his wife. He was, probably, a wealthy roué who had
coveted this beautiful woman and bought her in marriage. In high society
it was often that way, he mused. Family coercion, perhaps, or the need
to aid impoverished parents. It was being done every day. This man of
whom the butler spoke was probably her own age. Since the stone age this
domestic intrigue must have been going on.
He touched the keyboard--pianissimo at first and then growing bolder
plunged into the glorious _Liebestod_. It was not the sort of thing Mr.
Jackson would have done but then Anthony Trent was a head tuner as he
had explained. He watched the woman’s face to see into what mood the
music would lead her. He was speedily to find out.
“Stop,” she commanded and rising to her feet came to his side. “Why do
you do that?”
“I must try it,” he answered, a little sheepishly, “we always have to
test an instrument.”
“But to play the _Liebestod_” she said severely. “I have heard them all
play it, Bauer, Borwick, Grainger, d’Albert and Hoffman and you dare to
try! It was impertinent of you. Of course if you must play just play
those chords tuners always use.”
Trent admitted afterwards he had never been more angry or felt more
insulted in his life. He had not for a moment supposed this butterfly
woman even knew the name of what he played.
“I won’t offend again,” he said with what he hoped was a sarcastic
inflection. She answered never a word. She seemed to be listening. Trent
heard a sound that might have been the opening of the elevator door.
Then came hurried steps along the hall and Jules d’Aucquier entered.
He was dark to the point of swarthiness, tall and graceful. His rather
small head reminded Trent of a snake’s. As a man who knew men Trent
determined that the newcomer was dangerous. The look that he threw
across the room to the intruder was not pleasant.
He spoke very quickly in French.
“Who is this?” he demanded.
“No one who matters,” she answered in the same tongue.
“But what is the pig doing here at this hour?” he asked.
“Repairing the piano,” she told him, “a poor tuner I imagine for the
reason that he plays so well. I had to stop him when he began the
_Liebestod_. It affects me too much. That was being played when you
first looked into my eyes, dear one.”
“Send him away,” the man commanded.
“But that would look suspicious,” she declared.
Trent noticed that Jules did not respond to the affection which was in
the woman’s tone.
“You should not telephone to me at the club,” he said as he took a seat
at her side. “I am only a temporary member and do not want to embarrass
my sponsor.”
“But you were so cruel to me yesterday,” she murmured.
“Cruel?” he repeated and turned his cold, snake eyes on her, eyes that
could, when he willed it, glow with fire and passion. “Who is the
crueler, you or I?”
“What do you mean?” she cried almost tearfully. “You know I love you.”
“And yet when I ask you to do a favor which is easily within your power
to perform you refuse. I must have money; that you know.”
“It is always money now,” she complained. “You no longer say that you
love me.”
“How can I when my creditors bark at my heels like hungry dogs? Unless
I pay by to-morrow it is finished. You and I see one another no more,
that is certain.”
He looked at her in annoyed surprise when she suddenly smiled. He
watched her with an even greater interest than the man gazing from
behind the piano. From an escritoire she took a package wrapped in
lavender paper. This she placed in the pocket of the coat that he had
thrown across a chair.
“What good are cigarettes to me now?” he demanded. “I have told you that
unless I have fifteen thousand dollars by noon to-morrow, I am done.”
“When you get to your rooms,” she said, smiling, “open your cigarettes
and see if I do not love you.”
Trent admitted this Jules was undeniably handsome now that the dark face
was wreathed in smiles. Jules gathered her in his arms.
“My soul,” he whispered, and covered her face with kisses. When he
attempted to rise and go to the coat his eyes were staring at, she held
him tight.
“I got twenty thousand from him,” she said. “You will find the twenty
bills each wrapped in the cigarette papers. I pushed the tobacco out and
they fitted in.”
“Wasteful one,” he said in tender reproach and sought again to retrieve
his coat.
Unfortunately for the debonair Jules d’Aucquier this was not immediately
possible. The click of the little elevator was heard. The two looked at
one another in alarm.
“It must be Carr,” she whispered. “Nobody else could possibly use that
elevator now. Somebody has told him.” She looked about her in despair.
“You must hide. Quick, behind the piano there until I get him away.”
Trent working industriously amid the wreckage of what had been a grand
piano looked up with polite surprise at the tall man who flung himself
almost at his feet and tried to conceal himself behind part of the
instrument.
“Hide me, quickly,” Jules whispered, “do you hear. I will give you
money. Quick, fool, don’t gape at me.”
For the second time that evening Anthony Trent smothered his anger and
smiled when rage was in his heart. And he did so for the second time not
because he was conscious of fear but because he saw himself suitably
rewarded for his efforts. He felt a note thrust into his hand but this
was not the reward he looked for. He was arranging the piano débris
around the prostrate Jules when there was a knock on the door and Carr
Faulkner entered.
The millionaire’s eye fell first of all upon the coat over the chair.
“Who’s is this?” he demanded.
The pause was hardly perceptible before she answered.
“I suppose it belongs to the piano man.”
Faulkner looked across at the instrument and beheld the busy Trent
taking what else was possible from the Stoneman. All the king’s horses
and all the king’s men could not put that instrument together again
easily. Trent went about his business with quiet persistence.
