FORTUNATELYfor 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 afterO’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 hisown 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 policethought 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 hiscongéwith 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 wasleading 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.
SOfar 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. “Ioften 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. CertainlyAnthony 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 betranscripts, 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 forinsults 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 speechis to pour his scorn of a certain type of crime story on its author. As writers we are sorry if Inspector McWalsh never heard of the Einthoven string galvanometer upon which the solution of the story he ridicules rests, yet we know it to exist. Were I a criminal instead of a writer I should enjoy to cross swords with men who think as the Inspector does. I could outguess them every time.”
“Who is this guy?” Inspector McWalsh demanded loudly.
“Anthony Trent,” Mr. Crosbeigh whispered. “He wrote some wonderful crook stories a few years ago dealing with a crook called Conway Parker.”
“What one would expect to hear from a man with McWalsh’s opportunities to deal with crime is some of the difficulty he experiences in his work. There must be difficulty. We know by statistics what crimes are committed and what criminals brought to justice. What happens to the crooks who remain safe from arrest by reason of superior skill? I’ll tell you, gentlemen. They live well and snap their fingers at men like the last speaker. There is such a thing as fatty degeneration of the brain——”
Inspector McWalsh rose to his feet with a roar. “I didn’t come here to be insulted.”
“I am not insulting a guest,” Trent went on equably, “I am asking him to tell us interesting things of his professional work instead of giving his opinion on modern science. I met McWalsh years ago when I covered Mulberry Street for theMorning Leader. He was captain then. Let him entertain us with some of the reasons why the Ashy Bennet murderer was never caught. You remember, gentlemen, that Bennetwas shot down on Park Row at midday. Then the thoroughbred racer Foxkeen was poisoned in his stall at Sheepshead Bay. Why was that crime never punished? I remember a dozen others where the police have been beaten. Coming down to the present time, there is the robbery of the house of the genial sportsman Inspector McWalsh tells us he is proud to call his friend, Conington Warren. How was it the burglar or burglars were allowed to escape?” Trent was enjoying himself hugely. “I have a right to demand protection of the New York police. In my own humble home I have valuables bequeathed me by an uncle in Australia which are never safe while such men as snap their fingers at the police are at large. Let Inspector McWalsh tell us why his men fail. It will help us, perhaps, to understand the difficulties under which they labor. It may help us to appreciate the silent unadvertised work of the police. The Inspector is a good sport who loves a race horse and a good glove fight as much as I do myself. I assure him he will make us grateful if he will take the hint of a humble scribbler.”
The applause which followed gratified the Inspector enormously. He thought it was evidence of his popularity, a tribute to his known fondness for the race tracks. His anger melted.
“Boys,” he shouted, rising to his feet and waving a Larranaga to the applauders, “I guess he’s right and I hope the fellow who writes that scientific dope will accept my word that it wasn’t personal. Of course we do have difficulties. I admit it. I had charge of that Ashy Bennet murder and I’d give a thousand dollars to be able to put my hand on the man who done it. Asto Foxkeen I had a thousand on him to win at eight-to-one and when he was poisoned the odds were shortening every minute so you can guess I was sore on the skunk who poisoned him. The police of all countries fail and they fail the most in countries where people have most sympathy with crime. Boys, you know you all like a clever crook to get away with it. It’s human nature. We ain’t helped all we could be and you know it. We, ‘gentlemen of the police,’” he quoted Austin’s words glibly, “we make mistakes sometimes. We get the ordinary crook easy enough. If you don’t believe me get a permit to look over Sing Sing. The crimes the last speaker mentioned were committed by clever men. They get away with it. The clever ones do get away with things for a bit. But if the guy who croaked Bennet tried murder again the odds are we’d gather him in. Same with the man or men who put strychnine in Foxkeen’s oats. The clever ones get careless. That’s our opportunity.”
The Inspector lighted a new cigar, sipped his highball and came back to his speech.
“Boys, I’m not rich—no honest cop is—but I’d give a lot of money to get my hands on a gentleman crook who’s operating right now in this city. I’ve got a list of seven tricks I’m certain he done himself. He’s got technique.” Inspector McWalsh turned purple red, “Dammit, he made me an accomplice to one of his crimes. Yes, sir, he made me carry a vase worth ten thousand dollars out of Senator Scrivener’s house on Fifth Avenue and hand it to him in his taxi. He had a silk hat, a cane and a coat and he asked me to hold the vase for a moment while he put his coat on. I thought he was a friend of the Senator so I trotteddown the hall—there was a big reception on—down the steps past my own men on watch for this very crook or some one like him, and handed it through the window. None of my men thought of questioning him. Why did he do it you wonder. He did it because he thought some onemighthave seen him swipe it. The thing was thousands of years old and if any of you find it Senator Scrivener stands ready to give you five thousand dollars reward. I believe he took the——” Inspector McWalsh stopped. He thought it wiser to say no more. “That’s about all now,” he concluded. Then with a flourish he added, “Gentlemen, I thank you.”
