Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

It was not a descent which caused much trouble. There was the chance that the rope might break. He wondered through how many awnings he would plunge before consciousness left him.

Heathcote was asleep. By a table near the bed was an ash tray, matches, Conrad’s “Youth” and the cigarette case. And lying near was the stout cane which the man who was wounded in that splendid attack on Zeebrugge used to aid himself in his halting walk.

Trent, with the case in his pocket, walked to the door. It was not his intention to make the more hazardous climb up to his room when so easy a way of getting there presented itself. It was locked and barred.

In his room he sat and looked at what he had taken. It represented, so Kaufmann said, his freedom from arrest. It contained plans of vital importance to the allies. They could only be used by the enemy to bring destruction to those who fought for right. And what punishment would be given the wounded hero for losing what was entrusted to him? For an hour Trent sat there looking at the pigskin case. And gradually what had seemed an impossible sacrifice to make, came to be something desirable and splendid. Anthony Trent had never been able to regard his career as one justified by circumstances. There burned in his breast the spark of patriotism more strongly than he knew. He had fought his fight and won. His eyes were moist as he thought of his father, that old civil war soldier who had been wounded on Gettysburg’s bloody field and walked always with a limp like the English sailor beneath.

When he opened the door Heathcote was still slumbering. He replaced the case as nearly in the position he found as he could. In that moment Anthony Trent felt he could look any man in the face.

He was still slumbering when Commander Heathcote awoke. Presently the officer saw that the door was unbarred and as investigation proved, unlocked.

“I’d have sworn,” muttered the Commander, “that I locked and barred it.”

CHAPTER XXIX

MRS. KINNEY INTERVENES

AT his apartment, which he reached by noon, he found a note from Mrs. Kinney advising him that she would not be back until late. A salad would be found in the ice box. But his appetite had deserted him and strong tea and crackers sufficed him. The feeling of exaltation which had carried him along was now dying down leaving in its place a grim, dogged determination. He saw now very clearly that the time was come to pay for his misdeeds. Dimly he had felt that some day there would have to be a reckoning. He had never thought it so near.

It would not have been difficult to make his escape from the man who threatened. With his swift motor he could cross some sparsely peopled border district into Canada. Or he could drop down into South or Central America and there wait until the years brought safety or he had deteriorated in fibre as do most men of his race in tropic sloth.

The thing that kept him was a chivalrous, burning desire to capture Kaufmann. Anthony Trent wondered how many men weaker than he had been forced to betray their country as he had very nearly done. And the knowledge that he had even considered such baseness for a moment awakened a deep smouldering wrath in his mind that needed for its outlet some expression of physical force. Kaufmann was strongly built and rugged but it would hardly be a smiling suave spy that he would drag before the police. At least they would go down to ruin together.

At ten thirty the bell rang. But the feeble steps that made their weary ascent were those of Mrs. Kinney. When first he flung open the door he hardly recognized her. As a rule neat and quietly dressed in black she was to-night wearing the faded gingham dress she used for rough work, a dress he had seldom seen. She wore no hat; instead a handkerchief was on her head. She looked for all the world like some shabby denizen of the city’s foreign quarters.

“Are you expecting him?” she demanded.

“Yes,” he said dully. It was a shock not to meet him when he was nerved to the task.

She looked at him with a certain triumph in her face that was not unmixed with affection.

“He will never come here again.”

“What do you mean?” he cried.

“He’s dead.” It was curious to note the flash of her usually mild eye as she said it. For a moment he thought the old woman was demented. But her voice was firm.

“I followed him on his way here,” she went on. “I found out where he lived. As he crossed Eighth avenue at 34th street I told people he was a German spy. There were a lot of soldiers on their way to the Pennsylvania station and they started to run after him. Then a man tripped him up but he got to his feet and crossed the road in front of a motor truck.”

“You are certain he was killed?”

“I waited to make sure,” she said simply. “Nobody knew it was I who started calling him a spy.”

There was a pause of half a minute. The knowledge of his safety was almost too much for Trent after his hours of suspense.