Carr Faulkner’s voice was very courteous and kind as he addressed the
tuner.
“I’m afraid I must ask you to wait outside in the hall for a few minutes
until I have had a little private talk with my wife.”
“Is that necessary,” she said quickly. “I’m just going to dress for
dinner. We have people coming, remember.”
“There is time,” he said meaningly. “I left my club half an hour earlier
to-day. Did the change incommode you?”
“Why should it?” she said lightly.
Faulkner was a man of middle age with a fine thoughtful face. It was a
face that made an instant appeal to Trent. It mirrored kindliness and
good breeding, and reminded him in a subtle way of his own father, a
country physician who had died a dozen years before his only son left
the way of honest men.
“A few minutes only,” he said and Trent passed out into the hall taking
care to leave the door opened an inch or so. It was necessary for his
peace of mind that he should know what it was Mr. Faulkner had to say to
his wife. It might concern him vitally. It was possible that inquiry at
Stoneman’s might have informed Faulkner of his trickery. While this was
improbable Trent was not minded to be careless. This kindly aspect of
the millionaire might be assumed to put him off his guard; even now men
might be stationed at the exits to arrest him. Very quietly he stole
back to the door and listened.
“I have found out for certain what I have long suspected,” Faulkner was
saying to his wife. “It is always the husband who learns last. Don’t
protest,” he added. “I know too much. I know for example that you have
sold many of your jewels to provide funds for a gambler and a rascal.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she cried white-faced.
“You do,” he said, and there was a trace of deep sadness in his voice.
“You know too well. This man Jules d’Aucquier is not of a noble French
family at all. He is a French-Canadian and was formerly a valet to an
English officer of title at Ottawa. It was there he picked up this
smattering of knowledge which has made it easy to fool the
unsuspecting.”
“I don’t believe it,” she cried vehemently.
He looked at her sadly. The whole scene was crucifixion for him.
“I shall prove it,” he said quietly.
“I don’t care if you do,” she flung back at him.
“You would care for him just the same?” he asked.
“I have not said that I care for him at all,” she said, a trace of
caution creeping into her manner.
“I shall give you the opportunity to prove it one way or another within
a few minutes. We have come to the parting of the ways.”
It was at this moment Anthony Trent knocked timidly upon the door. The
stage was set to his liking. When he was bidden to enter his quick eye
took in everything. There, out of sight d’Aucquier skulked while he
prepared to hear his despicable history told to the woman who was his
victim. As for the woman she was defiant. She would probably elect to
follow a scoundrel who had fascinated her and leave a man behind whose
good name she had trailed in the dust. The situation was not a new one
but Trent was moved by it. Carr Faulkner had all his sympathy. He
registered a vow if ever he met d’Aucquier, or whatever his name might
be, to exact a punishment.
“Excuse me,” said Anthony Trent, stepping into the room, “but my train
leaves in twenty minutes--I live out in Long Island--and I’ve got to
catch it or else the missus will be worrying.”
Mrs. Faulkner looked at him frowning. She wanted to get this scene over.
He was a good looking piano tuner, she decided, and now his tragedy was
plain. He who had no doubt once aimed at the concert stage tuned pianos
to support a wife and home in Long Island!
“I’ll finish the job to-morrow morning.”
She waved him toward the door imperiously. Every moment she and her
husband spent in this room added to the chance of the hiding man’s
discovery.
“Why don’t you go?” she cried.
Anthony Trent permitted himself to smile faintly.
“I’ve come for my coat, Ma’am,” he said, and glanced at the raiment
d’Aucquier had thrown carelessly over a chair, the coat now laden with
such precious cigarettes.
Carr Faulkner was growing impatient at this interruption. He could not
understand the look of anger on his wife’s face.
“Don’t you understand,” he exclaimed, “that the man merely wants to go
home and take his coat with him?”
He turned to the deferential Trent.
“All right, all right,” Trent moved to the chair and took the garment.
At the door he turned about and bowed profoundly.
In the lower hall he found the cynical butler whose ideas on matrimony
were so decided. He startled that functionary by thrusting into his hand
the ten dollars d’Aucquier had forced upon him.
“What’s this for?” demanded the butler. When piano tuners came with
gifts in their hands he was suspicious. “I don’t understand this.” He
observed that the affability which had made the tuner seem kin to
himself was vanished. A different man now looked at him.
“It’s for you,” said Trent. “I’m not a piano tuner. I’m a detective and
I came here after that ex-valet who pretends to be a French nobleman.”
The butler breathed hard.
“I ’ate that man, sir,” he said simply. “I’d like to dot him one.”
“You’ll be able to and that within five minutes,” Trent assured him. “He
is concealed behind the lid of the grand piano I was supposed to repair.
Mr. and Mrs. Faulkner are both in the room but _he_ doesn’t know Jules
is there. You take two footmen and yank him out and then if you want to
‘dot him one’ or two, there’s your chance.”
The muscles of the butler’s big shoulders swelled with anticipation.
“Where are you going?” he asked of Trent, now making for the front door.
“To get the patrol wagon,” said Anthony Trent.