McWalsh sat down with the thunder of applause ringing gratefully in his ears. And none applauded more heartily than Anthony Trent.
THEREwas an opportunity later on to visit the Scribblers again. Crosbeigh begged him to come as he desired a full attendance in honor of an occasion unique in the club’s history.
It seemed that some soldier members of the club, foregathering in New York, offered the opportunity for a meeting that might never recur. The toastmaster was a former officer and the speakers were men who had fought through the ghastly early years of the war before the United States came into it.
It happened that Trent had known the toastmaster, Captain Alan Kent, when the two had been newspaper cubs together. In those days Kent had been an irresponsible, happy-go-lucky youngster, liked by all for his carefree disposition. To-day, after three years of war, he was a sterner man, in whose eyes shone steadily the conviction of the cause he had espoused. War had purged the dross from him.
“You boys, here,” he said, “haven’t suffered enough. You haven’t seen nations in agony as we have. The theater of war is still too remote. The loss of a transport wakens you to renewed effort for a moment and then you get back to thinking of other things, more agreeable things, and speculate as to when the war will be over. I’ve spoken to rich men who seem tothink they’ve done all that is required of them by purchasing a few Liberty Bonds. They must be bought if we are to win the war, but there’s little of the personal element of sacrifice in merely buying interest-bearing bonds.”
He launched into a description of war as he had seen it, dwelling on the character it developed rather than the horrors he had suffered, horrors such as are depicted in the widely circulated book of Henri Barbusse. This mention of negative patriotism rather disturbed Anthony Trent. All he had done was to buy Liberty Bonds. And here was Alan Kent, who had lived through three years of hell to come back full of courage and cheer, and anxious, when his health was reestablished, to leave the British Service and enroll in the armies of America. It was not agreeable for him to think how he had passed those three years.
He was awakened from these unpleasant thoughts by the applause which followed Kent’s speech. The next speaker was an ambulance driver, who made a plea for more and yet more ambulances.
“Lots of you people here,” he said, “seem to think that when once a battery of ambulances are donated they are there till the war is over. They suffer as much as guns or horses. The Huns get special marks over there for potting an ambulance, and they’re getting to be experts at the game. I’ve had three of Hen. Ford’s little masterpieces shot under me, so to speak. I’m trying to interest individuals in giving ambulances. They’re not very expensive. You can equip one for $5,000. Men have said to me, ‘What’s the use of one ambulance?’ I tell them as I tell you that the one they may send will do its work before it’s knocked out. Itmay pick up a brother or pal of a man in this room. It may pick up some of you boys even, for some of you are going. God, it makes me tired this cry of what’s the use of ‘one little ambulance.’”
When the dinner was over Trent renewed his acquaintance with Captain Kent and was introduced to Lincoln, the Harvardian driver of an ambulance. Over coffee in the Pirates’ Den Lincoln told them more of his work.
“This afternoon,” he said, “I had tea with the Baroness von Eckstein. You know who she is?”
Trent nodded. The Baroness was the enormously wealthy widow of a St. Louis brewer who had married a Westphalian noble and hoped thereby to get into New York and Washington society. The Baron had been willing to sell his title—not an old one—for all the comforts of a wealthy home. He had become naturalized and was not suspected by the Department of Justice of treachery. His one ambition seemed to be to drink himself to death on the best cognac that could be obtained. This potent brew, taken half and half with champagne, seemed likely to do its work. It was rumored that his wife did not hinder him in this interesting pursuit.
“I sat behind him at a theater once,” Trent admitted. “He’s a thin little man with an enormous head and a strong Prussian accent.” He resisted the temptation to mimic the Baron as he could have done. He could not readily banish his professional caution.
“I tried to get the Baroness to buy and equip four ambulances,” Lincoln went on. “It would only have cost her twenty thousand dollars—nothing to her—but she refused.”
“Before we went into the war,” Captain Kent reminded him, “she was strongly pro-German.”
“She’s had enough sense to stop that talk in New York,” Lincoln went on. “She’s still trying to break into the Four Hundred and you’ve got to be loyal to your country for that, thank God!”
“I thought she was in St. Louis,” Trent observed.
“She’s taken a house in town,” Lincoln told him. “The Burton Trent mansion on Washington Square, North. Took it furnished for three months. She had to pay like the deuce for the privilege.Gotham Gossipunkindly remarks that she did it so some of the Burton Trents’ friends may call on her, thinking they are visiting the Trents. It’s the nearest she’ll ever get to high society. It made me sick to hear her hard luck story. Couldn’t give me a measly twenty thousand dollars because of income tax and high cost of living and all that sort of bunk, while she had a hundred thousand dollars in diamonds on her fat neck. I felt like pulling them off her.”