“I suppose you know,” he said huskily, “that you’ve probably saved my life. I didn’t do as he wanted me to. I was prepared to denounce him to the police.”

“But they’d have got you, too,” she said.

“I know,” he returned. “I’d thought of that.”

“Oh, Mr. Trent!” she cried, “Oh, Mr. Trent!” Then for the second time in the years he had known her she fell into a fit of weeping.

When she was recovered and had taken a cup of strong tea she explained how it was she had tracked Kaufmann to his home. She had slipped away from Trent at the Grand Central when he was too much worried to notice it. Kaufmann walked the half dozen blocks to his rooms in the house occupied by a physician on Forty-eighth street, just west of Fifth avenue. Applying for work Mrs. Kinney was engaged instantly for two days a week. The need for respectable women was so great that no references were asked. She was thus free of the house and regarded without suspicion.

She worked there the whole day but learned nothing from the cook and waitress of Mr. Kaufmann. He rented the whole of the second floor and had a fad for keeping it in order himself. It saved them trouble. The maids said, vaguely, he was in the importing business and very wealthy.

It was while Kaufmann went down to sign for a registered letter that Mrs. Kinney slipped into the room. There was nothing in the way of papers or documents that she could see.

Because he could not bear investigation, Anthony Trent telephoned to the Department of Justice as he had done in the case of Frederick Williams. He felt certain that Kaufmann was a highly placed official. But there was no newspaper mention of the raid. Trent was not to know that no news was allowed to leak out for the reason that matters of enormous importance were discovered. He was right in assuming Kaufmann to be a personage. The mangled body was buried in the Potters’ Field and those lesser men depending on the monetary support and counsel of Kaufmann were thrown into confusion. His superiors in Germany, when later they found the Allies in possession of certain secrets, assumed their agent to be interned. Altogether Mrs. Kinney deserved her country’s thanks.

“And now shall we go back to Kennebago?”

“Not yet,” he said smiling a little gravely. “Not yet. It may be I shall never see Kennebago again.”

She looked at him startled. The affairs of the past week had been a great strain to her.

“I’m going to enlist,” he said.

CHAPTER XXX

“PRIVATE TRENT”

Before Trent went to enlist, he had an understanding with Mrs. Kinney as to the Kennebago camp. She was to live there and keep the house and gardens in good order until he returned. He had none of those premonitions of disaster which some who go to war have in abundance. Now that the danger of his arrest was gone and Kaufmann could never again entrap him he felt cheerful and lighthearted.

“I shall come back,” he told the old woman, “I feel it in my bones. But if not there will be enough for you to live on. I am seeing my lawyer about it this morning.”

On the way to the recruiting station, Trent met Weems.

“What branch are you going in?” he asked upon learning of Trent’s plans.

“Where I’m most needed,” Trent said cheerfully. “Infantry I guess.”

“You can get a commission right away,” Weems cried, a sudden thought striking him. “It was in last night’s papers. It said that men holding the B.S. degree were wanted and would be commissioned right off the reel. You’re a B.S. You wait a bit. Be an officer instead of an enlisted man. I bet the food’s better.”

He was a little piqued that Anthony Trent betrayed so little pleasure at the news. It so happened that Trent had given a deal of thought to this very thing. And his decision was to allow the chance of a commission to go. There was a strain of quixotism about him and a certain fineness of feeling which went to make this decision final. He loved his country in the quiet intense manner which does not show itself in the waving of flags. To outward appearances and to the unjudging mind, Weems would seem the more loyal of the two. Weems wore a flag in his buttonhole and shouted loudly his protestations and yet had made no sacrifice. Trent was to offer his life quietly, untheatrically. And he wanted to wear no officer’s uniform in case his arrest or discovery would bring reproach upon it. In his mind he could see headlines in the paper announcing that an officer of the United States Army was a notorious – he shuddered at the word – thief. And again, there was no certainty in his mind that he would give up his mode of life. In the beginning he had set out to obtain enough money to live in comfort. That, long ago, had been achieved. Then the jewels to adorn his lamp occupied his mind and now the game was in his blood. He wanted his camp for recreation but it would not satisfy wholly. When the war was over there would be Europe’s fertile fields to work upon.

