Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

“Will they come in here?” Trent asked anxiously. He wanted the opportunity to do his own work while the family dined and he did not want to be seen by an unnecessary person. He disliked taking even a million to one shot.

The cynical butler interpreted his interest differently.

“You won’t understand a word of what they’re saying. They talk in French. She was at school in Lausanne and he’s a French count, or says he is. I’ve made a mistake in scorning foreign languages,” the butler admitted, “I’d give a lot to know what they talk about.” He was not to know that Trent knew French moderately well.

Left to himself Trent called to mind the actions of a piano tuner. He had often watched his own grand being tuned. When Mrs. Carr Faulkner came into the room she beheld an earnest young man delving among the piano’s depths. She was interested in no man but Jules d’Aucquier who filled her heart and emptied her purse.

“Is the thing much damaged?” she asked presently.

“I think not,” he replied.

“Then you need not stay long?”

“I shall go as soon as possible,” he said.

She sank into a deep chair and thought of Jules. And there came to her face a softer, happier look. The butler’s talk Trent dismissed as mere servants’ gossip. Of Carr Faulkner he knew nothing except that he was years older than his wife. He was, probably, a wealthy roué who had coveted this beautiful woman and bought her in marriage. In high society it was often that way, he mused. Family coercion, perhaps, or the need to aid impoverished parents. It was being done every day. This man of whom the butler spoke was probably her own age. Since the stone age this domestic intrigue must have been going on.

He touched the keyboard – pianissimo at first and then growing bolder plunged into the glorious Liebestod. It was not the sort of thing Mr. Jackson would have done but then Anthony Trent was a head tuner as he had explained. He watched the woman’s face to see into what mood the music would lead her. He was speedily to find out.

“Stop,” she commanded and rising to her feet came to his side. “Why do you do that?”

“I must try it,” he answered, a little sheepishly, “we always have to test an instrument.”

“But to play the Liebestod” she said severely. “I have heard them all play it, Bauer, Borwick, Grainger, d’Albert and Hoffman and you dare to try! It was impertinent of you. Of course if you must play just play those chords tuners always use.”

Trent admitted afterwards he had never been more angry or felt more insulted in his life. He had not for a moment supposed this butterfly woman even knew the name of what he played.

“I won’t offend again,” he said with what he hoped was a sarcastic inflection. She answered never a word. She seemed to be listening. Trent heard a sound that might have been the opening of the elevator door. Then came hurried steps along the hall and Jules d’Aucquier entered.

He was dark to the point of swarthiness, tall and graceful. His rather small head reminded Trent of a snake’s. As a man who knew men Trent determined that the newcomer was dangerous. The look that he threw across the room to the intruder was not pleasant.

He spoke very quickly in French.

“Who is this?” he demanded.

“No one who matters,” she answered in the same tongue.

“But what is the pig doing here at this hour?” he asked.

“Repairing the piano,” she told him, “a poor tuner I imagine for the reason that he plays so well. I had to stop him when he began the Liebestod. It affects me too much. That was being played when you first looked into my eyes, dear one.”

“Send him away,” the man commanded.

“But that would look suspicious,” she declared.

Trent noticed that Jules did not respond to the affection which was in the woman’s tone.

“You should not telephone to me at the club,” he said as he took a seat at her side. “I am only a temporary member and do not want to embarrass my sponsor.”

“But you were so cruel to me yesterday,” she murmured.

“Cruel?” he repeated and turned his cold, snake eyes on her, eyes that could, when he willed it, glow with fire and passion. “Who is the crueler, you or I?”

“What do you mean?” she cried almost tearfully. “You know I love you.”

“And yet when I ask you to do a favor which is easily within your power to perform you refuse. I must have money; that you know.”

“It is always money now,” she complained. “You no longer say that you love me.”

“How can I when my creditors bark at my heels like hungry dogs? Unless I pay by to-morrow it is finished. You and I see one another no more, that is certain.”

He looked at her in annoyed surprise when she suddenly smiled. He watched her with an even greater interest than the man gazing from behind the piano. From an escritoire she took a package wrapped in lavender paper. This she placed in the pocket of the coat that he had thrown across a chair.