Anthony Trent pricked up his ears at this.
“I didn’t know she had a necklace of that value,” he mused.
“I guess you don’t know much about the fortunes these millionaire women hang all over ’em,” said Lincoln. Lincoln had an idea the other man was a bookish scholar, a collector of rare editions, one removed from knowledge of society life.
“That must be it,” Trent agreed. He wondered if another man in all America had so intimate a knowledge of the disposition of famous gems. “So she won’t give you any money for ambulances?”
“It’s known she subscribed largely to the GermanRed Cross before we got into the war. Leopards don’t change their spots easily, as you know. It was one of her chauffeurs at her country place near Roslyn who rigged up a wireless and didn’t know he was doing anything the government disapproved of. His mistress lent him the money to equip the thing and she didn’t know she ought not to have done it. I tell you I felt like pulling that necklace off her fat old neck. Wouldn’t you feel that way?”
“It might make me,” Trent admitted, “a little envious.”
On the whole, Trent enjoyed his first evening of emancipation immensely. Particularly glad was he to meet his old friend, Alan Kent, again. The repressed life he had led made him more than ever susceptible to the hearty friendship of such men as he had met.
With some of them he made arrangements to go to a costume dance, a Greenwich Village festival, at Webster Hall, on the following evening. He did not know that Captain Kent was attending less as one who would enjoy the function socially than an emissary of his government. It was known that many of the villagers had not registered. Some had spoken openly against the draft and others were suspected of pro-German tendencies that might be dangerous. It was not a commission Kent cared about, but it was a time in the national history where old friendships must count for naught. Treason must be stamped out.
It was not until midnight that Trent dropped into Webster Hall. It was the nearest approach to the boulevard dances that New York ever saw. The costumeswere gorgeous, some of them, but for the greater part quaint and bizarre. As a Pierrot he was inconspicuous. There were a number of men he knew from the Scribblers’ Club. He greeted Lincoln with enthusiasm. He liked the lad. He envied him his record. It was while he was talking to him that a gorgeously dressed woman seized Lincoln’s hands as one might grasp those of an old and dear friend.
“Naughty boy,” she said playfully. “Why haven’t you asked me to dance?”
“I feared I wasn’t good enough for you,” Lincoln lied with affable readiness. “You dance like a professional.”
While this badinage went on Trent gazed at the woman with idle curiosity. Her enameled face, penciled eyebrows and generally careful make-up made her look no more than five-and-forty. Her hair was henna-colored, with purple depths in it. She was too heavy for her height and her eyes were bright with the light that comes in cocktail glasses. She had reached the fan-tapping, coquettish, slightly amorous stage. Her bold eyes soon fell on Anthony Trent, who was a far more personable man than Lincoln.
“Who is your good-looking friend?” she demanded.
Lincoln was bound to make the introduction. From his manner Trent imagined he was not overpleased at having to do so.
“Mr. Anthony Trent—the Baroness von Eckstein,” he said.
The Baroness instantly put her bejeweled hand within Trent’s arm.
“I am sure you dance divinely,” she cooed.
Lincoln was a little disappointed at the readiness with which the older man answered.
“If you will dance with me I shall be inspired,” said Trent.
“Very banal,” Lincoln muttered as the two floated away from him.
“I’m so glad to be rescued from Lincoln,” he told her. “He is so earnest and seems to think I have an ambulance in every pocket for him.”
“This begging, begging, begging is very tiresome,” the Baroness admitted. She wished she might say exactly what she and her noble husband felt concerning it. She had understood that some of these artists and writers in the village were exceedingly liberal in their views. “Mrs. Adrien Beekman has been bothering me about giving ambulances all this afternoon.”
“She is most patriotic,” he smiled, “but boring all the same.”
“I suppose you are one of these delightfully bad young men who say and do dreadful things,” she hazarded, a little later.
“I am both delightful and bad,” he admitted, “and a number of the things I have done and shall do are dreadful.”
“I am afraid of you,” she cried coquettishly.
There was about her throat a magnificent necklace, evidently that of which Lincoln had spoken at the Scribblers’ dinner. It was worth perhaps half of what the ambulance man had said. The stones were set in platinum.
“I wonder you are not afraid of wearing such a magnificent necklace here,” he said later.
“Are you so dangerous as that?” she retorted.
“Worse,” he answered.
She looked at him curiously. The Baroness liked young and good-looking men. Trent knew perfectly well what was going on in her mind. He had met women of this type before; women who could buy what they wanted and need not haggle at the price. Her eyes appraised him and she was satisfied with what she saw.
“I believe you are just as bad as you pretend to be,” she declared.
“Do I disappoint you?” he demanded.