“How long will you be?” asked the man.
“I shall be back in no time,” Trent answered cryptically.
Arrived in his quiet rooms he undid the box of cigarettes. At first he
thought he had been fooled for the top layer of cigarettes were
tobacco-filled and normal.
But it was on the next row that Mrs. Carr Faulkner had expended her
trouble. Each one contained a new thousand dollar bill and their tint
enthralled him.
CHAPTER XI
ESPIONAGE AT CLOSE RANGE
CASHING a modest check at the Colonial bank one morning, Trent had
fallen in line with a queue at the paying teller’s window. He made it a
point to observe what went on while he waited. He was not much
interested in bank robberies. To begin with the American Bankers’
Association is a vengeful society pursuing to the death such as mulct
its clients. Furthermore, a successful bank robbery, unless the work of
an inside man, needs careful planning and collaboration.
On this particular morning Trent saw a stout and jocund gentleman push
his check across the glass entrance to the cashier’s cave and received
without hesitation a large sum of money. He passed the time of day with
the official, climbed into a limousine and was whirled up Broadway.
“Did yer see that?” a youth demanded who stood before Trent.
“What?” he asked quietly. It was not his pose to be interested in other
of the bank’s customers.
“That guy took out twenty thousand dollars,” the boy said, reverence in
his tone.
“That’s a lot of money,” said Trent.
“He lives well,” said the lad. “I ought to know, he gets his groceries
from us and he only eats and drinks the best.”
“He looks like it,” the other said genially. If the stout and jocund
gourmet had known what was in Trent’s mind he would have hied him back
to the bank and redeposited his cash. “It’s Rudolf Liebermann, isn’t
it?”
“That’s Frederick Williams, and he lives on Ninety-third, near the
Drive.”
What additional information Trent wanted to know might be obtained from
other than this boy. To make many inquiries might, if Frederick Williams
were relieved of his roll, bring back the incident to the grocer’s boy.
Directly dusk fell Anthony Trent, in the evening garb of fashion,
crossed over to Riverside Drive and presently came to the heroic statue
of Jeanne d’Arc which stands at the foot of Ninety-third Street. By this
time he knew the license number of the Williams’ limousine and the
address. It was one of those small residences of gray stone containing a
dozen rooms or so. Such houses, as he knew, were usually laid out on a
similar plan and he was familiar with it.
It was very rarely that he made a professional visit to a house without
having a definite plan of attack carefully worked out. This was the
first time he sought to gain entrance to a strange house on the mere
chance of success. But the twenty thousand dollars in crisp notes
tempted him. In his last affair he had netted this sum in notes of a
similar denomination and he was superstitious enough to feel that this
augured well for to-night’s success.
Careful as ever, Trent had made his alibis in case of failure. In one of
his pockets was a pint flask of Bourbon, empty save for a dram of
spirit. In another was a slip of paper containing the name of the
house-holder who occupied a house with the same number as that of
Williams, but on Ninety-fifth Street. Once before he had saved himself
by this ruse. He had protested vigorously when detected by a footman
that he was merely playing a practical joke on his old college chum who
lived, as he thought, in this particular house, but was found to be on
the next block. And in this case the emptied whiskey flask and the
cheerful tipsiness of the amiable young man of fashion--Trent’s most
successful pose--saved him.
In his pockets nothing would be found to incriminate him. He knew well
the folly of carrying the automatic so beloved of screen or stage
Raffles. In the first place, the sudden temptation to murder in a tight
pinch, and in the second the Sullivan law. In the bamboo cane, carefully
concealed, were slender rods of steel whose presence few would suspect.
He had left such a cane in Senator Scrivener’s Fifth Avenue mansion when
he was compelled to make an unrehearsed exit. Once he met the Senator
coming down the steps of the Union Club with this cane in his hand. He
chuckled to think what might be that worthy’s chagrin to know he had
been carrying burglar’s tools with him.
As there was little light on the lower floor of Frederick Williams’
house, Trent let himself in cautiously. There was a dim hanging light
which showed that the Williams idea of furnishing was in massive bad
taste. At the rear of the hall were the kitchens. Under the swinging
door he could see a bright light. The stairs were wide and did not
creak. Carefully he ascended them and stood breathless in a foyer
between the two main reception-rooms. There were voices in the rear
room, which should, if Williams conformed to the majority of dwellers in
such houses, be the dining-room. Big doors shut out view and sound until
he crept nearer and peeped through a keyhole. He could see Williams
sitting in a Turkish rocker smoking a cigar. There were two other men
and all three chattered volubly in German. Unfortunately it was a tongue
of which the listener knew almost nothing. Reasonably fluent in French,
the comprehension of German was beyond him. There was a small safe in
the corner and it was not closed. Trent felt certain that in it reposed
those notes he had come for.
In the corner of the foyer was a carven teakwood table with a glass top,
and on it was a large Boston fern. It would be easy enough to crouch
there unobserved. The only possibility of discovery was the remote
contingency that Williams and his friends might choose to use this
foyer. But Trent had seen that it was not furnished as a sitting-room.
He had barely determined on his hiding place when he found the sudden
necessity to use it. Williams arose quickly and advanced to the door.