“What good are cigarettes to me now?” he demanded. “I have told you that unless I have fifteen thousand dollars by noon to-morrow, I am done.”

“When you get to your rooms,” she said, smiling, “open your cigarettes and see if I do not love you.”

Trent admitted this Jules was undeniably handsome now that the dark face was wreathed in smiles. Jules gathered her in his arms.

“My soul,” he whispered, and covered her face with kisses. When he attempted to rise and go to the coat his eyes were staring at, she held him tight.

“I got twenty thousand from him,” she said. “You will find the twenty bills each wrapped in the cigarette papers. I pushed the tobacco out and they fitted in.”

“Wasteful one,” he said in tender reproach and sought again to retrieve his coat.

Unfortunately for the debonair Jules d’Aucquier this was not immediately possible. The click of the little elevator was heard. The two looked at one another in alarm.

“It must be Carr,” she whispered. “Nobody else could possibly use that elevator now. Somebody has told him.” She looked about her in despair. “You must hide. Quick, behind the piano there until I get him away.”

Trent working industriously amid the wreckage of what had been a grand piano looked up with polite surprise at the tall man who flung himself almost at his feet and tried to conceal himself behind part of the instrument.

“Hide me, quickly,” Jules whispered, “do you hear. I will give you money. Quick, fool, don’t gape at me.”

For the second time that evening Anthony Trent smothered his anger and smiled when rage was in his heart. And he did so for the second time not because he was conscious of fear but because he saw himself suitably rewarded for his efforts. He felt a note thrust into his hand but this was not the reward he looked for. He was arranging the piano débris around the prostrate Jules when there was a knock on the door and Carr Faulkner entered.

The millionaire’s eye fell first of all upon the coat over the chair.

“Who’s is this?” he demanded.

The pause was hardly perceptible before she answered.

“I suppose it belongs to the piano man.”

Faulkner looked across at the instrument and beheld the busy Trent taking what else was possible from the Stoneman. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put that instrument together again easily. Trent went about his business with quiet persistence.

Carr Faulkner’s voice was very courteous and kind as he addressed the tuner.

“I’m afraid I must ask you to wait outside in the hall for a few minutes until I have had a little private talk with my wife.”

“Is that necessary,” she said quickly. “I’m just going to dress for dinner. We have people coming, remember.”

“There is time,” he said meaningly. “I left my club half an hour earlier to-day. Did the change incommode you?”

“Why should it?” she said lightly.

Faulkner was a man of middle age with a fine thoughtful face. It was a face that made an instant appeal to Trent. It mirrored kindliness and good breeding, and reminded him in a subtle way of his own father, a country physician who had died a dozen years before his only son left the way of honest men.

“A few minutes only,” he said and Trent passed out into the hall taking care to leave the door opened an inch or so. It was necessary for his peace of mind that he should know what it was Mr. Faulkner had to say to his wife. It might concern him vitally. It was possible that inquiry at Stoneman’s might have informed Faulkner of his trickery. While this was improbable Trent was not minded to be careless. This kindly aspect of the millionaire might be assumed to put him off his guard; even now men might be stationed at the exits to arrest him. Very quietly he stole back to the door and listened.

“I have found out for certain what I have long suspected,” Faulkner was saying to his wife. “It is always the husband who learns last. Don’t protest,” he added. “I know too much. I know for example that you have sold many of your jewels to provide funds for a gambler and a rascal.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she cried white-faced.

“You do,” he said, and there was a trace of deep sadness in his voice. “You know too well. This man Jules d’Aucquier is not of a noble French family at all. He is a French-Canadian and was formerly a valet to an English officer of title at Ottawa. It was there he picked up this smattering of knowledge which has made it easy to fool the unsuspecting.”

“I don’t believe it,” she cried vehemently.

He looked at her sadly. The whole scene was crucifixion for him.

“I shall prove it,” he said quietly.

“I don’t care if you do,” she flung back at him.

“You would care for him just the same?” he asked.

“I have not said that I care for him at all,” she said, a trace of caution creeping into her manner.

“I shall give you the opportunity to prove it one way or another within a few minutes. We have come to the parting of the ways.”