“Of course,” she laughed, “I shall have to reform you. I am very good at reforming fascinating man-devils like you. You must come and have tea with me one afternoon.”
“What afternoon?” he asked.
“To-morrow,” she said, “at four.”
If she had guessed with what repulsion she had inspired Trent she would have been startled. She was a type he detested.
Later he said:
“Isn’t it unwise of you to wear such a gorgeous necklace at a mixed gathering like this?”
“If it were real it would be,” she answered. “Don’t tell any one,” she commanded, “but this is only an imitation. The real one is on my dressing table. This was made in the Rue de la Paix for me and only an expert could tell the difference and then he’d have to know his business.”
“What are you frowning at?” he demanded when he saw her gaze directed toward a rather noisy group of newcomers.
“These are my guests,” she whispered. “I’dforgotten all about them. Doesn’t that make you vain? I shall have to look after them. Later on they are all coming over to the house to have a bite to eat.” She squeezed his hand. “You’d better come, too.”
The Baroness was not usually so reckless in her invitations. She had learned it was not being done in those circles to which she aspired. But to-night she was unusually merry and there was something about Trent’s keen, hawk-like type which appealed to her. Lincoln, she reflected, came of a good Boston family with houses in Beacon Street and Pride’s Crossing, and his friendmustbe all right.
No sooner had she moved toward her guests than Trent made his way to the street. Over his costume he wore a long black cloak which another than he had hired. Very few people were abroad. There was a slight fog and those who saw him were in no way amazed. Webster Hall dances had prepared the neighborhood for anything.
He was not long in coming to Washington Square. It was in the block of houses on the north side that he was specially interested. From the other side of the road he gazed up at the Burton Trent house. Then going east a little, he came to the door of the only apartment house in the block. It was not difficult for him to manipulate the lock. Quietly he climbed to the top of the house until he came to a ladder leading to the door on the roof.
A few feet below him he could see the roof of the neighboring house. To this he dropped silently and walked along until the square skylight of the Burton Trent mansion was at hand. The bars that held theaperture were rusted. It required merely the exercise of strength to pry one of them loose. Underneath him was darkness. Since Trent had not come out originally on professional business, he was without an electric torch. He had no idea how far the drop would be. Very carefully he crawled in, and, hanging by one hand, struck a match. He dropped on to the floor of an attic used mainly for the storage of trunks.
The door leading from the room was unlocked and he stepped out into a dark corridor. Looking over the balustrade, he could see that the floor below was brilliantly lighted. From an article in a magazine devoted to interior decoration he had learned the complete lay-out of the residence. He knew, for example, that the servants slept in the “el” of the house which abutted on the mews behind. Ordinarily he would have expected them to be in bed by this time. But the Baroness had told him she had guests coming in. There would inevitably be some servants making preparations. They would hardly have business on the second or third floors of the house. The Burton Trents, who had let their superb home as a war-economy measure, would never allow any alteration of the arrangement of their wonderful furniture. And the Baroness would hardly be likely to venture to set her taste against that of a family she admired and indeed envied. It was therefore probable that the Baroness occupied the splendid sleeping chamber on the second floor front, an apartment to which the writer on interior decoration had devoted several pages.
His borrowed cloak enveloping him, he descended the broad stairs until he stood at the entrance of theroom he sought. It was indeed a magnificent place. His artistic sense delighted in it. Its furniture had once been in the sleeping room of a Venetian Doge. It had cost a fortune to buy.
The dressing room leading from it was lighted more brilliantly. There was a danger that the Baroness’s maid might be there awaiting the return of her mistress.
Peeping through the half-opened door, he satisfied himself that no maid was there. On the superb dressing table with its rich ornaments he could see a large gold casket, jewel-encrusted, which probably hid the stones he had come to get.
Swiftly he crossed the soft Aubusson carpet and came to the table. He was far too cautious to lay hands on the metal box straightaway. Although he was nameless and numberless so far as the police were concerned, he was not anxious to leave finger-prints behind. He knew that in all robberies such as he intended the police carefully preserve the finger-prints amongst the records of the case and hope eventually to saddle the criminal with indisputable evidence of his theft. Usually Parker wore the white kid gloves that go with full evening dress. To-night he was without them. He was also in the habit of carrying a tube of collodion to coat the finger-tips and defy the finger-printers. This, too, he was without since his adventure was an unpremeditated one.
While he was wondering how to set about his business, he was startled by a sound behind him. From the cover of achaise longueat the far end of the room a small, thin man raised himself. Trent knew in a moment it was the Baron von Eckstein. He relaxedhis tense attitude and walked with a friendly smile to the other man. He had mentally rehearsed the rôle he was to play. But the Baron surprised him.
“Hip, hip, ’ooray!” hiccoughed the aristocrat.
There was not a doubt as to his condition. He swayed as he tried to sit up straighter. His eyes were glazed with drink.