When he threw it open the path of light left the unbidden one completely
obscured. The three men passed by him and entered the drawing-room in
front. Trent caught a view of a luxuriously overfurnished room and a
grand piano. Then Williams began to play a part of a Brahms sonata so
well that Trent’s heart warmed toward him. But his appreciation of the
master did not permit him to listen to the whole movement. He crept
cautiously from his cover and into the room the three had just vacated.
If there were other of Williams’ friends or family here Trent might be
called upon to exercise his undoubted talents. One man he would not
hesitate to attack since his working knowledge of jiu-jitsu was beyond
the average. If there were two, attack would be useless in the absence
of a revolver. But if the coast were clear--ah, then, a competence, all
the golf and fishing he desired. There would be only the Countess to
deal with at his leisure.
The room was empty, but _the safe was closed_! Williams was not devoid
of caution. A glance at the thing showed Trent that in an uninterrupted
half hour he could learn its secrets. But he could hardly be assured of
that at nine o’clock at night. His very presence in the room was fraught
with danger. The one door leading from it opened into a butler’s pantry
from which a flight of stairs led into the kitchen part of the house.
Downstairs he could hear faucets running. A dumbwaiter offered a way of
escape if he were put to it. To the side of the dumbwaiter was a
zinc-lined compartment used for drying dishes. It was four feet long and
three in height and a shelf bisected it. This he took out carefully and
placed upon the floor of the compartment, making an ample space for
concealment. A radiator opened into it, giving the heat desired, and two
iron gratings in the doors afforded Trent the opportunity to overhear
what might be said. He satisfied himself that the doors opened
noiselessly. The burglar’s rôle was not always an heroic one, he told
himself, and thought of the popular misconception of such activities.
It must have been an hour later when he heard sounds in the adjoining
room. By this time he was fighting against the drowsiness induced by
the heat of his prison.
The swinging door between the butler’s pantry and the dining-room was
thrown open and Williams came in. He leaned over the staircase and
shouted something in German to some one in the kitchen, who answered him
in the same tongue. There was the sound below of locking and bolting the
doors. The servants had evidently been sent to bed.
When Williams went back to the other room the door between did not swing
to by four or five inches. So far as Williams was concerned this
carelessness was to cost him more than he guessed. Even in his hiding
place the conversation was audible to Trent, although its meaning was
incomprehensible.
He was suddenly awakened to a more vivid interest when he became aware
that it was now English that they were talking. There was a newcomer in
the room, a man with a nasal carrying voice and a prodigious brogue.
“This, gentlemen,” he heard Williams say, “is Mr. O’Sheill, who has done
so much good work for us and for the freedom of oppressed, starving,
shackled Ireland, which we shall free. I may tell Mr. O’Sheill that the
highest personages in the Fatherland weep bitter tears for Ireland’s
wrongs.”
“That’s all right,” said the Sinn Feiner a trifle ungraciously, “but
what’s behind yonder door?”
For answer one of the other men flung it open, turned up the lights and
permitted Mr. O’Sheill to make his examination. Trent heard the man’s
heavy tread as he descended the stairway and found at the bottom a
locked door.
“You’ve got to be careful,” O’Sheill said when he rejoined Williams and
the rest. “These damned secret service men are everywhere, they tell
me.”
“That is why we have rented a private house,” one of the Germans
declared. “At an hotel privacy is impossible. We have had our
experiences.”
These scraps of conversation aroused Anthony Trent immediately. It
required only a cursory knowledge of the affairs of the moment for a
duller man than he to realize that he had come across the scent of one
of those plots which were so hampering his government in their
prosecution of the war. Very cautiously he crawled from his hiding place
and made his silent way to the barely opened door.
O’Sheill was lighting a large cigar. His was a suspicious, dour face.
Williams, urbane and florid, was very patient.
“That I do not tell you the names of my colleagues,” he said, “is of no
moment. It is sufficient to say that you have the honor to be in the
presence of one of the most illustrious personages in my country.” Here
he bowed in the direction of a small, thin, dapper man who did not
return the salutation.
“I came for the money,” said O’Sheill.
“You came first for your instructions,” snapped the illustrious
personage coldly.
“That’s so, yer Honor,” O’Sheill answered. There was something menacing
in the tone of the other man and he recognized it.
“This money,” said Williams, “is given for very definite purposes and an
accounting will be demanded.”
“Ain’t you satisfied with the way I managed it at Cork?” O’Sheill
demanded.
“It was a beginning,” Williams conceded. “Here is what you must do:
Wherever along the Irish coast the English bluejackets and the American
sailors foregather you must stir up bad blood. I do not pretend to give
you any more precise direction than this. Let the Americans understand
that the British call them cowards. Let the British think the same of
the Yankees. Let there be bitter street fights, not in obscure drinking
dens, but in the public streets in the light of day. I will see to it
that the news gets back here and let Americans have something to think
about when the next draft is raised. Find men in England to do what you
must do in your own country. Let there be black blood between Briton and
American from Belfast to Portsmouth. Let there be doubt and
recrimination so that preparations are hindered here.”