It was at this moment Anthony Trent knocked timidly upon the door. The stage was set to his liking. When he was bidden to enter his quick eye took in everything. There, out of sight d’Aucquier skulked while he prepared to hear his despicable history told to the woman who was his victim. As for the woman she was defiant. She would probably elect to follow a scoundrel who had fascinated her and leave a man behind whose good name she had trailed in the dust. The situation was not a new one but Trent was moved by it. Carr Faulkner had all his sympathy. He registered a vow if ever he met d’Aucquier, or whatever his name might be, to exact a punishment.

“Excuse me,” said Anthony Trent, stepping into the room, “but my train leaves in twenty minutes – I live out in Long Island – and I’ve got to catch it or else the missus will be worrying.”

Mrs. Faulkner looked at him frowning. She wanted to get this scene over. He was a good looking piano tuner, she decided, and now his tragedy was plain. He who had no doubt once aimed at the concert stage tuned pianos to support a wife and home in Long Island!

“I’ll finish the job to-morrow morning.”

She waved him toward the door imperiously. Every moment she and her husband spent in this room added to the chance of the hiding man’s discovery.

“Why don’t you go?” she cried.

Anthony Trent permitted himself to smile faintly.

“I’ve come for my coat, Ma’am,” he said, and glanced at the raiment d’Aucquier had thrown carelessly over a chair, the coat now laden with such precious cigarettes.

Carr Faulkner was growing impatient at this interruption. He could not understand the look of anger on his wife’s face.

“Don’t you understand,” he exclaimed, “that the man merely wants to go home and take his coat with him?”

He turned to the deferential Trent.

“All right, all right,” Trent moved to the chair and took the garment. At the door he turned about and bowed profoundly.

In the lower hall he found the cynical butler whose ideas on matrimony were so decided. He startled that functionary by thrusting into his hand the ten dollars d’Aucquier had forced upon him.

“What’s this for?” demanded the butler. When piano tuners came with gifts in their hands he was suspicious. “I don’t understand this.” He observed that the affability which had made the tuner seem kin to himself was vanished. A different man now looked at him.

“It’s for you,” said Trent. “I’m not a piano tuner. I’m a detective and I came here after that ex-valet who pretends to be a French nobleman.”

The butler breathed hard.

“I ’ate that man, sir,” he said simply. “I’d like to dot him one.”

“You’ll be able to and that within five minutes,” Trent assured him. “He is concealed behind the lid of the grand piano I was supposed to repair. Mr. and Mrs. Faulkner are both in the room but he doesn’t know Jules is there. You take two footmen and yank him out and then if you want to ‘dot him one’ or two, there’s your chance.”

The muscles of the butler’s big shoulders swelled with anticipation. “Where are you going?” he asked of Trent, now making for the front door.

“To get the patrol wagon,” said Anthony Trent.

“How long will you be?” asked the man.

“I shall be back in no time,” Trent answered cryptically.

Arrived in his quiet rooms he undid the box of cigarettes. At first he thought he had been fooled for the top layer of cigarettes were tobacco-filled and normal.

But it was on the next row that Mrs. Carr Faulkner had expended her trouble. Each one contained a new thousand dollar bill and their tint enthralled him.

CHAPTER XI

ESPIONAGE AT CLOSE RANGE

CASHING a modest check at the Colonial bank one morning, Trent had fallen in line with a queue at the paying teller’s window. He made it a point to observe what went on while he waited. He was not much interested in bank robberies. To begin with the American Bankers’ Association is a vengeful society pursuing to the death such as mulct its clients. Furthermore, a successful bank robbery, unless the work of an inside man, needs careful planning and collaboration.

On this particular morning Trent saw a stout and jocund gentleman push his check across the glass entrance to the cashier’s cave and received without hesitation a large sum of money. He passed the time of day with the official, climbed into a limousine and was whirled up Broadway.

“Did yer see that?” a youth demanded who stood before Trent.

“What?” he asked quietly. It was not his pose to be interested in other of the bank’s customers.

“That guy took out twenty thousand dollars,” the boy said, reverence in his tone.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Trent.

“He lives well,” said the lad. “I ought to know, he gets his groceries from us and he only eats and drinks the best.”