“Hip, hip, ’ooray!” said the Baron again, and sank back into bibulous slumber. By his side on a tray was a half-emptied bottle of liqueur cognac and an open bottle of champagne. He had evidently been consuming over-many champagne and brandy highballs. Anthony Trent considered him for a few moments in silence. He saw a way out of his difficulties and a certain ironical method of fooling investigation which pleased him more than a little.
In a tall tumbler he mixed brandy and champagne—half and half—and poked the little Baron in the ribs. The familiar sight of being offered his favorite tipple made the trembling hand seize the glass. The contents was absorbed greedily, and the Baron fell back on thechaise longue.
The well-worn phrase “dead to the world” alone describes the condition of the Baron, who had married a brewery. Trent raised the man—he could have weighed no more than a hundred pounds—in his strong arms and carried him across to the dressing table. And with the Baron’s limp hands he opened the jewel case. Therefrom he extracted a necklace of diamonds set in platinum. What else was there he did not touch. He had a definitely planned course of action in view. The Baron’s recording fingers closedthe box. It would be as pretty a case of finger-prints as ever gladdened the heart of a central-office detective. The Baron was next carried to thechaise longue. He would not wake for several hours. It would have been quite easy for Trent to make his escape undetected. But there was something else to be done first. He locked the door of the Venetian bedroom and then took up the telephone receiver. His carefully trained memory recorded the accent and voice of the Baron von Eckstein as he had heard it during an evening at the theater.
He called a telephone number. Fortunately it was a private wire connecting with the central.
“I wish to speak to Mrs. Adrien Beekman,” he said when at length there was an answer to his call.
“She is in bed,” a sleepy voice returned. “She can’t be disturbed.”
“She must be,” said Trent, mimicking the Baron. “It is a matter of vast importance. Tell her a gentleman wishes to present her ambulance fund with a large sum of money. To-morrow will be too late.”
“I’ll see what can be done,” said the voice. “That’s about the only matter I dare disturb her on. Hold the wire.”
“Madam,” said Trent a minute later, “it is the Baron von Eckstein who has the honor to speak with you.”
“An odd hour to choose,” returned Mrs. Adrien Beekman with no cordiality.
“I wish to make reparation, Madam,” the pseudo Baron flung back. “This afternoon you talked to my wife, the Baroness, about your ambulances.”
“And found her not interested in the least,” Mrs.Beekman said, a little crossly. So eminent a leader of society as she was not accustomed to refusal of a donation when asked of rich women striving for social recognition.
“We have decided that your cause is one which should have met a more generous response. I have been accused of being disloyal. That is false, Madam. My wife has been attacked as pro-German. That is also false. To prove our loyalty we have decided to send you a diamond necklace. Convert this into money and buy what ambulances you can.”
“Do you mean this?” said the astonished Mrs. Adrien Beekman.
“I am never more serious,” retorted the Baron.
“What value has it?” she asked next.
“You will get fifty thousand dollars at least,” he said.
“Ten ambulances!” she cried. “Oh, Baron, how very generous! I’m afraid I’ve cherished hard feelings about you both that have not been justified. How perfectly splendid of you!”
“One other thing,” said the Baron, “I am sending this by a trusted messenger at once. Please see that some one reliable is there to receive it.”
It was safer, Trent thought, to gain the Square over the roofs and down the stairways of the apartment house. It was now raining and hardly a soul was in view. The Adrien Beekman house was only a block distant. They were of the few who retained family mansions on the lower end of Fifth Avenue.
He knocked at the Beekman door and a man-servantopened it. In the shadows the man could only see the dark outline of the messenger.
“I am the Baron von Eckstein,” he said, still with his carefully mimicked accent. “This is the package of which I spoke to your mistress.”
It seemed, when he got back to Webster Hall, that none had missed him. The first to speak was the Baroness.
“We are just going over to the house,” she said cordially.
“I don’t want to share you,” he said, smiling, “with all these others. I’d rather come to-morrow at four. May I?”
At four on the next day Anthony Trent, dressed in the best of taste as a man of fashion and leisure, ascended the steps to the Burton Trent home and wondered, as others had done before him, at the amazing fowl which guarded its approach.
He was kept waiting several minutes. From the distant reception rooms he heard acrimonious voices. One was the Baron’s and it pleased him to note that he had caught its inflections so well the night before. The other voice was that of his new friend, the Baroness. Unfortunately the conversation was in German and its meaning incomprehensible.
When at last he was shown into a drawing room he found the Baroness highly excited and not a little indignant. She was too much overwrought to take much interest in her new acquaintance. Almost she looked as though she wished he had not come. Things rarely looked so rosy to the Baroness as they did after a good dinner and it was but four o’clock.
“What has disturbed you?” he asked.