There were many things to aid him in his feeling that the turning over of a new leaf would be useless. Nothing could ever undo what he had done. Try as he might he would never face the world an honest man. He would go to war. He would be a good soldier.

It was in the infantry that they needed men and Camp Dix received him with others. So insignificant a thing was one soldier that he presently felt a sense of security that had been denied him for years.

The experiences he went through in Camp were common to all. They were easier to him than most because of his perfection of physical condition. On the whole it was interesting work but he was glad when he marched along the piers of the Army Transport Service, where formerly German lines had docked, and boarded the Leviathan. Private Trent was going “over there.”

It was common knowledge that the regiments would not yet be sent to France. What they had learned at Camp Dix would be supplemented by a post-graduate course in England.

Curiously enough Trent found himself on the Sussex Downs, those rolling hills of chalk covered with short springy aromatic grasses and flowers. Here were a hundred sights and sounds that stirred his blood. Five generations of Trents had been born in America since that adventurous younger son had set out for the Western world. The present Anthony was coming back to the ancient home of his family under the most favorable circumstances. He was coming back with his mind purged of ancient enmities fostered so long by Britain’s foes to further alien causes; coming back to a country knit to his own by bonds that would not easily be broken.

It was curious that he should find himself here on the high downs because it was from this county of Sussex that the Trents sprang. Not far from Lewes was an old house, set among elms, which had been theirs for three hundred years. When he was last in England he had made a pilgrimage to it only to find its owner salmon fishing in Norway. The housekeeper had shown him over it, a big rambling house full of odd corridors and unexpected steps and he had never failed to think of it with pride. On that visit he had been disappointed to find the village church shut; the sexton was at his midday dinner.

Trent had been under canvas only a few days when he obtained leave for a few hours and set out to the church. He counted three Anthony Trents whose deeds were told on mural tablets. One had been an admiral; one a bishop and the third a colonel of Dragoons at Waterloo. He sauntered by the old house and looked at it enviously. “If I bought that,” he thought, “I would settle down to the ways of honest men.”

He shrugged his shoulders. There were many things yet to be done. It was only since he had been in England and seen her wounded that he realized what none can until it is witnessed, the certainty that there must be much suffering before the end is achieved.

The men in his company were not especially congenial. They were friendly enough but their interests were narrow. Trent was glad when the training period was over and he embarked in the troop train for Dover en route to the Western front. He made a good soldier. More than one of his mates said he would wear the chevrons before many weeks but he was anxious for no such distinction.

At the time his regiment arrived in France the American troops were at grips with the enemy. It was the first time that they held as a unit part of the line. The Germans, already making their retreat, left in the rear nests of machine gunners to hamper the pursuers. To clear these nests of hornets, to search abandoned cellars and buildings where men or bombs might be lying in wait was a task far more deadly than participation in a battle. Only iron-nerved men, strong to act and quick to think, were needed. There was a day when volunteers were asked for. Anthony Trent was the first man to offer himself. Under a lieutenant this band of brave men went about its dangerous task. The casualties were many and among them the officer.

He had made such an impression on his men and they had gained such favorable mention for gallant conduct that there was a fear lest the new officer might be of less vigorous and dashing nature. It was work, this nest clearing danger, that Trent liked enormously. He had come to know what traps the Hun was likely to set, the tempting cigar-box, the field glasses, the fountain-pen the touching of which meant maiming at the least. And against some of these trapped men Trent revived his old football tackle and brought them startled to the ground. It was the most stirring game of his life.

But one look at the new officer changed his mood. He looked at his lieutenant and his lieutenant looked at him. And the officer licked his lips hungrily. It was Devlin whom he had laughed at in San Francisco. Instinctively the men who observed this meeting sensed some pre-war hatred and speculated on its origin. Recollecting himself Trent saluted.

“So I’ve got a thief in my company,” Devlin sneered. “I’ll have to watch you pretty close. Looting’s forbidden.”