“He looks like it,” the other said genially. If the stout and jocund gourmet had known what was in Trent’s mind he would have hied him back to the bank and redeposited his cash. “It’s Rudolf Liebermann, isn’t it?”

“That’s Frederick Williams, and he lives on Ninety-third, near the Drive.”

What additional information Trent wanted to know might be obtained from other than this boy. To make many inquiries might, if Frederick Williams were relieved of his roll, bring back the incident to the grocer’s boy.

Directly dusk fell Anthony Trent, in the evening garb of fashion, crossed over to Riverside Drive and presently came to the heroic statue of Jeanne d’Arc which stands at the foot of Ninety-third Street. By this time he knew the license number of the Williams’ limousine and the address. It was one of those small residences of gray stone containing a dozen rooms or so. Such houses, as he knew, were usually laid out on a similar plan and he was familiar with it.

It was very rarely that he made a professional visit to a house without having a definite plan of attack carefully worked out. This was the first time he sought to gain entrance to a strange house on the mere chance of success. But the twenty thousand dollars in crisp notes tempted him. In his last affair he had netted this sum in notes of a similar denomination and he was superstitious enough to feel that this augured well for to-night’s success.

Careful as ever, Trent had made his alibis in case of failure. In one of his pockets was a pint flask of Bourbon, empty save for a dram of spirit. In another was a slip of paper containing the name of the house-holder who occupied a house with the same number as that of Williams, but on Ninety-fifth Street. Once before he had saved himself by this ruse. He had protested vigorously when detected by a footman that he was merely playing a practical joke on his old college chum who lived, as he thought, in this particular house, but was found to be on the next block. And in this case the emptied whiskey flask and the cheerful tipsiness of the amiable young man of fashion – Trent’s most successful pose – saved him.

In his pockets nothing would be found to incriminate him. He knew well the folly of carrying the automatic so beloved of screen or stage Raffles. In the first place, the sudden temptation to murder in a tight pinch, and in the second the Sullivan law. In the bamboo cane, carefully concealed, were slender rods of steel whose presence few would suspect. He had left such a cane in Senator Scrivener’s Fifth Avenue mansion when he was compelled to make an unrehearsed exit. Once he met the Senator coming down the steps of the Union Club with this cane in his hand. He chuckled to think what might be that worthy’s chagrin to know he had been carrying burglar’s tools with him.

As there was little light on the lower floor of Frederick Williams’ house, Trent let himself in cautiously. There was a dim hanging light which showed that the Williams idea of furnishing was in massive bad taste. At the rear of the hall were the kitchens. Under the swinging door he could see a bright light. The stairs were wide and did not creak. Carefully he ascended them and stood breathless in a foyer between the two main reception-rooms. There were voices in the rear room, which should, if Williams conformed to the majority of dwellers in such houses, be the dining-room. Big doors shut out view and sound until he crept nearer and peeped through a keyhole. He could see Williams sitting in a Turkish rocker smoking a cigar. There were two other men and all three chattered volubly in German. Unfortunately it was a tongue of which the listener knew almost nothing. Reasonably fluent in French, the comprehension of German was beyond him. There was a small safe in the corner and it was not closed. Trent felt certain that in it reposed those notes he had come for.

In the corner of the foyer was a carven teakwood table with a glass top, and on it was a large Boston fern. It would be easy enough to crouch there unobserved. The only possibility of discovery was the remote contingency that Williams and his friends might choose to use this foyer. But Trent had seen that it was not furnished as a sitting-room.

He had barely determined on his hiding place when he found the sudden necessity to use it. Williams arose quickly and advanced to the door. When he threw it open the path of light left the unbidden one completely obscured. The three men passed by him and entered the drawing-room in front. Trent caught a view of a luxuriously overfurnished room and a grand piano. Then Williams began to play a part of a Brahms sonata so well that Trent’s heart warmed toward him. But his appreciation of the master did not permit him to listen to the whole movement. He crept cautiously from his cover and into the room the three had just vacated. If there were other of Williams’ friends or family here Trent might be called upon to exercise his undoubted talents. One man he would not hesitate to attack since his working knowledge of jiu-jitsu was beyond the average. If there were two, attack would be useless in the absence of a revolver. But if the coast were clear – ah, then, a competence, all the golf and fishing he desired. There would be only the Countess to deal with at his leisure.