“Everything,” she retorted. “Mainly my husband. Tell me, if you were a woman and your husband, in a drunken fit, gave away a diamond necklace to an enemy would you be calm about it?”
“Has that happened?” he demanded.
“It has,” she snapped. “You remember I told you at the dance I had left the original necklace at home for safety?”
“I believe you did mention it,” he said, meditating.
“I’d much better have worn it, Mr. Trent. Everybody knows the Baron’s passion is for cognac and champagne. No man since time began has ever drunk so much of them. When we got back here last night we had a gay and festive time. It was almost light when I went to my room and found the necklace gone. I sobered the Baron and he could give absolutely no explanation. He said he had slept in the dressing room to guard the jewels. That was nonsense. He came there to worry my maid. She went to bed and left him drinking. The police came in and took all the servants’ finger-prints and tried to fasten the thing on them. There were marks on the jewel case where some one’s hands had been put. I offered a reward of five thousand dollars for any one who could point out the man or woman who had taken the necklace.”
Trent kept his countenance to the proper pitch of interest and sympathy. It was not easy.
“What have the police found?”
“Wait,” the Baroness commanded, “you shall hear everything. This morning I received a letter from Mrs. Adrien Beekman. You know who she is, of course. She thanked me, rather patronizingly, forgiving my diamond necklace to her Ambulance Fund. She said she had sold it to a Mexican millionaire for fifty thousand dollars, enough to buy ten ambulances.”
“How did she get the necklace?” Trent asked seriously.
“That husband of mine,” she returned. “The Baron did it. I can only think that in his maudlin condition he remembered what I had told him at dinner about being bothered by the Beekman woman for a cause I’m not very much in sympathy with. There is no other explanation. It all fits in. Actually he took the diamonds to the Beekman place himself. I can’t do anything. I dare not tell the facts or I should be laughed out of New York.”
“Mrs. Adrien Beekman is very influential,” he reminded her, choking back his glee, “it may prove worth your while.”
“She hates me,” the Baroness said vindictively. “I’ve never been so upset in my life. You haven’t heard all. There’s worse. One of my servants is trying to get into the Army and Navy Finger-printing Bureau. She’s made finger-prints of every one in the house—me included—from glasses or anything we’ve touched. It was the Baron’s finger-prints on the jewel case, as the police found out, too, and I’ve got to pay her five thousand dollars reward!”
ITwas while Trent was shaving that the lamp fell. He started, blessed the man who invented safety razors, that he had not gashed himself, and went into his library to see what had happened.
Mrs. Kinney, his housekeeper, was volubly apologetic.
“I was only dusting it,” she explained, “when it came down. I think it’s no more than bent.”
It was a hanging lamp of Benares brasswork, not of much value, but Trent liked its quaint design and the brilliant flashing of the cut colored glass that embellished it. Four eyes of light looked out on the world when the lamp was lit. White, green, blue and red, eyes of the size of filbert nuts.
He stooped down and picked up the shattered red glass. It was the sole damage done by Mrs. Kinney’s activity.
“It will cost only a few cents to have it repaired,” he commented, and went back to the bathroom, and speedily forgot the whole matter.
At breakfast Anthony Trent admitted he was bored. There had been little excitement in his recent work. The niceness of calculation, the careful planning and dextrous carrying out of his affairs had netted him a great deal of money with very little risk. Therehad been risk often enough but not within the past few months. His thoughts went back to some of his more noteworthy feats, and he smiled. He chuckled at the episode of the bank president whom he had given in charge for picking his pocket when he had just relieved the financier of the choicest contents of his safe.
Trent’s specialty was adroit handling of situations which would have been too much for the ordinary criminal. He had an aplomb, an ingenuous air, and was so diametrically opposed to the common conception of a burglar that people had often apologized to him whose homes he had looted.
It was his custom to read through two of the leading morning papers after breakfast. It was necessary that he should keep himself fully informed of the movements of society, of engagements, divorces and marriages. It was usually among people of this sort that he operated. To the columns devoted to lost articles he gave special attention. More than once he had seen big rewards offered for things that he had concealed in his rooms. And although the comforting phrase, “No questions asked” invariably accompanied the advertisement, he never made application for the reward.
In this, Trent differed from the usual practitioner of crime. When he had abandoned fiction for a more diverting sport he had formulated regulations for his professional conduct drawn up with extraordinary care. It was the first article of his faith under no circumstances to go to a “fence” or disposer of stolen goods, or to visit pawnshops. It is plain to see such precautions were wise. Sooner or later the police getthe “fence” and with him the man’s clientèle. Every man who sells to a “fence” puts his safety in another’s keeping, and Anthony Trent was minded to play the game alone.
As to the pawnshops, daily the police regulations expose more searchingly the practices of those who bear the arms of old Lombardy above their doors. The court news is full of convictions obtained by the police detailed to watch the pawnbrokers’ customers. It was largely on this account that Trent specialized on currency and remained unknown to the authorities.