It was plain to the men who watched Devlin’s subsequent plan of action that he was trying to goad the enlisted man into striking him. In France the discipline of the American army was taking on the sterner character of that which distinguished the Allies.

No task had ever been so difficult for Anthony Trent as this continual curb he was compelled to put upon his tongue. Devlin had always disliked him. He was maddened at the thought that Trent had taken the Mount Aubyn ruby from under his nose. It was because of this, Dangerfield had discharged him from a lucrative position. And in the case of the Takowaja emerald it was Anthony Trent who had laughed at him. Many an hour had Devlin spent trying to weave the rope that would hang him. And in these endeavors he had gathered many odds and ends of information over which he chuckled with joy.

But first of all he wanted to break his enemy. There was no opportunity of which he did not take advantage. Ordinarily his superior officers would have witnessed this policy and reprimanded him; but conditions were such that their special duties kept Devlin and his men apart from their comrades. Devlin was a good officer and credit was given him for much that Trent deserved.

It chanced one night that while they waited for a little wood to be cleared of gas, Devlin and Trent sat within a few feet of one another. It was an opportunity Devlin was quick to seize.

“Thought you’d fooled me in ’Frisco, didn’t you?”

Trent lighted a cigarette with exasperating slowness.

“I did fool you,” he asserted calmly. “It is never hard to fool a man with your mental equipment.”

“Huh,” Devlin grunted, “you’ve got the criminal’s low cunning, I’ll admit that, Mr. Maltby of Chicago.”

He made a labored pretence of hunting for his cigarette case.

“Gone!” he said sneering; “some one’s lifted it but I guess you know where it is. Oh no, I forgot. You weren’t a dip, you were a second story man. Excuse me.”

He kept this heavy and malicious humor going until Trent’s imperturbability annoyed him.

“What a change!” he commented presently. “Me the officer and you the enlisted man who’s got to do as I say. You with your fast auto and your golf and society ways and me who used to be a cop.”

Winning no retort from his victim he leaned forward and pushed Trent roughly. He started back at the white wrath which transfigured the other’s face.

“Look here, Devlin,” Trent cried savagely, “you want me to hit you so you can prefer charges against me for striking an officer and have me disciplined. Listen to this: if you put your filthy hand on me again I won’t hit you, I’ll kill you.”

Towering and threatening he stood over the other. Devlin, who knew men and the ways of violence, looked into Trent’s face and recognized it was no idle threat he heard.

“That would be a hell of a fine trick,” he said, a little unsteadily, “to empty your gun in my back.”

“You know I wouldn’t do it that way,” Trent retorted. “Why should I let you off so easily as that?”

“Easily?” Devlin repeated.

“When I get ready,” Trent said grimly, “I shall want you to realize what’s coming to you.”

“Is that a threat?” Devlin demanded.

Trent nodded his head.

“It’s a threat.”

Devlin thought for a moment.

“I’ll fix you,” he said.

“How?” Trent inquired. “You’ve tried every way there is to have me killed. If there’s a doubtful place where some boches may be hiding with bombs whom do you send to find out? You send Private Trent. I’m not kicking. I volunteered for the job. I came out to do what I could. My one disappointment is that my officer is not also a gentleman.”

Devlin’s face was now better humored.

“I’ll fix you,” he said again, “I’ll see Pershing pins a medal on you all right.”

Trent wondered what he meant. And he wondered why for a day or two Devlin goaded him no more. Instead he looked at him as one who knew another was marked down for death and disgrace. It was inevitable that Anthony Trent could never know how near to discovery he was. The odds are against the best breakers of law. The history of crime told him that the cleverest had been captured by some trifling piece of carelessness. Had Devlin some such clue, he wondered?

CHAPTER XXXI

DEVLIN’S REVENGE

THERE came a night when Devlin’s men were called upon to clean out part of a forest from which many snipers had been firing, and where machine guns and their crews were known to be. It was work for picked men only and Trent admitted Devlin made a courageous leader.

The Americans met unexpectedly strong opposition. It was only when half their little company was lost that they were ordered to retreat. The way was made difficult with barbed wire and shell splintered trees. It was one of a hundred similar sorties taking place all along the Allied lines hardly worthy of mention in the press.