The man who passed as Williams looked venomous as he said this. The man
to whom he spoke, thinking in his ignorance that he was indeed helping
his native land instead of hurting it, and forgetful that in aiding the
enemies of America he was stabbing a country which had ever been a
faithful friend of Erin’s, gave particulars of his operations which
Trent memorized as best he might. He was appalled to hear to what length
these men were prepared to go if only the good relations between the
Allies might be brought to naught.
So engrossed was he with the importance of what he heard that the
passing of the large sum of money from Williams to the Sinn Feiner lost
much of its entrancing interest. Trent meant to have the money, but he
intended also to give the Department of Justice what help he could.
It was not the first time that he had gone from one floor to another by
means of a dumbwaiter. It was never an easy operation and rarely a
noiseless one. In this instance he was fortunate in finding well-oiled
pulleys. It was only when he stepped out in the kitchen that he ran into
danger. There was a man asleep on a folding bed which had been drawn
across the door. To leave by the front door immediately was imperative.
Even were it possible to leave by a rear entrance he would find himself
in the little garden at the back and could only get out by climbing a
dozen fences. This would be to court observation and run unnecessary
risks.
To invite electrocution by killing men was no part of Anthony Trent’s
practice. It was plain that the servant was slumbering fitfully and the
act of stepping over him to freedom likely to awaken him instantly. Even
if he had the needed rope at hand binding and gagging a vigorous man was
at best a matter of noise and struggle. But something had to be done. He
must reach the street in time to follow O’Sheill.
Superimposed on the bed’s frame was a mattress and army blanket.
Directly behind the sleeper’s head was a door which led, as Trent knew
from his knowledge of house design, to the cellar. It opened inward and
without noise. He bent quietly over the man, put his hands gently
beneath the mattress and then with a tremendous effort flung him,
mattress, army blanket and all, down the cellar stairs. There was a
clatter of breaking bottles, a cry that died away almost as it was
uttered, and then the door was shut on silence.
* * * * *
A little later Williams, feeling the need for iced beer and cheese
sandwiches, rang the bell for Fritz. When he received no answer he
descended to the kitchen with the intention of buffeting soundly a man
who could so forget his duties to his superiors. Mr. Williams found only
the bare bed. Fritz, with his bedding, had disappeared.
A front door unlocked when instructions had been exact as to the
necessity of its careful fastening at all hours, brought uneasy
conjectures to his mind. It was only so long as he and his companions
were invested with the immunity of neutrality that he was of value to
his native land. Of late he had been conscious of Secret Service
activities.
Obedient to his training, Williams instantly reported the matter to the
thin, acid-faced man under whose instructions he had been commanded to
act.
“They have taken Fritz away,” he cried.
“Who?” demanded his superior.
“The Secret Service,” said Williams wildly. He was now beginning to
ascribe aggressive skill to a service at which he had formerly sneered.
Going down to the kitchen, they were startled by a feeble cry from the
cellar. There they discovered the frightened Fritz, cut about the face
from the bottles he had broken in his fall. His injuries gave him less
concern than the admission he had slept at his post. He was, therefore,
of no aid to them.
“I do not know,” he repeated as they questioned him. “There must have
been many of them. One man alone could not do it.”
The thin man turned to Williams: “This O’Sheill is in danger. Arm
yourself and go to his hotel. It will go badly with you if harm comes to
him.”
CHAPTER XII
THE SINN FEIN PLOT
FORTUNATELY for O’Sheill’s peace of mind, he left the house before
Williams made his discovery. He stepped into the street painfully
conscious of the large sum of money he carried. It seemed to him that
every man looked at him suspiciously. A request for a match was met with
an oath and the two women who asked him the location of a certain hotel
drew back nervously at his scowl.
He boarded the Elevated at the Ninety-third Street station and alighted
at Ninth Avenue and Forty-second Street, still glancing about him
suspiciously. It was not until he was in his room on the top floor of a
cheap and old hotel on the far West Side that he ventured to feel safe.
He sighed with relief as he stuffed a Dublin clay with malodorous shag.
Twenty thousand dollars! Four thousand pounds! Some would go to the
traitorous work he was employed to prosecute, but a lot of it would go
to satisfy private hates. And when it was exhausted there would be more
to come. It would be easy to conceal the notes about his person, and,
anyway, he reflected, he was not under suspicion.
He was aroused from his reveries by the sudden, gentle tapping on his
door. After a few seconds of hesitation he called out:
“What is it ye want?”
The voice that answered him was strongly tinged with the German accent
to which he had recently become used. It will not be forgotten that
Anthony Trent had a genius for mimicry.
“I’m from Mr. Williams,” said the stranger gutturally. He had followed
O’Sheill with no difficulty.
“What’s your name?” O’Sheill demanded.
“We won’t give names,” Trent reminded him significantly. “But I can
prove my identity. I was in the house at Ninety-third Street when you
came. The money was given you to stir up trouble in Ireland and
circulate rumors that will embarrass the British government and made bad
blood between English and American sailors. You have twenty
one-thousand-dollar bills and you put them in a green oilskin package.”
“That’s right,” O’Sheill admitted, “but what do you want?”