On this particular morning the newspapers offered nothing of interest except to say that a certain Italian duke, whose cousin had recently become engaged to an American girl of wealth and position, was about to cross the ocean and bear with him family jewels as a wedding gift from the great house he represented. Methodically Trent made a note of this. Later he took the subway downtown to consult with his brokers on the purchase of certain oil stocks.
He had hardly taken his seat when Horace Weems pounced upon him. This Weems was an energetic creature, by instinct and training a salesman, so proud of his art and so certain of himself that he was wont to boast he could sell hot tamales in hell. By shrewdness he had amassed a comfortable fortune. He was a short, blond man nearly always capable of profuse perspirations. Trent knew by Weems’ excitement that there was at hand either an entrancingly beautiful girl—as Weems saw beauty—or a very rich man. Only these two spectacles were capable of bringing Weems’ smooth cheeks to this flush of excitement. Weems sometimes described himself as a “money-hound.”
“You see that man coming toward us,” Weems whispered.
Trent looked up. There were three men advancing. One was a heavily built man of late middle age with a disagreeable face, dominant chin and hard gray eyes. The other two were younger and had that alert bearing which men gain whose work requires a sound body and courage.
“Are they arresting him?” Parker demanded. He noticed that they were very close to the elder man. They might be Central Office men.
“Arrestinghim?” Weems whispered, still excitedly, “I should say not. You don’t know who he is.”
“I only know that he must be rich,” Trent returned.
“That’s one of the wealthiest men in the country,” Weems told him. “That’s Jerome Dangerfield.”
“Your news leaves me unmoved,” said the other. “I never heard of him.”
“He hates publicity,” Weems informed him. “If a paper prints a line about him it’s his enemy, and it don’t pay to have the enmity of a man worth nearly a hundred millions.”
“What’s his line?” Trent demanded.
“Everything,” Weems said enthusiastically. “He owns half the mills in New Bedford for one thing. And then there’s real estate in this village and Chicago.” Weems sighed. “If I had his money I’d buy a paper and have myself spread all over it. And he won’t have a line.”
“I’m not sure he has succeeded in keeping it out. I’d swear that I’ve read something about him. It comes back clearly. It was something about jewels. I remember now. It was Mrs. Jerome Dangerfieldwho bought a famous ruby that the war compelled an English marchioness to sell.” The thing was quite clear to him now. He was on his favorite topic. “It was known as the Mount Aubyn ruby, after the family which had it so long.” He turned to look at the well-guarded financier. “So that’s the man whose wife has that blood-stained jewel!”
“What do you mean—blood stained?” Weems demanded.
“It’s one of the tragic stones of history,” said the other. “Men have sold their lives for it, and women their honor. One of the former marquises of Mount Aubyn killed his best friend in a duel for it. God knows what blood was spilled for it in India before it went to Europe.”
“You don’t believe all that junk, do you?” asked Weems.
“Junk!” the other flung back at him. “Have you ever looked at a ruby?”
“Sure I have,” Weems returned aggrieved. “Haven’t you seen my ruby stick pin?”
“Which represents to you only so many dollars, and is, after all, only a small stone. If you’d ever looked into the heart of a ruby you’d know what I mean. There’s a million little lurking devils in it, Weems, taunting you, mocking you, making you covet it and ready to do murder to have it for your own.”
Weems looked at him, startled for the moment. He had never known his friend so intense, so unlike his careless, debonair self.
“For the moment,” said Weems, “I thought you meant it. Of course you used to write fiction and that explains it.”
To his articles of faith Anthony Trent added another paragraph. He swore not to let his enthusiasm run away with him when he discussed jewels. Weems was safe enough. He was lucky to be in no other company. But suppose he had babbled to one of those keen-eyed men engaged in guarding Jerome Dangerfield, the multi-millionaire who shunned publicity! He determined to choose another subject.
“What does he take those men around with him for?” he asked.
“A very rich man is pestered to death,” the wise Weems said. “Cranks try to interest him in all sorts of fool schemes and crazy men try to kill him for being a capitalist. And then there’s beggars and charities and blackmailers. Nobody can get next to him. I know. I’ve tried. I’ve never seen him in the subway before. I guess his car broke down and he had to come with the herd.”
“So you tried? What was your scheme?”
“I forget now,” Weems admitted. “I’ve had so many good things since. I followed out a stunt of that crook, Conway Parker, you used to write about. In one of your stories you made him want to meet a millionaire and instead of going to his office you made him go to the Fifth Avenue home and fool the butlers and flunkeys. It won’t work, old man. I know. I handed the head butler my hat and cane, but that was as far as I got. There must be a high sign in that sort of a house that I wasn’t wise to.” Weems mused on his defeat for a few seconds. “I ought to have worn a monocle.” He brightened. “Anyway just as I came out of the door a lady friend passed by on the top of a ’bus and saw me. Now you’re a good looker,old man, and high-class and all that, but you and I don’t belong in places like Millionaires’ Row.”