Trent, when he had gained a clearing in the wood, saw Devlin go down like an ox from the clubbed rifle in a Prussian hand. Trent had put a shot through the man’s head almost before Devlin’s body fell to the soft earth. He had an excellent chance of escape alone but he could not leave the American officer who was his enemy to bleed to death among his country’s foes. He was almost spent when he reached his own lines and the Red Cross relieved him of his inert burden. They told him Devlin still lived.

Three days later Trent was called to the hospital in which his officer lay white and bandaged. Although Devlin’s voice was weak it did not lack the note of enmity which ever distinguished it when its owner spoke to Anthony Trent.

“What did you do it for?” Devlin demanded.

“Do what?”

“Bring me in after that boche laid me out?”

“Only one reason,” Trent informed him. “Alive, you have a certain use to your country. Dead, you would have none.”

“That’s a lie,” Devlin snarled, “I’ve figured it out lying in this damned cot. You saw I wasn’t badly hurt and you knew some of the boys would fetch me in later. You thought you’d do a hero stunt and get a decoration and you reckoned I’d be grateful and let up on you. That was clever but not clever enough for me. I see through it. You’ve got away with out-guessing the other feller so far but I’m one jump ahead of you in this.” He paused for breath, “I’ve got you fixed, Mister Anthony Trent, and don’t you forget it. You think I’m bluffing I suppose.”

“I think you’re exciting yourself unduly,” Trent said quietly. “Take it up when you are well.”

“You’re afraid to hear what I know,” Devlin sneered. “You’ve got to hear it sometime, so why not now?”

Trent spoke as one does to a child or a querulous invalid.

“Well, what is it?” he demanded.

“Never heard of any one named Austin, did you?”

“It’s not an unusual name,” Trent admitted. But he was no longer uninterested. Conington Warren’s butler was so called. And this Austin had met him face to face on the stairway of his master’s house on the night that he had taken Conington Warren’s loose cash and jewels.

“He’s out here,” Devlin said and looked hard at Trent to see what effect the news would have.

“You forget I don’t know whom,” Trent reminded him. “What Austin?”

“You know,” Devlin snapped, “the Warren butler. I was on that case and he recognized me not a week ago and asked me who you were. He’s seen you, too. We put two and two together and it spells the pen for you. He was English and although he was over age the British are polite that way. If he said he was forty-one they said they guessed he was forty-one. I went to see him in a hospital before he ‘went west’ and he told me all about it.”

Anthony Trent could not restrain a sigh of relief. Austin was dead.

“That don’t help you any,” Devlin cried. “Don’t you wish you’d left me in the woods now? That was your opportunity. Why didn’t you take it?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Trent answered. “For one thing you dislike me too much to see anything but bad in what I do. That’s your weakness. That’s why you have always failed.”

“Well, I haven’t failed this time,” Devlin taunted him. “I’ve laid information against you where it’s going to do most good.”

He hoped to see the man he hated exhibit fear, plead for mercy or beg for a respite. He had rehearsed this expected scene during the night watches. Instead he saw the hawk-like face inscrutable as ever.

“I’ve told the adjutant what I know and what Austin said and he’s bound to make an investigation. That means you’ll be sent home for trial and I guess you know what that means. I’m going to be invalided home and I’ll put in my leave working up the case against you. They ought to give you a stretch of anything from fifteen to twenty years. I guess that’ll hold you, Mister Anthony Trent.”

The other man made no answer. He thought instead of what such a prison term would do for him. He had seen the gradual debasement of men of even a high type during the long years of internment. Men who had gone through prison gates with the same instincts of refinement as he possessed to come out coarsened, different, never again to be the men they were. He would sidle through the gaping doors a furtive thing with cunning crafty eyes whose very walk stamped him a convict. How could so long a term of years spent among professional criminals fail to besmirch him?

He took a long breath.

“I’m not there yet,” he said. “It’s a long way to an American jail and a good bit can happen in three thousand miles.”