He was filled with a vague uneasiness. This young man seemed so terribly
in earnest and his eyes darted from door to window and window to door as
though he feared interruption.
“Mr. Williams sent me here to see if you had been followed. Directly you
went we had information from an agent of ours that your visit was known
to the Secret Service. Tell me, did any person speak to you on your way
here?”
“No,” answered O’Sheill, now thoroughly nervous by the other’s anxiety.
“Are you sure?” he was asked.
“There was one fellow who asked me for a light, but I told him to go to
hell and get it.”
“Anything suspicious about him?” Trent demanded.
“Not that I could see.”
“That will be good news for Mr. Williams,” Trent returned. “Our agent
said the Hunchback was on the job.”
“Who’s he?” O’Sheill said.
“One of our most dangerous enemies,” the younger man retorted. “He’s a
man of forty, but looks younger. He had one shoulder higher than the
other and he limps when he walks. He’s the man we’re afraid of. I think
we have alarmed ourselves unnecessarily.”
O’Sheill’s face was no longer merely uneasy. He was terror-stricken.
“And I guess we haven’t,” he exclaimed. “_The man who asked me for a
light was a hunchback._ There was two women who asked me the way to some
blasted hotel. They looked at me as if they wanted never to forget my
face.”
“Stop a minute,” said Trent gravely. “Answer me exactly about these
women. I want to know in what danger we all stand. The only two women
known by sight to us who are likely to be put on a case of this kind
wouldn’t look like detectives. There’s Mrs. Daniels and Miss Barrett.
They work as mother and daughter. Mrs. Daniels is gray-haired, tall and
slight, with a big nose for a woman and eyes set close together. When
she looks at you it seems as if the eyes were gimlets. The girl is
pretty, reddish hair and laughing eyes.” Trent paused for a moment to
think of any other attributes he could ascribe to the unknown women he
had directed to their hotel just after O’Sheill had scowled at them a
half hour back. “And very white little teeth.”
“My God!” cried O’Sheill, his arms dropping at his side, “that’s them to
the life! What’s going to happen to me?”
“If they find you with that money you’ll be deported and handed over to
your British friends. How can you explain having twenty thousand
dollars? Mr. Williams thought of that, but he didn’t actually know they
were on your trail. You must give me the money. I shan’t be stopped. You
are to stay here. They may be here in five minutes or they may wait till
morning, but you may be certain that you won’t be allowed to get away.
You must claim to be just over here to get an insight into labor
conditions.” Mr. Williams’ messenger chuckled. “I don’t believe they can
get anything on you.”
“But if they do?” O’Sheill demanded. It seemed to him that the
stranger’s levity was singularly ill-timed.
“If they do,” Trent advised, “you must remember that you’re a British
subject still--whether you like it or not--and you have certain
inalienable rights. Immediately appeal to the British authorities. Give
the Earl of Reading some work to do. Make the Consul-General here stir
himself. Tell them you came over here to investigate labor conditions.
That story goes any time and just now it’s fashionable. As an Irishman
you’ll have far more consideration from the British Government than if
you were merely an Englishman.”
“But what about this money?” O’Sheill queried uneasily.
“I’ll take it,” Trent told him. “If it’s found on you nothing can do you
any good. You’ll do your plotting in a British jail.”
O’Sheill was amazed at the careless manner in which this large sum was
thrust into the other man’s pocket. Surely these accomplices of his
dealt in big things.
“When you’re ready to sail you can get it back,” Trent continued. “That
can be arranged later. Meanwhile don’t forget my instructions. Be
indignant when you are searched. Call on the British Ambassador.” Trent
paused suddenly. An idea had struck him. “By the way,” he went on, “you
have other things that would get you into trouble beside that money.”
“I know it,” O’Sheill admitted. “What am I to do with them?”
“I’m taking a chance if they are found on me,” the younger man
commented. “But they are not after me. Give me what you have,” he cried.
Into this keeping the frightened O’Sheill confided certain letters which
later were to prove such an admirable aid to the United States
Government.
It was as Trent turned to the door that he heard steps coming along the
passage as softly as the creaking boards permitted.
He placed his fingers on his lips and enjoined silence. The furtive
sound completed O’Sheill’s distress. He felt himself entrapped. Trent
saw him take from his hip pocket a revolver.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “Wait.”
He turned down the gas to a tiny glimmer. Through the transom the
stronger light in the passage was seen. It was but a slight effort for
the muscular Trent to draw himself up so that he could peer through the
transom at the man tapping softly at the door.
Unquestionably it was Williams, and the hand concealed in his right hand
coat pocket was no doubt gripping the butt of an automatic. He was a man
of great physical strength, that Trent had noted earlier in the evening.
Although of enormous strength himself, and a boxer and wrestler, he knew
he would stand no chance if these two discovered his errand. There was
no other exit than the door.
Anthony Trent stepped silently to O’Sheill’s side.
“It’s the Hunchback,” he whispered. “If once he gets those long fingers
around your throat you’re gone. Listen to me. I’m going to turn the gas
out. Then I shall open the door. When he rushes in get him. If he gets
you instead I’ll be on the top of him and we’ll tie him up. Ready?”