“Too bad,” said Trent, smiling.
He wondered what Weems would have said if he had known that his friend had within the week been to a reception in one of the greatest of the Fifth Avenue palaces and there gazed at a splendid ruby—not half the size of the Mount Aubyn stone—on the yellowing neck of an aged lady of many loves.
When Weems was shaken off, Dangerfield and his attendants vanished, and Trent had placed an order with his brokers he walked over to Park Row, where he had once worked as a cub reporter. Contrary to his usual custom, he entered a saloon well patronized by the older order of newspapermen, men who graduated in a day when it was possible to drink hard and hold a responsible position. He had barely crossed the threshold when he heard the voice of the man he sought. It was Clarke, slave to the archdemon rum. He was trying to borrow enough money from a monotype man, who had admitted backing a winner, to get a prescription filled for a suffering wife. The monotype man, either disbelieving Clarke’s story or having little regard for wifely suffering, was indisposed to share his winnings with druggist or bartender.
It was at this moment that Clarke caught sight of his old reporter and more recent benefactor. He dropped the monotype man with all the outraged pride of an erstwhile city editor and shook Trent’s hand cordially. His own trembled.
“That might be managed,” said Trent, listening tohis request gravely, “but first have a drink to steady your nerves.”
They repaired to a little alcove and sat down. Clarke was not anxious to leave so pleasant a spot. He talked entertainingly and was ready to expatiate on his former glories.
“By the way,” said Trent presently, “you used to know the inside history and hidden secrets of every big man in town.”
“I do yet,” Clarke insisted eagerly. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing in particular,” said the other idly, “but I came downtown on the subway and saw Jerome Dangerfield with his two strong-arm men. What’s he afraid of? And why won’t he have publicity?”
“That swinehound!” Clarke exclaimed. “Why wouldn’t he be afraid of publicity with his record? You’re too young to remember, but I know.”
“What do you know?” Trent demanded.
“I know that he’s worse than theLeadersaid he was when I was on the staff twenty years back. That was why the oldLeaderwent out of business. He put it out. A paper is a business institution and won’t antagonize a vicious two-handed fighter like Dangerfield unless it’s necessary. That’s why they leave him alone. The big political parties get campaign contributions from him. Why stir him up?”
“But you haven’t told me what he did?”
“Women,” said Clarke briefly. “You know, boy, that some men are born women-hunters. That may be natural enough; but if it’s a game, play it fair. Pay for your folly. He didn’t. You ask me why he has those guards with him? It’s to protect him fromthe fathers of young girls who’ve sworn to get him. His bosom pal got his at a roof garden a dozen years back, and Dangerfield’s watching night and day. He’s bad all through. The stuff we had on him at theLeaderwould make you think you were back in decadent Rome.”
“What’s his wife like?”
“Society—all Society. Handsome, they tell me, and not any too much brain, but domineering. Full of precious stones. I’m told every servant is a detective. I guess they are, as you never heard of any of their valuables being taken. It makes me thirsty to think of it.”
Trent, when he had obtained the information he desired, left Clarke with enough money to buy medicine for his wife. With the bartender he left sufficient to pay for a taxi to the boarding-house of Mrs. Sauer, where he himself had once resided. Clarke would need it.
On his way uptown he found himself thinking continuously of Jerome Dangerfield and the Mount Aubyn ruby. There would be excitement in going after such a prize. The Dangerfield household was one into which thieves had not been able to break nor steal. A man, to make a successful coup, would need more than a knowledge of the mechanism of burglar alarms or safes; he would need steel nerves, a clear head, physical courage and that intuitive knowledge of how to proceed which marks the great criminal from his brother, the ordinary crook. If he possessed himself of the ruby there would be no chance to sell it. It was as well known among connoisseurs as are the paintings of Velasquez. To cut it into lesser stoneswould be a piece of vandalism that he could never bring himself to enact.
It was Trent’s custom when he planned a job to lay out in concise form the possible and probable dangers he must meet. And to each one of these problems there must be a solution. He decided that an entrance to the Dangerfield house from the outside would fail. To gain a position in the household would be not easy. In all probability references would be strictly looked up. They would be easy enough to forge, but if they were exposed he would be a suspect and his fictitious uncle in Australia exhumed. Also he did not care to live in a household where he was certain to be under the observation of detectives. No less than Jerome Dangerfield he shrank from publicity.
Mrs. Kinney noticed that he was strangely unresponsive to her well-cooked lunch. When she enquired the cause he told her he wanted a change. “I shall go away and play golf for a couple of weeks,” he declared.