Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

“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.”