The room was empty, but the safe was closed! Williams was not devoid of caution. A glance at the thing showed Trent that in an uninterrupted half hour he could learn its secrets. But he could hardly be assured of that at nine o’clock at night. His very presence in the room was fraught with danger. The one door leading from it opened into a butler’s pantry from which a flight of stairs led into the kitchen part of the house. Downstairs he could hear faucets running. A dumbwaiter offered a way of escape if he were put to it. To the side of the dumbwaiter was a zinc-lined compartment used for drying dishes. It was four feet long and three in height and a shelf bisected it. This he took out carefully and placed upon the floor of the compartment, making an ample space for concealment. A radiator opened into it, giving the heat desired, and two iron gratings in the doors afforded Trent the opportunity to overhear what might be said. He satisfied himself that the doors opened noiselessly. The burglar’s rôle was not always an heroic one, he told himself, and thought of the popular misconception of such activities.

It must have been an hour later when he heard sounds in the adjoining room. By this time he was fighting against the drowsiness induced by the heat of his prison.

The swinging door between the butler’s pantry and the dining-room was thrown open and Williams came in. He leaned over the staircase and shouted something in German to some one in the kitchen, who answered him in the same tongue. There was the sound below of locking and bolting the doors. The servants had evidently been sent to bed.

When Williams went back to the other room the door between did not swing to by four or five inches. So far as Williams was concerned this carelessness was to cost him more than he guessed. Even in his hiding place the conversation was audible to Trent, although its meaning was incomprehensible.

He was suddenly awakened to a more vivid interest when he became aware that it was now English that they were talking. There was a newcomer in the room, a man with a nasal carrying voice and a prodigious brogue.

“This, gentlemen,” he heard Williams say, “is Mr. O’Sheill, who has done so much good work for us and for the freedom of oppressed, starving, shackled Ireland, which we shall free. I may tell Mr. O’Sheill that the highest personages in the Fatherland weep bitter tears for Ireland’s wrongs.”

“That’s all right,” said the Sinn Feiner a trifle ungraciously, “but what’s behind yonder door?”

For answer one of the other men flung it open, turned up the lights and permitted Mr. O’Sheill to make his examination. Trent heard the man’s heavy tread as he descended the stairway and found at the bottom a locked door.

“You’ve got to be careful,” O’Sheill said when he rejoined Williams and the rest. “These damned secret service men are everywhere, they tell me.”

“That is why we have rented a private house,” one of the Germans declared. “At an hotel privacy is impossible. We have had our experiences.”

These scraps of conversation aroused Anthony Trent immediately. It required only a cursory knowledge of the affairs of the moment for a duller man than he to realize that he had come across the scent of one of those plots which were so hampering his government in their prosecution of the war. Very cautiously he crawled from his hiding place and made his silent way to the barely opened door.

O’Sheill was lighting a large cigar. His was a suspicious, dour face. Williams, urbane and florid, was very patient.

“That I do not tell you the names of my colleagues,” he said, “is of no moment. It is sufficient to say that you have the honor to be in the presence of one of the most illustrious personages in my country.” Here he bowed in the direction of a small, thin, dapper man who did not return the salutation.

“I came for the money,” said O’Sheill.

“You came first for your instructions,” snapped the illustrious personage coldly.

“That’s so, yer Honor,” O’Sheill answered. There was something menacing in the tone of the other man and he recognized it.

“This money,” said Williams, “is given for very definite purposes and an accounting will be demanded.”

“Ain’t you satisfied with the way I managed it at Cork?” O’Sheill demanded.

“It was a beginning,” Williams conceded. “Here is what you must do: Wherever along the Irish coast the English bluejackets and the American sailors foregather you must stir up bad blood. I do not pretend to give you any more precise direction than this. Let the Americans understand that the British call them cowards. Let the British think the same of the Yankees. Let there be bitter street fights, not in obscure drinking dens, but in the public streets in the light of day. I will see to it that the news gets back here and let Americans have something to think about when the next draft is raised. Find men in England to do what you must do in your own country. Let there be black blood between Briton and American from Belfast to Portsmouth. Let there be doubt and recrimination so that preparations are hindered here.”