The prospect of a fight restored O’Sheill’s spirits. Every line of his
evil face was a black menace to Friedrich Wilhelm outside.
“Don’t use your revolver,” Anthony Trent cautioned.
“Why?” O’Sheill whispered.
“We can’t stand police investigation,” said the other. “Get ready now
I’m going to open the door.”
When he flung it open Williams stepped quickly in. O’Sheill maddened at
the very thought that any one imperiled his money, could only see, in
the dim light, an enemy. The first blow he struck landed fair and square
on the Prussian nose. On his part Williams supposed the attack a
premeditated one. O’Sheill was playing him false. The pain of the blow
awoke his own hot temper and made him killing mad. He sought to get his
strong arms about the Sinn Feiner’s throat.
It was while they thrashed about on the floor that Anthony Trent made
his escape. He closed the door of the room carefully and locked it from
the outside. Then he unscrewed the electric bulb that lit the hall. None
saw him pass into the street. It was one of his triumphant nights.
Next morning at breakfast he found Mrs. Kinney much interested in the
city’s police news as set forth in the papers.
He was singularly cheerful.
“What is it?” he demanded. “Some very dreadful crime?”
“A double murder,” she told him, “and the police don’t seem to be able
to figure it out at all.”
Trent sipped his coffee gratefully.
“What’s strange about that?” he demanded.
“I don’t see,” Mrs. Kinney went on, “what a gentleman like this Mr.
Williams seems to have been----”
Anthony Trent put down his cup.
“What’s his other name?” he inquired.
“Frederick,” said the interested Mrs. Kinney. “Frederick Williams, a
Holland Dutch gentleman living in Ninety-third Street near the Drive. He
aided the Red Cross and bought Liberty Bonds. What I want to know is why
he went to a low place like the Shipwrights Hotel to see a man named
O’Sheill from Liverpool, England?”
“A double murder?” he demanded.
“Here it is,” she returned, and showed him the paper. The two men had
been found dead, the report ran, under mysterious circumstances, but the
police thought a solution would quickly be found. Anthony Trent smiled
as he read of official optimism. He was inclined to doubt it.
When Mrs. Kinney was out shopping he read through the documents he had
taken from O’Sheill. They seemed to him to be of prime importance. There
was a list of American Sinn Feiners implicating men in high positions,
men against whom so far nothing detrimental was known. Outlines of plots
were made bare to embroil and antagonize Britain and the United
States--allies in the great cause--and all that subtle propaganda which
had nothing to do with the betterment of prosperous Ireland but
everything to do with Prussian aggrandizement. It was a poisonous
collection of documents.
The chief of the Department of Justice in New York was called up from a
public station and informed that a messenger was on his way with very
important papers. The chief was warned to make immediate search of the
premises at Ninety-third Street where a highly important German spy
might be captured.
In the evening papers Anthony Trent was gratified to learn that the
highly-born, thin, haughty person was none other than the Baron von
Reisende who had received his _congé_ with Bernstorff and was thought to
be in the Wilmhelmstrasse. He had probably returned by way of Mexico.
And certain politicians of the baser sort were sternly warned against
plotting the downfall of America’s allies. Altogether Trent had done a
good night’s work for his country. As for himself twenty thousand
dollars went far toward making the total he desired.
Consistent success in such enterprises as his was leading him into a
feeling that he would not be run to earth as had been those lesser
practitioners of crime who lacked his subtlety and shared their secrets
with others.
But there was always the chance that he had been observed when he
thought he was alone in some great house. Austin, the Conington Warren
butler, looked him full in the face on his first adventure. And that
other butler who served the millionaire whose piano he had wrecked
might, some day, place a hand on his shoulder and denounce him to the
world. Yet butlers were beings whose duties took them little abroad.
They did not greatly perturb him.
CHAPTER XIII
ANTHONY TRENT INTERESTS HIMSELF IN POLICE GOSSIP
SO far as he knew, none suspected him. His face had been seen on one or
two occasions, but he was of a type common among young Americans of the
educated classes. Above middle height, slenderly fashioned but
wire-strong, he had a shrewd, humorous face with strongly marked
features. It might be that the nose was a trifle large and the mouth a
trifle tight, but none looking at him would say, “There goes a
criminal.” They would say, rather, “There goes a resourceful young
business man who can rise to any emergency.”
Since Trent had calculated everything to a nicety, he knew he must,
during these harvesting years, deny himself the privilege of friendship
with other men or women. Too many of his gild had lost their liberty
through some errant desire to be confidential. This habit of solitude
was trying to a man naturally of a sociable nature, but he determined
that it could be cast from him as one throws away an old coat when he
was a burglar emeritus.
That blessed moment had arrived. He even looked up an old editor friend,
the man who had first put into his mind that he could make more money at
burglary than in writing fiction.
“It’s good to see you again!” cried the editor. “I often wish you
hadn’t been left money by that Australian uncle of yours, so that you
could still write those corking crook yarns for us. There was never any
one like you. I was talking about you at the Scribblers’ Club dinner the
other night.”
Trent frowned. Publicity was a thing to avoid and this particular editor
had always been ready to sound his praise. The editor had once before
asked him to join this little club made up of professional writers. They
were men he would have delighted to know under other conditions.
“Be my guest next Tuesday,” the editor persisted. “I’m toastmaster and
the subject is ‘Crime in Fiction.’ I told the boys I’d get you to speak
if I possibly could. I’m counting on you. Will you do it?”
It seemed a deliciously ironical thing. Here was an honest editor asking
the friend he did not know to be a master criminal to make an address on
crime in fiction. Trent laughed the noiseless laugh he had cultivated in
place of the one that was in reality the expression of himself. The
editor thought it a good sign.
“Who are the other speakers?” Trent demanded.
“Oppenheim Phelps for one. He’s over here on a visit. His specialty is
high-grade international spy stuff, as you know. E. W. Hornung would be
the man to have if we could get him, but that’s impossible. I’ve got
half a dozen others, but Phelps and you will be the drawing cards.”
“Put me down,” Trent said genially, “but introduce me as a back number
almost out of touch with things but willing to oblige a pal.” He laughed
again his noiseless laugh.
Crosbeigh looked at him meditatively. Certainly Anthony Trent was
changed. In the old days, before he came into Australian money, he was
at times jocund with the fruitful grape, a good fellow, a raconteur, one
who had been popular at school and college and liked to stand well with
his fellows. But now, Crosbeigh reflected, he was changed. There was a
certain suspicion about him, a lack of trust in men’s motives. It was
the attitude no doubt which wealth brought. The moneyless man can meet a
borrower cheerfully and need cudgel his mind for no other excuse than
his poverty.
Crosbeigh was certain Trent had a lot of money for the reason he had
actually refused four cents a word for what he had previously received
only two cents. But the editor admired his old contributor and was glad
to see him again.
“I’m going to spring a surprise on you,” Crosbeigh declared, “and I’m
willing to bet you’ll enjoy it.”
“I hope so,” Trent returned, idly, and little dreamed what lay before
him.
The dinner was at a chop house and the food no worse than the run of
city restaurants. Anthony Trent, who had fared delicately for some time,
put up with the viands readily enough for the pleasure of being again
among men of the craft which had been his own.
Oppenheim Phelps was interesting. He was introduced as a historian who
had made his name at fiction. It was a satisfaction, he said, to find
that modern events had justified him. The reviewers had formerly treated
him with patronizing airs; they had called his secret diplomacy and
German plot-stuff as chimeras only when they had shown themselves to be
transcripts, and not exaggerated ones at that, of what had taken place
during the last few years.
Anthony Trent sat next to the English novelist and liked him. It brought
him close to the war to talk to a man whose home had been bombed from
air and submarine. And Phelps was also a golfer and asked Trent, when
the war was over, to visit his own beloved links at Cromer.
It had grown so late when the particularly prosy member of the club had
made his yawn-bringing speech, that Crosbeigh came apologetically to
Trent’s side.
“I’m afraid, old man,” he began, “that it’s too late for any more
speeches except the surprise one. A lot of us commute. Do you mind
speaking at our next meeting instead?”
“Not a bit,” Trent said cheerfully. But he felt as all speakers do under
these circumstances that his speech would have been a brilliant one. He
had coined a number of epigrams as other speakers had plowed laboriously
along their lingual way and now they were to be still-born.
But he soon forgot them when Crosbeigh announced the surprise speaker.
“I have been very fortunate,” Crosbeigh began, “in getting to-night a
man who knows more of the ways of crooks than any living authority.
Gentlemen, you all know Inspector McWalsh!”
“Well, boys,” said the Inspector, “I guess a good many of you know me by
name.” He had risen to his full height and looked about him genially. He
had imbibed just the right amount to bring him to this stage. Three
highballs later, he would be looking for insults but he was now ripe
with good humor. He had come because Conington Warren had asked him to
oblige Crosbeigh. For writers on crime he had the usual contempt of the
professional policeman and he was fluent in his denunciation. “You
boys,” he went on, “make me smile with your modern scientific criminals,
the guys what use chemistry and electricity and x-rays and so forth.
I’ve been a policeman now for thirty years and I never run across any of
that stuff yet.”
Inspector McWalsh poured his unsubtle scorn on such writings for ten
full minutes. But he added nothing to the Scribblers’ knowledge of his
subject.
It chanced that the writer he had taken as his victim was a guest at the
dinner. This fictioneer pursued the latest writings on physicist and
chemical research so that he might embroider his tales therewith.
Personally Trent was bored by this artificial type of story; but as
between writer and policeman he was always for the writer.
The writer was plainly angry but the gods had not blessed him with a
ready tongue and he was prepared to sit silent under McWalsh’s scorn.
Some mischievous devil prompted Anthony Trent to rise to his aid. It was
a bold thing to do, to draw the attention of the man who had been in
charge of the detectives sent to run him to earth, but of late
excitement had been lacking.
“Inspector McWalsh,” he commenced, “possesses precisely that type of
mind one would expect to find in a successful policeman. He has that
absolute absence of imagination without which one cannot attain his rank
in the force. All he has done in his speech is to pour his scorn of a
certain type of crime story on its author. As writers we are sorry if
Inspector McWalsh never h
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/40909